Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Tue 25 November 2025 16:19, UK
Throughout his storied career, the late David Crosby was fortunate to surround himself with many incredible songwriters who taught him the tricks of the trade.
Think back to the start of his career, and you will see the many paths that crossed with Crosby’s. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Roger McGuinn, and Stephen Stills can all be considered close acquaintances and musical partners in one form or another. It’s a serious heft of musical talent, but it doesn’t come close to the songwriters he cherished most of all.
For Crosby, none of them were in the same league as two men from New York City named Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who worked together as Steely Dan.
With Steely Dan, there was a scientific edge to their brilliance, and consistently, their output blew Crosby’s mind. While their brand of jazz-rock was the antithesis of the glam-rock scene, which was also prominent in the 1970s, Steely Dan dared to be different, and the duo reaped the rewards for their unapologetic approach to making music.
Crosby never tried to deny his admiration for the band and used every opportunity to give Steely Dan their flowers. From the perspective of the former Byrds musician, Steely Dan reached the peak of their powers in the late 1970s, and there aren’t many of their fans who’d disagree with his point of view.
David Crosby on stage. (Credits: Far Out / Raph_PH)
By the end of the decade, Steely Dan had truly hit their stride and were operating at an incomparable level with their peers. Before they split in 1981, they released Gaucho and Aja, two albums Crosby considered the pinnacle of pop.
During an interview with Sonic Bread Crumbs, Crosby explained why those albums cemented the duo’s status as greats and proved they are the best of their generation. He said: “Sophistication, complexity, beauty. Donald and Walter [Becker] were arguably the best pop writers of our times. They produced a higher level of music on record than anybody I know about. And frankly, that’s just how it is. Aja and Gaucho are two of the best records ever made, and you can’t argue with them.”
Crosby also took to his personal Twitter account in 2020 to proclaim his love of the band, stating: “Steely Dan is my favourite band in the world period”. The group are a mercurial bunch and deserves its place on the mantel of music. While they have, at times, become a byword for fussiness and over-production, or more simply the most dad-rock band of all time, they’re an incandescent duo with a serious catalogue.
A year later, Crosby was thankful to tick off a bucket list and work with Fagen on the track ‘Rodriguez for a Night’ on the former’s album For Free. The lone surviving Steely Dan member rarely works with others, and it took a lot of persuasion from Crosby to convince him to participate in the project.
Upon the song’s release, Crosby said: “I’ve been asking him for a couple of years. He started to trust us, I think. It took a long time, but he gave us a set of words that are really wonderful and we just wrote the shit out of them.”
Sadly, For Free was the final album that Crosby managed to make before his tragic passing in 2023. However, one positive to take from the situation is that he finally succeeded in collaborating with one of his musical heroes, and they managed to put their magnificent musical minds together before it was too late.
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