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Happy Birthday, David Crosby
In honor of David Crosby’s birthday on August 14, ten favorite Crosby songs in chronological order. The drug misadventures, weight problem, etc. have captured the most attention, but Crosby is a fantastically talented songwriter with a more advanced sense of harmony than most rock musicians, and a gorgeous singing voice. I could easily double the length of this list, and I do mention a few other favorites in my comments.
“Why” first appeared as the B-side of “Eight Miles High” (which Crosby had a huge musical influence on, contributing a line as well). Its psychedelic arrangement had been perfected by the time the Byrds took their third crack at it for Younger Than Yesterday (1967).
A haunting highlight of Younger, this droning meditation on disappointment shows the influence of Miles Davis’s concurrent modal explorations.
An outtake from Younger, this may be the catchiest song Crosby ever wrote; it draws on the riffage of early Byrds tunes by McGuinn and Clark even as the production (including horns) anticipates the musical style of Crosby’s songs on the following Notorious Byrd Brothers, which appeared after he’d been booted from the band.
A post-apocalyptic vision from CSN’s 1969 debut. Besides Crosby’s contributions, Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane) wrote two verses, Stills one.
From the 1970 album of the same name comes this jazzy, exotic excursion. There’s an even wilder version (the intro sounds like free jazz) on Crosby & Nash’s 1977 Live.
I have terribly underrepresented Crosby’s solo work here, I admit. The album this is found on, 1971’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, has come to be seen in retrospect as a quirky classic of its time and place.
From Crosby’s first album with Nash, Graham Nash/David Crosby (1972), comes this pretty, wry song of optimism.
Wind on the Water (1975) is an outright masterpiece. “Homeward” could’ve been a CSNY track if their 1974 attempt to make an album hadn’t been aborted by the fragmentation of the quartet. “The blind are leading the blind / and I am amazed how they stumble / homeward through the haze” was an apt comment on issues personal and political, band and nation. That’s Crosby playing the stinging electric guitar solo, too. “Carry Me” and “Bittersweet” are other great songs from this album.
Crosby’s puckish wit is front and center again on this self-deprecating song from CSN (1977). In the next ten years, there would be only one noteworthy Crosby track, the haunting “Delta” (on CSN’s Daylight Again from 1982), as crack took over Crosby’s existence and led to hard time in prison.
This musically stark, deadly serious self-indictment and declaration of determination is simultaneously harrowing and uplifting. It’s one of the two best tracks on the mostly lackluster 1988 album American Dream.
