Buy Our E-Book!!! 'Change Partners - The Alan's Album Guide To CSN/Y' Is Available Now!

Click here to buy the book!!!

AAA Extra: CSNY Projects 'Wasted On The Way' (Revised Edition)

Available to buy now in ebook format 'Change Partners - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young' by clicking here!

Dear all, we'll get back to our 'landmark concerts' and 'key cover versions' next week but we thought you deserved a break about now so instead here is one of our occasional 'extra' columns, this one an extended version of one of our original 'top five' pieces from 'News, Views and Music' issue #33 back in May 2019

Look around you. Look at CSN’s life before you. Shouldn’t this book be even – gulp – bigger? Have you noticed the odd reference to an album you can’t find in this book? Don’t despair because most likely its int his section, a part we’ve dedicated to C/S/N/Y albums that for one reason or another were wasted on the way, these roads apparently unable to be taken after all. Would these alternate C/S/N/Y albums from a parallel universe run rings around the way it could have been? Possibly not – some of these albums were even improved by record company interference or the addition of certain songs – though you have to feel for ‘King Of The Mountain’ and ‘Samurai’ particularly, two Crosby songs that nearly came out on three extra projects before finally seeing the light of day on the box set ‘Voyage’. Other albums feature songs lost that have since been added on re-issues, alternate mixes that have leaked out on Stills and Nash sets ‘Carry On’ and ‘Reflections’ or the CSN box or in the case of the last album on this list have never seen the light of day at all. Here’s our run down of what could have been and where you can hear what’s left of each record.

1)  ‘Human Highway’ (CSNY 1974)

Potential track listing: [215] See The Changes [366] Little Blind Fish [133] Prison Song ‘Human Highway’ [169] As I Come Of Age [198] Time After Time [182] To The Last Whale [173] Carry Me [168] First Things First ‘Pardon My Heart’ [135] And So It Goes [160] Homeward Through The Haze [181] Fieldworker [172] Myth Of Sisyphus [161] Through My Sails Reason Unfinished: Row

We start with the most famous entry on this list. Back in 1970 CSNY split acrimoniously, Crosby and Nash complaining of being ‘Stills’ backup band’ and Young disappearing as quickly as Crazy Horse could carry him, not to mention the love triangle between Stills, Nash and Rita Coolidge. Time, though, is a great healer (as well as [369] ‘The Final Currency’) and by 1973 enough water had disappeared under the bridge for CSNY to be friends again when they met up chance in Hawaii. A favourite spot for all four members – and where Nash ill later make his home for thirty years – Crosby-Nash were taking a break before discussing their second album when they bumped into Stills who happened to let on that he’d seen Young there earlier in the week too. The timing seemed perfect so Nash urged them to shoot a ‘holiday photo’ intended for use as an album cover (you know the one, they’re in holiday gear in the sunset, with Young sporting a rare beard) and they made plans to get back together again soon. Against all odds this happened, the quartet agreeing to take the pressure off themselves by appearing unbilled at the second half of a Manassas show booked at San Francisco’s Winterland Arena. The four men all played new songs as well as a few oldies and they talked openly about wanting to include them on a new album, the honorary follow-up to ‘Déjà vu’. As 1973 turned into 1974 they embarked on a lengthy and lucrative stadium tour playing four hour shows to their fans which started off as warm and snugly and were turning slightly fractious by the end. Undeterred they set off into the studios anyway and got as far as recording the first ‘fast’ version of Stills’ ‘See The Changes’ and Crosby’s ‘Homeward Through The Haze’ (both available on the box set), Young’s ‘Through My Sails’ (released on his 1975 Crazy Horse album ‘Zuma’) and a song of Crosby’s sung by all four members which after a lot of stripping down to the basics will appear on CPR’s first album (1998) – the first version taped in 1974 still hasn’t appeared officially anywhere yet (though it turns up again in our ‘unreleased recordings’ section). The quartet then split, old grievances coming to light a bit too painfully, leaving another album tantalisingly unfinished. We know what would have been on it though thanks partly to the songs played at Winterland and on tour and in discussions and interviews with the four – all agreed quickly that a new country-ish song of Neil’s would be the title (he’ll release this odd song himself on 1978’s ‘Comes A Time’) while other tracks will turn up on Nash’s ‘Wild Tales’, Crosby-Nash’s ‘Wind On The Water’ and ‘Stills’ across 1974 and 1975 (as with all the listings here our running order is a guess based on how the album ‘feels’ and the patterns of CSNY with a song each at the start rather than any actual running order as none of these albums ever got that far). What would it have been like? Superb! A little heavy on ballads perhaps, but almost all the songs here are first class and would have made good use of those famous harmonies with an overall album theme of growing older and going down different avenues, balanced by songs about ecology and Nash’s past.

2)  ‘Long May You Run’ (CSNY 1976)

Potential track listing: [206] Long May You Run [203] Taken At All [209] Black Coral [208] Midnight On The Bay [198] Time After Time ‘No One Seems To Know’ [232] Beaucoup Yumbo [197] Broken Bird [205] Out Of The Darkness [212] Fountainebleau ‘Will To Love’ [214] Guardian Angel Reason Unfinished: Row

This album was even more fractious. Divided into two camps in 1976, Stills-Young were working on their version of ‘Long May You Run’ partly as a kind attempt to boost Neil’s stalling career in the wake of his ‘doom trilogy’ (how ironic does that seem now – Young’s never offered to help Stills the other way around in the forty years since!) while Crosby-Nash were busy making ‘Whistling Down The Wire’. Realising that ‘Run’ was turning out ragged and solid rather than spectacular Stills got on the phone without asking Neil and got hold of C-N at their studios and played them some songs. ‘Hey guys what do you think? I think its lacking something. ‘Yeah’ giggled Nash ‘Us!’ Putting their album on hold (despite a tight deadline) Crosby-Nash rushed to help out singing harmony vocals on at least ‘Black Coral’ (a CSNY mix of which will turn up on Stills’ box set ‘Carry On’ in 2012) and with C-N offering up their own newly written song about the 1974 split called ‘Taken At All’. S and Y add their own distinctive touches to this song – their version will turn up on the CSN box set of 1991, while the pair will re-record it as the highlight of ‘Whistling Down The Wire’. C-N were next in the studio recording harmonies for ‘Guardian Angel’ when Nash admitted he had a problem. ‘I’m sorry Stephen, this is just too hard to sing, is there any way we could change it?’ he asked. It was a big moment: CSNY had never asked each other to change one of their songs before. What he perhaps didn’t realise was that of all of Stills’ personal songs this may well be the most personal – the passionate cry of a man whose drowning in self-hatred and longing to be saved by an outside force and Stills had spent several hours tryin to perfect it already. In a drunken rage he probably feared that his own self-prophecy was coming true but, rather than listen to reason, he started an argument that lasted into the evening when Crosby-Nash were staying at his rented apartment and got so ugly he threw them both out. Legend has it Stills also shredded the mastertapes of everything the duo had added in the past few weeks with a razorblade, though if so perhaps he missed the recording of ‘Black Coral’. ‘I will never work with that man again’ said Nash in the press. ‘The last time I saw him he wiped some very precious work of David’s and mine’. What would this second lost record have been like? Well better than either the way ‘Long May You Run’ turned out when pared back to a very rough and ragged Stills-Young creation that’s for certain and better than the rather lifeless ‘Whistling Down The Wire’ too, with the one recording started from scratch ‘Taken At All’ one of the unheralded beauties of the CSNY canon. But Crosby-Nash had no new material after making their record and the result would still have been a bit cobbled together, with C-N adding to what was already there and sweetening the sour passages of Stills’ darker material rather than starting from scratch.

