There have been greater bands, more successful ones also, but, CSNY were perfection in pop music, super refinement in soft rock.
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Oh captain what are we hiding from,
You’ve been hiding from the start,
Did some lover steal your heart,
Or did the full moon make you mad,
Oh captain why these speechless seas,
That never come to land,
Oh I need to understand,
Can a little light be that bad...
David Crosby - Shadow Captain
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David Crosby passed earlier this week, aged 81.
It was in the seventies, that my passion for rock music took root, and Crosby, Stills Nash & Young’s debut album, was first up on my turntable—CSNY, along with Blind Faith and Cream were one of the first supergroups (a supergroup is a musical group whose members are successful as solo artists or as members of other successful groups).
It’s hard to assess the career of an artiste, most of whose stellar work is in conjunction with equally skilled bandmates—am unable to fully appreciate Lennon without McCartney, Simon without Garfunkel for me, is a weaker force, and so Crosby without Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young was not as powerful, despite a successful solo career, the magic of this quartet was unmatched.
It was at Eros Cinema, where I first heard David Crosby’s voice. “Woodstock” the movie hit us in the darkened auditorium of a matinee show… this insane music festival now on celluloid, had us wide-eyed as the opening credits rolled, and a drone flew over Max Yaegers farm, venue for this once-in-a lifetime event. I heard harmonised vocals for the first time, not two, or three but four men, CSNY set the bar for unified singing. Four men in perfect harmony—David Crosby, Stephen Stillls, Graham Nash and Neil Young, four distinct voices, criss-crossing each other, vocal chords intertwined, mutual trust as individual sound merged into a unified whole, yet retaining a distinct identity.
As the opening credits of Woodstock rolled, Crosby’s epic, “Long Time Gone” had me foot tapping at the melodic value, and yet, in a pre-Wikipedia era, I was unaware of the significance of the song’s political subtext. Crosby said, “I wrote the song, Long Time Gone, after they assassinated Bobby Kennedy, it was the result of losing him, John F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, I started to feel overwhelmed, it seemed as if it was bullet over ballot, like it didn’t matter how good a person was, as a leader, as a source of inspiration, that the other side would triumph by simply gunning them down.”
But he didn’t feel helpless, in the songs third verse he wrote, “Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness, you got to speak your mind if you dare.”
In his “Almost Cut My Hair”, he felt the late sixties disillusionment as the body count in Vietnam rose, but fifty odd years later, the singers righteous anger still resonates.
To write pop songs with political connotations, makes the music so much more fulfilling.
There have been greater bands, more successful ones also, but, CSNY were perfection in pop music, super refinement in soft rock.
David Crosby was political, he was poetic. For someone so angry he was also gentle, for someone so alpha male, he was a romantic too—take his 1968 track “Guinnevere”.
Guinnevere had green eyes,
Like yours mi’lady like yours,
She’d walk down through the garden,
In the morning after it rained,
Peacocks wandered aimlessly,
Underneath an orange tree,
Why can’t she see me,
Guineveere drew pentagrams,
Like yours, mi’lady like yours.
The song on the face of it refers to the Queen, but is actually about three women, two he was in love with, the third… Joni Mitchell.
Crosby was always unquestionably himself—from the 60s through the 70s to the present, cantankerous, but musically always melodic.
Crosby, Stills and Nash may have had massive disagreements personally, professionally and politically, but one thing’s for sure, they were the greatest four part harmony band of all time. To be so in sync that it seemed improvisational, so rehearsed and still sound raw. And at its helm was one David Crosby.
Rest well Croz, rest well Shadow Captain.
Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com
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