The artist David Crosby called a national treasure: “Wonderful dedication to life”
Any musician is going to want to represent the times they live in. As much as people like the odd love song that defies any generational ties, it’s important to look at music as an excuse to reflect on the world you’re living in rather than make something cheap that people might like for one summer. And while David Crosby transcended the traditional means of songwriting during his time in The Byrds, Crosby, Stills, and Nash and beyond, he felt that there were artists who did a better job at saying it all when it comes to American music.
When looking at the founders of rock and roll, plenty of artists have already defined what America means to people. Before the British invasion took over the mainstream in the 1960s, everyone’s vision of rock and roll came from Chuck Berry playing his guitar or Elvis Presley shaking his ass, but for someone like Crosby, music meant more than rock and roll.
Considering his musical diet was all over the map, some of his best material came from him pulling from different genres. Crosby never claimed to be a snob, and when listening to genres like jazz or traditional folk music, it wasn’t that hard for him to start incorporating that into his music, whether it be finding that lost chord that no one used or trying to layer different styles of harmony on top of each other.
Despite his music collection, Crosby will always be defined by what he brought to the world of folk rock. Bob Dylan had already broken down the doors for people to write something more cerebral for rock and roll, but The Byrds were the ones who brought his music to the mainstream, with Crosby usually seeing the music potential that came from Dylan’s original and layering harmonies on top of it. But folk music didn’t begin and end with Dylan.
Everyone who had been doing their homework knew that the folk tradition had been going strong for years, and while Woody Guthrie was Dylan’s starting point, Pete Seeger was a purer version of what folk music stood for. He may have picked a banjo instead of a guitar in his time, but his warm presence always circled back to the age-old folk music tradition, where everyone was free to sing along to whatever song he played to create that communal atmosphere.
For all of the Dylan worship that was in many Byrds songs, Crosby knew that the best values of American music could be found in Seeger’s tunes, saying after interviewing him, “I did Pete… that guy is a national treasure. He’s a wonderful guy, wonderful dedication to life, wonderful set of values.” And while Crosby’s music doesn’t exactly sound the same as Seeger’s, he did take a lot of those values to heart.
Given how many times he layered vocal harmonies on top of each other, Crosby knew how to keep things sparse as well, and listening back to a song like ‘Almost Cut My Hair,’ the decision to leave everything sounding raw was a much better move than having everyone plough in on the chorus. It’s not easy to write out those harmony parts, but once someone hears one person telling a story through song, it’s easier for everyone to get involved.
Seeger was far from the first person to play a hand in the folk revolution, but looking at the back pages of the other folkies around him, I see that he was definitely the most heartfelt. People like Dylan have mythologised to the moon and back ever since they hit it big, but until his final hours, Seeger always played music strictly because he loved playing it.