1)  Untitled (CSN 1978)

Potential Track Listing: [239] Drive My Car [238] Can’t Get No Booty [246] Helicopter Song ‘Mirage’ ‘Jigsaw’

Just a few months after CSN (‘the one with the boat’) the trio were back in Criteria Studios again, having enjoyed that experience so much that they were keen to make up for lost time and make another album straight away. But the band didn’t have enough material yet and had just come off the back of the longest tour they had ever played. Disagreements began to rear their head again with only five songs partially recorded. Interestingly none has yet to appear on bootleg and nobody seems to have a clue what the last two tracks are, except to say that Nash is the author of ‘Mirage’ and ‘Jigsaw’ is a rare Crosby-Nash collaboration. Stills took all his songs with him to CBS to make ‘Thoroughfare Gap’, while Crosby and Nash decided to have a bash at making a fourth joint album. It won’t go well…

2)  Untitled  (C-N 1979)

Potential Track listing: [239] Drive My Car [244] Out On The Island [420] Samurai [247] Barrel Of Pain [241] King Of The Mountain [246] Helicopter Song [411] On The Other Side Of Town [243] Love Has Come  Reason Unfinished: Crosby’s Drug Habit

A tentative fourth Crosby-Nash record didn’t even get that far, being abandoned during its early stages after the moment discussed in depth in the autobiographies of both Crosby and Nash. Rehiring the same ‘Section’ players heard on ‘Wind On The Water’ and ‘Whistling On The Wire’ the band were enjoying a great jam session which Nash was secretly hoping might end up on record. The buzz from the amplifiers was so loud and strong that Crosby’s cocaine freebasing pipe gradually moved its way to the edge of a piano and shattered on the floor. Crosby could have got another one easily – he could have sent off a runner to get one in a few hours – but Croz was by then so secretly addicted that he couldn’t face even that long without a hit and got the band to stop so he could pick the remnants off the floor and smoke them. Nash, already concerned that his best friend was hiding his habit from him confronted him about just how addicted he was and Crosby’s gruff dismissive ‘I’m fine’ reaction cast a pallor over the rest of the sessions which gradually wound down. In truth Crosby didn’t have that music yet – since the CSN reunion in 1977 he’d been struggling to be creative, the drugs filling up his musical veins. Nash wasn’t that worried – Crosby’s songs had always tended to turn up last out of the four (Young wrote approximately ten times as many songs as Crosby in their heyday) but he was still coming up with the lion’s share of songs discussed at the sessions. Most of these will be re-recorded for his 1980 record ‘Earth and Sky’ which duly includes guest appearances by Croz on ‘Helicopter Song’, suggesting that this song at least may have started life at this session. But it seems more likely that everything in this list was started from scratch and it is probably the least likely out of all of these six albums to have been made in the way we’ve listed here. We do know that the charming ‘On The Other Side Of Town’, of Daddy Nash’s guilt over his baby son’s loom of betrayal when he had his first injection, was intended for this album though before being revived for the fourth Crosby*Nash album when it finally appeared much delayed in 2004. Would this record have been a classic? No, but ‘Earth and Sky’ is one of the more overlooked albums in the CSNY canon and could only have been enhanced by the handful of songs Crosby had with him in this period.

3)  Drive My Car (Crosby 1980)

Potential track listing: [239] Drive My Car [263] Might As Well Have A Good Time [241] King Of The Mountain [305] Melody [311] Distances [258] Delta [420] Samurai [312] Flying Man [81] Kids and Dogs  Reason Unfinished: Rejected by Record Company

His options disappearing, Crosby quit Atlantic to sign with Columbia. Intending a whole new sound, full of more up to date technology, Crosby was stymied by his creativity, about two-thirds of the way to an album. Columbia thought so too, rejecting it outright and asking for something more ‘radio friendly’, particularly disliking the choral chant ‘Samurai’ already offered for the Crosby-Nash album. The album was abandoned early on, but not before a few tracks were recorded: ‘Distances’ turned up more or less unchanged on Crosby’s eventual replacement ten years later ‘Oh Yes I Can!’ and this first rockier version of ‘Drive My Car’ on the CSN box set, while this album’s notably mournful ‘Samurai’ is the version included on the ‘Voyage’ box set. The album’s most famous recordings though, ‘Delta’ and ‘Might As Well Have AS Good Time’ were both added to bulk out ‘Daylight Again’ with the addition of a few Stills-Nash harmonies. With the pick of this album’s sessions to choose from I’ve often wondered why the pair didn’t pick ‘Distances’ too – it would have been perfect for that slightly cagey album with its tale of differences between people who used to be close and Crosby sounds far more ‘with it’ than he does on the rest of the album. This and ‘Delta’ would have made the album a mini-masterpiece alone, while ‘King Of The Mountain’ which had been looking for a home for years by this time would have found a particularly welcome home here. The rest might perhaps not have lived up to Crosby’s reputation though, especially if the timid recording of ‘Samurai’ is anything to go by.

4)  Untitled (S 1980)

Potential track listing: [43] Cherokee [256] Southern Cross [262] You Are Alive [424] Feed The People ‘Precious Love’ ‘Dangerous Woman On The Loose’ ‘Streetwise’ ‘One Way Ride’ ‘Palace Of The King’ Reason Unfinished: Rejected By Record Company

Captain Many Digits, meanwhile, became the first musician anywhere in the world to record using digital technology. Always interested in new techniques, The Record Plant in Los Angeles knew that Stills was a likely guinea pig for their new technology – apparently this was the ‘3M’ system of digital recording, which used a whole new mixing board to replace the old analogue one. Barry Beckett was the producer and Michael Braunstein the engineer for this illustrious event and Stills was thrilled, using his short-lived ‘California Blues Band’ with keyboardist Mike Finnigan to back him on some tight and fairly robotic versions of an old friend and a new one. ‘Cherokee’, already released on his first solo album, sounds good in new clothes, the band using the spacey funk arrangement they’d been playing in concert and this song about Rita Coolidge suits the monotony of the extra drums and stylised production values. ‘Southern Cross’ though sounds horrid, a warm song sounding harsh and sterile and lacking both the more ‘human’ verses that make this song the gem that it is and the C-N harmonies. CBS, already underwhelmed by ‘Thoroughfare Gap’, asked Stills to think again and be more commercial – ironically Stills’ sound was just a few years too early and son everybody will be sounding like this. Unwilling to compromise the two agreed to go their spate ways instead and the tapes are still lying in a tape vault to this day (except for two songs on bootleg – one more we know was recorded here and resurrected for ‘Daylight Again’, ‘Feed The People’ will be resurrected a full quarter century later for ‘Man Alive’ and ‘Precious Love’ and ‘Dangerous Woman’ can be heard on live bootlegs, but the other song titles are a mystery, reported as being recorded at the time). Fun as ‘Cherokee’ is, we may have had a lucky escape as a whole album of this would have been hard-going. In the end Ry Cooder became the first artistxto release an album recorded digitally!

