The velvet-voiced hellraiser who embodied the Sixties

David Crosby's contribution to folk rock and the sound of the West Coast will live on. Mark Beaumont pays tribute

- Mark Beaumont

When The Byrds arrived in the UK for the first time in August 1965, they were hyped as the spearhead of an American Invasion. "The US Beatles!" headlines screamed as their lush cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man" topped the charts and their similarly titled debut album broke big on both sides of the pond.

Witnesses of their rammed half-hour show of multi-harmonied folk pop at London’s Flamingo Club were left unimpressed – “Flopsville!” declared Melody Maker – but in the end, the hype won out. Within two years The Byrds would stamp their mark on pop history, laying the foundations for folk rock with their renowned cover of Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and their third album Fifth Dimension’s psychedelic mainstay “Eight Miles High”. And they contained at least one future musical icon in their midst. The writer of the vulnerable yet cynical “Everybody’s Been Burned”, master of crystalline guitar lines that hinted at jazz, and owner of a velvet voice that would become synonymous with late-Sixties counterculture. The one affectionately known as Croz.