The album cover brought back a memory. My friends were in a band and after seeing CSNY at the Fillmore they wanted to learn and play their songs. We spent a day together at one of their cabins in the Santa Cruz mountains while they worked on and played their songs. Then we decided we had to take a picture for the album cover. If I am successful attaching it I’m the one sitting on the rail on the right, holding either a cat or a puppy. I can’t remember everything from that time, after all.
...and I seem to have failed insofar as it's not a link.
if anyone manages to actually VIEW this, there's an exchange I usually have when people see it. they ask "and who the fuck is this?" and I answer "oh that's just my dead rockstar cousin?"
and now I'm deeply motivated to find someone who knows how to post the actual picture in an actual Substack post. it's among the photos on my FB page if you wanna go into THOSE particular weeds...they're open to the world.
and now that I think about it, in a metaphorical sense, it sorta IS "my dead rockstar cousin" since 1970 really WAS a completely other world.
I once showed the picture to the psychiatrist in a Crisis Unit I was working in, c.1990. the first thing he noted was how dilated my pupils were. he said I looked like I was "on" something with some kind of smug "diagnostic" look on his face. "aha!" I replied, "the trained eye of the skilled clinician!"
you can probably tell I didn't much care for him, on account of he was more of a trained clinician yutz.
I remember the CSN concert in San Diego maybe about a decade ago. After an intro set of several hits each took the stage separately to perform some of their individual songs. If memory serves David was last to step up, and the audience was getting pretty antsy by then (all old folk), and were quite chatty. The hall was noisy (this was the Civic Theater that holds nearly 3,000 and has lousy acoustics). So David steps up to a microphone stage left, then steps beyond it, opens his mouth, and the clearest angelic sound issues forth, filling that cavernous hall and totally, instantly, silencing that audience. We just sat there in absolute awe as sweet a cappella music washed over us. Never experienced anything like that before or since. And I’ve listened to Pavorati in concert. No comparison.
Any reference to "Ring of Fire" makes me chuckle. My brother-in-law's dad, if his kids were too slow in getting out of bed on Sunday morning for church, would blast it at high volume to get them moving. The Byrds - oh gosh, so much great music came out of that era. Feeling lucky here to have experienced it while it was still new!
I'm pretty sure I remember Ring of Fire from when I was in fourth grade--it kind of went with the Vikings that we were studying. But I don't know who was playing it in 1962-63.
Now that you mention it, I remember it was him. Thanks! I liked that song a lot, even though I was only beginning to get into rock & roll at the time, and I still do! (I played it on youtube tonite).
Another soundtrack artist from my misspent youth gone…I still have my old vinyl CSN album with Suite Judy Blue Eyes and Marrakesh Express on it. Eight Miles High with the Byrds…
This is a gut punch, not unexpected like a sucker punch, but a breath taker for sure. I did not know the man, but I had friends that knew him well and they all loved him. Like all of us he had his problems, but he also had a remarkable gift that he shared with us, a gift that most of us could only dream of having. I'm sure he's playing now with Graham Parsons and the others that preceded him, I pray that his joy is never ending, he certainly gave away a lot of it with his music RIP David RIP
Croz - He was pretty much my son-in-love, Jackson Nash's', uncle, more than the Hawaiian version of uncle. Jackson has known Croz since he was born, he was devastated by his death but knew it was coming. I was so glad to be here in in Kauai to help him through this today. I met Croz backstage a few times, but the best was having dinner with him, Janny and Django in Hanalei with Jack and Melissa, our daughter. He was a lion back in 2021, so imposing and gracious. He had a wonderful and crazy life and I'm so glad I was part of that, in a very small but beautiful way. Rest in love, Croz!
