The artist that nearly kept David Crosby from stardom: “It’ll never work”
Some of the best artists in the world don’t really need to flaunt their gifts to be considered among the greatest of all time. There are many people who work diligently until they find their musical strengths and start capitalising on them, but when someone has that kind of fire right out of the gate, it’s enough to blow everyone away from the first few minutes of hearing them.
While David Crosby certainly belonged in that kind of company, there was a good chance that he would never have found his musical wings in Los Angeles.
Going through Crosby’s career, though, he always knew the inner workings of what made his material sound fantastic. Sure, there were a handful of moments throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s when his excesses started to catch up with him, but whenever he was in his element with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, it was easy for him to layer parts together and make them sound beautiful without very much practice.
That’s because he was a student of all kinds of music before rock and roll had even begun. He knew the ins and outs of what made a great jazz song work, so when he eventually translated that to what he was hearing out of the folk community and what people like Joni Mitchell were doing, he began to reshape what acoustic music could be. Yes, it might have sounded sleepy in places, but once people dug a bit deeper, they would see a work of genius.
However, everyone needs an incubator to hone their talents, and The Byrds was where Crosby picked up the tools of the trade. He was far from the main attraction when they had Roger McGuinn at the helm, but listening to the high harmonies on ‘Eight Miles High’, he clearly brought something new to the table that McGuinn or Gene Clark could never have done on their own.
Anyone that great should have been a shoo-in to join, but before Crosby was even considered for the group, McGuinn was the first person to shoot him down when he was suggested, with Clark saying, “I said: ‘Who is this guy?’ Roger said: ‘I know him.’ He didn’t want to talk about it. Then the guy sang, and I was just blown away. I said: ‘Man, is he good! That’s it. You can’t ask for any better than that.’ McGuinn said: ‘No, man. I know David. We tried to work together. It’s impossible. It’ll never work.”
Then again, McGuinn could very well have been doing it out of jealousy. Crosby certainly had a great amount of material at his disposal, so if McGuinn got his break by doing his own take on Beatlesque rock and roll, what would the band have possibly sounded like when songs like ‘I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better’ became a thing of the past?
As time would show, though, both Crosby and McGuinn were always better working off of someone else. Crosby’s best work always came when he harmonised with the rest of CSN, and when Gram Parsons was brought into the world of The Byrds, McGuinn’s jangly guitars worked perfectly with the country rocker’s take on his tunes on albums like The Sweetheart of the Rodeo.
There may have been some bad blood before Crosby played a note, but McGuinn’s choice to take him on is part of the lesson every musician needs to learn sooner or later. You may not get along with every member of your group, but if they bring something irreplaceable to the table, there comes a time when talent and harmony go above nearly everything else.
