Byrds

Two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby, has died, sources close to his family confirmed to Billboard. He was 81. The cause of death is unknown. Crosby was a seminal, pioneering figure in the folk-rock scene for more than six decades as a member of The Byrds;  Crosby, Stills & Nash and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He also had a prolific solo career, especially in recent years, releasing new music at an almost frenetic pace.  His former bandmates took to social media to…

The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) (1965)The Byrds: Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) – videoCrosby co-founded the Byrds, cementing his place as a major architect of the 1960s folk-rock movement. The title track of the California group’s second LP – a Pete Seeger cover with lyrics largely plucked from the Book of Ecclesiastes – pleads for peace while meditating on the sometimes bittersweet cyclical nature of life. The song also shows off Crosby’s gift for musical subtlety: He…

David Crosby, who helped found two supergroups that broadened and deepened the reach of rock music, and who, with his outspoken political pronouncements and famously outsized appetites came to symbolize the Woodstock generation’s exuberance and excesses, has died, according to a source close to the musician.Bedeviled by drug and alcohol addictions early in life and then corresponding medical problems as he grew old, Crosby was 81.A guitarist who sang in a crystal-clear middle tenor, Crosby had a voice sometimes described…

Bands choose their members for many reasons, but you’d like to think the ability to play would be towards the top of the list. It didn’t quite work out that way in the summer of 1964 when the Byrds, one of rock’s most influential bands, were finalizing their line-up. With four highly talented members already in place, they lacked only a drummer. Fate struck when they spotted Michael Clarke strolling by the Troubadour club in LA “We didn’t care whether he could play drums or not,” Roger McGuinn recalled the other day with…