The Byrds were one of the three or four groups (including Dylan as a "group" here, to save space or something) whose albums I'd buy the day they came out (if he's reading this, I can actually FEEL the breeze from Tony Soll nodding in excited agreement). it's impossible for me to see any clip of the T.A.M.I. Show without thinking very sadly of Jack Nitszsche, who planned the whole thing and played piano...his programming was a work of genius and proved to be vastly influential (The Stones said that they did what everyone thinks of as their "act" because they were following James Brown and realized they had to do SOMETHING). Jack produced my songwriting partner's second album, which that prick Clive Davis refused to release and which has existed in Great Unreleased Album Samizdat since it was finished in 1977. actually, not too different from, say, a Great Unproduced Screenplay. Jack had HIS demons, which were directly responsible for his passing so soon. I shouldn't sound so detached and journalistic about any of this...I'm typing this right now because, to quote David Crosby, I just got lucky.
and Jack had many, many horrifying David Crosby stories. as did the limo company guy CSN&Y always hired when they were playing gigs here. hang around long enough and you're gonna get to know Everybody. Crosby was a real good singer, though, the horror stories notwithstanding.
a little piece of related trivia I only found out about this past week...the word is that McGuinn picked up the notion to use the Twelve String Rickenbacker from George Harrison. GH was such an enthusiastic Byrds fan at the time, I always assumed it was the other way around. and the songs George wrote that are very obviously influenced by the Byrds (Gene Clark especially, who was the best writer in the group's earliest manifestation) are great ones (the first one that always springs to mind for me is "And Your Bird Can Sing"). jesus...so amazing how long a year could be back then.
if I'm getting any of this wrong, I await a correction.
and since I mentioned the T.A.M.I. Show, I should add that the DVD is not expensive, has a terrific commentary track and gives a lot of bang for the buck.
"sic transit gloria mundi" gets a little more true with every passing day....
there's a YouTube video from that Dylan 30th Anniversary Special in which several Big Guys (Dylan, McGuinn, Clapton, Young, Petty, Harrison...am I forgetting anyone?)do the whole song (all the verses), but very much in the Byrds's arrangement, which is certainly the canonical one.
Karen....scroll down until you find the link I just posted. I was in a very anxious state while I had it, so I didn't dare post it as an answer to you....oy... am I making any sense?
I know it's there, although it shows up in thumbnail size.
Many of us are at an age that allows us (thankfully) to remember the good music that came out in those days (and the bad music, but I digress...). I am thankful to be able to listen to it almost at will with satellite radio available. I saw CSN live on a very hot night in July in Charlottesville, VA just a few years ago. And though they (and we) were all a lot older than when Crosby was part of The Byrds, they were still CSN in every way, and it transported me back to a younger age for a couple of hours. Thank you, David, for the music.
My 90 year old Grandmother used to say all of the time when she was still alive 25 years ago: “who is that old woman in the mirror? It can’t be me I still feel like I’m 18”😹
TC, when I read these comments this morning, I had no idea that David had passed. Now having read about it, it makes me sad. I'll always love his works and the man that he was.
I was so young... My brother was a freshman at St.Mary's, across the bay from San Francisco. Five years later I followed him out there. I was in Berkeley in 1970, and as a midwestern Catholic school educated white girl, well,
it sure wasn't Kansas! My brother lived with a bunch of people in a huge house in the Mission District, and his friends and he always let me tag along to the concerts and clubs on the weekends. It was baptism by fire.
I never felt like I was part of that world, only peering in from outside. It was a strange time for me, I felt like things were changing so quickly, but I couldn't understand... I felt exhilarated and overwhelmed at the same time. I felt like I needed an answer, but I couldn't figure out what the question was.
Neither could any of the rest, but we weren't about to admit that. :-)
Berkeley in '70 - yes indeed a great place. My wife and I were living over in The Castro when it was just this cool bohemian neighborhood with great weather and a very diverse set of residents. Harvey Milk ran a camera store on Castro Street and taught me a lot of Serious Photography Stuff that got me on the way to being the photographer I became.
I was in Berkeley in the summer of '70. I rented a place for a month with about ten other people (most of them strangers, of course). it was on Bienvenue, about three doors down from where Patty Hearst was kidnapped a few years later. there was a really crazy guy who was sharing the place. I've always been a typewriter nut, and he had a beautiful Hermes 3000, which I gushed about. he became very weird after that and when I asked him what the problem was after about a week of craziness, he told me that my admiration for his typewriter "felt like a very hostile act." I have never been an especially hostile guy, although I certainly have been an asshole for long periods. but this didn't feel like one of them. where was the peace and love?
a friend from home I'd met up with there gave me a sort of practicum/lecture about his own version of dumpster diving at MacDonald's ("watch the kids...they always leave the fucking fries."). and I got what looks like a jailhouse tattoo at a parlor in Oakland...I had to beg the guy to finish it because it hurt so much and I yelled so loud...and I was ALREADY DRUNK.
so not much peace and love at all.
we DID have a swell flight to Detroit, where we met up with my family for the drive home. we were tripping our gourds off on the night flight...my first 747. in retrospect, probably not a great idea, but at the time it actually ended up being pretty swell. it felt like a Byrds song...think a combination of "5D" and "Eight Miles High" (both conveniently present on the same great album).
