The one musician David Crosby said no one could replace: “Nobody plays the way he did”
The magic of music was never lost on David Crosby whenever he performed.
He knew that there was some unspoken power to the way that he sang with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and even when he wasn’t the one performing, he could appreciate what the more adventurous parts of the rock scene were bringing to the table every now and again. But he felt that there were only a few musicians who had that certain spark in them that no one else could have captured if they tried.
Then again, a lot of that spark doesn’t come from being endowed with some musical gift. Crosby was more than happy to put in the work whenever he was arranging music with The Byrds or his other projects, and even when he started working on his solo efforts, he almost seemed more gung-ho to make something that no one ever heard before, like when he moved into more ethereal harmonies on If I Could Only Remember My Name.
But the giants that Crosby often mingled with normally had more on their minds than writing a couple of good tunes. His heroes were the ones who lived and breathed music with every fibre of their being, and if he could be literally blown away by listening to John Coltrane, it didn’t take him long to appreciate what people like Steely Dan were doing. These were students of music, and Crosby wanted to be anywhere close to them.
And when you look at the way that Crosby put his respect on Joni Mitchell’s name, it’s not like the new school didn’t have their fair share of power players, either. Some of the biggest names out at the time were trying to bend rock and roll into different shapes, and while the other side of the scene was about getting heavier and heavier, Crosby was knocked out when he heard what Jerry Garcia could do on any instrument.
Garcia had already been able to weave together the prettiest melodies for the Grateful Dead, but he was still willing to turn in some time on his friend’s projects as well. He had already been the one laying down that beautiful pedal steel part throughout CSNY’s ‘Teach Your Children’, but when Crosby was floated the idea of making an entire tour based around If I Could Only Remember My Name, he wasn’t going to do it unless he somehow had a time machine to bring back Garcia.
His guitar parts were the heart of the record to him, and when asked if he would play the album in full live, Crosby figured that any chance of him doing justice to it wasn’t going to be possible without Garcia, saying, “I have [considered it]. But 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.”
And it’s not like Crosby is exactly wrong, either. What Garcia was doing was far beyond what any guitarist would have done in that situation, and even if he wasn’t playing the most complicated parts or anything, you could hear something more than simple scales in his solos. He was channelling every emotion that Crosby felt in the way that he played, so those guitar parts are practically as identifiable as a fingerprint to him.
But that’s exactly what any great musician is looking to achieve when they make a new record. Anyone can make something that sounds like them, but being able to make something so signature that no one else could replace it is the kind of thing that most guitarists only strive for but never fully achieve.
