David Crosby: Harmony plus rhythm in A Major

David Crosby: Aug 14, 1941 - Jan 18, 2023

An American country rock musician called Crosby died yesterday. He was 81. The number of Indians who have heard of him would not cross 5,000 if that many. Yet, when this newspaper asked me to write about him, I thought I could not refuse. Crosby produced that kind of music.

David Crosby, or just Crosby as he was known, was active as a musician for over 60 years but his heyday was in the late 1960s when he was the leading member of a group called Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). The latter two are better known here.

Those of us who were in college in the late 1960s and the very early 1970s relied on a channel called Yuv Vani for western pop and rock music, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening. Like everything else those days, even music was rationed. All India Radio (AIR), however, had never heard of CSNY. I don’t remember ever hearing their songs on Yuv Vani.

But there were some rich chaps in college whose parents had given them record players. It was in the winter of 1969, I think, that I first heard CSNY. Someone had got hold of a record. We were immediately hooked on the sound. Nice clean guitars, soft harmony and a simple beat.

David Crosby (Photo: Wikipedia)

Those were the days when hard rock was very much the thing. The sounds that CSNY created were completely unique and, as they say in sports, quite against the run of play.

One day I asked a classical violinist friend, Abhijit Majumdar, what he thought of it. He was all of 17 years old but his reply was precise: “Harmony plus rhythm in A Major”. And, as I look back after 55 years, that pretty much defines the music Crosby created.

It had harmony by the truckload and rhythm of the catchy 4/4 beat. And, of course, A Major was the scale they invariably used to set an optimistic mood. The lyrics were quite soppy even in protest. They were mostly about nice things like love, flowers, family and children. Their biggest hit, “Teach Your Children Well”, was a perfect example of this.
 

But again, looking back, I think what made that song stand out was the guitar playing by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. He used the then still new steel guitar as a slide guitar. Unlike the Hawaiian guitar, which is a slide guitar, the steel guitar could be played standing up. In a rock band a seated guitarist just wouldn’t do. What eventually turned out was quite a little masterpiece. But that little stratagem wasn’t used very often.

Most of the CSNY songs relied on modern ballads and harmony singing of the Everly Brothers’ variety. Remember them, anyone? The effect was very pleasant. The lyrics were essentially preachy but set to such catchy music that they worked very well in certain settings. They became to pop and rock what Mozart became to heavily baroque music of his time. What’s derisively called ‘light classical’.

Musically, of course, CSNY were not great in any sense of the term but their songs were ideal for listening in, say, a car during a cross country drive. The songs didn’t demand too much attention but they put you in a good mood and had you humming.

The number of their songs that managed this is actually pretty impressive. A dozen, at the very least. Their songs were, if I may be so bold, of the O P Nayyar kind. Recognisable instantly but quite forgettable, too.

Like all such groups, CSNY also broke up after a while. Crosby kept singing singly and in groups, but he never reached the level of popularity that he had in the late 1960s when he and CSNY had performed at Woodstock. That was his and their high point, I think.

Crosby was prolific but he went through bad times as well, including a nine-month stint in jail for possession of drugs. He got married twice. He gave up his son for adoption but got reunited many years later. It seems to have been an eventful life.

In the final analysis, a musician, any musician, has to be judged by his legacy. So what would one say of Crosby’s? Well, it didn’t get beyond CSNY. But that bit was immensely powerful. Some of the songs have transcended two generations.

But all told I can think of just one descriptor for even that: soufflé.