Among the many tributes being paid to the late David Crosby today, perhaps the most entertaining is the one shared by musical polymath Jacob Collier.
It turns out that Collier and Crosby were friends, having met in New Orleans in 2015 when they were recording with Snarky Puppy.
“I’ll never forget the moment we all first heard him sing - the way the room descended into hush,” says Collier on Instagram. “I’d never seen a person capable of doing that in that way before. He was a sorcerer.”
Collier goes on to say: “The following year David recorded [2016 album] Lighthouse in the studio right next door to Hans Zimmer, where I was mixing [2016 debut album] In My Room. We’d often wander into each other’s sessions to say hello or take a listen.
And then comes the highly amusing kicker: “[Crosby] was loving and brutally honest - I remember playing him my arrangement of the Flintstones, to which he laughed, shook his head and said ‘that’s like a dog licking its balls - just because it can’.”
Collier certainly isn’t shy about showing off his outrageous vocal arranging talent, and his Flintstones cover - which has racked up more than 3.4 million views on YouTube since it was uploaded in 2016 - has it dialled up to the max. Despite his good-natured diss, though, Crosby was clearly impressed with Collier’s chops, as the pair would go on to work together in the future.
“Our mutual crush on vocal stacks brought us together a handful more times over the years, and I was always grateful to see his face,” Collier concludes. “We’ll miss him here on Earth. Thank you David Crosby”.
