Now that David Crosby is, referencing the awful 1977 Kansas song, dust in the wind, dying a couple of weeks ago at the—for him, preposterous—age of 81, fans of my generation (whether they bought the Byrds or Crosby, Stills & Nash records when released or retroactively) are still quasi-mourning his loss. One person, a good guy, who I knew a long time ago wrote on a social media site: “The music of my youth (as well as present) has lost yet another giant. The melodies, humanity of the lyrics, along with the rhythms were works of art unmatched. RIP, Mr. Crosby.” Cripes, that’s some heated hyperbole! I liked a handful of songs Crosby wrote or co-wrote—exclusively with the Byrds—but his “art” is mostly forgotten and “matched” 50 times over by rock/pop musicians of greater stature.
I’d guess that those who write or talk so rhapsodically about a minor figure like Crosby are unconsciously, or for the realists, consciously, thinking about their own mortality, a natural reaction. At 67, I sometimes ponder that too, but not when a long-ago pop or movie star, who’s no longer producing exciting work, dies. For example, who didn’t love the gentleman Charlie Watts, always the most dignified member of the Stones? But when he punched out at 80 in 2021 I thought about it for a minute or two, figured he had a full life and moved on. It wasn’t tragic, like the plane crash that killed Otis Redding (26) or Sam Cooke’s fatal gunshot at 33, since they had so much yet to accomplish. (Put Duane Allman in that camp, too.) Redding and Cooke, by the way, were far more influential than David Crosby. Every generation is the same when it comes to the passing of stars from their youth: my mom, who starting turning to The Long Islander’s obituary section first when she was 50—I thought that was strange at the time—was taken aback by the sudden death of Dorothy Kilgallen in 1965, mostly because of the conspiracy angle. But she didn’t bat an eye when notables such as Mae West, Ike or Joseph Kennedy kicked.
It's even worse when a magazine writer goes gooey, like Amanda Petrusich’s Jan. 24th online New Yorker post: “David Crosby, one of the most iconic and enduring voices of the nineteen-sixties, died last week… He was a founding member of the Byrds and of Crosby, Stills, and Nash (sometimes Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young), two deeply beloved and influential folk-rock outfits. For anyone who found solace or haven in Crosby’s singing, his death feels like the dimming of some golden light.”
As noted, as a teenager I was a fan (still am) of several Crosby songs, and rank “Everybody’s Been Burned,” “Dolphin’s Smile,” “Draft Morning” and “I See You”—all with the Byrds, some co-written—at the top of the heap. I liked the first Crosby, Stills & Nash LP in 1969—though the anticipated follow-up in 1970, Déjà Vu, was disappointing—but can’t listen to it now, save “Wooden Ships.” And Crosby’s “Guinnevere” and “Long Time Gone” from the first LP, and then “Almost Cut My Hair” on the next one, are awful songs that if I listened to radio would occasion a lickety-split change of station.
I’d never read Petrusich before, at least knowingly, but her claim that the death of “Croz” “feels like the dimming of some golden light” is an appalling distortion of the truth. (That The New Yorker staff writer was born in 1980 makes her assessment more galling.) Of the four musicians in and out of the group, I always preferred Neil Young—the only member who can be described as a major talent (if not icon) well into the 1980s—and when he wrote “Ohio” in 1970, recorded by band just a couple of weeks after the May 4th Kent State murders, a remarkable turnaround even in those days, it was instant dynamite, except for Crosby’s screeching in the background. Christ, what a ham.
The New York Times’ longtime, and not always objectionable, rock critic Jon Pareles (69) wrote “David Crosby’s 15 Essential Songs”—to Pareles, at least, and not “required listening” for anyone else—just two days after the singer’s demise. (Could be that Crosby’s obituary was in the can since about 1980 at newspapers and magazines.) I agree with several of his choices, hated Crosby’s ear-bleeder “Mind Gardens” (why Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman allowed that garbage on Younger Than Yesterday is a minor mystery) and didn’t pay any attention at all to his 21st century work. It’s interesting, sort of, that Pareles’ list skips from 1971 to 2014, but it’s his description of “Almost Cut My Hair” that made me want to speak out against the madness.
He writes: “Boomers can remember when the length of a man’s hair signified a political allegiance. While Stills and Young set up a lead-guitar duel behind him, Crosby sings with his most intense near-rasp, feeling paranoia—‘like lookin’ at my mirror and seeing a police car’—but deciding he was ‘letting my freak flag fly’ anyway.” I had long hair at the time but felt like getting a crewcut after listening to Crosby’s self-indulgent crap. And it’s not really true that by 1970 long hair “signified” anything but fashion: look at any high school yearbook from that year and the teenagers’ pictures show almost all the boys with flowing locks, and some with bushy sideburns and scraggly beards. Young rednecks let their “freak flags” fly, too, although maybe like Crosby they were fascinated with guns.
Rock critic Bill Wyman took some flak for writing an unflattering obit of Crosby just days after he died. “Pissing on a fresh grave” was a common complaint, as Wyman, while praising Crosby’s voice and harmonizing, devoted much of his story to the singer’s longtime drug addictions, contemptible treatment of women and quotes from contemporaries (in previous books and articles) that he was an asshole. Wyman’s lead sentence: “David Crosby’s career in music should’ve ended in 1967,” when McGuinn and Hillman fired him from the Byrds. I’m not much interested in rock star gossip, and the suggestion that Crosby would hang it up in ’67 is silly; a singer wants to sing for his supper. But Wyman’s contention that “Croz” was a relatively minor talent is on the mark, and was a welcome departure from most of the pro forma praise found in most outlets.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER1955
