Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)

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Crosby, Stills & Nash (at times known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) is a pioneering folk rock/rock supergroup that formed out of the remnants of three 1960s bands: Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, and the Hollies. The band is primarily known for their three- (and sometimes four-) part vocal harmonies. They have a strong association with the Woodstock Festival, and they are one of the few North American groups that rivaled the Beatles in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are commonly referred to by their initials CSN or CSNY.

Contents

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Early years

Image:Crosbystillsandnash.jpg

The group began when Buffalo Springfield was falling apart. Neil Young failed to show up for their set at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. As a substitute, David Crosby was invited to sit in by Stephen Stills. After Buffalo Springfield broke up and Crosby was dismissed from the Byrds, he and Stills began meeting with each other and jamming. When the Hollies ventured to California in 1968 while on tour, Graham Nash was introduced to Crosby by Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. At a party at either Joni Mitchell's place or John Sebastian's (depending on differing accounts), Nash joined Stills and Crosby to add additional harmonies to Stills' "You Don't Have To Cry."

Creatively frustrated with the Hollies, Nash decided to join with Crosby and Stills. After a failed audition with the Beatles' Apple Records, the trio was signed with Atlantic. Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) was an immediate hit with several hit singles and rock radio tracks. Only one outside musician (Dallas Taylor on drums) appeared on the record. Stills contributed lead guitar, bass, and organ, and Crosby played rhythm guitar. Because of this CSN had to audition musicians in order to tour.

Neil Young was added as a full member so that all four could play keyboards during shows. From the outset, it was made clear that Young would maintain a solo career with his band Crazy Horse in addition to working with CSN. With Young on board, the group went on tour. Their second live performance was at the Woodstock Festival. Their first album with Young, Déjà Vu came out in 1970, and was another hit. In May of that year, Crosby gave Young the Life cover featuring the Kent State massacre which inspired him to write "Ohio," another Top 20 hit for the group.

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Solo years

See main entries: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young.

Shortly afterward, all four released solo albums (Crosby If I Could Only Remember My Name, Stills Stephen Stills, Nash Songs for Beginners, Young After the Goldrush). All had a measure of solo success, especially Young and to a lesser extent Stills.

1972 proved to be a very fruitful year for the four members. Young achieved commercial, but creatively stifling, success with the country-tinged Harvest, Stills released the tour-de-force album Manassas with the backing band of the same name, and Crosby and Nash released their first duet album, "Graham Nash/David Crosby". With such differently styled and respectfully brilliant albums (at least in this stage in their careers), it seemed unlikely that the four would reconvene.

Nevertheless, as 1973 dawned, a reunion came to seem more likely. Crosby spearheaded a reunion of the original Byrds line-up that resulted in a poorly selling, artistically lackluster release. The second Manassas album fared badly as well, leading to the dissolution of the group. Nash's girlfriend was savagely murdered, resulting in the batch of songs captured on the despondent Wild Tales.

After the heroin overdose of former Crazy Horse rhythm guitarist and longtime compatriot Danny Whitten, Young embarked on a drunken 90-date tour of America with the Harvest band. Crosby and Nash stepped in to provide harmonies and some guitar on the final leg of the tour. The experience resulted in the live album Time Fades Away. Shortly after that tour, in the summer of 1973, the four men reconvened in Hawaii for a working vacation. Just as the band began to record a new album in October 1973, Neil Young abruptly deserted them and left for Los Angeles, where he made his nilhistic, hedonistic magnum opus Tonight's the Night (not released until 1975). Young toured the songs throughout Europe and America with Crazy Horse, but did not reconvene with CSN until the spring of 1974. At this point, the band agreed to mount a tour before heading back to the studio to finish the album, tentatively entitled Human Highway.

In the summer, the group (with sidemen Tim Drummond on bass, Russ Kunkel on drums, and Joe Lala on percussion) embarked on its first-ever large-scale stadium tour. Songs from the new album were premiered; all were first rate: Nash's wispy "It's Alright", Crosby's elegiac "Carry Me", Stills' allegorical "Myth of Sisyphus", and Young's majestic hard-rock epic "Pushed It Over The End" (contrasted by the spare "Love/Art Blues") were among the standouts. Though they would have the press believe that their characteristic arguments were a thing of the past, these arguments and the general excesses of the tour took their toll on all in the band. Sessions were broken off at the end of 1974. However, many of these songs can be found on solo albums by CSNY such as Stills, Comes A Time, and Wind on the Water. Also rare copies of Nash's unreleased film of the Wembley Stadium concert of 1974 attest to the excellence of the new songs. For many devotees of the band, material from this period is often regarded as their finest. Unfortunately, much of it was never recorded in a definitive CSN or CSNY format.

After the 1974 tour, Crosby and Nash toured regularly for two years and continued recording as a duo to great commercial acclaim with Wind On The Water and Whistling Down The Wire. They would also provide harmonies to many singer-songwriter albums from the era, their image of "complacent hippiedom" reviling to the rock underground. Conversely, Crosby also played with pioneering electronica artist and synthesist Ned Lagin at Bay Area concerts around this time along with members of the Grateful Dead.

Meanwhile, Young released Tonight's The Night, cemented his position as a critical darling, and reformed Crazy Horse. Though it would be some years before his commercial career reached the peaks of Harvest, Young was second only to Bob Dylan in terms of his staying power with the rock critic hegemony, and he would be one of the few "dinosaurs" to not only weather, but embrace, the punk rock era. Once the brightest star of the collective, Stills' solo career descended into freefall, the result of a collapsing marriage and copious drug use.

