(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Tue 16 December 2025 20:00, UK
It took a long time for David Crosby to arrive at the final stage of his life.
While he had been known as one of the wildest casualties of the 1960s for all of his troubles with the law, his later years showed him to be a guy who made his fair share of mistakes and was going to do everything he could to make sure they never happened again. But even with all of that musical knowledge in his head, he was willing to admit when he was working with people who were well above anything that he could do.
Because listening to his personal record collection, Crosby had a far more eclectic taste than most rock and rollers. Anyone could have had their fair share of Beatles and Stones records in their catalogue, but Crosby wanted to listen to the far edges of music, whether that was experimental music or the most complicated jazz players that anyone had ever heard, whether that was the sounds of John Coltrane or Miles Davis reinventing what the idea of modern jazz meant.
You can definitely hear him trying to go for that same vibe when working on records like If I Could Only Remember My Name, but there are also more than a few moments where he got to work with the legends close up. He already had the chance to work alongside people like David Gilmour, but there was no accurate way of describing the feeling that one got when listening to Joni Mitchell for the first time and hearing all the layers that her music brought to the hit parade.
Then again, there are also people like Steely Dan that were on their own separate plane. As opposed to Crosby trying to make the best records he could with only a guitar in his hand, Steely Dan were sonic magicians half the time they played, usually taking the basics of whatever they were working on and channelling it into studio perfection, whether that was using the right musicians as their tools or making chords that would have never been found in any other top 40 hit.
But when listening to Gaucho, Crosby felt that there was never any chance that most rock and roll bands could best ‘The Dan’ at their own game, saying, “Songs. Best goddamn writing anybody was doing, or has done. Nobody’s topped it.” There would be some people who would disagree with that assessment, though, and their names are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.
Despite being the masterminds behind Steely Dan, Gaucho has always been a bit of a sore spot for them. The making of the record was absolute hell, and when all of them finally released it to rave reviews, it was clear that they had done all they could do together. Still, there are moments on this record that managed to best what they did on Aja and anything that they did on their solo records.
If you look at what Crosby did after the fact, though, there are more than a few times when he could take a few pages from his favourites’ playbook. While a lot of the stuff that he made in his later years were meant for a certain audience, his time with CPR was a lot more in line with what he saw himself doing had he been born as an official member of the band.
So while Crosby did have more than his fair share of chops, he figured that there were moments where people could take music much further than he could. It was only a matter of putting their fingers in the right place, and Steely Dan had the kind of divine touch for anyone remotely interested in the jazzier side of rock and roll.
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