Critically panned on release in 1971, David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is now rightly acknowledged as a masterpiece, its hallucinatory psych-folk emblematic of the shifting West Coast spirit of the times. “I didn’t hear it until about ten or fifteen years ago,” admits The Waterboys’ Mike Scott. “But I loved its spontaneity. It captures a moment of freedom and stoned optimism.”
This October, Scott will take his place alongside a number of artists – Hothouse Flowers’ Liam Ó Maonlaí, Kris Drever and The Staves – for the first ever live performance of Crosby’s signature solo album as part of Llais, Cardiff’s annual international arts festival. “If I Could Only Remember My Name holds a special place in my heart,” says musician and arranger Kate St John, who devised the concept and will lead the accompanying band. “I’ve had the idea of realising this for years and have been playing around with ideas in my head. I’m not interested in a slavish reproduction, I want to throw it open to the singers and the band and for us to channel the spirit of the music. I want to recreate that feeling, to make it a kind of happening.”
The band will include guitarists Neill MacColl and Robbie McIntosh, Ed Harcourt on keyboards and three backing vocalists: St John, Margo Buchanan and Michelle Willis, Crosby’s latter-day collaborator in the Lighthouse Band. The whole thing is very much attuned to the essence of the original album sessions, which saw Crosby joined by a host of friends: Jerry Garcia, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and various members of Jefferson Airplane and Santana.
It was a particularly difficult time for Crosby, grieving the death of girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car crash and self-medicating heavily as a result. “Even though it’s clearly a snapshot into a deeply personal time, a kind of reflection of grief and recovery, it’s also extremely collaborative,” notes The Staves’ Camilla Staveley-Taylor, for whom Crosby/CSNY are a formative presence. “You can feel that he’s surrounded by a bunch of people who are helping him heal through making that music. So I think it’s really fitting that the Llais show is going to be collaborative too.”
The second half of the gig will draw from Crosby’s time with The Byrds, CSN and his later solo works, with St John promising “some hidden gems”. Most recently involved in orchestrating segments of the Nick Drake celebration at London’s Albert Hall, St John is keen to “have all or most of the singers on stage all the time, singing together and on each other’s songs. I picked the singers carefully. It’s so important to get that right when shaping the soul of a show.”
Meanwhile, the cross-generational appeal of Crosby, who passed away in January 2023, continues to endure. Staveley-Taylor recalls how she and her sister/bandmate Jess “were in New York about ten years ago, in the audience for Jimmy Fallon’s TV show. Crosby was playing and we ended up bumping into him backstage. He was very cool and charming. I don’t get starstruck easily, but it felt like I was outside my body a little. It was like meeting Gandalf!” Mike Scott never met Croz, but sees him as something of a touchstone: “I liked his headstrong personality. He sang better than ever in his last years, wrote beautifully, was soulful, made music with younger people, and honoured his own younger self without shame or surrender while moving forward. A wonderful example of how to age well creatively.”
If I Could Only Remember My Name: The Music Of David Crosby takes place at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff on October 11 as part of Llais Festival; click here for more details