LONG TIME GONE (2005 Remaster)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS3l_TwPNRY
Crosby, Stills & Nash
℗ 1969 Atlantic Recording Corporation
Engineer: Bill Halverson
Drums: Dallas Taylor
Guitar, Vocals: David Crosby
Rhythm Guitar: David Crosby
Producer: David Crosby
Producer: Graham nash
Vocals: Graham nash
Unknown: Rob Grenell
Band Member, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Vocals: Stephen Stills
Bass Guitar: Stephen Stills
Producer: Stephen Stills
Writer: David Crosby
The album cover brought back a memory. My friends were in a band and after seeing CSNY at the Fillmore they wanted to learn and play their songs. We spent a day together at one of their cabins in the Santa Cruz mountains while they worked on and played their songs. Then we decided we had to take a picture for the album cover. If I am successful attaching it I’m the one sitting on the rail on the right, holding either a cat or a puppy. I can’t remember everything from that time, after all.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VYHGF2aZQquRvGp_5XvDWMElJFrxolSy/view?usp=drivesdk
Buncha hippies... :-)
Well yeah, 1969 in the SF Bay Area of course we were😹
great picture! I'm still kicking myself that in 1969 (still, I'm afraid, the best year of my life) I didn't carry around a camera.
I DID have one friend who was an excellent photographer...wish me luck in posting this....
C:\Users\davol\OneDrive\Pictures\welnerpanpick.jpg
...and I seem to have failed insofar as it's not a link.
if anyone manages to actually VIEW this, there's an exchange I usually have when people see it. they ask "and who the fuck is this?" and I answer "oh that's just my dead rockstar cousin?"
Unfortunately I can’t open it David. I’m so disappointed. I really wanted to see your dead rockstar cousin.
and now I'm deeply motivated to find someone who knows how to post the actual picture in an actual Substack post. it's among the photos on my FB page if you wanna go into THOSE particular weeds...they're open to the world.
and now that I think about it, in a metaphorical sense, it sorta IS "my dead rockstar cousin" since 1970 really WAS a completely other world.
I once showed the picture to the psychiatrist in a Crisis Unit I was working in, c.1990. the first thing he noted was how dilated my pupils were. he said I looked like I was "on" something with some kind of smug "diagnostic" look on his face. "aha!" I replied, "the trained eye of the skilled clinician!"
you can probably tell I didn't much care for him, on account of he was more of a trained clinician yutz.
You were successful and looking good, Karen, but cannot tell if you're holding a kitty or puppy.
Well not that successful. The album never happened, but much fun was had!
Loved the picture Karen
Super cool!
One of my favorites Fern!
Southern Cross was my favorite. I miss music the most in my deafness. So crank it up and play
it for me. 😁
I remember the CSN concert in San Diego maybe about a decade ago. After an intro set of several hits each took the stage separately to perform some of their individual songs. If memory serves David was last to step up, and the audience was getting pretty antsy by then (all old folk), and were quite chatty. The hall was noisy (this was the Civic Theater that holds nearly 3,000 and has lousy acoustics). So David steps up to a microphone stage left, then steps beyond it, opens his mouth, and the clearest angelic sound issues forth, filling that cavernous hall and totally, instantly, silencing that audience. We just sat there in absolute awe as sweet a cappella music washed over us. Never experienced anything like that before or since. And I’ve listened to Pavorati in concert. No comparison.
David’s death is hitting hard.
My whole body is tingling from this memory. Thanks Gary.
Any reference to "Ring of Fire" makes me chuckle. My brother-in-law's dad, if his kids were too slow in getting out of bed on Sunday morning for church, would blast it at high volume to get them moving. The Byrds - oh gosh, so much great music came out of that era. Feeling lucky here to have experienced it while it was still new!
