David Crosby: 20 Essential Songs by the Folk-Rock Legend
“I’ve got to make the most of every minute I have,” David Crosby told Rolling Stone in 2018. “Wouldn’t you?” He was on his third or fourth life by then — the golden-voiced, long-haired, cantankerous, beatific American original who was there to invent folk-rock with the Byrds in the mid-Sixties, to redefine the supergroup with Crosby, Stills, and Nash a few years later, and to remain unquestionably himself through all the decades of gorgeous harmonies and outrageous opinions that followed. In his final years on this planet, Croz seemed renewed, making some of his best records ever and sounding humbled in interviews like that one in 2018. His death at age 81 leaves an irreplaceable space in music. Here are his greatest songs.
“Turn, Turn, Turn” (1965)
Crosby didn’t write or take the lead vocal on the Byrds’ chart-topping cover of Pete Seeger’s Bible-derived folk classic, but he did arrange the unforgettable vocal harmonies, as he did throughout his tenure in the band. It’s impossible to imagine this song without Crosby’s high parts floating above McGuinn’s lead on the refrain — a sound that inspired countless harmony-rich folk and rock acts in the decades to come. — B.H.
“Renaissance Fair” (1967)
Of all the original Byrds, Crosby was always the hippest and hippie-est, from his capes to his increasingly long locks. His open tunings, ethereal melodies, and elliptical lyrics captured that vibe, too, as heard on this ode to a land of “cinnamon and spices” with a “kaleidoscope of colors” from Younger Than Yesterday. This was inspired by actual Renaissance fairs in L.A. at the time. “They were the first large gatherings of hippies,” he said in the notes to his box set Voyage, “even before the Be-Ins.” This song, he said, “gave you a taste of what it was like.” — D.B.
“Everybody’s Been Burned” (1967)
Amid cycles of psychedelic chords, Crosby wrote lyrics about coming to terms with being hurt for this contemplative deep cut. “Everybody has been burned before,” opens the song. “Everybody knows the pain.” Crosby had written the tune, whose jazzy voicings allowed for an avant-garde guitar solo, a few years before he joined the group, and years later he still recognized it as a songwriting breakthrough, calling it “the first actually passable song that I wrote” in a 1995 interview. “‘Everybody’s Been Burned’ was most characteristic of what was to become my style,” he said in ’84, “pretty changes, an unusual feel and flavor — plus good words.” — K.G.
Editor’s picks
“Triad” (1968)
Crosby’s relentless drive to push the Byrds into new realms — so effective when he turned his bandmates on to Coltrane and raga for “Eight Miles High” in 1966 — met its limit two years later with this frank threesome proposition. “I love you too, and I don’t really see,” he crooned over the band’s smoky slow-burn, “why can’t we go on as three?” Those words were risqué enough to get him axed from the band in the fall of 1968, after Croz fought unsuccessfully for the song’s inclusion on The Notorious Byrd Brothers amid growing conflicts with bandmates Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. (Jefferson Airplane, always game for a provocative gesture, went on to cover it; the Byrds’ original studio recording of “Triad” wouldn’t be released til years later as a bonus track.) “At least one group of people was very uptight by that song,” Crosby told Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres in 1970, after he’d landed happily in CSN. “This band is not uptight behind that song at all, having been through similar experiences.” — S.V.L.
“Guinnevere” (1969)
Imagine it’s 1969 and you just bought CSN’s debut album. It opens with the seven-minute “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” followed by the rollicking “Marrakesh Express.” But by the third track, it all slows down. It’s the ballad “Guinnevere,” and you’ve entered the mystic. Croz himself knew the song was a killer, as he describes the legendary English queen’s green eyes and golden hair over an almost haunting time signature. He eventually revealed to us that he wrote the song about three different real-life, non-mythical women. One was his partner Christine Gail Hinton, who would die later that year in a tragic crash; another was Joni Mitchell. “And the other one is somebody that I can’t tell,” he said. “It might be my best song.” — A.M.
Related
“Long Time Gone” (1969)
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