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Crosby, Stills and
Nash “After The Storm” (1994)
Only Waiting For
You/Find A Dream/Camera/Unequal Love/Till It Shines/It Won’t Go Away/These
Empty Days/In My Life/Street To Lean On/Bad Boyz/After The Storm/Panama
‘There are things I
wish I would have said before you rushed out of my life…It will take a million
years to fill these empty days” or “I’ve got one last great love in my life and
my heart is telling me it might be youuuuu”
Wow. We are here. We are actually here. The moment
that I have been building up to across ten years, five youtube videos, four
laptops, multiple sleepless nights, endless breakdowns, constant fascinating
discussions on social media, one thousand one hundred and ninety nine posts and five hundred and twenty reviews. This, dear
readers, is it, the very last review of the very last album missing from the
thirty AAA bands we cover at Alan’s Album Archives. Every stone has been
unturned, every turn has been stoned, even every one of the flipping thirty
Rolling Stone live albums have been dissected across a decade of newsing,
viewing, musing, perusing, reviewing and music-ing. At least until Neil Young
releases another flipping album as he no doubt will in a fortnight’s time
(hopefully he’s giving me a break for a week after the shock announcement of
last week’s record ‘The Visitor’!) And what have we learnt in all that time and
all those quadzillions of words dear reader? That by and large most bands’
essential releases tend to come at the beginning of their career, when they’re
hungry and desperate to make their mark and are true to themselves, before
record company interference and pressure causes all bands to buckle under the
pressure some time, in some way (whether its band break-ups, line-up changes,
nervous breakdowns, drug and drink overdoses or ‘Magical Mystery Tour’). That
you can never ever quite count out the impossible (who guessed that I would be
able to actually review a physical official copy of ‘The Beach Boys’ ‘Smile’ –
actually make that two of them! – as well as comebacks from Cat Stevens, Pink
Floyd, The Monkees and The Grateful Dead that I just didn’t see coming). That
life is precious and short (we still miss you those who were lost along the way
during the making of this website, from the Floyd’s Rick Wright on week three
through to Buffalo Springfield’s Dewey Martin, The Kinks’ Pete Quaife, The
Monkees’ Davy Jones, Syd Barrett, The Searchers’ Tony Jackson, The Small Faces’
Ian McLagan, The Who’s John Entwistle, Jefferson Airplane’s Signe Andersen,
Lindisfarne’s Si Cowe, and the Airplane’s Paul Kantner last year, not to
mention Oasis who released what turned out to be their final album weeks after
we went online – and we always will). That the world can be crazy and do really
dumb things (ten years ago the word ‘Brexit’ sounded like the title of a bad
prog rock album and David Cameron could still stand next to a pig without
making the world break down in laughter, while would you believe Obama was
elected less than a year into the AAA’s reign over the internet and Trump was
still seen as an idiot businessman?) That music is the single most glorious,
wonderful, fantastical thing you could possibly be doing with or without your
clothes on as it teaches us to be kind, to seek the truth, to embrace life and
fight injustice with everything we’ve got. That music may well be the best art
form there is, allowing us to dance our troubles away with the rhythms while
the words tell us something we didn’t know about life – the two together,
whether working together or in a battle, is a glorious sound when it’s used
right as a good 80% of the records we’ve covered in our decade together
demonstrate. That our visiting aliens from Zigorous Three and beyond including Catalunia The Third and Habridan The Seventh are astro-nuts, not to mention a whole role-call of clandusprods, mrasianarts and belobrats down the years. And of course that the Spice Girls are awful!
And also that ‘All Things Must Pass’. Except, for
now, this website: aside from hoping to bring you the trickle of releases as
they arrive next year and the following year and beyond into the future, we
have a whole six months to go before the (hopeful) start of our book series,
months in which we can bring you key concerts, key cover versions and an essay
dedicated to each and every one of our bands (we even released two of them this
year in the quiet period before the Christmas ‘rush’ of, err, two whole
albums). Even so, this feels like an end, the moment I have been dreaming of
for nine years at least, since I realised that if I was well enough and
ambitious enough and mad enough that one day I might end up here with my job of
discussing every single one of the studio albums by our chosen bands done one
day (with smaller entries for live and solo and compilation records and, well,
everything you could ask for really). I wasn’t sure that moment would ever
arrive, I’m still not quite sure that it has – but the moment has been prepared
for.
I’ve wondered long and hard about what album to put
here as a big finale, dear readers and have even been asked on a couple of
occasions what might go in this spot. If I’d really known I was going to get
this far then I met kept back one of my all-time favourites for this spot (The
Beach Boys’ ‘Smile’, The Who’s Quadrophenia’, The Hollies’ ‘Butterfly’, the
Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead/CSNY crossover that is ‘Blows Against The
Empire’). But I used up so many of my favourites for my original list of ‘101
classic or neglected albums everyone must own’ (what a long time ago that seems
four hundred reviews ago!) that I didn’t have any left. I do, however, have a
very wonderful album which sums up everything I wanted this site to be about
and it’s an album that has everything this site has been banging on about since
early 2008: passionate love songs, fierce angry politics, sweet reflective
moments, raw dangerous passages, lots of old familiar signature moments
combined with new places a band have never been to before. It looks back to the
past, embraces the present and worries about the future, all frequent themes of
many albums on this website. It sees the world with a view of short-term
pessimism and long-term optimism, which turns up a lot too (particularly on
Kinks LPs). This is an album that has, to quote from one of the very first
reviews I ever wrote (the first CSN record) ‘harmonies straight from heaven –
and rock credentials straight from hell’. It has the entirely fitting near
goodbye message that ‘music is worth all the pain’ (an Alan’s Album Archives
motto if ever there was one!) It is dominated by Graham Nash who, thanks to his
triple stint in The Hollies and CSNY and solo has dominated this site more than
any other figure except one – and Paul McCartney duly turns up to play too
thanks to co-writing the album’s Beatles cover ‘In My Life’. And nobody else I
know out there, even the most committed CSN fans of the lot even seems to know
about or notice it.
That, of course, is where we come in – to rescue
wonderful albums that fell through the cracks thanks to a band being out of
fashion or an album being hard to buy and tell you lot to go out and buy them!
‘After The Storm’ might not have the daring-do or the free-wheeling wonders of
the trio/quartet’s first brace of albums, but other websites out there have
talked about those albums endlessly (plus we covered them in our early run of
reviews). This reunion album from 1994 though is special: though the band
didn’t realise it till record label Atlantic pointed it out and asked the trio
to rush-release it, ‘Storm’ came out on the twenty-fifth anniversary of their
first LP, the as-ever imaginatively titled ‘Crosby, Stills and Nash’ in 1969.