I'm pretty sure I remember Ring of Fire from when I was in fourth grade--it kind of went with the Vikings that we were studying. But I don't know who was playing it in 1962-63.
Johnny Cash - his first hit.
Now that you mention it, I remember it was him. Thanks! I liked that song a lot, even though I was only beginning to get into rock & roll at the time, and I still do! (I played it on youtube tonite).
Johnny Cash - Ring Of Fire (The Best Of The Johnny Cash TV Show) Live!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCMz70Fm5pA
I hadn't realized it was his FIRST.
Another soundtrack artist from my misspent youth gone…I still have my old vinyl CSN album with Suite Judy Blue Eyes and Marrakesh Express on it. Eight Miles High with the Byrds…
So do I.
Me too Dennis
This is a gut punch, not unexpected like a sucker punch, but a breath taker for sure. I did not know the man, but I had friends that knew him well and they all loved him. Like all of us he had his problems, but he also had a remarkable gift that he shared with us, a gift that most of us could only dream of having. I'm sure he's playing now with Graham Parsons and the others that preceded him, I pray that his joy is never ending, he certainly gave away a lot of it with his music RIP David RIP
Croz - He was pretty much my son-in-love, Jackson Nash's', uncle, more than the Hawaiian version of uncle. Jackson has known Croz since he was born, he was devastated by his death but knew it was coming. I was so glad to be here in in Kauai to help him through this today. I met Croz backstage a few times, but the best was having dinner with him, Janny and Django in Hanalei with Jack and Melissa, our daughter. He was a lion back in 2021, so imposing and gracious. He had a wonderful and crazy life and I'm so glad I was part of that, in a very small but beautiful way. Rest in love, Croz!
The Byrds were one of the three or four groups (including Dylan as a "group" here, to save space or something) whose albums I'd buy the day they came out (if he's reading this, I can actually FEEL the breeze from Tony Soll nodding in excited agreement). it's impossible for me to see any clip of the T.A.M.I. Show without thinking very sadly of Jack Nitszsche, who planned the whole thing and played piano...his programming was a work of genius and proved to be vastly influential (The Stones said that they did what everyone thinks of as their "act" because they were following James Brown and realized they had to do SOMETHING). Jack produced my songwriting partner's second album, which that prick Clive Davis refused to release and which has existed in Great Unreleased Album Samizdat since it was finished in 1977. actually, not too different from, say, a Great Unproduced Screenplay. Jack had HIS demons, which were directly responsible for his passing so soon. I shouldn't sound so detached and journalistic about any of this...I'm typing this right now because, to quote David Crosby, I just got lucky.
and Jack had many, many horrifying David Crosby stories. as did the limo company guy CSN&Y always hired when they were playing gigs here. hang around long enough and you're gonna get to know Everybody. Crosby was a real good singer, though, the horror stories notwithstanding.
a little piece of related trivia I only found out about this past week...the word is that McGuinn picked up the notion to use the Twelve String Rickenbacker from George Harrison. GH was such an enthusiastic Byrds fan at the time, I always assumed it was the other way around. and the songs George wrote that are very obviously influenced by the Byrds (Gene Clark especially, who was the best writer in the group's earliest manifestation) are great ones (the first one that always springs to mind for me is "And Your Bird Can Sing"). jesus...so amazing how long a year could be back then.
if I'm getting any of this wrong, I await a correction.
and since I mentioned the T.A.M.I. Show, I should add that the DVD is not expensive, has a terrific commentary track and gives a lot of bang for the buck.
"sic transit gloria mundi" gets a little more true with every passing day....
Great music! Thanks for the link! Brings back so many memories.
For some reason, Back Pages comes to mind. Dylan's words but the Byrds version is by far the best recording.
Yes, great and their version best.
there's a YouTube video from that Dylan 30th Anniversary Special in which several Big Guys (Dylan, McGuinn, Clapton, Young, Petty, Harrison...am I forgetting anyone?)do the whole song (all the verses), but very much in the Byrds's arrangement, which is certainly the canonical one.
the whole thing is pretty sublime.
https://youtu.be/rGEIMCWob3U
David wins the Intertoobz and gets his bright idea moved to the main post.
Wow! That is great. Neil Young and George Harrison too. Thank you David!
so very welcome....
