David Crosby

Even the album cover carries a symptomatic message about how times were about to change in sunny, musical California, and more precisely in that psychedelic forge which for a good five years had been churning out genuine hippie gems: San Francisco. The era of flower power was drawing to a close, and the dreams were showing their first cracks in a wall built of revolutionary hopes that was slowly crumbling, revealing just how utopian it was to imagine a world made only of "peace, love and music".

David Crosby, eternal hippie, came from - or rather cut his teeth in - the Byrds, but his uneasy relationship with the tyrannical Roger McGuinn led to his departure within a few years. Together with Stephen Stills, formerly of Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash, formerly of the Hollies, he had founded that celebrated outfit condensed into their initials: CS&N.

The debut, the self-titled album, was formidable: it ranged from Nash's Beatles-esque melodies to Stills' rawer guitar lashes, but shining with a particularly ambiguous light were above all two tracks: "Guinnevere" and "Wooden Ship", era-defining songs that sum up everything David Crosby is, with those enveloping, cerebral sounds perfectly suited to nostalgic open-air singalongs. After just one year, another rock legend joined the celebrated outfit: Canadian Neil Young, himself a Buffalo Springfield alumnus. The name expanded to CSN&Y, and the legend left another deep footprint on the damp, sunlit Californian shore with "Dejà Vu".

It was 1971, when all the major artists who had painted those musical frescoes of the "Love Generation", perhaps aware that the age of daydreaming was coming to an end, gathered around their friend David Crosby as if at a wake held around a night-time bonfire, to hand down to posterity one last flourish of that lysergic current so many young people had drunk from like fresh water in a drought. Graham Nash, the "Dead" - Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzman, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh - the "Airplane" - Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jack Casady - a member of "Quicksilver" David Freiberg, and last on this prestigious list but certainly not least, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell - all joined their voices with Crosby's to form a single choir, and together they brought forth that final, disillusioned reflection on what might have been and never was.

"If I Could Only Remember My Name" is the musical testament of an era, swept away by a wind bearing new ideals that supplanted the old ones, making them seem already ancient despite only a few years having passed since their joyful revolutionary wave. From the first groove to the last, this record breathes an atmosphere of complicity, one that feels like a private club, meant for a small circle of intimates, for when the party is over and only the most loyal friends remain to turn off the lights, unaware that the premonitory sunset pictured on the cover might mark the end of an era. One more choral sigh of friendly voices breathes a song into being, and what echoes is "If I Could Only Remember My Name".

"Music Is Love", written by Crosby/Nash, opens pastorally, suffused with acoustic guitar, while light handclaps form the pulsing rhythmic heart that carries and marks time for this ballad, perfectly balanced between folk and psychedelia; the lyrics are a clear example of what it meant to be hippie to the bone, and the vocals are simply a repetitive back-and-forth between Crosby and Nash. "Cowboy Movie", on the other hand, is entirely Crosby's own work and strongly recalls the ambiguous moods of "Wooden Ships": the vocal is nostalgic and biting at once, and the rhythm is marked by a nervous cadence that stops the melody with a certain regularity - a peculiarity that keeps the melody from ever fully breaking free, which in turn keeps the song's structure from settling into calm.

It is precisely thanks to these hiccupping rhythmic shifts that the song stays bathed in a dense, barely repressed unease, so much so that the finale becomes an adrenaline-fuelled crescendo in which Crosby's voice climbs in pitch, losing its initial clarity, trading off with Kaukonen's deep guitar slashes, which lend the track that surge of electricity that is its greatest strength. Next comes "Tamalpais High", again by Crosby: a subtle psychedelic arpeggio, with David humming a wordless melody, carries us into a dreamlike landscape, blurring colours and smoothing out sonic edges; the closing section, by contrast, features a guitar solo that stays deliberately low in the mix, almost afraid to steal the spotlight from the protagonist, or perhaps so as not to distort the delicate features of this ballad.

The following "Laughing" is a Crosby classic, one of his finest compositions ever. It opens - or rather continues the musical conversation begun in the previous track - along the same serene, lysergic lines, with a guitar as light as a gust of wind in its accompaniment, marked by little shimmering pearls of country-flavoured guitar work, brief touches that dart in and out, adding further depth to the song, almost like an echo without an echo. The instrumental "What Are Their Names", credited to Crosby and Young along with the whole Dead crew, could easily have found a place on "Aoxomoxoa" or "Anthem Of The Sun" by the Grateful Dead: here the acid-drenched sound reaches its most hallucinated peaks, the kind that lends itself so well to sprawling jams in trance-like concerts; Jerry Garcia's unmistakable stamp stands out, that fragmented style aimed at tracing infinite lines toward the psychic galaxy.

"Traction In The Rain" is entirely Crosby's, and it shows, because his gently dreamlike touch resurfaces once more; the vocal performance, meanwhile, is a display of great class - at times sighed softly, at others rising just enough to give shape and character to the song's structure - but what truly astonishes is the intensity with which he enunciates the words: practically an emotional recitation that not only strikes but pierces the heart with its vocal grace. The arpeggio of "Song With No Word", also by Crosby, strongly recalls that of "Guinnevere", and the vocal - as the title suggests - is wordless, yet beautiful for its perfectly judged West Coast melody, tinged with a strong flavour of melancholy; Casady's bass pulses intermittently, without any fixed regularity, sketching background textures that blend seamlessly with Kaukonen's distant guitar lashes.

Like an unconventional concept work, the album continues with "Orleans", an old traditional song rearranged by Crosby into an a cappella version that manages to blend vaguely gospel textures with sulphurous lysergic notes arpeggiated in the background. The final song is another instrumental, "I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here", an evocative mantra made only of voices rising and clashing with one another, mixing the sacred and the profane even within rock. It is the seal on an era-defining album, one whose very last melodies echo the liturgical lyricism of a rite drawing to a close - yet one that will renew itself forever, reminding us of a time when it was believed the sun would never set.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

29/10/2006