David Crosby - The Nautical Dreamer

David Crosby or Croz to his fans, one of the key faces of 60s counterculture and ex member of The Byrds and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, died last month after a long illness.

Crosby's career was a tale of two halves - firstly with the two aforementioned groups and a brief solo career before sex, drugs and rock & roll caught up with him landing him with a year of jail time in 1985. Initial come backs were often short lived, firstly with two solo albums in 1989 and 1993 and then teaming up with his son in the jazzy folk rock band CPR in the late nineties. However it was complete sobriety in the last decade of his life that led to a burst of creativity and five albums over his last ten years.

His songs, opinions and moustache were part of the zeitgeist of the late sixties' counterculture and influence spread far and wide long after this period passed. Personally, I was particularly drawn to his sea songs because of my Devonshire roots and childhood days by the coast. This raison d'être was inspired by Crosby's love of sailing, itself stemming from a revelatory family trip aged eleven.

Here are ten songs, chronologically ordered, that demonstrate his affinity for the sea:

1  Dolphin's Smile
from The Byrd's The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)

Crosby's songwriting was improving at a rate of knots and coincided with The Byrd's peak with this their fourth album which included this song of stunning imagery:
Out at sea, for a year, floating free, from all fear, every day, blowin' spray, in a dolphin's smile

2 Wooden Ships
from Crosby Stills & Nash's Crosby Stills & Nash (1969)

Co-written with bandmate Stephen Stills this post-apocalyptic song was one of the highlights of the accompanying debut: 
Wooden ships on the water, very free and easy, easy, you know the way it's supposed to be

3 I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here
from David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name (1970)

A complex wordless choral arrangement ends Crosby's debut solo album and masterpiece. Whilst there were no direct nautical references, the sounds and emotions were everywhere not least in the reflective album cover and this haunting piece. recalling the spirits of lost love ones. 
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4  The Lee Shore

from Crosby Stills Nash & Young's Four Way Street (1971)

Debuted live and never officially released, this is perhaps the most obvious and idyllic song about the sea in his reportoire:

All along the Lee shore, shells lie scattered in the sand, winking up like shining eyes at me, from the sea

5 Carry Me

from Crosby & Nash's Wind On The Water (1975)

Having been touched by sailing as a young boy, Crosby used his settlement from The Byrds to buy a boat, the Mayan:

When I was a young man, I found an old dream, was as battered and worn a one, as you have ever seen

6  Shadow Captain 

from Crosby Stills & Nash's CSN (1977)

Written having awoken in the middle of the night whilst drifting miles off the coast of California, this was one of a number of nautical themed songs that eluded to the need for someone to lead and to choose the direction of travel:

Who guides this ship, dreaming through the seas, turning and searching, whichever way you please?

7  Delta

from Crosby, Stills & Nash's Daylight Again (1982)

Crosby was to all intense and purposes out of action for the recording of CSN's follow up to their self-titled album. However he enough strength to muster this beauty, encouraged by a demanding Jackson Browne:

Of fast running rivers of choice and chance, and time stops here, on the delta

8  Compass

from Crosby Stills Nash & Young's American Dream (1988)

"I have wasted ten years in a blindfold" opens this blunt and honest critique. Again Crosby draws on direction, a compass, that most valuable of sailing instruments, for guidance:

But like a compass seeking north, there lives in me a still sure spirit part, clouds of doubt are cut asunder by the lightning and the thunder, shining from the compass of my heart

9  Rusty & Blue

from CPR's CPR (1998)

Mirroring his own Triad and it's relaxed flow, my favourite track from Crosby's nineties band with amongst others his own son:

And I feel a need to gather to rummage and fetch, to shake out my life and give it a stretch, to bring shells to the surface, give 'em to you, gifts from the sea floor rusty and blue

10  Ships In The Night

from David Crosby's For Free (2021)

Along with forming a new band - Lighthouse - Crosby released five albums in his last decade, after decades of relative inactivity, this is one of the few nautical references that made it into his final album:

I am awake while the world sleeps, I can't seem to touch this world, I'd sleep while the world weeps, my ship's still my sails furled

Sail on sailor