The one artist David Crosby said made the world better: “We need more like her”
The integrity of rock and roll was never something David Crosby took for granted.
There were plenty of artists who only wanted to be a part of the scene for the sake of having thousands of fans, but for him, it was about what impact you were leaving on the world when you were finished singing. Every song should have been a part of a record for a reason, and while he had more than his fair share of off moments, Crosby knew that there were artists who helped make the world a better place.
But any musician’s effect on the world comes more from what happens after they’ve become famous. It’s hard to really gauge too many instances where the history of the genre was changed in a single moment, and while many point to people like Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen for changing the game in terms of guitar, Crosby was more interested in the songs at the centre of everything.
That’s not to say that he couldn’t appreciate a good technical performance when he heard one. He was an avid fan of jazz, and while John Coltrane could play some of the most outlandish music ever conceived, there was a lot more going on than playing for the sake of playing. He took listeners on a journey, and it wasn’t hard to see many of Crosby’s favourite bands doing the same thing with their music.
Everyone from Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell helped push the boundaries for where rock and roll could go in terms of strange harmonies or jazzy breaks in their music, but a lot of Crosby’s greatest music could still be done on an acoustic guitar. He had come up in an era where folk and protest music were the fixtures of the industry, and while Bob Dylan helped guide The Byrds to stardom, Crosby was transfixed by what Joan Baez could do.
Although a lot of her songs are tied up in the era in which they were released, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. When looking at the amount of work she had done for the Civil Rights movement and how she was willing to put her career on the line for the sake of doing what was right, it’s hard not to think of her as a cultural icon on the same level as what Dylan was like in his prime.
And for Crosby, that kind of legendary artist is what needs to be much more prevalent in the modern age as well, saying, “I think [Joan’s] an exemplary human being; I wish we had more like her. What she did for the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement we’ll never be able to repay her for.” But judging by her career, she was bound to be a one-off throughout the course of music history.
She definitely had her moments where she could be musically usurped by the likes of Joni Mitchell back in the day, but she rarely let it show in public. For her, it was all about playing songs that reflected her place in time, and if that happened to become timeless in the process, that may as well have been a bonus.
But the basic structure of her tunes is probably what has made them endure for so long as well. The idea of people like Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin being able to cover her songs would have been unthinkable back in the day, but the fact is that it’s easy to dress up any tune if the foundation is solid enough.