Though CSN hardly ever looked backwards, they do on this LP and come up with a
similar balance of love songs and political angst after a career of leaning
towards one or the other (or taking the easy way out and breaking up, nine
times out of ten). In the rollercoaster world of CSN most albums tend to be
pitched towards one of the trio or another: for much of the 1970s it was
Stills, for much of the 1980s it was Nash (apart from ‘American Dream’ where it
was very much Young’s show on one of Neil’s rare returns) and more recently it
was Crosby who was propping up reunion albums like 2000’s ‘Lookin’ Forward’
with the best songs. But ‘After The Storm’ is the one CSN/Y album that’s more
or less equal, where all three men have something to say and are itching to say
it, playing their sweetest ballads, their rockiest rock songs and some of their
weirdest weird love songs. In this period Crosby is eight years out of prison and
at the end of a terrific prolific run of songs made when, free of drugs at
last, the songs pour out of him. Stills is recovering from another failed
marriage and enjoying the stability of a lifetime with his new wife Kristen,
who might not get as many songs written about her as Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Collins, Veronique Sanson or Rita Coolidge but is perhaps the greatest Stills
muse of them all. And Nash is enjoying life after a difficult two decades of
murdered girlfriends, disintegrating bands and organising nuclear protests to
properly take to being a family man in Hawaii. For CSN the past is an
inspiration and the future seems golden.
Alas, the present is slightly less savoury. We’re at
the stage politically when Bill Clinton is beginning to fade from view, having
achieved all he can with a Republican congress blocking his movements and when
he’d visibly much rather have been watching The Grateful Dead (jeez a Deadhead
in charge of the free world - it all seems so long ago suddenly doesn’t it?)
The Monica Lewinsky scandal is about to break, but already there is a feeling
in the air that the change promised isn’t quite coming in America. Over in
Britain Margaret Thatcher’s successor John Major is trying to cling onto power
quietly, but the leader of the opposition Tony Blair is becoming more and more
respectable, dogging his every move with youthful vigour and demanding honesty
and fairness (wow, this really is a long time ago isn’t it?!) There’s a
worldwide recession – the one before this one – to remind us about the evils of
capitalism, right on cue five years after the collapsed of communism (when CSN
were particularly riding the crest of a wave, being the headline act at the
actual fall of the Berlin Wall that night in 1989). The young are out of work, the
rich are becoming poor and the poor are starving. The Woodstock generation
suddenly feels a lifetime ago and on the 25th anniversary of the
concert the exact same month this album came out the point was made even
starker with a ‘reunion’ concert. So few acts who played the show in 1969 are
available to play thanks to illness, death, imprisonment, band break-ups or the
need to stay safe in millionaire tax havens so in the end only Country Joe
McDonald, Joe Cocker, John Sebastian, Santana and CSN are available to play.
Many things have changed: back in 1969 there were so many millions of kids
gathering for the concert that it was registered briefly as ‘the third biggest
city’ in America, whilst it caught authorities by surprise as they were so
overwhelmed the ticket price got waived and locals and police went in to help
as much as they could. In 1994 only a fraction of people turn up and most of
them are aged hippies wondering what happened to their mis-spent youth (‘seems
more worthwhile every single day’), while everybody was ready this time, with
endless breaks in the concert to advertise sponsors, burger vans a-plenty,
endless merchandise vans and huge TV deals.
One of those people watching the TV that night was
me. I’d been a CSN fan for two years already since discovering ‘Live It Up’ and
I’d slowly worked my way backwards to buy as much of the back catalogue as I
possibly could (not the rare stuff like ‘Stills Alone’ just yet though, that
took another decade of scouring charity shops!) Being British and born in
completely and utterly the wrong decade it was my first chance to actually my
favourite band perform and I stayed up to a ridiculously long way past my
then-bedtime (which would actually feel like going to bed early in my current
lifestyle of spoonie illness and insomnia!) I had never actually seen CSN
‘move’ before. Sure they looked old and they sounded rough (even for a fan who
loved ‘Four Way Street’) but they were one hell of a lot better than all the
modern acts who were on (seriously, Salt and Pepa’s set over-ran so CSN had one
less song on our television coverage. I’ve never quite forgiven them yet!) It
was a huge event in my life so why wasn’t it in everybody else’s? Nobody was
talking about it at school the next day, even the teachers (I’d given up on my
Spice Girls loving classmates by then, more or less) and whenever I mentioned
Crosby, Stills and Nash people assumed I was talking about a lawyer firm. This
was a big deal for me, but I realised to my horror that it was such a tiny
thing for everybody else and that the world had moved on from the Woodstock
hope and good vibes and the idea that peace and love could be the ‘norm’ for
society, not something weird people did at weekends in between office work.
CSN clearly realised it too because ‘After The
Storm’ tries so hard to be contemporary. That’s what it really shares with the
first album – it holds a mirror up to the world, shows where it went wrong and
how it could be better. ‘Find A Dream’ is a gorgeous song that reflects on how
much water has gone under the bridge and how crucial it is in an often cruel
world to find something to hang on, to ‘find a dream’ whatever that dream may
be and however impossible (very Alan’s Album Archives, that!) ‘Till It Shines’
is a song about being true to yourself come what may, that the world is a
corrupt and confusing place and anyone who thinks they’ve spotted how it
‘works’ is lying to you. ‘It Won’t Go Away’ attacks the modern media’s reliance
on big business and the way it brainwashes people into thinking that life is
all miserable.‘Street To Lean On’ and ‘Bad Boyz’ worry about a generation
seemingly doomed to be unemployed and castigated for not being lucky enough to
be born baby boomers (has there ever been a more up-to-date AAA song than the
latter, with its heavy metal crunch and outrage – it out-rocked any actual song
any of my friends were listening to by ‘hip’ bands and it made sense too!) The
world is a place of stars to reach for – and gutters when you fall over
reaching for them. The first CSN album wasn’t an entirely hippie love-fest
either (‘Wooden Ships’ is, after all, about the aftermath of a nuclear war
while ‘Long Time Gone’ suffers a nervous breakdown after the assassination of
Robert Kennedy). However ‘After The Storm’ is kinda darker, a more realistic
portrayal of what changes mankind needs to make before we can live in peace and
harmony.