5)  Daylight Again (S-N 1981)

Potential Track Listing: [254] Turn Your Back On Love [255] Wasted On The Way [256] Southern Cross [264] Raise A Voice [165] Feel Your Love [259] Since I Met You [260] Too Much Love To Hide [261] Song for Susan [262] You Are Alive [266] Tomorrow Is Another Day [47] Daylight Again Reason Unfinished: Atlantic Insist On Crosby Being Added

An easy one this: ‘Daylight Again’ was a Stills-Nash album up until the eleventh hour, the pair having met up for a conciliatory drink and discussing their fading fortunes in the wake of poor sales for ‘Earth and Sky’ and ‘Thoroughfare Gap’. They even agreed to resign for Atlantic. The drug-taking elephant in the room though was what to do about Crosby. Stills figured his drug problem couldn’t be that serious (and he had a developing one of his own) but Nash had seen it firsthand and claimed that Crosby just couldn’t cut it. The pair made an album without him as their safest option, one which included Stills’ new find keyboard player Mike Finnigan as an extra harmony vocal, while James Taylor and Art Garfunkel played at being ‘Crosby’ on different songs (the title track in the latter’s case). Atlantic weren’t happy though: they figured that actually they’d rather have the full trio or nothing, leaving a sheepish Nash to call Crosby and invite him over; in dire financial straits he turned up with his abandoned album in his hand and gleefully declared that the others couldn’t cope without him. It was all a charade though with Stills and Nash adding vocals to ‘Delta’ and ‘Might As Well have A Good Time’ (their two favourite songs from Crosby’s abandoned album) and Crosby singing small parts here and there to everybody else’s songs. The trio only started one song from scratch and Nash actually wrote [257] ‘Into The Darkness’ after seeing Crosby for the first time in months and being shocked at how ill he looked (it’s a bitter sequel to Croz’s own [205] ‘Out Of The Darkness’). Some songs were in this early line-up were abandoned – for plagiarism reasons in the case of ‘Feel Your Love’ when someone pointed out that Stills had subconsciously nicked a song by Rose Royce of all bands; to fit in Crosby’s work in other cases, with ‘Raise A Voice’ held back for mostly-live record ‘Allies’ in 1983 and ‘Feel Your Love’ and ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’ finding a release for the first time on the CD reissue of the album in the early 21^st century. What would this album have sounded like? Well none of the rejected songs are classics and certainly none of them are up to the beauty of ‘Delta’. But it would have been fascinating to see how a Stills-Nash album might have gone down with the audience and it would have been a much kinder and much more honest album than what we got. Note too that the original version of ‘Turn Your Back On Love’ was quite different to the one that made the finished album, with a different set of Stills words added to Nash’s urgent riff, although knowing Stills he tidied these up long before Crosby turned up! Session tapes also reveal a groovy and very Stillsy untitled instrumental, though whether this song ever had words and how seriously it was intended to make the final cut is a mystery.

6)  Untitled (C-N 1989)

Potential track listing: [315] Live It Up! [319] Yours and Mine [322] House Of Broken Dreams [323] Arrows [321] Straight Line [241] King Of The Mountain [316] Anyone Who Had A Heart [420] Samurai [324] After The Dolphin Reason Unfinished: Atlantic Insist On Stills Being Added

Following ‘American Dream’ in 1988 CSNY went their separate ways again, but Crosby-Nash were both having a particularly fertile period and were enjoying renewing their friendship after the dark days of Crosby’s addiction. Atlantic were interested in a fourth Crosby-Nash album so they duly set off making one. Most of ‘Live It Up!’ was made this way, with the pair branching out to outside artists to fill in the gaps and – according to an interview made in Record Collector Magazine – this set would ‘at last’ have given a home to both ‘King Of The Mountain’ and ‘Samurai’, a song Crosby had always wanted to make as a Crosby-Nash song. Once again Atlantic began to have second thoughts and at the same time Stills turned up asking to hear how the album was progressing and that without a label of his own maybe they could find a home for his new songs. Fearing what happened last time CSN did far more from scratch on the record (to the point where it sounds as if Crosby is pushed to one side, not Stills) and the album is definitely better for the Nash harmony added to Stills solo recording [318] ‘Haven’t We Lost Enough?’, the frenetic Stills guitar solo added to [316] ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ and lots of Stills harmonies across the songs Crosby and Nash had already taped. The one new song taped at these sessions held the album up weeks, with Nash panicking that they could never get the under-rated [320] ‘Got To Keep Open’ the ‘way we wanted it’ until the trio hit on the brainwave of adding a reggae lilt. The result is a second artificial CSN album in a row, but at least more care was taken making it sound like a three-way effort than its predecessor and arguably the finished product is better than it would have been as a C-N record without an awful lot of changes.

7)  ‘Songs We Wish We’d Written’ (CSN 2012)

Potential track listing: ‘Uncle John’s Band’ ‘Ruby Tuesday’ ‘Love Has No Pride’ ‘Fancy’ ‘How Have You Been?’ [234] Midnight Rider ‘Girl From The North Country’ ‘Close Your Eyes’ ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ ‘A Beatles Tune’ ‘Something By Joni Mitchell’ Reason Unfinished: Row

The album that broke CSN up? All we know for certain is that CSN really didn’t see eye to eye with their new producer Rick Rubin, who had resurrected Johnny Cash’s career quite brilliantly in later life by getting him back to basics and embracing his older age. CSN - reuniting for the first time since 1994 (threesome) or 1999 (foursome) - weren’t quite ready for that just yet and began to get worried when Rubin tried to ‘interfere’ with the album they wanted to make. CSN had been talking about a ‘covers’ album for a while – their cover of [327] ‘In My Life’ had gone down well with fans and the trio had always made a point of highlighting their favourite acts be they known (Dylan, Joni Mitchell) or comparatively unknown (Marc Cohn, Michael Hedges). However they couldn’t always agree on what songs to record (Crosby wanted to do a Grateful Dead song as a tribute to his old friend Jerry Garcia but admitted he hadn’t got a clue what ‘Uncle John’s Band’ meant, while Nash wasn’t all that sure what his choice, The Rolling Stones’ ‘Ruby Tuesday’, was all about either). Without much direction tensions ran high between the trio and the producer – they weren’t yet as hungry or desperate as Cash had been after ten years in the wilderness and had never been used to working with producers. Crosby stifled at Rubin’s suggestion that they keep to just one Beatles cover (‘There’ll only be one Beatles song if we decide there’ll only be one Beatles song! Who the fuck are you to decide?!’) Nash argued that Rubin didn’t get CSN (‘Guide us – yes. Make suggestions – fantastic. ‘Try it this way’ – no problem. But tell us what to do? You can’t!’) However it seems from most sources that it was Stills who lost his temper first and walked out of the project three songs in. Apparently the trio got as far as The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, The Stones’ ‘Ruby Tuesday’ and John Sebastian’s lovely ‘Close Your Eyes’ (there’s a gorgeous live version of this song doing the rounds from their 2013 tour) before calling it a day. Most of the other songs listed here are guesswork, but they did play some of them in concert which means they already had arrangements ready for them: ‘Fancy’ is an Iggy Alazalea song CSNY sang when guesting on a period Jimmy Fallon chat show, ‘Girl From North Country’ is a Dylan cover Stills had been doing for years and which CSN had perfected some lovely harmonies on, ‘Love Has No Pride’ is a Bonnie Raitt song the trio once sang with its composer on stage, ‘Midnight Rider’ is an Allman Brothers song Stills had already recorded in 1978 and mentioned in interviews he’d like to do again and I would have been astonished if the trio hadn’t got round to doing a Joni Mitchell song in there somewhere. Some press reports said that the trio were planning to rework older songs from the Byrds (‘Eight Miles High’) and Buffalo Springfield (‘Rock and Roll Woman’ or ‘Bluebird’) days too, though this seems more speculation than promise. Either way this would have been a strange LP. CSN never seemed quite convinced by any of this material live and they remain more of a creative band than an interpretative one. Any CSN is better than none at all however and it seems a shame that what might have turned out to be the last three-way recordings seem likely to end up stuck in the vaults for the foreseeable future. I bet ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ sounded good though, especially if they nailed the sudden switch from drugged out peace to sudden anger!

