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It takes a lot to drive someone out of a successful band. Outside of being a secure job in a business where musicians don’t really get those, it can be a lot more comfortable to play the hits whenever you walk onstage, but David Crosby knew that he had other plans besides being one of the greatest voices behind America’s favourite 1960s-rock outfit.
But when Crosby was finding his feet, he couldn’t have asked for a better gig playing with The Byrds. In an era when The Beatles were sending shockwaves through the rock and roll community, Crosby took his knowledge of harmony and turned it into pure pop flair whenever he sang, either playing off fo Roger McGuinn on ‘Eight Miles High’ or flexing his own songwriting muscles on ‘So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’.
Any band would have been set for life playing that kind of music, but there was always going to come a time where they fell out of favour with the rest of the world. The jangle-pop of the mid-1960s was about to become a thing of the past when the Summer of Love kicked in, and Crosby wasn’t in love with the direction that the rest of the band were heading in. They had dabbled in acoustic music, but pure country was a step over the line.
After all, Crosby’s taste was far more eclectic, and he didn’t want to have to be restricted to playing the same cowboy chords that rock and roll was built on. He knew that there was a future in listening to songs by Joni Mitchell, and since she was taking her cues from people like John Coltrane, he figured it was better to find something a little bit more sophisticated. There was no sense of putting a supergroup together, but in Stephen Stills, Crosby at least knew the idea was possible.
The initial plan was for him to become a solo star once he told McGuinn that he was leaving, but Stills was a creative dynamo when he picked up his guitar. Compared to McGuinn’s work, Stills had the perfect balance of grit in his guitar tone and delicate fingerpicking skills to turn Crosby’s head, and by the time that he had decided to fly free, he knew Stills was the first person that he wanted to call.
According to Crosby, Stills was one of the main reasons why he saw a future outside of The Byrds, saying, “What happened is that I encountered Stephen Stills and he swung really hard. He could play a kind of music that The Byrds couldn’t play and it appealed to me tremendously. I wanted that, and I really didn’t want to go in the direction that Chris and Roger wanted to go in, of becoming more country.”
Then again, maybe that split was for the best. Crosby, Stills, and Nash would become one of the greatest folk-rock acts of the late 1960s, but even when continuing on with Gram Parsons, The Byrds were working on a new approach no one saw coming. It might not have been appreciated for a few more years, but albums like Sweetheart of the Rodeo became the blueprint for what country-rock would eventually become, with people like Eagles picking up where they left off when making their first hits.
Although Crosby was far more comfortable working on a new approach to vocal harmony and using some strange chords, there’s no shame in leaving a band if something better is on the horizon. If anything, this is one of the few times where a foundational musician leaves a group and everybody wins.
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