The Crosby, Stills and Nash song about “three women I loved’
In the 1950s, when David Crosby’s friends were all listening to Elvis, he was enamoured by west coast jazz, devouring the sounds of Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. After his dismissal from the Byrds, he felt lost, and knew he had to go back to his roots in jazz and folk. Appearing on the 1968 album Crosby, Stills & Nash, his song ‘Guinevere’ was the sum of those two influences.
It was an unusual song with a structure distinctly touched by jazz, its three-note motif recalling Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. It follows a green-eyed, golden-haired woman who wonders through a garden, unseen: “Guinevere drew pentagrams / Like yours, mi’lady, like yours / Late at night when she thought / That no one was watching at all.”
Crosby, who wrote the track, revealed to Rolling Stone it was about three women he loved. “One of whom was Christine Hinton, the girl who got killed who was my girlfriend, and one of whom was Joni Mitchell, and the other one is somebody that I can’t tell,” he said. “It might be my best song.”
The tragedy of Hinton’s death in 1969 was also charted by Crosby on ‘I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here’. ‘Guinevere’ and its songwriter’s ability to draw on his own emotion led Graham Nash to say Crosby was one of the most unique songwriters he’d ever worked with.
“Crosby sent me a tape of ‘Guinnevere’ in 1968, and it was one of the things that [made me] really realise that this man was a profound thinker and a great musician,” he explained. “I still have people coming up to me saying, you know, ‘I broke my hand trying to play [it],’ until David reminds ’em that it’s in A tuning.”
‘Guinnevere’ and ‘Déjà Vu’ were both on the same tape Crosby had sent, and it staggered Nash how “special” his work was, with him saying the band “had a great time singing that song ’cause we never do it the same way twice.”
Appearing on the trios first album, the album sleeve’s layout led fans to think Nash wrote the song. “We’re all sitting in the wrong order because we decided to call ourselves Crosby, Stills and Nash. It flows off the tongue better than any other combination. That’s why people keep calling me Crosby. They think I wrote ‘Guinnevere.'”
Equally, Crosby was fairly confused when Miles Davis recorded his own lengthy take on the number. Crosby admitted to Uncut he couldn’t wrap his head around the 20-minute psychedelic jazz version of his song.
“Miles played it for me, but I didn’t get it because there’s no recognizable part of ‘Guinevere’ in it. I was more concerned about my tune than I was in the honour of the fact that he used it as a starting point for one of his records,” he said. “I was kind of snooty about it. But now, obviously, I am completely thrilled.”
