Bob Dylan on why he admired David Crosby: “An architect of harmony”
As versatile and innovative a performer as Bob Dylan was, there is one thing I don’t think he could have quite pulled off.
In the 1960s, when folk was developing into the world of smooth Americana, musicians were banding together to layer harmonies over the top of their songs. It was the ultimate product of creative collectiveness, and it’s for that reason, it was best Bob Dylan steered clear.
Of course, in his early folk career, he forayed into the world of harmonic performance with Joan Baez, but there was something about the warring tensions of their voices that worked so uniquely on those songs. Almost like a conversation or argument, that existed musically over the top of the music.
Three-part harmonies were entirely different and required a unified approach that created something bigger than the sum of its parts. Dylan was, despite whatever situation labels tried to put him in, a solo artist and nothing else. Steadfast in pursuing his own vision and telling his own stories, his voice was designed to be left to its own devices.
There was another artist who, on paper, had a similar profile. David Crosby was well known in musical circles for being a cantankerous old git, semi-beloved and berated for his argumentative nature, penchant for politicism, and the underlying ego that existed below that. But ultimately, that is what made him one of the great songwriters of musical history, because like Dylan, he was steadfast in his view on the world and used his music as a vehicle to express it.
“Crosby was a colourful and unpredictable character, wore a Mandrake the Magician cape, didn’t get along with too many people and had a beautiful voice,” Dylan once explained of the songwriter. But then he continued, describing one of the key attributes of Crosby that ultimately made of one of music’s great paradoxes.
Dylan continued, describing him as “an architect of harmony. He could freak out a whole city block all by himself. I liked him a lot.”
That was perhaps the biggest enigma when it came to understanding Crosby. His ability to be so resolutely uncompromising and famously contrarian, yet he sat at the middle of one of music’s greatest ever three-part harmonies.
There were many things that made the brilliance of Crosby, Stills and Nash so hard to understand, but perhaps Crosby’s role in that was the biggest of them all. When his voice was paired with the transatlantic musicians who stood alongside him, somehow the aggravation seemed to fall away, leaving his vocals to seamlessly blend with two others to create something bigger than their individual contributions.
But with Crosby, Stills, and Nash as a whole, there seemed to be something larger at play. The band gelled so incredibly to a point where it almost acted in spite of their differences. Stephen Stills’ songwriting somehow spoke to the gruff nature of David Crosby, which was supported further by the obscure introduction of Graham Nash’s British voice. Even though Dylan can provide an explanation, the root of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s greatness doesn’t need one.
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