The Crosby, Stills & Nash song written on the night “Kennedy was killed”
Music is an excellent way for people to discuss politics. The works of artists like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan remain timeless because they reflect both a moment in time and an ideology. Not only can artists use their songs as a form of expression, but they can also help people make sense of situations that seem completely unfathomable.
John F Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States. He was beloved by many, but his run as president was cut short on November 22nd, 1963, as he was shot and killed while driving through Dallas, Texas. The incident had a huge impact on the American people and American society as a whole. It remains the source of serious debate, and some people are still unable to make sense of the situation.
One song that arose from the assassination and helped a nation in crisis mourn was Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’. The track was never supposed to be about JFK, as Hebb’s brother had passed away just 24 hours before, and it was an ode to him. However, the optimistic look at grief, which remembers the good times rather than the bad, seemed to resonate with the American people, and the track was adopted by many as a shining light through a period of darkness.
It wasn’t the only song that can be commended as some form of tribute to the Kennedys. On June 5th, 1968, JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, was also murdered. He was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Again, this was a complicated moment for the American people, as it seemed anyone who preached peace was getting murdered.
This time, David Crosby took to writing a tribute directed towards the assassinated Kennedy. His group, with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash, was formed in 1968, so when they were writing material for their first record, the topic of RFK’s assassination was on everybody’s mind. While the trio may not have been considered the most political group in the world, this was a topic they wanted to write about. So they set to work and ended up writing the track ‘Long Time Gone’, which featured on their debut album.
The song is certainly open to interpretation; however, in the 1991 box set for the record, Crosby wrote about it and outlined its subject. He admitted he felt incredibly frustrated by the news of RFK’s assassination and wanted to write some kind of tribute to him.
“It was written the night Bobby Kennedy was killed. I believed in him because he said he wanted to make some positive changes in America, and he hadn’t been bought and sold like Johnson and Nixon—cats who made their deals years ago with the special interests in this country in order to gain power,” Crosby concluded. “I thought Bobby, like his brother, was a leader who had not made those deals. I was already angry about Jack Kennedy getting killed, and it boiled over into this song when they got his brother, too.”
