David Crosby on the guitarist “nobody else” could emulate
If the music wasn’t so good, putting David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young in a band together might have just been the greatest publicity stunt in music history. To be clear, each member did have some mainstream success under their belt before joining the group. However, it was the assimilation of their talents into one supergroup that made them one of the world’s biggest bands. When they split in a haze of drugs and drama in 1970, they retained that level of notoriety and fame into four separate successful solo careers.
At the time though, there was a big question mark over how the mercurially talented David Crosby would take to a solo career. For one thing, to call Crosby erratic is akin to calling the sky ‘up’. His was a temperament that needed to be handled with kid gloves due to his various addictions, volcanic temper and complete inability to shut up. All things that would stay with him throughout the rest of his life.
However, on a strictly musical note, he was also the member of CSNY that thrived by collaborating. He had come to prominence as a member of The Byrds and even when he joined Stills and Nash, the songs co-written for those records were often ones Crosby had finished with the help of his bandmates. To be absolutely clear this is me in no way diminishing his talent.
There are people who thrive on their own, oftentimes for good reason. Neil Young springs to mind for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. On the other hand, there are those who do not. The sheer quality of what Crosby was able to create speaks for itself whether he collaborated with others to do that or not. The question still remained though, how would he take to his solo career? If you look at the reviews his debut solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name received, you would assume very, very badly.
What made the first solo album by David Crosby great?
The record was slated on release but has since been regarded as one of the best solo records by an ex-CSNY member. A lot of that is due to the absolutely stellar supporting cast that Crosby assembled to make the album. Young and Nash from his previous band all showed up to write and play on the album; Joni Mitchell sings back up on a few songs, as does Paul Kantner and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane. However, there was one person that Crosby considered to be the beating heart of the record.
In a 2021 interview with Uncut magazine, Crosby was asked whether he would ever tour his debut solo album in full. His response speaks volumes. He said, “I have. But (Jerry) Garcia’s dead, and that puts quite a crimp in it. Nobody else plays the way he did. And there’s no point trying to duplicate what happened there without him, ’cos he’s all over it. There was a certain magic that happened every time he and I picked up two guitars.”
It’s clear that Crosby viewed The Grateful Dead frontman as a musical kindred spirit, and would elaborate on their connection in a truly charming moment later in the interview. Crosby continued: “If you listen to the beginning of [album outtake] ‘Kids And Dogs’, we’re playing a game with each other where we’d count: one, two, three, play! Each time we’d play a note, and neither of us knows what note the other guy’s gonna play. …If you hear us, we’re doing that game, playing with each other, and then we hit a chord that’s so good that Garcia starts laughing, and you can hear him laughing on the tape. That’s what used to happen every time.”
There you have what made Crosby really stand out among his peers. Anyone can sit down with a guitar and hash out a song on their own. It takes true vision to work with someone and get the best out of each other. Few people have given us more proof of this than David Crosby. Not only for the work he did with Jerry Garcia, but also the vast, vast majority of the people he worked with as well.