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

'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

'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

'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

'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

'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

'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

CSNY Essay: The Superest of Super Groups? Plus Updates

Available to buy in ebook format 'Change Partners - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young' by clicking here!

here!

It used to be easy didn’t it? A ‘band’ was a group of musicians who grew up on the same corner of the same street, went to the same schools, hung out in the same clubs and ended up playing in the same groups. The only difference between you and your bandmates was the instrument you played – otherwise you had the same interests and passions, had the same kind of vision and dated the same kind of girls (or boys). CSN though represented a change. If you were a kid growing up in the 1950s and playing at being in a band yourself then you picked your ‘leader’ – usually the frontman, occasionally the guitarist – whose name would go up on the posters and who would go up on all the posters and be seen in big on TV to make all the girls (maybe some of the boys) swoon while their mates got on with actually making music behind them. Think Cliff and the Shadows, Marty Wilde and the Wilde Three or Rory Storm and The Hurricanes. The Beatles changed all that – as they changed most everything – even though ironically they too started life as ‘Johnny and the Moondogs’ and ‘Long John Lennon and The Silver Beatles’ before McCartney’s talent overtook the gap in age between him and his musical partner. Even so, for most of the 1960s the idea was that as equals you had to think the same thoughts, in Graham Nash’s words on The Hollies to ‘make love to the same woman in the same room night after night’. You couldn’t have any individual identity – your group was your identity and you shared it between you. This is the era when bands all had the same haircuts, the same uniforms, the same pose and the same, well, everything.

CSN were the first to change all that (with perhaps the special exception of Cream, though only Eric Clapton was truly a household name at the time of their first single)  – and they did so deliberately. They were, after all, three such strong personalities that they’d outgrown the idea of being in a band singing to the same hymn-sheet a long time ago. Indeed, CSN were writing very different hymn-sheets to anything anyone else had ever written before. They also looked completely different, each with their recognisable silhouettes: there was Crosby all fringed jackets and droopy moustaches, Stills with tight-lipped blondeness and Nash with his thin goatee Manuncian look. If you had been beamed down from outer space (you won’t have met Catalunia the Third yet but she’s coming in these pages – it’s probably her planet!) you’d have wondered how these guys met and how they became friends – never mind have their surnames linked together for all eternity as one of the world’s grooviest sounding rock and roll law firms. That was the point though really: this was a firm of opposites who came together because that’s what the music demanded – not a brethren brotherhood who all shared the same sound and who always thought alike.

This was CSN’s greatest strength – and their greatest weakness. At their best it enabled them to sound like no other band out there with some of the widest range of influences out there and a sense that this trio could go anywhere and do anything. At their best they did do anything and broke more ground than they’re ever given credit for, especially in terms of political protest which was a genre they more or less created (in rock and roll terms, if not folk). At their worst it meant they couldn’t see eye to eye on anything – and all three were used to getting their own way. While CSN have many great qualities, none of them are what you might call ‘team players’. They weren’t very good at biting their lip and getting through the music business machines the way that you have to in order to have a successful career. But then CSN wasn’t a career – the biggest difference between this band and any that came before it was that music was a vocation, a calling. The pop stuff in their respective bands had just been the warm-up act for the ‘real’ job of making politicians afraid and making hippies of all ages, races and generations feel loved and hopeful. CSN were the hippie town criers, spreading hope around the globe – and throwing in a few stinging barbs when the people in charge of our world let us down. They didn’t merely want to be in a ‘band’ – which was what every other musician of their generation and taste longed for – they had all outgrown the need.

It’s worth having a quick recap for anyone whose missed our earlier books on The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and who hasn’t read our forthcoming book on The Hollies. David Crosby had been kicked out of The Byrds for seeing life differently to his band-members. While few people can compete with Crosby in the most liberal of bands, The Byrds were hardly the natural bedfellows for his way mind worked: he wanted to shake things up and they wanted to preserve it; The Byrds had a very eclectic sound but they veered towards establishment country when Crosby wanting to go places that were very new; they had to schmooze people in front of and behind the camera to stay in the top forty – something that Crosby hated with a passion. When the other Byrds kicked him out their famous line was that ‘we’ll do better without you’ – commercially they probably had a point without David around to mess up the pop-star bandwagon anymore, even if critically they clearly got it very wrong. The result was that by 1968 Crosby hated the idea of being in a band and vowed to never be in one again.

For Stills the idea of being in a band was a little bit different. He’d enjoyed the camaraderie that went with being in a band, especially one like Buffalo Springfield who were shaped and moulded in his image and largely consisting of his friends. But the powers-that-be decided that Richie Furay was a more marketable frontman and got him to sing lead or co-lead on many of Stephen’s songs. Then that pesky Neil Young began writing his own material and singing it too, not to mention getting more guitar solos and close-ups and much of the girls. Then Neil went and quit his band – his band! – six times in three years, leaving them in disarray and killing off their big shot at fame. Stills didn’t need the hassle – he wanted to be on his own.

Graham had the most interesting journey to CSN. The Hollies weren’t just a few musical mates he’d bumped in his twenties but his best friends from Primary School, at least in the case of singer Allan Clarke. They were successful, hitting the charts far more regularly than The Byrds or Springfield has ever been and they had weathered many storms: changing fashions, the end of Merseybeat, critical backlashes from own label-mates The Beatles and being pigeon-holed as a ‘singles band’ in the era of the long-playing record. But Nash seemed to have it all: he was the lead writer by 1968, was frequently referred to in the press as the band’s ‘leader’ and unlike Crosby his band looked to him to make trouble, while unlike Stills he didn’t really have the competition for creative control. But Nash found himself at odds with his bandmates. His other famous line was that the difference between his hit bands was that ‘David and Stephen never go to bed – and The Hollies go to bed at 8.30!’ In practical terms that meant that Nash was always high and thinking up mystical thoughts that turned into songs, while his pals were down the pub drinking. A rift grew between them – and Nash realised that being in a band could be a right drag.

CSN agreed, then, that their next band would be different – and maybe not be a ‘band’ at all in the Beatles ‘all in it together four musketeers’ sense. What all three had in common was that each of their respective bands had tried to dictate their identity – and they were desperate to grow and explore the idea of who they were. They wouldn’t necessarily agree with each other in interviews (indeed most fans read them to see how badly they’d disagree with each other!) They certainly wouldn’t wear the same clothes (could you see Nash in Crosby’s fringes? Or Croz in Stills’ American football T-shirts?!) They didn’t always share the same politics (as time went on Stills got more conservative, Nash got more liberal and Crosby broke all the rules – until settling down with a family late in life and renouncing or at least excusing most of his past). The only thing they really shared, alongside the music, was a similar kind of goofy humour that allowed them to soften the blows when they violently disagreed with each other (CSN’s stage patter is, John Lennon aside perhaps, the best).