Oops Guess you mentioned both of those already.
Karen....scroll down until you find the link I just posted. I was in a very anxious state while I had it, so I didn't dare post it as an answer to you....oy... am I making any sense?
I know it's there, although it shows up in thumbnail size.
Yes
Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Countless with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps…
Thanks for the reminder Dave. A great song
Indeed it is, thanks Karen.
This is my all-time favorite rendition of that song. “But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
https://youtu.be/V_Df39PjkwA
we both posted the same link. but it's pretty unavoidable, this version is so great.
isn't it really EVERYBODY's favorite version?
I tend to think it's a song that people didn't pay that much attention to, until the Byrds covered it. or maybe it just feels that way.
Many of us are at an age that allows us (thankfully) to remember the good music that came out in those days (and the bad music, but I digress...). I am thankful to be able to listen to it almost at will with satellite radio available. I saw CSN live on a very hot night in July in Charlottesville, VA just a few years ago. And though they (and we) were all a lot older than when Crosby was part of The Byrds, they were still CSN in every way, and it transported me back to a younger age for a couple of hours. Thank you, David, for the music.
such a loss of great talent... It's hard to acknowledge the soundtrack of my youth is passing away, on e great artist at a time...
That's exactly what I did. I guess we were all young like that once and looked quite different from the way we look now.
I keep wondering who in hell that stranger is in the bathroom mirror every morning. :-)
I avoid mirrors like Dracula. I've also thought of covering them, but that'd be like sitting shiva for MYSELF, which feels like very bad luck
My 90 year old Grandmother used to say all of the time when she was still alive 25 years ago: “who is that old woman in the mirror? It can’t be me I still feel like I’m 18”😹
Now I get it
Of course you do. So do we all.
TC, when I read these comments this morning, I had no idea that David had passed. Now having read about it, it makes me sad. I'll always love his works and the man that he was.
That video was great TC. I hardly recognized David.
Me too. The first time through I did it by a process of elimination! :-)
I was so young... My brother was a freshman at St.Mary's, across the bay from San Francisco. Five years later I followed him out there. I was in Berkeley in 1970, and as a midwestern Catholic school educated white girl, well,
it sure wasn't Kansas! My brother lived with a bunch of people in a huge house in the Mission District, and his friends and he always let me tag along to the concerts and clubs on the weekends. It was baptism by fire.
I never felt like I was part of that world, only peering in from outside. It was a strange time for me, I felt like things were changing so quickly, but I couldn't understand... I felt exhilarated and overwhelmed at the same time. I felt like I needed an answer, but I couldn't figure out what the question was.
Neither could any of the rest, but we weren't about to admit that. :-)
Berkeley in '70 - yes indeed a great place. My wife and I were living over in The Castro when it was just this cool bohemian neighborhood with great weather and a very diverse set of residents. Harvey Milk ran a camera store on Castro Street and taught me a lot of Serious Photography Stuff that got me on the way to being the photographer I became.
I was in Berkeley in the summer of '70. I rented a place for a month with about ten other people (most of them strangers, of course). it was on Bienvenue, about three doors down from where Patty Hearst was kidnapped a few years later. there was a really crazy guy who was sharing the place. I've always been a typewriter nut, and he had a beautiful Hermes 3000, which I gushed about. he became very weird after that and when I asked him what the problem was after about a week of craziness, he told me that my admiration for his typewriter "felt like a very hostile act." I have never been an especially hostile guy, although I certainly have been an asshole for long periods. but this didn't feel like one of them. where was the peace and love?
a friend from home I'd met up with there gave me a sort of practicum/lecture about his own version of dumpster diving at MacDonald's ("watch the kids...they always leave the fucking fries."). and I got what looks like a jailhouse tattoo at a parlor in Oakland...I had to beg the guy to finish it because it hurt so much and I yelled so loud...and I was ALREADY DRUNK.
so not much peace and love at all.
we DID have a swell flight to Detroit, where we met up with my family for the drive home. we were tripping our gourds off on the night flight...my first 747. in retrospect, probably not a great idea, but at the time it actually ended up being pretty swell. it felt like a Byrds song...think a combination of "5D" and "Eight Miles High" (both conveniently present on the same great album).