127. Triad

The Byrds: The Notorious Byrd Brothers - unreleased (Columbia, 1968);
composed by David Crosby

For better or worse, there was probably nobody who believed in hippiedom more than David Crosby. He also exemplified how it differed from other forms of alternative culture before and since - some of the more visionary genuinely thought they were closer to some kind of future normal than the straight world in its fatal contradictions could possibly remain. Except that fatal contradictions are, in Brecht’s terminology, how mankind stays alive, if you can call it that. This track was recorded for the Byrds’ last great album just before they kicked him out for being an arrogant asshole (ultimately, he agreed with that assessment) and it would have added an even spacier dynamic to the cross-faded spacy masterpiece that Roger McGuinn fashioned out of what was left when they dropped this song (and Crosby gave it to Jefferson Airplane). Ostensibly, the song is about a threesome. More to the point, the song is also about what it might be like if no one was afraid of what they wanted most – not excluding “water brothers,” a now-quaintly archaic term for gay men, and not at all a common or publicly expressed sympathy, even then. An arrogant asshole who truly meant well.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.