David Crosby, the 'hippie' bore and with a great nose who promoted Laurel Canyon

The mythical scene in Laurel Canyon had David Crosby, born in Santa Barbara and who died this Thursday, as its great agitator.

It was the egg before the chicken, or vice versa.

He was the musician who, with less talent than others of his generation such as Roger McGuinn, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell or Stephen Stills, knew how to be the glue for all those ragged people with groundbreaking visions and a hunger for experiences to be able to move the pop barracks to the sunny California, right in the hilly neighborhood of Laurel Canyon, the Olympus of longhairs and

Hootennannies

small gatherings of folk singers with acoustic guitars—had been taking place in Los Angeles since the end of World War II.

However, by the late 1950s, the scattering of these gatherings coalesced into clubs and coffeehouses that began to proliferate west of old Hollywood.

Especially important were the Café Unicorn, opened in 1957 on Sunset Boulevard, and, above all, the Troubador club, which in 1961 moved from the Sunset Strip to Santa Monica, bringing with it the

more commercially minded

Among all those peacocks, ready to shine as much as the stars of the new Hollywood, one stood out as cocky and dogmatic: David Crosby.

More information

David Crosby, folk-rock legend, dies at 81

Crosby was the man who was always there, a regular of that aspirational tribe with its verbiage and its bells and whistles of combative folk, or, as the journalist Barney Hoskyns described him in the essential book

(Contra), the “mischievously minded lewd teddy bear who sang wailing protest songs in imitation of Woody Guthrie.”

A guy who knew everyone and everyone knew him or wanted to know him.

If the Troubador, as the great catalyst club of that incipient scene, always had an eye on success, Crosby, its great master of ceremonies, did too.

Musicians David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash (FILE).TOM SWEENEY / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO (TOM SWEENEY / ZUMA PRESS / CONTA)

He was the glue, a true achiever and the guy who presided over the best

His eye was on commercial success, but also on the cascade of hedonism that emanated in the warmth of the sunny, free-thinking new Hollywood.

He drank everything, got into everything and chased everyone, even though he was ashamed of his beefy physique compared to the rest of the

.

Dallas Taylor, the drummer who played with Crosby, Stills & Nash and various formations of the time, assured that he and Keith Richards became fans of the jaco in half of Hollywood.

Eve Babitz, the best chronicler of that wild and partying Hollywood, who died last year, said that, when she went to the Troubador, "you could smell the semen from the street" because of all the sex and drugs that are waiting inside. .

Crosby could be smelled from two blocks away.

Crosby was the scene and therefore kept all his contradictions.

Jackson Browne described it better than anyone when he called it a "hippie trick."

“He had a Volkswagen van with a Porsche engine and that combination said everything about him,” he recalled.

He established himself as the great spokesperson for him and became more of a bore than he already was.

One-liners, airs of moral and intellectual superiority, and given over to sex, drugs and—take off

on this suntanned side of the country—progressive left-wing folk.

This attitude affected his big projects: The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash (CS&N).

Just as he had a nose for relationships, he also had a nose for knowing what music was

earthquake had left

among American adolescents.

It was one of his virtues.

Maybe the best.

With his round face, he saw some boys in the Troubador who called themselves Jet Set and, impressed, he went up on stage to sing with them.

The real names of those boys were Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark.

Together, plus bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke, they would found The Byrds in 1964, driven by the historic knock-on effect that The Beatles' appearance in pop music had.

All American teenagers wanted to form a band in their garage or high school.

With permission from The Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Byrds were America's best answer to The Beatles.

In fact, they were the first, with an enduring significance still thanks to those sublime vocal harmonies and prodding Bob Dylan to realize that in the new pop, outside the closed circuit of Greenwich Village folk, was the glory.

A special band, lovers and connoisseurs of the American sound tradition, where the artistic visions of all came together and sought their space.

Crosby, with his crystalline voice, brought a sense of the ballad and a certain fondness for jazzy passages.

At heart, he was a less fascinating part compared to McGuinn's splendorous chimes of ringing twelve-string guitars, Hillman's towering melodic basses, or Clark's mere presence,

The Byrds, in Trafalgar Square, London, in 1965. Victor Blackman (Getty Images)

By the summer of 1967, Crosby, always insecure about the talent around him, had already become unbearable for McGuinn, leader of the group.

The Monterey Pop Festival was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Onstage, he'd gone into a political diatribe about the Kennedy assassination, and on top of that, he'd gotten up to sing with Buffalo Springsfield, the cool new folky guys who

The Byrds.

He and Hillman went to his house to tell him that he was being kicked out for being "terrible."

The parsley of all sauces that was Crosby knew how to make a living, apart from having other interests.

In Monterey he had managed to become the bridge between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which led to his joining the talented Stephen Stills, from Buffalo Springsfield.

The two came up against each other at

hosted by Mama Cass Elliot of The Mamas and The Papas and Peter Tork of The Monkees.

They recruited Graham Nash, who had shown great value with the British The Hollies, but did not want to sample the concupiscent and political honeys of

sentiment .

He left them to found Crosby, Stills & Nash (CS&N) in 1969.

Crosby's braided guitars, plus his fine voice, shone brighter than ever on the group's debut.

It was soft, warm, distinct music, perfect as a magical narcotic for Vietnam-worn America entering a massive economic recession.

Music that would make the imprint of the singer-songwriter fashionable in the seventies.

CS&N represented three different models, with character and distinction.

Three models who let in a room: Neil Young.

Too many roosters in the pen.

From left to right: Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash of CSN&Y, in 1970. Michael Ochs Archives

His entrance made everything more dangerous and unpredictable.

Young soon showed his obsession with imposing his ideas.

As Nash said: “When we made the first CS&N record we all loved each other so much and we all loved each other's music.

By the time

hit , all of that had gone to shit."

the next album they put out as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was really good, although it sounded more pompous and lacked that unique symbiosis.

Crosby, increasingly unbearable in his intellectual ringleader rhapsody and insecure about Young's unquestionable new talent, ended up driving everyone to despair.

Their egos ended up exploding and they all made it on their own, although years later they would reunite without Young and manage to keep the meaning of the group afloat with good songs.

Crosby's sense of smell, which had been fighting drugs for half his life, was a little lacking.

He promoted the career of Joni Mitchell, with whom he had a romance as short-lived as stormy.

She produced her first record, introduced her to the

, and always championed her worth in such competitive territory.

Also solo she showed different sounds, where arpeggios predominated, as in the melancholic

.

And it is worth mentioning his collaboration with Graham Nash, who, always stepping aside and willing to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others, was the one who put up with Crosby the most.

In 1972 they both recorded a very interesting album, little remembered among so many classic works of the time, such as

He was neither the best nor the most bearable nor a true

, but David Crosby was in the middle of all that California glow to, from the mountains of Laurel Canyon overlooking Hollywood, realize that a group of long-haired could become the

of his country.

Today, yet another myth for a nation that has always manufactured them in order to create its history live and direct.

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