From the start then, when CSN first sang together at that party (be it in Joni Mitchell’s living room as Stills claims, Mama Cass’ kitchen as Crosby and Nash say or – through some quirk of time – both, CSN were adamant that if they were going to spend the rest of their lives singing together, then it had to be on their own terms. And under their own name. Crosby and Stills had been playing around with the druggy name ‘The Frozen Noses’, given to them by a radio disc jockey who agreed to play their demos over the air for feedback without revealing who the duo were. When Nash joined in and things got more serious they discussed having a band name, but quickly opted out. What band name could possibly sum up three such different people?  Their sound was ‘real’ – it wasn’t contrived, it wasn’t an act and they didn’t want to be known as a ‘Byrd’ or a ‘Hollie’ forever. Instead they would just be themselves, sticking to their real names (although even there it took a lot of arguments: Crosby somehow expected to be at the front, while with only one syllable to his name Nash found himself out-argued that his name sounded better after ‘and’). Before this the only band that had come close was ‘Simon and Garfunkel’  and they weren’t really a ‘band’ in the same sense (not least because they were two guys and a guitar; Stills alone was an entire orchestra!)

Many people find it odd that CSN keep splitting and getting back together. I’m not sure even they expected to break up quite as many times as they have across fifty odd years, but some kind of flexibilty was always part of the plan – and for me part of what made them great. Instead of some big reunion or split the trio would just keep getting back together or departing for new musical avenues when they wanted to, going where the music took them. Sometimes their songs were too personal for mass consumption and epic harmonies; sometimes they wanted to prove to themselves that they could sell records on their own; often-times they hated each other’s guts and didn’t want to spent weeks locked in a studio with two (sometimes three) other loonies. But even at their most bitter, it wasn’t until 2016 that a split seemed final, that the trio (indeed quartet) were talking about never being able to work again with each other, ever. This wasn’t that kind of a band: however cross they got with each other, no matter how much hostility, no matter how many girlfriends had been chased off, CSN always knew that one day the time would be right and they would ‘return to the mothership’. There weren’t many things bigger than the egos of Crosby, Stills and Nash separately and yet somehow those initials CSN were. All of them saved their best music for when they were back together. All of them guested on each other’s solo albums to make them better. And all of them could offer anything they wanted on stage, no matter when they had written ir ot who with – after a lifetime spent in 1960s bands where everything had to be agreed on, CSN meant ‘freedom’ – suddenly everything was ‘allowed’. Though CSN frequently trampled on each other’s feelings, the one thing they never lost was their respect for each other – whatever they wanted to do was fine by the others, because they trusted them not to mess up (and even if they did, at least they messed up by being too ambitious, as opposed to not being ambitious enough!)

No wonder everyone else was left scratching their heads - no other band did that, getting back together again when they felt like it rather than when their bank balance dictated it. Even Cream took forty years (and a lot of money) to get back together again for one last hurrah. In fact nowadays, when CSN have been missing for what seems like decades (but is actually only six years) is when arguably they need the money most with back taxes, drug habits, aliony and new teeth to pay for – but it’s now they choose not to get back together again. That seems strange to believe now – despite the many changes CSN brought onto an unsuspecting public, ever since the mid-1970s it’s been taken for granted that any member splitting for a group will go solo (before rejoining the band again – it’s only a matter of time before Robbie Williams gets sucked back into Take That). But CSN wasn’t an ordinary group, from the very beginning, given that they were born from the giant furnace of pop stardom and they refused to ever get anywhere close to its brightness again, preferring to lurk in the shadows where the real music was. CSN were special for many reasons – for always telling the truth as they saw it for one thing, for keeping the crooked and the greedy on a leash and for having harmonies that couldn’t have been designed to fit any better together. But it was the template of their design that also made them special. CSN worked differently, not being prepared to play the pop game even when it meant we had lean years with only obscure solo albums on private labels, while all the time the trio would save their best music until they were all together and people would take note of what they had to say.

Neil Young’s chemistry changed everything, the way Neil always does. Added to the band as a touring extra, he slowly grew to the point where he eclipsed the trio’s fame – unfairly so in my eyes (this is a band of equals; having one of them as a superstar defeats the idea somehow, but then Neil doesn’t seem to have played by the same unspoken ‘rules’ as the other three). His dark and edgy edge gave CSNY a whole different sound to their original one as a trio, sucking the happiness and hope out of the room (which is odd because even though Neil tends to err towards the darker side of life solo, that’s hardly true of most of his CSNY work like ‘Helpless’ and ‘American Dream’). It also destabilised the dynamic: CSN always sensed that were meant to belong together and would return together eventually, but Young was a mystery who always worked to his own timetable and set his rules. There have only ever been three CSNY albums in fifty odd years, which is strange to think but not half as strange as how the last two turned out, with ‘American Dream’ and ‘Lookin’ Forward’ easily CSN/Y’s cosiest of albums, as if the quartet were too afraid to address their history or the darker edge Neil brought them. Even in a band who didn’t want to be a band, Neil was the least likely band member you could have.

You see, what’s wonderful about CSN – as opposed to CSNY these days - is that everyone is (roughly) equal. In other bands that might not have mattered, but CSN were meant to be equal – it’s what they sang about in their songs all the time and the need to respect other people’s opinions when they were so different to your own. They even had an African-American bass player at a time when bands didn’t tend to mix race much and more Spanish-speaking players than you could shake a conga at. The fact that the trio were walking the walk as well as talking the talk made it oh so real. I mean, if three nutcases who were so extremely different could get it together – some of the time – then why not the world? CSN were in many ways as different as you could get, with very different characters all jostling for position (Crosby by being a natural counter-culture rebel leader, Stills by being a forceful workaholic and Nash via friendly persuasion). The trio also had very different backgrounds (Crosby’s was a rich Californian lifestyle; Stills was a middling Texan one where his family moved a lot; Nash came from bitter Manchester poverty). Nobody who worked with one would ever have guessed that they could be in a band together through work-rate either: Crosby wrote six songs a year and was happy to let the others change them around, Stills wrote six before breakfast and they were all fully formed and Nash wrote six before each deadline to make sure the band had something to sing when they got the studio. Compared to getting CSN in the same room together, solving the cold war was a doddle. But each of them was roughly equal and – nearly always – respected, with one track by one of them treated much the same as one by the other two (or in the early days three).

There were always similarities too, something that’s all too often dismissed when discussing the trio. Crosby felt abandoned and dismissed during his childhood, overlooked in his posh Hollywood family house by an elder brother Ethan who seemed to have everything while a young David was a fat bullied kid and not a particularly determined scholar. Stills was a swot and eager to please his military parents, but his family kept moving every few terms that left him finding it difficult to make friends and with all the love in the world Stills was never going to agree to a life of service for an institution he didn’t believe in (even if the discipline paid off in his musical career). Nash had responsibility young after his dad died after a spell in prison he should never have been inside for (not grassing up a friend who sold him stolen goods if you haven’t read the review for ‘Wild Tales’ yet!), close to his family but somehow ignored by then simultaneously. All three men wanted to make their mark, were hungry for success and for all three of them the only thing worth living through their pretty brutal teenage years for was music and the chance of escape. Music mattered, it wasn’t just a chance to make money or pull girls but a chance to save the world and make it a better place. That vision was bigger than any difference between them all – at least until Nash ran off with Stills’ girlfriend, or Stills started dictating how the music went, or Crosby ended up high as a kite and Stills wiped the Crosby-Nash harmonies off his and Neil’s record and and and….anyway, usually the pull of taking on the world as town criers and making it a better place, brick by brick, was usually enough to keep CSN on the straight and narrow.

