Cowboy Movie
The longest track on the solo debut, an outlaw tale recorded live with Jerry Garcia on lead guitar.
David Crosby, from If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971)
- Written by
- David Crosby
- Released
- 1971
- Album
- If I Could Only Remember My Name
At 8:02, Cowboy Movie is the longest track on the album. Barncard said it was recorded completely live in Heider's Studio C, and that Crosby had played the song only twice and never demoed it. Crosby sings and plays electric guitar, Jerry Garcia plays lead guitar, Phil Lesh bass, Mickey Hart drums and Bill Kreutzmann tambourine. The engineer said they tried to mix it many times before going back to an earlier rough mix.
The lyric tells of Old West outlaws torn apart by a femme fatale and is read as a thinly veiled account of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quartet. Pitchfork calls it the only song on the album with a narrative arc and hears in the music a "gnarled, paranoid skeleton" of Neil Young's 1969 song Down by the River. An alternate version of 10:57 is on the bonus disc of the 2021 anniversary edition.
More songs by David Crosby
Laughing, Guinnevere, Wooden Ships, Almost Cut My Hair, Eight Miles High
Sources
- Track by Track Commentary by Stephen Barncard, If I Could Only Remember My Name official website (archived) (2012-03-22)
- David Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name, Pitchfork (2019-03-10)
- If I Could Only Remember My Name, Wikipedia
- David Crosby, If I Could Only Remember My Name, Unsung review, Head Heritage