Indeed, CSN can’t even live in peace and harmony at
home anymore. Following on from the restless heartbreak of ‘Live It Up’ this is
an album that’s less about ‘Our House’ and more about ‘your alimony’. We start
off in a very happy place with Stills’ brilliant love song ‘Only Waiting For
You’ which finds him dating Kristen (the pair will marry in 1996) and aware
that ‘I’ve got one last love left in my life – and my heart is telling me it
might be youuuuu!’ while dismissing his younger, more restless self-destructive
self as a ‘basket case’. Elsewhere though he’s still very much feeling the
split with his last wife Pamela: ‘These Empty Days’ wonders about the ‘things I
forgot to say as you walked out of my life’ whilst the narrator knows his last
difficult days with her are going to haunt him for ‘years’. Crosby is
celebrating a fifteenth wedding anniversary he never expected to arrive but is
haunted by how easily he nearly lost his life along with wife Jan and how he
wished he could stop time ‘like a knife’ right here and now, where he’s happy.
Nash has been married to wife Susan for even longer but the unease heard on
‘Live It Up’ is heard ever more on this album worried ballad ‘Unequal Love’.
Love was, in 1969, something to be cherished because it was new and exciting
and made you feel so alive – in 1994 love is something that keeps you going
through your worst times and stops you feeling dead.
Finally Stills takes one last lingering look back to
the past as he recalls how he lost his virginity to an older, more experienced
girl from ‘Panama’ and how it was his rite of passage into being a ‘man’, as if
to remind us how love has shaped him. Even the music recalls the Latin American
grooves of Stills’ earlier years and solo albums (though only the ‘Cuban’
finale to ‘Suite: Judy’ had ever made it to a CSN record before now). That’s a
typical finale for an album which does indeed have an eye over its shoulder all
the way through, not just in a world but in a personal sense, though not always
in ways that would be obvious to the casual fan. ‘Camera’ isn’t just about
freezing time in the present but a tribute to Crosby’s cinematographer father
Floyd (he got a ‘Golden Globe’ for his work on ‘High Noon’). ‘In My Life’ is a
fabulous fab four song about revisiting the past (and as such is perfect for
this album, being inspired by a walk Lennon took around childhood Liverpool
haunts in a rare break from being a Beatle) that itself recalls ‘Blackbird’,
one of the most popular songs in CSN’s setlists. It was also one of the first songs
they sang together as an ‘audition’ piece for The Beatles’ ‘Apple’ records back
in London before they signed to Atlantic for their first LP (they also
performed it at both ‘Woodstock’ and ‘Woodstock ‘94’). ‘Street To Lean On’ also
recalls Crosby’s years in prison (‘You know you can eat real good when you’re
doing time!’)
The result is an album that feels like an ‘ending’.
It almost was. Sessions for the album ended early when Crosby was feeling
unwell. He got worse on the tour that followed and for the first time reviewers
started to be rude about the trio’s harmonies, as opposed to their weight or
their fashion sense or anachronisms as usual (ha, as if peace and love is a
fashion statement rather than a way of life!) After keeling over Crosby was diagnosed
with liver failure in November 1994 and was given emergency treatment. There
was a lot of fuss in the press: did a former alcoholic who had openly admitted
to taking drugs deserve a second chance at life when so many others lost
theirs? But if CSN ever had a mantra it was that all life was worth saving
(well, maybe not Bush Jnr or Nixon!) and Crosby had been a model recovering
addict since returning from prison in 1987, giving many talks in public that
must have been hard to make, attending endless meetings, adopting those he felt
were in need and falling off the rails (including then-teenage child actress
Drew Barrymore who lived with the Crosbys for a year) and opening up about how
awful it was in a best-selling autobiography ‘Long Time Comin’ (still amongst
the best AAA reads out there). If ever there was a figure of how to do right
after doing wrong then it was Crosby –
and if ever there was an album about doing the same its this one. Alas ‘After
The Storm’ was so hideously unfashionable in a world of grunge and heavy metal
that it disappeared and Atlantic did the unthinkable, dropping the band boss
Ahmet Ertegun had helped put together and who had once been one of their
best-selling acts, leaving CSN to disappear from view until Neil returns at the
end of 1999. Chalking it up to another reminder to be more careful in the
future, Crosby’s blazing creativity will slow down into something more ‘normal’
past this point, when he forms a band with son and friend to make up for the
lack of touring which he names ‘CPR’ both for their combined names CSN-style
and for the new lease of life he’s been given. Stills and Nash will be even
more quiet than that, disappearing into family life and not making any more
records until ‘Lookin’ Forward’ released just past the band’s thirtieth
anniversary.
‘After The Storm’ was, then, a last chance to look
back on a past that had seen the band on Atlantic for an unbroken thirty year
run (well unbroken in terms of labels – it was broken up like crazy paving in
terms of band bus-ups!) It’s full of pride about what the band achieved back in
the day and what they stood for, along with songs about family and first loves.
It’s full of worries over the present day and how the world is unfolding, in
roughly the opposite direction to the way it had seemed when they’d first got
together, full of songs about families both departing and starting. And they
look to the future with wonder and hope, dreaming of a time when the mad crazy
world we live in is finally working properly and people live together in
harmony the way they should have done all along. One of CSN’s most consistent
albums, this is also one of their most melodic, most poetic and most courageous
albums, branching out into multiple different directions without doing what so many
AAA album we’ve criticised in the past have done – far from throwing out the
baby with the bathwater, this is an update of an old sound that’s still there,
not a replacement for it. This is still audibly CSN from first note to last,
but it does sound more relevant than normal, better suited to the times that
ignored it and a far better match for what was happening in the world in 1994
than bleeding Spice Girls influences Salt ‘n’ Pepa. It’s one of their very best
in fact, severely under-rated and long overdue for a re-issue one day so more
fans can get to hear it (Atlantic buried it so much few even knew it was out
the first time anyway). But then that’s what Alan’s Album Archives is all
about: once the storm of whatever is currently in vogue has long died out and
the brainwashing of the media about a particular politician has faded we can
better see the world for what it really is and get back to what we should be
doing: being kind to one another. I just want to see the love in fans’ eyes for
this obscure album after ther storm has passed you and gone.
The album explodes into glorious technicolour with
Stills’ ‘Only Waiting For You’, the single poppiest CSN moment since ‘Marrakesh
Express’. The song was written at the last minute when the trio were putting
their running order together and realised they didn’t have a strong catchy
opener for the album. Given that the last time Nash mentioned this to Stills he
had come up with the terrific ‘Carry On’, Graham jokingly mentioned this to
Stephen to see if lightning would strike twice twenty-four years on. Stills is
a master of deadlines and took to this song with speed, offering it up so CSN
could record in one last frenetic session on July 1st (making this
effectively the last song any of the band will make for their old ‘home’ at
Atlantic). Though clearly written as a deliberately punchy ear-catching opener
there is nothing forced about this song though and indeed its hard to imagine
the album without it, as the dash of hope an otherwise gloomy record needs. In
between writing his songs for the album in a downbeat mood in 1992 and 1993
Stills had shocked himself by falling in love again after meeting Kristen.