Of course being so different and with such different working practices didn’t always make for plain sailing. No wonder it led to so many fights over the years – three leaders into one band doesn’t often mix. But with CSN it kind of worked because even though the three of them were saying things very differently, they were essentially saying the same thing: that life is better with love and humanity is better with peace. If even CSN could come together because of that and despite all their differences then the world might – just might – have a chance of working together too. Life really is better multiplied, well most of the time. One tacit agreement of CSN was that the trio would never be censored or ridiculed the way they sometimes had been in their earlier bands. All three were free to express themselves and their individual thoughts and feelings without being afraid of how these songs would look when sat next to their colleagues’ work. Therefore a song like Crosby’s ‘Deja Vu’ – with it’s weird time signatures and talk about past lives informing our present selves – sits easily against Nash’s ‘Teach Your Children’ with it’s more straight- forward country tale of learning from past mistakes and guiding the next generation to help them best make their own decisions and Stills’ ‘Carry On’ (with it’s rock moral about how, if only we can hold on through the bad times, ‘love is coming to us all’). They’re all coming from roughly the same place and heading to roughly the same direction – they just take three very different routes to their destination sometimes. 

This is what makes the first (and second) CSN/CSNY albums such a landmark in music history – here we have four very individual writers all working towards the same message but approaching it from different angles. Later albums too, though the formula was never quite as astonishing on returns as it was the first time (even if many individual songs on those albums are better). The closest you get to a previous partnership like this is the Beatles, with Lennon’s droll sarcasm and scattered brainstorms balanced by McCartney’s thoroughness and natural melodic sense. But CSN take this idea to its logical conclusion, adding in a third (and when Neil agrees to join them a fourth) voice to the mix and stressing their differences, rather than have George Martin’s production values smother both Beatles for the sake of ‘album unity’. Almost every track on every CSN album sounds like a completely different beast to its predecessor and successor (even if all three writers do, from to time, rehash old ideas of their own) and that’s exciting to listeners then and now. You don’t know where each of these albums are going next, from one track to another. Have there ever been three more different songs from a debut album than ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ ‘Marrakesh Express’ or ‘Guinnevere’? CSN records can go anywhere and do anything – they can be small and humble, epic and huge, as poppy as the poppiest band, as weird as the most out-there jazzy combo. Whatever the music dictated they could usually provide it between themselves, Stills especially being a dab hand at altering his style depending on which of the  trio’s many roots were showing: pop, rock, folk, blues, psychedelia, jazz, R and B, Latin American influences. The trio all ‘got’ what the other brought to the table too. They didn’t merely tolerate it the way other bands do, they actively supported one another. Though the trio were pigeon-holed as early as their opening three trio songs as the ‘weird’ one, the ‘epic’ one and the ‘pop’ one, they could all do anything – including what the others did so well. All three men were good mimics at each other’s style and were often at their best when writing like each other: when Stills wrote a great hook-laden pop song like [  ] ‘Carry On’, when Nash wrote an epic like [  ]  ‘Cathedral’ or when Crosby combined the two on a song like [  ] ‘Yours and Mine’. The result was a band with a wider scope and a bigger musical playground of ideas and backgrounds and influences to play around in than perhaps any other before or since. Add in a coating of three voices that sounds so perfect together and which was so instantly recognisable whatever the backing was and an interest in politics that meant they told the truth as honestly and fiercely as they could and you have several very good reasons why CSN may well be the most important band that ever lived. At least for a year, until those very differences that made them so interesting blew them so wide apart.

Perhaps modern sanitised bands should take a leaf out of CSN’s book: differences are what cause the artistic tensions within a band but they’re going to show up one day anyway and should be at best encouraged at worst exploited, not extinguished outright as everyone puts on false grins and pretends they haven’t happen. You believe every word CSN say to the world – and to each other with a quite amazing long list of songs directed at each other through the ages ( [  ] ‘King Of The Mountain’ [  ] ‘Do For The Others’ [  ] ‘Frozen Smiles’ and [  ] ‘Hippie Dream’ to name just one each by CSNY). Other songs looked at CSNY as a collective: [  ] ‘Cowboy Movie’ told the tale of the 1970 split via Western spaghetti B-film plots, [  ] ‘Beneath The Waves’ had Nash refusing to prop the goof ship CSNY up anymore and [  ] ‘The Old Homestead’ and ‘Walk Like A Giant’ are contradicting Young views of CSNY as a millstone or a milestone around his neck. At least the band are honest though and respectful, letting us know how they feel about each other – and accepting what the others write as fair game for musical inspiration (I’ve never read any of CSNY criticse another for what they said in a song, though they complain bitterly about what was said in interviews all the time).

Would that this would happen more often: just think how more fun The Spice Girls break-up might have been with songs about what the others were ‘really’ like or Justin Bieber using his failed relationships as a chance to pour out his heart instead of acting like a big headed twonk. Just look at the awful situation we have with today’s girl and boy bands, where the only differences seem to be people’s hair colour. CSN are a prime example of why life is better multiplied and shared. All three men could and did have a good chance at a solo career, but heard together they do so much more and go in so many more directions and together they made some of the greatest music that was ever made, adding harmony to each other’s music even as they add discord to their lives. They belong together, not in the same way that a horse and carriage or fish and chips are made for each other, but in the same way that a sandwich is: you can enjoy the parts separately, but only together do you get the true blend of flavourings that your taste-buds deserve, with so much happening at once your ears strain to keep up. Suddenly everything feels bigger, bolder, better. And who can deny the power when CSN finally put their differences together and combine, as they do stunningly so many times throughout this book (though the best may well be that final surge on [  ] ‘Country Girl’).  Whatever the future of ‘supergroups’ (and let’s face it, there haven’t been many recently have there?!), the birth of CSN is an often overlooked milestone for music – the time when being in a band and making important music was the most sacred thing in the world and when it all seemed so special and plausible it really did feel like love was one day coming to us all. Three very different voices saying one thing will always be more special than one saying the same thing three times and CSN are surely the holy trinity of music, with the power of three. There will surely never be a band like CSN/Y – a band that wasn’t a band but a gathering of like-minded individuals - and no, we hadn’t really been here before.

Plus Updates: 

Stephen Stills in ‘The Rides’ "Can’t Get Enough"

(429 Records, August 2013)

Roadhouse/That’s A Pretty Good Love/Don’t Want Lies/Honey Bee/Rockin’ In The Free World/Search and Destroy/Can’t Get Enough/Only Teardrops Fall/Talk To Me Baby/Word Game

CD Bonus Tracks: High Voltage/Honey Bee (Radio Edit)/Don’t Want Lies (Acoustic Version)

"I’m lost in the shadows, close to the end”

Having recently dusted off his past, here’s Stills back concentrating on the present with a new power trio made up of Barry Goldberg from Paul Butterfield Blues Band spin-off Electric Flag (who were on stage at Monterey shortly after The Buffalo Springfield and who also played with Stills on the ‘Super Session’ LP back in 1968) and guitarist Kenny Shepherd. With CSN broken up, his old session muso buddies mostly retired and/or in rehab and struggling with his new slurred older voice Stills responds in the best way possible by using all this as a strength and doing something he’d never tried before. After decades of sounding old before his time, here Stills really is a gnarled blues veteran and is surrounded by players who have a similar passion for a heavy rock form of the blues, with a band sound that’s big on authenticity over the sort of aural perfection Stills used to stand for. To some extent it works: Goldberg is a fine foil, his tighter vocals bouncing off Stills’ own without diminishing the blues flourishes, whilst the sound is just enough like the spirit of Manassas’ bluesier moments to come off (although you miss that band’s eclecticism across a whole LP). What this debut record doesn’t have is the material to go with it. There are a grand total of four original songs on this album, only one of which is up to the glory days of old, alongside three covers and a messy revival of old war horse ‘Word Game’. It’s all a little loud, lacking the dynamics and harmonies we’re used to from Stills, but at least it’s powerful and there’s a sense that Stephen is enjoying his music again – certainly a lot more than he seemed to on ‘Man Alive’. This time he really sounds alive again.

