The singer David Crosby called one of the bravest he met: “She’s a hero of mine”
David Crosby never wanted to approach rock and roll as some fun occupation to have.
This was a business from the moment that people started making music, and while Crosby was willing to play the game a little bit, his entire mission was to fight to express himself the way he wanted to, even if the powers that be were begging him to rein things in at every opportunity. He was going to live his life the way he wanted to, and his heart always went out to those who were trying to cheat the system the same way that he did.
And it’s not like Crosby made it easy for people to depend on him. Even if you’re ignoring the massive drunken tirades that would have made Ol’ Dirty Bastard tell him to tone things down, Crosby didn’t want to cower to every pop cliche in the book. That’s half the reason why he left The Byrds when he did, and even when everyone else began moving in the direction of country music, Crosby was trying to find those strange harmonies that he was hearing out of Joni Mitchell at the time.
You have to remember that Crosby was well-versed in the world of jazz, and his ear for harmony always catered towards notes that made people’s ears perk up. He didn’t want to sing the traditional harmonies the rest of his life, but he had a lot more respect for people who could stand up for what they believed in. ‘Ohio’ was already the first time that CSNY made a massive political smash, but Crosby felt that people like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were making truly difficult decisions.
Dylan was already one of the greatest poets of his generation, but Baez was the one willing to stick her neck out on the line for the right reasons. The response to the Vietnam War was absolutely rapturous from the rock and roll community, but whereas most musicians would have made the odd song about the war and moved on, Crosby marvelled at the fact that Baez was the one doing the dirty work out in the wild.
She was the one monitoring the lines for the draft, and after talking a few kids out of going half the world away, Crosby felt like no one else was braver than her, saying, “She’s a hero of mine. She would be outside where the line was and say ‘You don’t have to go.’ and she would get yelled at and get spit on, cursed, threatened. She’d get arrested and go to jail and they would humiliate her every way they could. And she’d get bailed out, go home, have a meal, put on new clothes, and go back and do it again. That’s a brave human being and I’ve been a fan of her bravery and her musicianship.”
It’s hard to really gauge what the temperature was like with the eyes of someone who hasn’t lived through it, but judging by what it means to protest today, Baez must have had nerves of steel to go up against the government. There are many people that would happily want to shoot someone like that on sight these days if they didn’t agree with what they were doing, but Baez figured that she would rather go down doing what was right than rolling over and doing nothing all the time.
And if you look at the way that Crosby Stills and Nash approached a lot of their tunes, they were willing to put their money where their mouth was as well. Crosby wasn’t looking to tiptoe around the government when George W Bush was in office, and when the supergroup went onstage and were greeted with dissent from the audience, Crosby was willing to take it on the chin if it meant he could go to bed at night happy with his decision.
Because, really, playing music can sometimes feel like a matter of life and death, and while any label will want their rock stars to play the game, there’s a reason why so many artists have become legends by going against the grain. No one gets to the top of the charts by following all the rules to the letter, and the only way people will react to what’s going on in the world is if someone like Baez shakes them out of their stupor.