Anyone whose come to this album after the heartbreak of ‘Live It Up’ and
‘Stills Alone’ will know that this was the last thing Stills was expecting
(indeed, I would have laid money on him living in a cave and becoming a hermit
after hearing the painful cry of ‘Haven’t We Lost Enough?’) Stills is as
shocked as anyone at this rapid twist in fate and fortune and really feels like
it’s the real deal this time (your heart will break on the line ‘I’ve got one
last great love left in my life and my heart is telling me it might be you’, so
fragile and so Stills after admitting to being over-confident just a verse
before it!) While I’m not sure I quite buy his claims of being a ‘most
reclusive kind of guy’ who ‘usually runs and hides’ around love (not after all
those albums chasing Judy, Rita and Veronique!), there’s something delightfully
autobiographical and open about this song, perhaps the last song Stills truly
wrote from his big wide open heart. He calls his younger self a ‘basket case’,
so desperate for love he tried too hard, prepared to woo his ‘best friend’ into
being his lover and certain that all those missed opportunities and wasted
chances across the rest of his life have been good practice for the love of his
life, which he was waiting for all these years and has finally found. It’s such
a CSN moment: life was horrific, but now everything is easy ‘cause of you’,
hate and guilt and frustration turning into love at a moment’s notice and all
you have to do is be ready for it. Admittedly the middle eight sounds rushed,
Stills switching to a rudimentary run through the nearest minor chord while
playing some gutsy bluesy guitar, but even this works in context The joy of
this bouncy ‘Tigger’ song is infectious, marvellously handled by a band firing
on all cylinders as their regular backing band in this era (Michael Finnigan,
who is unusually subtle on the synths here, and drummer Jody Cortez, with
everything else played by Stills in one last great show of being ‘Captain
Manyhands’) and some classy CSN harmonies that make them all sound like
love-struck teenagers in a way we’ve never quite heard them before. Stills’
lead is delightful too, raw but right on the money and so perfect for this
track its clearly still new and fresh and exactly how he’s feeling at the
moment he entered the studio. That joy is matched only by the response of the
listener who have waited so so very long to hear Stills happy after such an
awful time in his love life – and now at last he is. That was the best
anniversary present CSN could ever have given us! How this wonderful pop ditty
wasn’t the album single I’ll never know…
‘Find A Dream’ is even better. A moody Nash song
about failure and throwing in the towel, it’s the perfect accompaniment to the
last song. Wonderful moments when you feel on top of the world are rare and
there to be cherished. Graham was clearly in a bad mood when he wrote this one:
‘life is uncertain, life is unknown, life is a shot in the dark’. One of Nash’s
most poetic and under-rated set of words, its almost haiku like in its symmetry
but gloriously written, telling a ‘whole’ story in a clever way (the rhyming
couplet – which looks on paper as if it couldn’t possibly rhyme with anything,
is the rather natty ‘life is a curtain, always unfolding, life is an amber and
a spark’. Things can be extinguished quickly, without warning, a flame that can
easily be put out and this equates to both mood and human life. In many ways
this song is a call for help, Nash reaching out a hand to anyone listening to
this song in trouble with the stark lines ‘don’t be a fool – stay around for a
long time!’ It’s his equivalent emotional and evocative phrase counterpart to
Neil’s line ‘it’s better to burn out than it is to rust’ – nonsense, says Nash
with typical brusqueness, life is precious and valuable and it’s always worth
fighting on. ‘Time is a gift, not a loan’ he urges, a gorgeous line that should
be printed on a tour t-shirt one day. Looking to give his audience a practical
reason why to get through the hard times he urges them ‘try to find a dream’ –
a very CSN message because if you can find something to believe in and put your
energies into, however small, then the world will be a batter place because of
it. The music too is some of Nash’s best, sounding both instantly Nash-like
(those gloomy chords, that wistful harmonica break) and something he’d never
tried before (it’s all ice-cool detachment, as if singing to us from a
distance, while the constant drum pattern that underlines everything is
gorgeous, the constant repetition an grind of life that’s deeply unusual for
the much more melodic Graham – how much better an album might be the
synth-drums of ‘Innocent Eyes’ have been if it had sounded like this?) The
recording too is marvellous. Perhaps sensing how out of touch with his usual
style this song is and how well it suits the more eroded vocals of his
companion, Nash gives the ‘lead’ of this song to Stills to sing and he excels
at it, worrying at the song like a dog with a bone and there’s a particularly
gorgeous point when he holds the note of most lines long past the point where
its comfortable – it ought to sound wrong, but somehow it sounds beautiful
(‘not a lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o—an!’, as if all that extra effort will be rewarded
and lead into the next line in a continual round of digging yourself out of
trouble). There are some exquisite CSN harmonies too when the song gets going,
Crosby sinking under the weight of the world and Nash rising with hope all at
the same time. Truly beautiful and incredibly haunting, ‘Find A Dream’ is one
of the best CSN songs you might not know.
‘Camera’ makes it a pretty stunning one-two-three
from each of the trio. Rather than getting sucked into the idea of a glorious
present or depressive future, though, Crosby looks back to the past. His father
Floyd had become rich through taking pictures and while David never followed
his dad’s interests (has there ever been a Crosby selfie, even on his hilarious
twitter feed?) he was fascinated by the idea of freezing time in a moment that
could be seen as a memory forever. The point seems to be that the images mean
nothing without their very human context – they would just be a sea of images
and people, not ‘my first birthday party’ or ‘my best friend before he got shot
in Vietnam/Iraq’, but that things and people that are important to the narrator
can be kept and cherished forever, at a point in time when the narrator wants
to remember them. As if to prove the point we open with a seemingly random
image, of Crosby on his bike ‘wobbling down the path’ surrounded by laughing
children – the face of the future that he ‘teaches’ by being himself in all his
eccentric glory, who might remember him by a treasured photograph. In keeping
with the album theme Crosby looks both forward and back, looking forward to
‘photographing the future when it finally comes ot call’ and ‘when I am old and
lonely’ going through old photos can ‘cover up the clocks’ and make him feel
young again. Crosby takes pictures of everything that means anything to him:
his ‘lover’s sleeping smile with the starlight on his face’, his father
fighting in WW2 while he was a baby ‘in the jungles of South America’ and the
children who are captured in their innocence and open-ness because ‘they
haven’t learnt to hide’ (or pose). Stills gets a co-credit for the music on
this song and may well have suggested this song’s exotic Latin American rhythms
after reading that verse of Crosby’s about ‘South America’. The only time
Stills worked his musical love into one of his partner’s songs, it’s an inspired
move, giving this song a lop-sided rhythm that makes it feel as if time is
stopping and starting again and Stills excels himself with an exaggerated
flamenco guitar part that catches him so by surprise he even chuckles during
the song’s instrumental break in the silence before some terrific drumming from
newcomer Tristan Imboden kicks the song off again. Wrapped up with some more
delightful harmonies (‘While I r-i-i-i-i-i-i-de’ sounds like Crosby pals
Jefferson Airplane singing ‘Watch Her Ride’ from their glorious album ‘After
Bathing At Baxters’ in 1967, but with pleasure not pain) this is another
stunning album moment, nicely handled.
