(Credits: Far Out / Raph_PH)
Wed 12 November 2025 4:00, UK
Roger McGuinn, David Crosby’s former bandmate in The Byrds, once spoke about how much of a loss to the band Crosby was.
“David Crosby is the best harmony singer in the world,” he said, “Singing with David Crosby… It’s just wonderful. He’s got the perfect sweet blend, especially with my voice.”
He added that it was a mistake to fire David Crosby from the band. “It was a mistake to fire him,” he said, “To fire the best harmony singer in the world. It was the best sound we ever had vocally… Never got that good again. We missed David. David was an essential part of the Byrds.”
Of course, McGuinn isn’t the only one who has praised Crosby’s singing talent in the past. In an exclusive interview with Far Out, his former bandmate, Graham Nash, said that the reason he decided to leave the UK was because he was so moved by Crosby’s singing talent and how they merged their voices together that it was a sound that he felt compelled to follow.
“I was born and raised on the outskirts of Manchester, and I heard a magical sound when me and David and Stephen [Stills] put our three voices together to try and make one voice,” explained Nash, “And when I heard that I had to go back to England, leave The Hollies and instead go back to that magical sound that we had created.”
While all of these complements are pretty admirable, it would also be unfair to suggest that Crosby’s contribution to music started and stopped at his ability to sing harmonies. There was a lot more to Crosby than that. He was a prolific songwriter and also knew a great deal about arranging and producing. He was able to get to the heart of a song, which meant not just laying down the track as a matter of fact, but taking away and adding elements in order to really bring out the emotion behind it.
A great example of this isn’t on one of his own records, but on Joni Mitchell’s Song to a Seagull. The album is often criticised because of the muffled sound that dominates the recording, but this was necessary because of the way that Crosby wanted to record it. He wanted the record to be stripped back and ethereal, and he did this by having Mitchell sing pretty much in isolation into a grand piano, so that her words reverberated off the strings. It was a pretty inspired move by Crosby, as it gave the album an incredibly unique sound, which he believed captured Mitchell’s “essence”.
He said that, naturally, there was pushback on making such a stripped-back piece of music, but he and Mitchell knew it was the right move. Bands were strictly banned from appearing on the record, as the two of them chased the majesty of simplicity.
“I love that record,” said Crosby. “I think the main thing I did was I didn’t let the rest of the world try to play on that record because they wouldn’t have known how. And because her arrangements at that point were indicated arrangements of an entire band, which is what we folksingers do on the guitar. We kind of approximate the sound of a band. And she was better at it than anybody. Better at it than me, that’s for sure.”
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