David Crosby Released His First Solo Album 50 Years Ago Today

I don't write about music nearly as much as I should given all the time I spend absorbing it. 

Now I have written a fair share about David Crosby having heard him in concert with Crosby, Stills & Nash in 2015 shortly before their dissolution, seen the Cameron Crowe directed documentary and attended his concert outside the Lincoln Center with my Dad in the summer of 2019 when crowds weren't hazardous to your health. 

I write about Crosby again today because it was 50 years ago today that he released his first solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name. Of course, it wouldn't be accurate to characterize it as a solo album. Both Graham Nash and Neil Young contributed to the album. But you couldn't call it as CSNY album either. Throw in Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart of The Grateful Dead, Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve of Santana as well as Paul Katner, Grace Slick, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and you have a free-flowing, esoteric, ethereal album that I'm sure some CSNY fans didn't know what the hell to make of at the time. It would be nearly two decades before Crosby would record another solo album.

If one were to have attended a CSN/CSNY or Crosby concert, the one cut one would likely hear would be the politically charged and thus always germane "What Are Their Names?" But the rest of the album has a mellow urgency serving as an antidote to alleviate stress at work. I suspect If I Could Only Remember My Name will serve as such a tonic come 2071.

My favorite song on this album is "Laughing" which features Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell on backup vocals, Phil Lesh on bass and Jerry Garcia putting the icing on the cake on pedal steel guitar. But the cake itself are Crosby's music with words.