Usually the first song recorded at a CSN album
session rather set the tone, but album single ‘Unequal Love’ recorded back in
January feels separate from the album somewhere. An overly emotional tale of
heartbreak, on the one hand it’s the latest in a long line of sensitive Nash
ballads and on the other it’s not like any other Nash love song at all. Nash
has always known what he wants and what to get, whether he was chasing first
wife Rose Eccles, muse Joni Mitchell, doomed lover Amy Gossage, wife Susan or
current partner Amy Grantham. But here, for one time only, he sounds unsure.
‘Did you ever stay too long with a lover who was over you?’ he sighs, comparing
a romance slowly falling apart with the line that the niggle started as a
‘whisper on the wind’ getting louder with every breath. Though his love life
was as turbulent as Stills’, Nash was a far more eager and optimistic
participant, but here he admits that ‘there are many many reasons not to play
‘the game’ at all’. He sighs that not all love is meant to be, that sometimes
one partner will pull more than the other and that the ‘pressure of this can
break them. A second verse tries to put a typical plaster over this (‘They’ll
tear the arrow from your heart, it’s you they love, it’s not just anybody!’)
and it’s the perfect moment for some spine-tingling harmonies to arrive with
Stills on particularly great form again. The melody too is pretty sumptuous,
with its rises and falls and long great sighs and fittingly feels like the
narrator is sleepwalking, hypnotised into walking on despite his instincts
(especially the harmonica break which starts off simple and short then keeps
going until Nash collapses, having all but run out of breath, for Stills’
shimmering guitar to take over). The performance, though, feels a bit rushed
and over-weighted on a song that sounds better when Nash is singing it alone
(as he does on a live version on his ‘Reflections’ box set) and it’s a measure
of how strong this album is that this lovely song isn’t quite up to the first
three.
‘Till It Shines’ finds Crosby in a bluesy mood as he
returns to his favourite chords from ‘Long Time Gone’ and plays them on guitar
instead of Stills playing them on an organ. It’s a provocative track, trying to
shake an unknown someone awake and make them see what’s really going on and
it’s a very Crosby concept, sharing its title with the chant ‘How Does It Shine?’
from the ‘Crosby*Nash’ CD of 2004. Unlike many Crosby songs, though, this track
keeps its target close to its chest and seems to be more about human ignorance
in general than anyone specific. ‘What does it take to getcha to admit it?’ he
purrs over the funky opening, before later adding that the people he seems
around him who seem to know so much ought to be ‘as confused as me’, seeking
information about how the world works when Crosby knows there are no real
answers. The best verse comes in the middle when Crosby laughs at people who
are reaching for something, anything, to make their life better and to start
having fun, be it a good job, savings, women, families, retirement. ‘It’s a
piece of empty paper!’ he snaps, ‘it’s a piece of empty pie, it’s a vision of
illusion that will surely pass you by!’ Unfortunately, while this song reads
like a great song the melody so insists on slapping the liostener around the
face with its awkward and unusually ugly feel that it doesn’t really suit this
band or the performance they give. Stills is having fun roaring his head off on
guitar (has he ever played so many guitar parts on a CSN album before?), but
this is his territory not Crosby’s and David’s vocal can’t match it. Still
there’s a nice rush of energy during the middle eight that seems to find all
the answers, gaining momentum and energy with a pulsing organ chord, even
though it’s the passage of the song when Crosby admits that he’s clueless
(‘Don’t know what to tell you, haven’t got a clue…’).
One of the forgotten album highlights ‘It Won’t Go
Away’ is exactly what CSN should have been doing on their 25th
anniversary. One of the biggest developments between 1969 and 1994 was the rise
of the way politics was reported, with American media split between left and right
wing networks all giving their own ‘spin’ on news events and 24 hour news
channels that enabled you to see events unfold near real time. Stills had
clearly been watching Fox News a lot as he spits venom on this kick-ass song
about crooked politicians and ‘media honeys’ using their ‘TV choice’. CSN
always used their voice for the disaffected and unheard and they do superbly
here, Stills angrily turning on those who say that the youngsters are all lazy
and that its all the fault of ‘people of colour’. Stills sees the media as
trying to turn Americans against each other, ‘keeping us afraid of each other’
and the fact that so many of the reporters claim to ‘speak for me’. ‘One of us
surely is a fool’ Stills scoffs, as the Government-affiliated networks spread
lies and un-truths while assuming their audience are too thick to see through
it and Stills sounds outraged as he concludes ‘you know that he thinks that its
me!’ A storming guitar solo releases the tension before another glorious verse
about those with ‘evil intent trying to confuse and control the minds of the
innocent’. This time, though, instead of going where we went before Stills and
Nash suddenly burst into instant falsetto harmonies on the line ‘good people
have got to speak up!’, as if offering us a ‘new’ way of listening to each
other. The pair are clearly having great fun on this vocal and they’re on top
form (just listen to the way Nash mirrors the way Stills sings ‘inent-uh’, as
if he knows his partner so well he guessed he was going to do this – Stills
can’t stop grinning for the rest of the verse despite his anger). Performed
with a terrific stinging contemporary feel (think superior period heavy metal),
this is CSN doing what they always did so well – speaking up for disaffected
youths – but the glory of this song is that they’re sticking up for ‘my’
generation (near enough) rather than merely their own. The whole theme of the
song, anyway, is that corruption is always there with every generation and
‘won’t go away’, though the song retains the CSN hope that there are enough of
‘us’ to maybe one day overthrow the chains of ‘them’. ‘Don’t you dare turn
away!’ CSN snarl, a sentiment I wish they’d given us more often in their later
years. The younger rebellious selves of ‘Long Time Gone’ and ‘Ohio’ era would
have been very proud of what their older selves grew into on this track, one of
the best songs of their ‘reunion’ albums (which is pretty much all of them!)