In 1976, Stills and Young jointly recorded Long May You Run as the Stills-Young Band, clearly an attempt by the latter to rejuvenate his old friend. As one would expect, it was not long before the old tensions surfaced (incidentally, the choice of Stills' band of professional LA/Miami studio musicians over Crazy Horse to back the twosome led to a contractual obligation throughout the late '70s wherein Young was bound to tour exclusively with Crazy Horse).

After their July 18, 1976 show, Young's bus took a different direction. Waiting at their July 20th show, Stills received a telegram: Dear Stephen, funny how things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil. Young's management claimed he was under doctor's orders to rest and recover from an apparent throat infection. Stills was contractually bound to finish the tour, though Young would make up most of the dates with Crazy Horse in the fall.

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Reunion years

Afterward, Stills appeared at a Crosby/Nash concert in Los Angeles. This set the stage for the album CSN in 1977. It was propelled by Stills' best songs in years, including 'Dark Star,' and Nash contributed the hymnal 'Cathedral,' whose strong anti-Christian sentiment was possibly unprecedented in popular music, and 'Just a Song Before I Go,' which became a hit. The album soared to the No. 2 position on the US Top 100, beneath Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, and made CSN household names again, in an era where Young was the only one to recognise (and actually embrace) the rise of Punk and New Wave. This was followed by Daylight Again in 1982. Daylight Again was originally recorded as a Stills-Nash record due to Crosby's increasing drug addiction. However, Atlantic Record executives refused to release it until Crosby was added. The trio toured extensively, releasing the live album Allies, but the touring ended abruptly in 1985 when Crosby was arrested and jailed on drug and weapons charges.

When Crosby was released from jail, Young rejoined for American Dream in 1988 because he had promised to record with them again if Crosby cleaned himself up. Young did refuse to tour to support American Dream, but CSN did regroup for the studio album Live It Up in 1990 and After the Storm in 1994.

In the late 1990s, CSN left Atlantic Records and began recording on their own. Stills invited Young to guest on a few tracks. After he arrived, Young contributed so much that Looking Forward was released as a CSNY album on Young's record label Reprise. The CSNY2K tour (2000) and the CSNY Tour of America (2002) were major money-makers. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have set tour dates for 2006, along with boxed sets slated for release from David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

CSN was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Crosby has also been inducted as a member of the Byrds, and Stills is also in as a member of the Buffalo Springfield. Interestingly, Young has been inducted for his solo work and his work in the Buffalo Springfield but has not been inducted with CSN.

In the event of Nash's former group, the Hollies, being inducted on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, CSN&Y would become the first group of musicians whose each members have been inducted in the Hall of Fame twice.

Nash was a co-founder of MUSE, Musicians United for Safe Energy, which organized the No Nukes concerts, which CSN participated in in 1979.

In 2006, long-time manager Gerry Tolman died in a car accident.

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Well known songs

  • "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" from Crosby, Stills & Nash
  • "Marrakesh Express" 1969 from Crosby, Stills & Nash
  • "Helplessly Hoping" from Crosby, Stills & Nash
  • "Wooden Ships" from Crosby, Stills & Nash
  • "Teach Your Children" from Déjà Vu
  • "Woodstock" from Déjà Vu
  • "Our House" from Déjà Vu
  • "Ohio" independent single
  • "Just A Song Before I Go" from CSN
  • "Southern Cross" from Daylight Again
  • "Wasted on the Way" from Daylight Again
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Themes

  • Anti-war and counter-culture

Like many other artists of the late 60's, politics, and specifically anti-war politics and the 1960s counter culture, was a theme running through much of their music. Some of the songs with this theme include: "Wooden Ships" (co-written with Paul Kanter of Jefferson Airplane), "Almost Cut My Hair", "Long Time Gone", "Woodstock", "49 Bye-Byes/America's Children", "Ohio", "Soldiers of Peace" and "Your and Mine."

  • Sailing and ships

Another theme running through their songs is an appreciation of water and boats. This was likely driven by Crosby, who learned to sail at age 11 and lived on a boat for many years. [1].The cover of their 1977 album CSN shows the three of them on a boat. Some of their songs which continue this theme are: "Wooden Ships", "The Lee Shore", "Shadow Captain", "Southern Cross", and "Through My Sails."

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CD discography

Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)

David Crosby solo

Stephen Stills solo

  • Stephen Stills, 1970
  • Stephen Stills 2, 1971
  • Manassas, 1972
  • Down The Road, 1973
  • Stills Live, 1975
  • Stills, 1975
  • Still Stills: The Best of Stephen Stills, 1976
  • Illegal Stills, 1976
  • Thoroughfare Gap, 1978
  • Right By You, 1984
  • Stills Alone, 1991
  • Turning Back The Pages, 2003
  • Man Alive, 2005

Graham Nash solo

  • Songs for Beginners, 1971
  • Wild Tales, 1973
  • Earth & Sky, 1980
  • Innocent Eyes, 1986
  • Songs for Survivors, 2002

Crosby Nash

  • Graham Nash/David Crosby, 1972
  • Wind on the Water, 1975
  • Whistling Down the Wire, 1977
  • Live, 1977
  • Best of Crosby and Nash, 1978
  • Another Stoney Evening, 1998
  • Best of Crosby & Nash: The ABC Years, 2002
  • Crosby & Nash, 2004

David Crosby as a member of CPR

  • CPR, 1998
  • Live At Wiltern, 1999
  • Just Like Gravity, 2001

Stills-Young Band

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External links

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