(Credits: Far Out / Eddie Janssens / wikiportret.nl)
Thu 11 December 2025 19:30, UK
David Crosby would have been the first person to say that he wasn’t the easiest to work with all the time.
While he has made countless classic records both on his own and with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, most would imagine that working with someone addicted to heroin, cocaine, and every other drug in between is probably not going to be the most reliable bandmate. But even when he was completely straight, Crosby did have some standards that were never going to be met by the average player.
At the same time, when has any of Crosby’s bandmates ever been described as “average”? Roger McGuinn practically invented the jangle pop sound of the 1960s with him when he was working with The Byrds, and considering he has contributed to albums by the likes of David Gilmour and Joni Mitchell, he wasn’t the kind of artist who would throw out a piece of brilliance to just anyone.
He wanted to make sure that anything that he made would last for a long time, and when Crosby, Stills, and Nash first started, everyone seemed to have the same goal. Their bands weren’t giving them what they wanted to hear, and when they first hit on the song ‘You Don’t Have to Cry’, those soaring harmonies were all they needed to convince each other that things were going to start moving pretty fast.
But over the years, Crosby had cut ties with a lot of his friends along the way. He had no problem running his mouth when it came to Neil Young being completely selfish, but it was heartwrenching to see him part ways with Graham Nash. No matter what, Nash had seen Crosby through the good times and the bad, and the fact that they never made up was something that haunted Nash when Crosby passed away.
For all of the heightened drama going on behind the scenes, Stephen Stills seemed to be the one musician working through everything. He had played virtually everything on the first record, and considering the amount of chops he had, he could carry the band through some of the more adventurous tunes on their records like ‘Suite Judy Blue Eyes’ or ‘Carry On’. But that didn’t mean that he endeared himself to Crosby behind the scenes.
Because while Crosby would readily admit that Stills was a genius, he was far from the most accommodating bandmate to work with, saying, “You know Stephen and I have never gotten along well. We butt heads pretty regularly. I love him. I’ve been through too much with the guy not to love him. He’s not an easy person. But he and I disagree about just about everything; about how to live our lives and what matters and where to go left and where to go right.”
Despite hardly hearing it in the music, there are a few times where you can feel Crosby and Stills butting heads now and again. When they split off into two separate duos, it’s no surprise that Crosby would leave Stills behind to work with Nash, and even when they reconvened for records like American Dream, it’s not like songs like ‘That Girl’ were going to go down in history the same way that ‘Ohio’ did back in the day.
Stills could always be counted on to make the right call behind the fretboard, but what Crosby was talking about seemed to have more to do with a personality thing. Young was already an extremely fickle artist to deal with in a group, but having one of his buddies by his side wasn’t going to endear him to Crosby, no matter how tight those gorgeous harmonies managed to sound.
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