I give up I cant do that: The song that made David Crosby want to quit music – Far Out Magazine

Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Unlike many of his peers, humble old David Crosby was always effuse with praise for his fellow performers. The late folk legend has said that he knew [he] couldnt match the words of Bob Dylan, heaped huge praise upon his favourite band Steely Dan, and crowned Grace Slick and Janis Joplin the queens of rock. However, while these all induced a sense of awe in Crosby, there was one song that stunned him so much he thought of quitting music for good.

Every generation needs a pioneer to take the budding energy of the zeitgeist and burst it into something new. For Crosby, the expansive scale of Brian Wilsons songwriting with The Beach Boys did just that. Brian was the most highly regarded pop musician in America, hands down, Crosby once reflectively opined. Everybody by that time had figured out who was writing and arranging it all.

With his ear tuned in to their innovative ways, he was then suddenly rocked by one stand-out tune. In My Room was the defining point for me, Crosby said. When I heard it, I thought I give up I cant do that Ill never be able to do that. He wasnt alone either; John Fogerty said, You know that Brian Wilson song In My Room? Its the truth, and Rufus Wainwright called it one of the great signature songs. Continuing: I mean Brian Wilson wrote countless brilliant tunes, but I think this one really represents him.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Interestingly, in a fitting fashion, this beloved epic from their 1963 record Surfer Girl might have helped to inspire the counterculture movement and the great art it blossomed, but it also has a dark twist in its underbelly: Charles Manson claims to have penned it. The cult leader who orchestrated six murders in 1969 was a frequent fellon before the heinous slayings and he wrote a song titled In My Cell about finding a sort of sanctity within his caged walls. When Wilson wrote a song that similarly dealt with the comforts of isolation and finding exultation from confines in the act of making music, Manson given his connection to the band thought that he had been ripped off. Naturally, his claim is false, hes not a man known for the truth, however, it does add a pertinent footnote to proceedings all the same.

Because, ultimately, if this song is, indeed, as Wainwright opines, Wilsons defining anthem, then it seems strangely fitting that the sweet sounds carry the potential for darker corroborations in the undertow. While this inverse look at isolation lingers in the songs refrains if you are inclined to look at it that way, thankfully, for Wilson, the sweet sounds came from a harmonious place.

In the liner notes to Surfer Girl / Shut Down, Wilson writes: There is a story behind this song. When Dennis, Carl and I lived in Hawthorne as kids, we all slept in the same room. One night I sang the song Ivory Tower to them and they liked it. Then a couple of weeks later, I proceeded to teach them both how to sing the harmony parts to it. It took them a little while, but they finally learned it. We then sang this song night after night. It brought peace to us.

Adding: When we recorded In My Room, there was just Dennis, Carl and me on the first verse and we sounded just like we did in our bedroom all those nights. This story has more meaning than ever since Dennis death. Wilson cogitated on the melody and the setting that spawned the song endlessly following that night in the bedroom.

When he eventually sat down to write it with Gary Usher late one evening, it simply flowed out of him, forming a perfect vignette for the transcendent power of music that got him through the isolation of suffering from agoraphobia. The song was written in an hour, Usher recalls. Brians melody all the way. The sensitivity the concept meant a lot to him. The pair had passed the curfew time that Wilsons authoritarian father had enforced. Fortunately, the anthem was deemed good enough to grant them an excuse.

We got Audree [the Wilson brothers mother], Usher continues, who was putting her hair up before bed, and we played it for her. She said, Thats the most beautiful song youve ever written. Murry said, Not bad, Usher, not bad, which was the nicest thing he ever said to me.

So, it might have meant a lot to Wilson given everything it entailed, but it subsequently meant a hell of a lot to other people too. Beyond the subtle complexities of melody and its peculiar flat VII A major chord, there is a resonant sense of depth that pushes the baroque nature of the music to poetic heights. Crosby was stupefied by this upon release and he remained a huge fan of it throughout his life, eventually choosing to cover it in 2001 alongside Jimmy Webb and Carly Simon in an all-star tribute.

Most popular

See the original post here:

I give up I cant do that: The song that made David Crosby want to quit music - Far Out Magazine