The songwriter David Crosby crowned as one of the greatest: “Best in the world”
David Crosby was no stranger to what a good song was supposed to sound like.
He had already studied under some of the greatest musicians in the world way before he had even joined The Byrds, and even though he tried his best to write the best songs that he could, he wasn’t going to spend his life trying to make the same jangly pop music that Roger McGuinn was doing. He needed to find a better outlet for what he was doing, but there were also some songwriters who could capture a feeling with their music better than he could have ever imagined.
But it’s not like Crosby was alone in trying to make music that was a bit more cerebral. The entire point of Crosby, Stills, and Nash forming was because all of them needed refuge from their other bands, and a lot of that came down to working with weird material. Their harmonies already blended perfectly when they sang together for the first time, but a tune like ‘Marrakesh Express’ captured that kind of lightning-in-a-bottle feeling that every single classic band needed to have.
It didn’t come easy when they first started working on classics like Deja Vu, but all of them had some of the greatest songwriters in the world to look up to. There wasn’t a single member of the band who didn’t think that Joni Mitchell was one of the finest songwriters in the world, and while Crosby was much more interested in the musical angle, he could appreciate when people like Bob Dylan could tell a captivating story with his music.
Then again, no one seemed to have the musical sixth sense that Jackson Browne did whenever he crafted his songs. He did get a lot of credit for making classics like ‘Doctor My Eyes’ on the charts, but a lot of the best moments of his career weren’t what ended up on the hit parade. He was telling deep, intricate stories whenever he made one of his songs, and it was enough to make anyone else dumbfounded.
Which is strange because he wasn’t using any kind of complex chords or anything. Browne was simply strumming away at his guitar whenever he made some of his best tunes, but Crosby had a better idea of what Browne was all about when he saw him. Here was a kid who was wise well beyond his years, and he figured that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world knew what he was capable of when they heard tunes like ‘The Pretender’ and ‘Running on Empty’ later on.
Because compared to the other singer-songwriters out at the time, Crosby felt that Browne was one of the finest that he had ever heard, saying, “Jackson was a very appealing guy from the get go. You knew that he was a great guy and that he was an incredible talent. And he is to this day. He’s one of the best singer-songwriters in the world.” But Crosby learned pretty quickly that Browne was willing to let his guard down and be cutthroat whenever it came to crafting the perfect song.
For instance, Browne was the person who heard Crosby sing the beginnings of what became ‘Delta’ for the first time, and he wasn’t going to rest until his friend completed that song. He was there at the piano as Crosby was hashing everything out, and he was adamant about his friend chasing after that melody until it became the classic version that everyone knows about today.
He didn’t need to be pleasant all the time whenever he made one of his records, but he didn’t work for anyone except the muse, and Crosby had to respect that. The fact that someone cared so deeply about his craft wasn’t lost on him, and if Browne had the beginnings of a classic song on his hands, he was going to move the Earth if it meant that he could create that magic on the tape.