‘After The Storm’ is a rare album of solidarity,
with CSN making an album because they wanted to work with each other again
(unlike ‘Daylight Again’ started without Crosby and ‘Live It Up’ started
without Stills). This can be heard on the rare co-write ‘These Empty Days’
which feels as if it started life as a Nash song (the melody of the verses is
pure Nash, folky Hollies in its lonely walk through Dylanesque chords but
whilst wearing glittery pop shoes) before Crosby adopted it with his own ideas
(the middle eight, which seems to run ‘backwards’, is very much like his usual
work). The pair then hand the song over to Stills to sing lead on and he excels
on a song that ended up very much like his own work too, despairing over
another impending divorce. ‘I can’t deal with it!’ he pleads on his own in
between some typical CSN harmonies, but the main theme of the song is more
detached and poetic than usual. The narrator recalls how a relationship fell
apart, how the decisions he made within the last few hours have haunted him for
years and in a clever line ‘how it will take a million years to fill these
empty days’ (that sounds like Crosby
line to me!) What this song lacks is a performance as strong as the song, as
CSN struggle with such a pot pourri of styles all flung together that veers
from folk to blues to pop with each new flurry of words. It’s also a little too
‘tidy’ for an album that’s generally so emotional and CSN are perhaps a little
too far gone to nail this song’s tricky precision with the pure beauty of their
earlier work. This is still a lovely song, floating like a butterfly compared
to many of the other songs that sting like a bee.
Stills had recorded his version of Beatles classic
‘In My Life’ for his ‘Stills Alone’ album in 1994. His solo version brings out
the weary sense of loss and pain well, but it lacks the uplifting twist in
Lennon’s lyrics and the pure beauty of one of McCartney’s greatest sleepwalking
melodies (yes, this is one of the few songs they wrote 50:50). The song is
perfect for a CSN sugar-coating though and this re-make is a triumph, recalling
their stately but stunning arrangement on ‘Blackbird’ a quarter century earlier.
I think I prefer this cover though, which is a much more natural CSN song
somehow, despite being less of a ‘protest’ song. The song’s tale of how things
from years gone by will always live with you and that your memories can stay
even if the places around you change, it’s perfect for this album of changing
times and recalls ‘Camera’ in its ability to freeze time and stop and start it
again. More vulnerable than the Beatles arrangement and losing the awful mock
baroque George Martin piano solo of the original (that really didn’t fit), this
version is less immediate than The Beatles’ arrangement and loses out on the
tempo which is quite painfully slow but wins out on the harmonies and the weary
sense of loss in the vocals, plus Nash’s sweet harmonica part which is one of
his best. That’s Stephen’s son Christopher - the baby on ‘To Mama From
Christopher And The Old Man’ back on ‘Stills’ in 1975 – making his first
recorded appearance on any CD. He’s quite a big star in his own right these
days. Curse the fact that we never got to the end of the ‘covers’ project CSN
were planning in 2012 before they split if it sounded anything like as good as
this.
For once on a CSN album Crosby doesn’t get any ballads
to sing. Instead his third and final song is another demented rocker ‘Street To
Lean On’ being another of this album’s comment about modern-day living. Coming
on like a slowed down ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ Crosby points to how messed
up life is and how topsy turvy it seems. The first verse has a homeless ‘bag
lady’ whom the police are tired of arresting for doing nothing wrong than be
unfortunate and unlucky – they urge her to come along with them because she’d
be better off in prison, fed and clothed and with a roof over her head. In a
second verse there’s a street gang the police are afraid of catching and who
know the law just enough to get away with being re-arrested ‘nineteen times
this month’. A third verse has a ‘fat lady with a wig on’ moaning about the
young who are hungry and desperate – they lunge for her purse containing money
she would barely notice, but it would be a lifesaver to them. She’s buying
antiques to look pretty in her big house, but like many CSN songs the future is
the ‘children’ and they’re being treated abominably, the world no longer
investing in them. A final verse then lays the finger of blame at the
politician who will ‘promise you anything’ but simply pockets the money and
runs in practice, with no one to hold his policies to account. They’re the one
set of people who could do something about all of this injustice, but they’re
too busy making the most out of the system themselves. Crosby’s wicked grin has
great fun on one of his most sarcastic tracks and it’s a great foil for Stills’
oh-so-straightforward howl of pain on guitar. The song both reads and sounds
wonderful, with another terrific band performance that also features a terrific
guest acoustic part from Crosby friend Michael Hedges. However the song needs a
better chorus, especially on a song that insists on repeating it so much: even
522 reviews in I’ve never had a song using the word ‘galleria’ (a mammoth
shopping centre) before. The theme of the song is a good one though: the kids
and homeless have nothing but the trust they get from each other (and ‘the
gutter when they fall’), while the rich and the politically savvy can afford to
be in it for themselves.
A second rocker in a row has Stills doing what
Crosby has just been saying but with even more muscle and contemporary beats. ‘Bad
Boyz’ is about prejudice again, the idea that the young are a bad lot who have
brought their current status of unemployment and petty criminal acts on
themselves. Stills, though, can see beyond the image of what people insist on
telling him and can see that they’re ‘unlucky’ much more than they’re ‘bad’. ‘Has
anyone ever tried to figure out just why they got so bitter and hard?’ he asks,
wondering how ‘we’re gonna explain life to them’ when it’s all so fucked up and
stacked against them. He again blames the news for spreading hatred, for
pitting one side against another in an endless war instead of bringing people
together. ‘Deserted and abandoned, they do the best they can’ is Stills’
passionate argument as he points out the hypocrisy of rich elder folks
complaining when they ‘can’t speak to their neighbour’. This is, though, a song
that is much more about feeling than intelligent arguments and Stills’ guitar
solo is sublime, so loud and high and mighty and yet so full of pain and
suffering too. Ethan Johns doubles on rhythm guitar and drums and both are
superb, the whole song adding up to a glorious burst of noise. For once the
only thing that doesn’t quite work are the vocals, with Crosby, Nash and (I
think?) Michael Finnigan drowning out Stills on his own song. I sense this is
one he might have been better keeping for a solo album where his aging vocals
might have suited it rather better. It is, though, a terrific moment of clarity
amidst the madness and again it’s so good to hearing someone from the baby
boomer generation sticking up for ‘us’.
