mark o'connor crosby obit...

 

David Crosby was an inspiration for me, and it turns out that he was to the very last day of his life. Because he was working on his music. Like many colleagues, I too met him and played with him once or twice. I opened up for him as a teenager in Marin County. He was playing solo then in 1980. I mention his name in my upcoming memoir. What struck me most about Croz that night was that he could play solo like he did, and he loved doing it, and the audience loved him doing it. Even after all of those great bands, collaborations, hit songs, vocal harmonies... he was good with the solo thing, too. The beautiful writing, the beautiful voice and his guitar chops with all of the tunings and arrangements he created... it was a full package as a solo, and it was an early inspiration to me that I could play solo shows myself (and did for many years, even though I was in well-known bands before).

We as lovers of music, are losing and going to lose a lot of icons in American music this year and over the next 10 years... A huge amount of great musical artists will pass on. And like you are going to feel, this is going to be really tough. Why are there so many iconic musicians from my era? The baby boomers produced the massive amount of dreamers, the creatives with a musical outlet, and there were a lot of us. It was the birth of rock and roll, where it included all of us. You could be naturally creative as a musician but didn't have to be a "trained" orchestral or jazz musician on a solo instrument to make your way into the mainstream music industry of NY and L.A. as the generation before. It was a coming out party for all, and that chapter is closing now. It will be rough to see it go, but we have to celebrate what this era produced for us. It was amazing. It made us feel something deep inside of us. RIP David Crosby.