‘Roadhouse’ is a new song credited to the whole band that has Stills roaring his head off as if he’s been gargling with sandpaper. The chord changes are very Stills even if the setting isn’t, while Stills laments being back on the road again ‘no closer to home’ than he was when he set off as a twenty-something half a century again, bemoaning ‘playing my music’ for a bunch of people who don’t get it.

Little Feat song ‘That’s  Pretty Good Love’ hands things over to Goldberg and it’s a sprightly romantic number with a funky catchy descending riff and a lot of noisy percussion. Not the sort of thing you’d want to listen to often, but OK.

‘Don’t Want Lies’ is the clear album highlight as Stills pours his heart out about feeling depressed and watching his career going nowhere, ‘wondering what it is I see’ when he looks in the mirror at the person who was once going to do so much and sighing that ‘I wonder how I make it through the week’. The blues backing is delicious, with a three-guitar attack rocking from side to side in sympathy while Stills’ vocal is delicious, dripping with a vulnerability that really suits his hardened lived-in voice. A choir of gospel singers chant along in sympathy for a track that’s really moving if you’ve followed any of Stills’ self-destructive story up until this point.

‘Search and Destroy’ is a noisy Iggy Pop cover handled by Goldberg that seems a bit over-the-top with its talk of napalm bombs and desperation not really suited to a band of this age, though Stills does fit in a fiery guitar part.

‘Honey Bee’ has Goldberg singing lead again on a slow boring blues number by Muddy Waters. Stills is having fun playing like he’s been reincarnated as a 1920s blues guitarist, but the backing sound more like Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings than The Rolling Stones, a group of friends playing for fun rather than musicians who mean it.

The days when Stills used to do a Young song on every album to help his partner out during his ‘doom trilogy’ fall from grace seem a long time ago, so a noisy unfocussed take on ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ is a big surprise though, Stephen, of course, had played it many times in CSNY by this stage. Stills shouts rather than sings and doesn’t quite get Neil’s dripping sarcasm, but it’s entertaining in a noisy way. Interestingly Crazy Horse guitarist Frank Sampedro gets a co-credit even though he didn’t on Neil’s original, released on ‘Freedom’ in 1989, one of his better LPs.

‘Talk To Me Baby’ is an Elmore James slow blues revved up to sound like any number of rockabilly moments. Stills provides some convincing muscle, but this song isn’t really in his style and Goldberg sounds a bit over-stretched on the histrionic vocal too.

‘Only Teardrops Fall’ is the final original, another soggy ballad played with a heavy guitar attack as Stills laments once being on top of the world and wondering ‘why did I let it go?’ Just like the old days he uses the act of writing a song as his inspiration in a postmodern sense, claiming that back then he was about to write a masterpiece, ‘the pen was in my hand’, but he got distracted. The song isn’t quite as sharp or as ‘real’ as ‘Don’t Want Lies’, though.

The album then closes with Stills’ most poetic and complex song ‘Word Game’ reduced to a shouter, like a champagne evening has been turned into a pub brawl. It works better than it has any right too, though, thanks to a committed Stills vocal that’s still outraged over prejudice and intolerance all these years on.

The result is an album that veers from being the best thing Stills has done since ‘After The Storm’ in 1994 (to be fair there hasn’t been much competition!) and a pale facsimile of ‘The Shocking Pinks’ without the laughter. This is a bumpy ride in truth and Stills might have been better off waiting for inspiration to flow and coming up with a second bunch of original songs to go alongside his own promising work here. The band are fine, though, it’s just the material that they need and it’s good to hear Stills confronting his heavy rocking side after a decade or so of mainly acoustic work. More enjoyable than expected, if ultimately a collection filler rather than a changer, this set is still worth checking out for its best moments.

Non-Album Recordings #23 2016

Most of ‘This Path Tonight’ does a pretty good trick of sounding like vintage CSN, but the bonus tracks – leftover tracks from the ‘dozens’ Nash and Fontayne wrote together on their tour bus – sound musically like discarded Hollies. That’s odd because after a full album of personal; songwriting, all three songs are political protest – more something that CSN would do.  [458] ‘Mississippi Burning’ sounds the perfect direction for Nash to travel in musically, with its dark folk and sense of foreboding, like the fourth Hollies album ‘Would You Believe?’ where the pop acts as a light to a brooding sense of darkness (think ‘breakthrough’ Nash song ‘Fifi The Flea’, perhaps the first he wrote on his own). Thematically too this is Nash still outraged at the racial lynchings in South America half a century before his birth in a different land and his outrage at the cover-ups that are still perpetrated in the supposedly enlightened modern era. And yet the words are awful, without his usual ability to empathise: ‘Kill me quick or kill me slow, my friends they are still with me’ is the unrealistic last cry of the hanged African American, while the song’s oddly nursery rhyme feel is at odds with the names of his two colleagues Nash reads out as his friends die alongside him. ‘Black and white, white and black, our world will keep on turning’ Nash urges though, determined that the racists won’t win. This feels like it should be a more substantial song than it is though, a big subject dealt with in an oddly small way. Find it on: the deluxe edition of ‘This Path Tonight’ (2017)

[459] ‘Watch Out For The Wind’ is more moving, Nash’s response to the senseless killing of a black student by police in Missouri and the cover-ups and protests that then happened in response. Nash preceded this song in concert with a warning about how ‘military madness’ was taking over America and how the police had more and more control of people. Nash, though, has been here before and sees a backlash beginning, a wind that can’t be seen but is fanned by the flames of the burning fires he sees in the protests. This slow sombre ballad tries hard – a bit too hard perhaps, with some over-written lyrics that are more about poetry than pain. ‘Don’t you forget’ he growls though, determined that this one lost life won’t be in vain and in turn that it’s not too late to ‘save the souls’ of the perpetrators. Again, though, for what should be a really moving song about modern politics sounds oddly unconvincing compared to the personal songs that made the album. Find it on: the deluxe edition of ‘This Path Tonight’ (2017)

[460] ‘The Last Fall’ could be both, as the personal and the political intertwine on a song about lost opportunities and missed chances. Nash has sounded vulnerable most of the album through but usually with a sense of destiny that what he is doing changing his life around is meant to be. This song, though worries. This is his last chance at finding happiness and purpose, just as its probably the world’s last chance to turn left instead of right. Has he made the right choice? Can he trust this wonderful girl who rushed into his life to do the right thing by him? Why does he still feel the ‘heartbeat’ of someone he was close to – be it ex Susan, Crosby or the world leaders like Obama then departing the international scene? For all this song’s inner turbulence, though, there’s a lovely quiet calm at the centre that makes the best of the three extra songs on the album if not up to 9/10ths of the actual record. It’s only human to question the big changes in your life and Nash would be more worried if he wasn’t worried. Somehow in the end this ‘fall’ he worries about is just an easier first small step than he was anticipating and his instincts tell him he’s in the right place. A sweet son that’s bristling with typical Nash chord changes and a folky flavour that suits his new lived-in voice. Find it on: the deluxe edition of ‘This Path Tonight’ (2017)

Stephen Stills in ‘The Rides’ "Pierced Arrow"

(429 Records, May 2016)

Kick Out Of It/Riva Diva/Virtual World/By My Side/Mr Policeman/I’ve Got To Use My Imagination/Game On/I Need Your Lovin’/There Was A Place/My Babe

CD Bonus Tracks: Same Old Dog/Born In Chicago/Take Out Some Insurance On Me Baby

"I don’t know what to call all of this, it seems like a runaway tram”

Stills, meanwhile, was having The Rides of his life, as the power trio returned for a second album that’s more consistent than the first if missing the high points of Stills pouring his heart out. Instead he’s having fun on an album that thankfully throws out most of the cover songs and has much more original material instead (eight songs to two this time, not five and five). By now the band have been on the road a few times and their telepathy is much sharper, especially the guitar-work which recalls the Buffalo Springfield: Shepherd comes into his own as the ‘Neil’ of the group, pouring out intense passionate blues stylings and Goldberg plays the more straightforward Richie Furay rhythm work, while Stills does everything else, adding a range to the band that make them more than just another bad blues band. The result still isn’t quite as major or important as it should be, but it’s worth a ride or three.

