(Credits: Far Out / Eddie Janssens / wikiportret.nl)
Sun 22 March 2026 21:30, UK
Some musicians were students of the game, labouring over arrangements to an almost painstaking degree in pursuit of perfection (see Steely Dan).
But others embodied the free and easy spirit of its true intentions, allowing songs to fall out of the instruments and naturally represent the melody of the inner mind – there were only a handful of musicians who encapsulated that quite like David Crosby.
Sure, he was the ultimate hippy, with his bristly moustache and ungroomed hair that made him the embodiment of 1960s radical counterculture, but beneath the surface was an attitudinal undercurrent that allowed him to wholly embrace the spiritual meanings of this new movement: be it anti-establishment leanings or creative open-mindedness.
So the latter was what made him the perfect member of Crosby, Stills, and Nash – they were a band who almost allowed melodies to fall out of the sky and onto their lap, creating songs that felt inherently intricate and lyrically profound, while performing them with a sense of ease that contradicted such an idea, as simply put, it was music in its simplest form, with three perfect voices harmonising with each other and a set of guitars quietly supporting the cause.
Crosby was always searching for that essence throughout his music career. It was at its very best with his transatlantic band members, but he was never shy to engage with more of his industry contemporaries, as he constantly chased that dangling carrot of creative transcendency.
Unsurprisingly, Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia was another man, constantly on hand to provide that to Crosby. Garcia, along with the remaining members of the Grateful Dead were recruited to help Crosby on his 1970 debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name. And while recording the record, Crosby got a deeper insight into the musicality of Garcia, particularly, and despite having worked with Stills, Nash and even David Young, Crosby regarded Garcia as the pinnacle.
He remembered, “He’d just show up, ‘Hey! What are you doing?’ If he and I had two guitars and we would sit in the same room, we were happening. He just wanted it to happen. He wanted to coax it into happening. Any kind of way. If he would make it down on the floor and lick the notes off the floor, he’d do it. He’d do whatever.”
Adding, “He knew it was waiting to happen – right around the edges of the picture. And he wanted to invite those notes out. ‘Come on. Come on, little notes. Come on out. Come on out.’ And he was the most pure music guy.”
The pair shared a deep, almost spiritual connection, largely aided by music and eventually heightened by a shared love of drugs. But without this psychedelic convergence, music would have been robbed of some of its most iconic moments.
Crucial moments for the Dead and Crosby’s solo work were crafted out of their friendship, and that’s not to mention Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s ‘Teach Your Children’, which featured Garcia on the distinct pedal steel guitar.