One of the reasons I wanted to end my run of (almost
– curse you for releasing another album at the last minute Neil!) interrupted
reviews with this album was title song ‘After The Storm’. It’s the perfect
finale, so perfect that I have it listed as one of the songs to be played at my
funeral. This is, you see, a song about what life is really about, bringing
words of comfort after crisis and reasons to carry on, even after something
very very sad has happened. Nash has never talked about why he wrote it and I’ve
often wondered: his parents were long dead by this time – maybe he was thinking
about his murdered girlfriend Amy on the twentieth anniversary of her death?
Nash, though, is through mourning and is always moving on, the way humans do,
old enough to realise the rollercoaster of emotions that is life and the
thought that after storm clouds sunshine and rainbows will always come. And
even death isn’t final: the melodies he
had in his head during a relationship are ‘still lingering on’ and so are the
memories. ‘So sad’ he sighs, but he has to continue living his life without the
sadness getting him down and he then imagines his own death, asking to see the
love in the eyes of those who loved him, not the tears. A middle eight isn’t
quite as strong, returning to Nash’s age-old theme of being true to yourself
and that life ‘doesn’t work if you pretend’ but even that is twisted in a
golden sudden shift back to the major key that his own story is proof – he couldn’t
do things alone and needed to be true for himself and his friends. Along the
way this music finds room to make us feel better by telling us that pain is an
inevitable part of life, but that it is so worth it – because to miss something
that breaks your heart you have to have really loved it in the first place. ‘How
come I have to explain?’ he asks, adding that music, people and children are ‘worth
all the pain’. In a way this is the CSN theme song for their big finale on
Atlantic: all those arguments, all those battles, all that in-fighting were all
worth it for those three things which, more than any other three words, define
what makes CSN special. The melody too is glorious, solemn and beautiful, yet
fragile and ready to break. Wrapped up in a gorgeous folky arrangement that
makes it sound like a traditional song, Nash’s stiff-upper-lip vocal is superb,
quivering in all the right places, while once again Stills is superb behind
him. The high falsetto vocal is by Stephen’s daughter Jennifer making her only
appearance on any of her dad’s related recordings and its terrific, hanging in
the air like a ghost and perfectly fitting for a song that’s partly about
family. Don’t mourn Alan’s Album Archives (even with six months of articles
still to go!) We just want to see the love in your eyes – and yes even writing
522 reviews it was well worth all the pain! This song is superb and one of my very
favourite pieces of music by anybody, saying inside three and a half minutes
what so many bands struggle to say in an entire career.
That song is the perfect end – but CSN never do
things the traditional way and instead throw this website a curveball encore. ‘Panama’
is a song unlike any we’ve reviewed in - what - six hundred thousand songs is
it now? Until Stills gets round to writing his autobiography (He’s the only
member of CSNY who hasn’t yet) I’ll never know for sure just how close this song
is to the ‘truth’. It ‘sounds’ real though, which is the part that matters and
it would help explain an awful lot about his love of Latin American sounds. This
song recalls how he lost his virginity aged fifteen to an older woman who
turned him into a man in ‘Panama’ but not as tacky or as heavy-metal based as
that makes it sound. My guess is that
Stills was dating a lady who was originally from there in one of the many
endless American states the Stills family were forever moving to. ‘I was not a
child, I was not yet a man’ he recalls as the song bubbles over with lust and
curiosity, his journey as a visitor to this foreign land a decent metaphor for
his growing love life. He sets off into the dark and unknown and she follows
him there, disguised by ‘leaves and dust’. Unsure of what to do or where to go
they make love in the jungle as he falls under the ‘spell’ of this exotic land
until Stills suddenly bursts into life on a yell of ‘Yo Soy Panamo’ (‘I am
Panama!’) Sounding not unlike the Ricky Martin songs all my ignorant classmates
were getting into but a million times better, Stills often pours his heart out
the most on his ‘Spanish’ songs and so it proves here with another terrific
band performance that’s full of life and energy and more than a little danger.
Once again CSN feel a little adrift here on a song that might have suited
Stills better alone but the guitar mix between father and son Stephen and
Christopher is a thrilling last throw of the dice in the Atlantic CSN canon.
The end result is an album that’s way better than it
has any right to be for a band celebrating their silver anniversary. If not
quite CSN’s best or most groundbreaking record, in many ways it’s their most
consistent and satisfying, absent from our original ‘core 101 albums everyone
should listen to’ list more because it was already swamped with CSN records
than any loss as an album. It should have been the start of a whole new era,
proving in the 1960s-friendly 1990s that there was still very much a future for
this band but that they understood the changes that had taken place since 1969
too – that the youngsters hadn’t failed to become hippies through lack of
trying and that finding their way out of the ‘devil’s garden’ to become ‘stardust’
was ever harder as the decades went on, with even more corruption and a whole
lot more brainwashing going on. CSN had never been more unified or equal, with
the excellent cover logo (by Stills and Nash, developed by graphic artists Kate
Nook and Rand Wetherwax) summing up this album well: every letter ‘belongs’
together, wrapping their limbs around each other in a golden hug, the bright
light in the sky while the storm rages behind them. Stills, especially, is on
top form for this album. He was almost always inspired when he was first in
love and so it proves here, as his longest lasting marriage inspires him to
provide some of his gutsiest vocals and some terrific guitar work, while Nash
is uncharacteristically deep on this record and Crosby is uncharacteristically
feisty. The result is an album that any band we cover would have been proud to
have had in their canon in any era and it should have been a huge success.
Instead Atlantic buried it, Crosby getting sick rather kyboshed the tour and
the rise and rise of Neil Young in this period (with ‘Sleeps With Angels’ on
the back of ‘Harvest Moon’) eclipsing this album commercially, if not
necessarily critically. The band split, again, releasing no new music between
them at all until Crosby’s first album with CPR four years later (and even that
was only ever released in America). What a waste: they had so much more to give
and indeed still do (especially in these Trump years of division – we need
their blend of hope and harmony more than ever before).
