David Crosby-If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971)

David Crosby is an icon of American music, a formidable pioneer of folk and country sounds, as demonstrated by his superb albums with The Byrds: “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, “Fifth Dimension”, “Young Than Yesterday”, and “The Notorious Byrd Brothers”, all fundamental works of the genre released in the late 1960s. After leaving The Byrds, Crosby joined forces with former Buffalo Springfield member Stephen Stills and former Hollies member Graham Nash to form CSN. With them, he recorded the seminal self-titled album “Crosby, Stills & Nash” in 1969 and “Déjà Vu” a year later, featuring Canadian guitarist Neil Young, thus forming one of the greatest and most acclaimed supergroups in the history of rock music. In early 1971, David Crosby was going through a difficult time due to his addiction to marijuana and other substances, and the tragic death of his girlfriend in a car accident. The result of all this was his first solo recording, "If I Could Only Remember My Name", released in February 1971. It featured collaborations with his former bandmates Graham Nash and Neil Young, singer Joni Mitchell, Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, and Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, among many others. "If I Could Only Remember My Name" is crafted from brief bursts of musical mastery, with rich vocal harmonies and a strong political and social dimension, representing diverse styles such as flower power and psychedelic folk. Filled with profound songs like the intoxicating “Music is Love”, the a cappella “I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here”, the angelic “Orleans”, the acoustic “Traction In The Rain”, the philosophical “Laughing” or the tour de force “Cowboy Movie”, they make up a somewhat chaotic but at the same time absolutely brilliant album.