David Crosby 1941-2023: A Deeper Look At The Counter Culture Legend’s Vast Career

If there was one thing besides sailing that David Crosby loved as much as making music, it was figuring out a way to get attention. Whether it was offering an extemporaneous verbal screed about JFK’s assassination at the same Monterey Pop Festival (where he sat in with Buffalo Springfield because Neil Young was AWOL) or ranting about waving his freak flag high (during “Almost Cut My Hair” from CSNY’s Deja Vu album), this son of elite Hollywood/New York heritage savored the spotlight.

No question he got plenty of it with the latter supergroup and arguably as much so by dint of his crazed drugs and firearms tales, recounted in his first autobiography Long Time Gone. But if David had merely allowed his earliest work as a member of the Byrds to speak for him, his reputation might well be one far more dignified than it stands as the news of his passing sinks in.

His top billing in his uber-famous trio collaboration is in fact based on his contributions to the iconic American band often (reasonably) likened to the Beatles, in terms of its influences on contemporary rock. The prominent acoustic textures of the eponymous Crosby Stills & Nash album are merely a literal-minded approach to the melding of folk and rock David helped pioneer when first meshing his talents and experience with Roger McGuinn, and the late Gene Clark.


The Byrds’ lush vocal harmonies, arguably as significant to their sound as the chiming twelve-string guitar, are distinguished in large measure by Crosby’s high harmonies. Hear his voice keen through “5D,” and while doing so, note that his rhythm guitar is a driving force of the performance: the man was as formidable in that instrumental role as his peers of the era John Lennon or Steve Miller.

Yet it was in the limited visibility of the background to which David Crosby did not cotton. His prideful attitude may explain the assertive stance on his original compositions beginning with the aforementioned record “What’s Happening?!?!” and “I See You:”– His elevation of profile–physically manifest in the eye-catching garb he wore in the form of capes and an array of hats plus his bushy mustache– ratcheted up the internal friction within an already unstable group circa 1966. The unexpected departure of songwriter/vocalist Clark the year after the Byrds’ breakthrough left a huge artistic vacuum, into which Croz stepped along (with bassist Christ HIllman who brought a decided country influence into the group that would prove crucial in its later years).

To begin with, David’s passion for Indian music brought forth the raga-like changes of “Why.” Initially released as the b-side of “8 Miles High,” itself a groundbreaking piece of psychedelia, it was re-recorded for the Byrds’ fourth album, Younger Than Yesterday, where it appeared alongside equally memorable Crosby pieces “Renaissance Fair” and “Everybody’s Been Burned.” Unfortunately, the man’s campaign on behalf of the execrable “Mind Gardens” shunted aside the exalting “Lady Friend,” which only saw the light of day as a less-than-successful single in the waning stages of the band’s commercial prospects.

The intra-group struggles centering on David Crosby hardly lessened during the next recording project. As otherwise laudable as was his obdurate stance in favor of all-original material for The Notorious Byrd Brothers, his self-imposed boycott(s) of some sessions eventually got him fired from the group by McGuinn and Hillman before the LP was completed. Thus, it’s high irony indeed that Croz had a prominent role in writing and singing those album cuts that most sound like a natural extension of the immediately recognizable sound of the band.

“Draft Morning,” “Tribal Gathering” and “Dolphin’s Smile”–all foreshadow the singular likes of “The Lee Shore” and “Shadow Captain” that David contributed to CSN(Y). More unconventionally creative than the dumbed-down likes of the title song from the first record with Neil Young, such output dovetails with the jazz-influenced likes of his work in later years with CPR–a group including Jeff Pevar and Crosby’s son James Raymond–not to mention his collaborations with the Lighthouse Band (whose ranks include Michael League of Snarky Puppy).

Underscoring David’s prolific nature toward the end of his life, this output should no more go unjustly recognized within the career arc of this irascible artist than the exquisite mood music that is his first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, or his pivotal initiative in producing Joni Mitchell’s very first long-player, Song To A Seagull, in 1968.

If it’s true that David Crosby gained some inner peace late in life, then there’s all the more reason to mourn his sudden loss in early 2023 and contemplate his rightly-esteemed position in the (relatively) calm eye of so many musical and cultural hurricanes of the past fifty-plus years.

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