David Crosby - R.I.P.

 This is an evolving post being composed at speed but it was announced late Thursday that David Crosby, pictured below died today aged 81 years being born in Los Angeles, Calif.

David was constant for those of us brought up on West Coast Californian rock both as a group member and solo artist, often collaborating with others. 

The picture, one of the more recent was on the tour re-promoting his "If Only I Could Remember My Name" album with a series of concert dates.

For those of our generation, we grew up in the light of Woodstock and Crosby, Stills and Nash formed of ex members of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield (Steven Stills) and The Hollies (Graham Nash) were a major part of that, joined later on by Neil Young who gave us such gems as Almost Cut My Hair, Ohio State, Suite Judy Blue  and others covered everything that mattered in that turbulent time.

The Byrds are only second to me outside of the (Jefferson) Airplane/Starship as my biggest musical influences revolutionizing rock music, pushing boundaries and Crosby was a co-founder of that very group that produced folk rock, propelled psychedelia into pop culture, came up with Country Rock and a host of other things.

Their career took off after the electrified recording of the Bob Dylan song  Mr. Tambourine Man was issued in mid 1965 to worldwide acclaim.

David is to be seen at the far left of this 1966 picture from the year that gave us Eight Miles High, Fifth Dimension and lead to recording of Everybody's Been Burned, a torch song sang by David which was the b side of So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll star which remains a huge favourite and Lady Friend, issued in 1967 during a turbulent period in the Byrds history as a mono single which I got to here via the excellent UK 1973 The History of The Byrds  compilation which at that time was hard to find otherwise.

Rest in peace.