The musicians David Crosby categorised as “advanced” singer-songwriters
Although David Crosby passed away in 2023 at the age of 81, his legacy will live on for many decades to come. His career spanned six decades of heady peaks and miserable lows that weave a truly engaging drama. As an early member of The Byrds, he famously celebrated the work of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger in pioneering works of folk-rock that ravaged the US charts. This early success catapulted him into the throws of stardom, wherein he made crucial alliances with some of the continent’s finest singer-songwriters.
Following his rise to stardom and subsequent expulsion from The Byrds, Crosby befriended a rising star from Canada by the name of Joni Mitchell. The pair entered into a brief yet volatile love affair that Crosby later likened to “falling into a cement mixer.” He added, “She is a turbulent woman and very, very crazy.” Despite the relationship’s transience, the pair remained close friends for the rest of Crosby’s life. Importantly, he helped Mitchell on her own route to stardom and produced her debut album, Song to a Seagull.
In a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone, Mitchell remembered the first time she met Crosby after her gig in Florida. “He was tanned. He was straight. He was clearing out his boat, and it was going to be the beginning of a new life for him,” she remembered fondly. “He was paranoid about his hair, I remember. Having long hair in a short-hair society.” The hippie ideals Crosby adhered to would stay with him for life and rub off on everyone he met.
In retrospect, Mitchell remembered Crosby for his supportive mentality and the crucial role he played in her career. However, as many peers reported through the years, his personality had a caustic side he struggled to keep at bay. “Crosby has enthusiasm like no one else,” she said. “He can make you feel like a million bucks or bring you down with the same force.” Despite hinting at Crosby’s longstanding feud with her former partner, Graham Nash, Mitchell remembered him warmly. “He did me an incredible service, which I will never forget,” she said. “He used his success and name to make sure my songs weren’t tampered with to suit the folk-rock trend.”
In return, Crosby was immensely proud to have been a part of Mitchell’s career and regarded her as one of the finest musicians of all time. “She is the best songwriter alive, easily as good as Bob [Dylan] and ten times the better musician,” he told The Times in 2018. “When she was my old lady, I’d write something and go, ‘Listen to this!’ She’d say, ‘That’s lovely, Dave,’ and play me three new songs of hers that were far, far better than mine.”
In 1994, after suffering many years with addiction issues, Crosby was told by his doctor that he would need an immediate liver transplant as his current one had been damaged beyond repair. While preparing for the risky transplant procedure, Crosby was notified that his long-lost son, James Raymond, had been searching for him. Fortunately, the surgery was successful, and the pair reunited.
Crosby and a past girlfriend had put Raymond up for adoption in 1962. Though he lived a life apart from his father, Raymond followed his genetic vocation and became an esteemed keyboardist and composer. “I was in the hospital dying, and I knew that I had a son out there someplace,” Crosby told The Baltimore Sun. “I had been beating myself up for years about not being there for this kid.”
With a new lease on life, Crosby re-established his music career in collaboration with his long-lost son. “He was this nice, decent young guy, and we became friends immediately,” Crosby said. The reunited pair formed a jazz-rock band called CPR (Crosby, Pevar and Raymond) and, by January 1997, were touring and performing together.
In 1998, after the first successful CPR tour, Crosby discussed the new band. He showed nothing but respect and admiration for his son and felt that, together, they formed a top-flight songwriting partnership. With his son’s jazz inclinations in the mix, Crosby deemed their material “advanced singer-songwriter stuff”. Continuing, he likened their work to some of their influences. “Steely Dan, Bruce Hornsby, James Taylor, Jackson Browne,” he listed. “There’s tons of people out there. And you know, people like Paul Simon, people that like Shawn Colvin, people that like Mark Cohen, people that like good singer-songwriter shit. They’re gonna love this fucking band ’cause it does that shit.”
Although CPR never reached the same heights of fame as Crosby, Stills & Nash, the band gained a strong following among Crosby’s fanbase and, thanks to its jazz influences, swept up some fusion fans along the way. The band’s most important accomplishment, however, was reconciling father and son after more than three decades apart. The power of music should never be underestimated.
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