After the storm has passed you and gone, though, it’s
easier to tell which albums have true worth even if no one noticed them at the
time. ‘After The Storm’ is exactly the sort of album Alan’s Album Archives
lived and breathed for across ten years of Spice Girls, in-jokes, weird youtube
videos, confusing April Fool’s Day issues (don’t worry, still one more of those
to go next year!) and some truly glorious life-changing music. You may not have
read it all – heck, I don’t think even I’ve read it all and I wrote it – but these
billions of pages, thousands of posts and ten years of near-constant writing
all pretty much add up to what this album is trying to say: that life is hard
but it does get better, that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear –
especially from politicians, that it is better to love than hate, that ‘time is
the final currency’ and precious to quote the CPR song most like this album and
that life is easier when you ‘find a dream’. ‘After The Storm’ is a microcosm
of everything we ever had to tell you and everything I’ve learnt while writing
this website and the thirty books that will hopefully follow it. Thankyou for
being there, dear reader, through the good, the bad, the ugly and the Spice
Girls jokes, my life will never be quite the same without you to write to every
week. Good job I still have all the music to listen to on repeat, eh? Hopefully
you do too. We’ll be back with our third essay (on Belle and Sebastian) next
week and polish off our run of Neil Young articles and then be back with our
annual review of the year before mopping up some extra bits and pieces in the
new year. In a very real sense, though, what Alan’s Album Archives was put to
do ends right here. And when I got to the end I needed a friend - and that friend was you, however many of these reviews you read across the last decade. Hopefully you’ll remember us with a song in your heart rather
than the pain in your ear-drums, the smile we put on your lips as you found
something new rather than the strain we caused to your eye-sight, with laughter
in your voice rather than an outward groan at a really bad pun and with love in
your eyes, now that Alan’s Album Archives has passed you and gone.
A Now Complete List Of CSN/Y and Solo Articles Available To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'Crosby, Stills and Nash' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-29-crosby-stills-and-nash-1969.html
'Deja Vu' (CSNY) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-34-crosby-stills-nash-and-young.html
‘Stephen Stills’ (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/stephen-stills-1970.html
'If Only I Could Remember My Name' (Crosby) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-45-david-crosby-if-only-i-could.html
'Songs For Beginners' (Nash) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-46-graham-nash-songs-for.html
'Stephen Stills II' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-48-stephen-stills-ii-1971.html
‘Graham Nash, David
Crosby’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/graham-nash-david-crosby-1972.html
'Stephen Stills-Manassas' (1972)http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-51-stephen-stillsmanassas-1972.html
'Wild Tales' (Nash) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-75-graham.html
'Stephen Stills-Manassas' (1972)http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-51-stephen-stillsmanassas-1972.html
'Wild Tales' (Nash) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-75-graham.html
'Down The Road' (Stephen
Stills/Manassas) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/stephen-stillsmanassas-down-by-road-1973.html
'Stills' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-65-stephen-stills-stills-1975.html
'Wind On The Water' (Crosby-Nash) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-67-crosby-nash-wind-on-water.html
'Stills' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-65-stephen-stills-stills-1975.html
'Wind On The Water' (Crosby-Nash) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-67-crosby-nash-wind-on-water.html
'Illegal Stills' (Stills)
(1976)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/stephen-stills-illegal-stills-1976.html
'Whistling Down The Wire'
(Crosby-Nash) (1976)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/david-crosby-graham-nash-whistling-down.html
'Long May You Run' (Stills-Young) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-33-stills.html
'CSN' (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-70-crosby-stills-and-nash-csn.html
'Long May You Run' (Stills-Young) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-33-stills.html
'CSN' (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-70-crosby-stills-and-nash-csn.html
'Thoroughfare Gap'
(Stills) (1978) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/stephen-stills-thoroughfare-gap-1978.html
'Earth and Sky' (Nash)
(1980)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/graham-nash-earth-and-sky-1980.html
'Daylight Again' (CSN) (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-131-crosby.html
'Daylight Again' (CSN) (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-131-crosby.html
'Right By You' (Stills)
(1984) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/stephen-stills-right-by-you-1984.html
'Innocent Eyes' (Nash)
(1986)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/graham-nash-innocent-eyes-1986.html
'American Dream' (CSNY)
(1988) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-american.html
'Oh Yes I Can!' (Crosby)
(1989)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/david-crosby-oh-yes-i-can-1989.html
'Live It Up!' (CSN) (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-viedws-and-music-issue-104-crosby.html
'Live It Up!' (CSN) (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-viedws-and-music-issue-104-crosby.html
'Stephen Stills Alone'
(1991)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/09/stephen-stills-alone-1991.html
'A Thousand Roads'
(Crosby) (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/david-crosby-thousand-roads-1993.html
‘After The Storm’ (CSN)
(1994) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/the-final-review-crosby-stills-and-nash.html
'CPR' (Crosby Band) (1998)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/cpr-david-crosby-band-1998.html
'Looking Forward' (1999) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-looking.html
‘So Like Gravity (CPR,
2001)
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/cpr-just-like-gravity-2001.html
‘Songs For Survivors’ (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/graham-nash-songs-for-survivors-2002.html
‘Songs For Survivors’ (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/graham-nash-songs-for-survivors-2002.html
'Crosby*Nash' (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-21-crosby.html
‘Man Alive’ (S) (2005) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/stephen-stills-man-alive-2005.html
'Deja Vu Live' (CD) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/news-views-and-music-issue-1-crosby.html
'Deja Vu Live' (DVD) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_09_21_archive.html
'Reflections' (Graham Nash Box Set) (2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-views-and-music-issue-22-graham.html
'Demos' (CSN) (2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-41-crosby.html
'Manassas: Pieces' (2010) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-52-manassas.html
‘Carry On’ (Stephen Stills Box Set) (2013) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/stephen-stills-carry-on-box-set-2013.html
'Croz' (Crosby) (2014) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/david-crosby-croz-2014album-review.html
'CSNY 74' (Recorded 1974 Released 2014)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-csny-74.html
'This Path Tonight' (Nash) (2016) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/graham-nash-this-path-tonight-2016.html
'Lighthouse' (Crosby)
(2016) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/david-crosby-lighthouse-2016.html
‘Sky Trails’ (Crosby)
(2017) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/david-crosby-sky-trails-2017.html
‘Here
If You Listen’ (Crosby) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/10/david-crosby-and-friends-here-if-you.html
The Best Unreleased CSNY
Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/csny-best-unreleased-tracks-news-views.html
Surviving TV Appearances (1969-2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/csny-surviving-tv-appearances-1969-09.html
Non-Album Recordings (1962-2009)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young_6.html
Live/Compilation/Rarities Albums Part One
(1964-1980)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young.html
Live/Compilations/Rarities
Albums Part Two (1982-2012)
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young_20.html
Essay: The Superest Of
Super Groups?
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/csny-essay-superest-of-super-groups.html
Five Landmark Concerts and
Three Key Cover Versions
https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/csny-five-landmark-concerts-and-three.html
