David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, from 1971
In 1971, during a break from recording and touring with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, David Crosby went into Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco and cut his first album, cheekily titled If I Could Only Remember My Name. The album, which included guest appearances by a who’s who of California rockers—Graham Nash and Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and members of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Santana—rose to #12 on the Billboard chart and is considered a masterpiece today among aficionados of the West Coast ’70s scene.
Now, according to an article posted on the website of NPO Radio 1 in The Netherlands, Crosby will team up with that country’s highly regarded Metropole Orkest for a new, orchestrated version of the album. The article notes that the news was confirmed by Robert Soomer of the orchestra in De Nieuws BV. The recording will take place in May, with release dates presumably to be announced at a later time.
According to the article, “Hornist Pieter Hunfeld of the orchestra said in De Nieuws BV how the remake is going to sound as far as he is concerned: ‘We want to make it an orchestral remix, remove elements that we approach acoustically again without losing their intensity.’” It further states, “As an example, he called the song ‘Cowboy Movie’ an elongated piece of music full of guitar improvisations: ‘It sounds just as ragged with us, sometimes a bit bigger, sometimes a bit smaller, but with the same tension, and overall the album becomes innovative.’”
Related: Crosby promotes his new documentary, Remember My Name
The article did not address whether the re-do will include return appearances from any of the guests that helped out the first time around. Several are still active, while others have since passed away, retired from music or are estranged from Crosby.
Crosby has been quite active in recent years, having recently released his fourth solo album in five years, Here If You Listen. He has expressed a willingness to work again with Nash, Young and Stephen Stills, despite their well-publicized spats, but as of yet none of the others have expressed a similar sentiment.
A new Crosby documentary, similarly titled Remember My Name, has recently been completed and is set to hit screens this year.
Watch a live version of “Cowboy Movie” from 2011 featuring Crosby with Graham Nash
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