“I’M AFRAID of dying. I’m close, and I don’t like it,” US singer-songwriter David Crosby admits in this new documentary about his life. “Every minute you get is precious. Time is the final currency, so how do you spend it?”

The 78-year old countercultural icon has certainly been busy in his sunset years, releasing four solo albums since 2014. Yet while this creative resurgence is welcome, it is his music and life during the rebellious 1960s that he will always be known for and which makes up the core of this film, directed by AJ Eaton and produced by Cameron Crowe.

Finding fame with folk-rock pioneers The Byrds, Crosby remembers how the group’s version of Mr Tambourine Man spurred Bob Dylan on to go electric. The band sacked him in 1967, with Crosby describing himself as “difficult” during this period: “Big ego, no brains, goofy, stoned.”

Moving to Laurel Canyon, he fell for Joni Mitchell and produced her debut album. Within a year he had formed the super group Crosby, Stills & Nash with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. Later joined by Neil Young, Crosby contributed classic songs like Guinevere, the hippie paranoia of Almost Cut My Hair and the gorgeous Lee Shore.

There are fascinating stories about an intense bathroom encounter with jazz great John Coltrane, playing Woodstock and being the inspiration for Dennis Hooper’s character in the 1969 cult classic film Easy Rider.

Noting he had sex with hundreds of women, he says that there were boundaries he crossed “that you haven’t thought of yet.” But rather than being boastful, he is full of regret for the partners and friends he hurt with his selfish and destructive behaviour and for the women he helped get dangerously addicted to the cocaine and heroin he himself was hooked on.

His painful memories of the death of his long-time girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car crash in 1969 are particularly affecting.

By the end of the film Crosby explains that all the people he played music with — Roger McGuinn in The Byrds, Stills, Nash and Young — all now “really dislike me — strongly.” Health-wise, it seems like his two heart attacks, eight stents, copious drug use, liver transplant and diabetes is about to catch up with him.

Stubborn, charismatic and brutally honest, Crosby cuts a magnetic, though often sad and lonely figure. That's a real surprise to see when one considers the shallow, sensational nature of many music documentaries.

The British premiere of David Crosby: Remember My Name is on November 17 at Curzon Soho in London. The screening is part of music documentary festival Doc’n'Roll, which runs until November 17, details: docnrollfestival.com