{"id":843461,"date":"2026-03-22T20:19:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/843461\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T20:19:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T20:19:18","slug":"david-crosby-and-the-songwriter-with-no-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/843461\/","title":{"rendered":"David Crosby and the songwriter with no equal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ David Gans)<\/p>\n

Sun 22 March 2026 14:42, UK <\/p>\n

When looking back to the peak of rock music as a cultural driver in the 1960s and \u201870s, it is always interesting to discover the various collaborations, friendships, and romantic relationships between some of our most beloved musicians. <\/p>\n

There may have been an overriding message of peace and love in the late \u201860s, but love all too often comes hand-in-hand with rivalry. This is something folk-rock legend David Crosby<\/a> knew all too well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In one of the 1960s\u2019 most fruitful post-fame collaborations, four remarkable musicians formed the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. All four arrived from successful foundations: Crosby from The Byrds, Graham Nash from The Hollies, and Stephen Stills and Neil Young from Buffalo Springfield. This crowding of musical genius was also led, if less directly, by a fifth dimension: Joni Mitchell. <\/p>\n

Like Young and Stills, Mitchell was a proponent of Canada\u2019s impressive folk crop and found success on the road in the US through the mid-1960s. She won the hearts of thousands of folk enthusiasts at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival and, by 1967, fell into Crosby\u2019s orbit. \u201cI walked into a coffeehouse in Coconut Grove, and she was standing there singing those songs, and I just was gobsmacked,\u201d Crosby told the Tampa Bay Times in 2016. \u201cI fell for her immediately. It\u2019s a little like falling into a cement mixer. She\u2019s kind of a turbulent girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship, however, deteriorated as the two musicians\u2019 paths began to diverge. Before they could completely separate, Crosby took up a semi-permanent residence with an old girlfriend and began a romantic relationship. When Mitchell found out, she was rightly incensed. It saw the singer confront Crosby at a party held at The Monkee\u2019s Peter Tork\u2019s house. \u201cJoni was very angry and said, \u2018I\u2019ve got a new song\u2019,\u201d Crosby reveals in David Browne\u2019s book,\u00a0The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock\u2019s Greatest Supergroup.<\/p>\n

\"Joni<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Mitchell then played \u2018That Song About the Midway,\u2019 which had \u201creferences to a man\u2019s sky-high harmonies and the way she had caught him cheating on her more than once\u2026 there was no question about the subject of the song,\u201d Browne writes. \u201cIt was a very \u2018Goodbye David\u2019 song,\u201d said Crosby. \u201cShe sang it while looking right at me, like, \u2018Did you get it? I\u2019m really mad at you.\u2019 And then she sang it again. Just to make sure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although fleeting, this romance was the glue that adhered Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young<\/a> in 1968. In the spirit of ephemeral flings and free love, Mitchell remained a close friend and collaborator of the supergroup after parting with Crosby, entering into a more stable and binding relationship with Nash. Any ill feeling between Crosby and Nash wasn\u2019t apparent at this point, but over the years, the CSNY\/CSN trail was littered with vitriol, much of it between Crosby and Nash. <\/p>\n

In 1970, Mitchell broke up with Nash on the apparently false conception that he wanted her to sacrifice her career for a housewife role. \u201cLike the song suggests, I asked her to marry me, but I think she thought I wanted a \u2018wife\u2019 to cook meals and so on, which was never my intention,\u201d Nash once remembered, discussing Mitchell\u2019s \u2018River\u2019 as one of his all-time favourite songs<\/a>. \u201cI wanted her to be as free as possible, to be as brilliant as possible. She\u2019s an amazing woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell was present at the birth of CSNY and seemed to be a light bulb on which her orbiting musicians banged their heads with admiration and frustration. An independent, assertive and veritably gifted musician, she left awe and bickering in her wake. \u201cShe is arguably the best singer-songwriter of our times,\u201d Crosby told Howard Stern of Mitchell on SiriusXM. \u201cI don\u2019t get along with her that well anymore, but I do love her with my whole heart for what she\u2019s given us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2019 documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name, Crosby commended Mitchell\u2019s talent, an assertion made all the more powerful by his conflicted personal relationship with her. \u201cShe\u2019s the best there is. There\u2019s no question,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cShe\u2019s better than all the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Crosby passed away in January 2023, he had just begun to patch things up with Nash after many years of hot and cold temper over various personal and professional factors. Despite their differences, he admitted to Stern in 2021 that Mitchell was always better suited to a relationship with Nash. \u201cI don\u2019t think Joni gets along with any of her exes. I was very happy when she went with Graham [in 1967],\u201d he admitted. \u201cGraham was, I think, the best of us for her. The best experience she had with a guy was with Graham.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to Graham Nash\u2019s demo of the famous CSNY song \u2018Our House\u2019, featuring Joni Mitchell.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ David Gans) Sun 22 March 2026 14:42, UK When looking back to the peak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[5765,133823,77,4574,269,150678,150677,16,15],"class_list":["post-843461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-crosby","tag-david-crosby","tag-entertainment","tag-joni-mitchell","tag-music","tag-nash-young","tag-stills","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116274683508445956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}