The best living rock star that David Crosby ever witnessed: “What the greatest looks like”
If there was one thing you could usually count on David Crosby for, it was being brutally honest.
The fact that he managed to make so many friends in the industry wasn’t a big surprise, but the fact that he kept so many after speaking his mind is a miracle after taking exception to Neil Young’s girlfriend or talking about the more disposable pop music on the radio. But if there was one thing that pissed him off more than anything, it was when someone became way too bigheaded for their own good.
He knew what great music was supposed to sound like, and while he was the first to admit that not everything he made was perfect, he still had standards for his fellow musicians. No one deserved to be running their mouth like they were one of the greatest bands on the planet, and even though Oasis had their fair share of big-headed moments in the press and onstage, Crosby felt that nothing could have been worse than when Kanye West started spouting off lines about him being one of the biggest rock stars of all time.
Granted, it’s not like West was trying to openly critique an entire genre when he said that. We all know at this point that West has had moments where he isn’t in his right frame of mind and has said some truly heinous things, and while he has gone past the point of no return more than a few times now, Crosby felt that his comment about being a rockstar was the major step over the line for him.
Because if Crosby had his way, he would have dragged West to the real heavy hitters like Stevie Wonder if he could, saying, “[He] said he was the ‘greatest living rock star’. So I said, ‘Listen, if he thinks he’s the greatest living rock star, would somebody please drive him over to Stevie Wonder’s house so he can see what the greatest living rock star actually looks like?’ And while you’re at it, could you buy him some Ray Charles records so he can learn how to fucking sing, because he can’t sing, write or play. He’s a fucking poser.”
While he had more vitriol for West than anything else in that interview, it says a lot about the kind of artist that Wonder was when Crosby mentioned him. Even for someone who heralded Joni Mitchell as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, there’s a certain magic that comes from Wonder’s music that no one can really deny when they put on one of his classic records.
Are all of his songs winners? Not exactly, but you can’t think of any Wonder tune that could be any more perfect than it is once he gets his hands on it. From Music of My Mind onward, everything that he ever made seemed like another perfect example of what R&B was supposed to sound like, and if anyone was looking to make the greatest record that they could, Songs in the Key of Life is a fine place to start their research.
That kind of music wasn’t lost on West, either. Even when talking about some of the biggest records for him when he first got started, he mentioned Songs in the Key of Life in the same breath as records by the likes of Dr Dre and A Tribe Called Quest when he was first putting together his beats.
And even if Wonder hasn’t made a new record in years, the fact that he could still make fantastic tunes like ‘So What the Fuss’ well into his career is proof that he was a cut above anyone else in popular music. Anyone could have tried to make a record that sounded like him, but there was no way that they were going to replace the kind of passion that he had whenever he sang.