Listening to the blues of the original songs on the first LP you might wonder why these three elder statesmen of rock still do what they do for a living. ‘Kick Out Of It’ is the answer, the closest Stills has got to heavy metal yet with a heavy metal stomp about how the world dismisses him as ‘insane’ but Stills adores his ‘oldest profession’ and wouldn’t change it for the world.

‘Riva Diva’ has Goldberg taking the lead on a simple bluesy song about a distant woman who causes the narrator to get the ‘rock and roll blues’. A nicely gutsy guitar part and a blistering solo from Stills elevate it past the ordinary.

‘Virtual World’ is perhaps the best song on the album, Stills and Goldberg in wobbly unison as they consider the problems of pollution and the madness of being on Planet Earth. ‘Someone started a fire’ they sigh, but no one seems to know how to put it out, with everyone bucking the problem of what to do and living in a ‘virtual world’ where its everybody else’s problem to sort out.

Goldberg and Shepherd came up with the moody ballad ‘By My Side’ which sounds more like Humble Pie than CSN. It’s quite hypnotic as the pair conclude that life doesn’t get any easier with age but just ‘goes on – to the bitter end!’

Stills returns for the witty bitter ‘Mr Policeman’ which could have easily been a CSN song in a different setting with a pleasant pop tune and protest lyrics that seem to be inspired by the same Missouri protests (when police killed an innocent black kid for being in the wrong place at the wrong time) as Nash. Stills, who was trained to be so subservient to authority figures in his youth by his military father, has by now lost all respect for men in uniform only taking ‘orders’, even when they’re clearly wrong. A shame the music errs towards another noisy blues thrash, though, compared to some excellent words.

Legendary songwriter Gerry Goffin wrote the words for Goldberg’s ‘My Imagination’ but neither lyric nor tune quite get going on a slow-burning song about making the best out of your life and not worrying about the future. The organ part is very much in the feel of Al Kooper’s on the ‘Super Session’ LP though and it sounds very 1960s all round, which can only be a good thing.

‘Game On’ finds Stills fully grasping the blues feel by the horns on a shouty song about how ‘people just wanna be left alone’ without interference from the politicians and priests who think our lives should be better. There’s a great harmonica part in there, while Stills’ raw vocal is better performed than anything on ‘Man Alive’ that tried a similar sense of straightforward outrage.

‘I Need Your Lovin’ is another Goldberg-Shepherd song that’s an over-simple rockabilly love song made better than average thanks to a brutal Stills guitar part that ought to sound out of place but instead gets the song moving. It’s unusual to hear Stills as the support act rather than the ‘star’ but he does a good job here.

‘There Was A Place’ is a moody ballad that has Stills really struggling with his vocal on what is another album highlight. He once used to be somebody but ‘it’s been a long time’ and he barely remembers what it was like when the world once knew his name. This moving song is easily the second best The Rides have done so far and they really suit this naked emotional honesty as Stills wonders why his fall from grace was so hard and fast, bringing out his insecure and bluesy side most magnificently. Stills has still got it though, at least for songs like these that come from the heart.

The album closes with ‘My Babe’, a Willie Dixon cover that sounds a bit out of place here with its tale of pure unconditional love and how his girl ‘can’t stand no cheatin’. The Rides sound ever more like a pub tribute act here rather than the real thing, which can’t hold a candle to their own songs.

Overall, though, ‘Pierced Arrow’ is a fine album with some interesting tracks that for the most part dig a little deeper than most noisy generic blues songs. It’s interesting that all of CSN should be stepping outside themselves with their 2016 releases, re-defining who they are although still becoming more ‘true’ to the stereotype of what each one had to offer back in 1969 (when Crosby was ‘the weird one’ Stills was ‘the bluesy one’ and Nash was sort of the ‘folky one’ after The Hollies had a bash at that genre). Stills sounds the most comfortable of all though on an album fans expected him to make decades ago, although its perhaps only now that his fading voice and lowered expectations allows him to really fig into the soul of the ‘bluesman’ he once claimed to be. The result is an excellent if flawed second ride that promises even better things to come with album number three (which, scarily, would put the band equal with Buffalo Springfield in terms of discography and one more than CSN/Y the first time round).

Stephen Stills and Judy Collins “Everybody Knows”

(Cleopatra, September 2017)

Handle With Care/So Begins The Task/River Of Gold/Judy/Everybody Knows/Houses/Reason To Believe/Girl From The North Country/Who Knows Where The Time Goes?/Questions

"Come on lover, talk to me!”

Released the week before ‘Sky Trails’, this is the big development in Stills’ life story and career over the past decade – his reuniting with old flame Judy Collins that finally puts to a close some unfinished business dating back to 1968. The pair had become good friends ever since they stopped trying to be lovers somewhere around 1972 and stayed in touch – far longer than Stills did with any of his other exes. Friends often asked them when they were going to make an album together and there were plenty of hints down the years that it might happen – the pair guesting on Nash’s short-lived talk show in the late 1990s or the sweet comments that Judy Blue Eyes made about the ‘love of her life’ in her autobiography. But only here in 2017, after a well received acoustic tour, did the pair finally tie the recording knot. And the result is…rushed, frankly, for an album that fans had been waiting for across forty-eight years. Most of these songs sound like first takes, recorded so quickly Stills didn’t even have time to get his teeth in (the slurred vocals that suited the blues songs by The Rides don’t work as well on folk, with its precision and bareness). On this album there is just one new song – one of Judy’s, the less than flattering ‘River Of Gold’ about how seasons and partners come and go. There is no less than half an album of cover songs, from the sublime (Tim Hardin’s ‘Reason To Believe’ is a sweet song that’s perfect for the Stills-Collins relationship, where they struggle to live both with and without each other) to the ridiculous (The Travelling Wilburys’ ‘Handle With Care’ is a clumsy clod-hopping arrangement if ever I heard one and Stills’ ‘baby you’re adorable’ is enough to have Judy running for the hills again).

That still leaves half a remarkable album though made up of old songs from both he and she that were written for each other down the years. We never did get to hear a full band recording of the remarkable ‘Judy’, written by Stills and recorded as a quick demo for the ‘Just Roll tape’ that then got forgotten for nearly forty years. It sounds great, with Stills longing to keep his ex ‘company’ and hoping ‘you have need of me’ as he asks to ‘tell you about my life’. ‘Questions’, a playful song early on in their relationship from the Buffalo Springfield days when Stills’ ‘head is reeling now’ wondering where their relationship might go is now answered not with the aching fade-out of first the Springfield then CSNY remakes (as heard on ‘Last Time Around’ and then as part of the ‘Carry On’ single) but with a lovely harmony-fest where Judy now sings alongside her one-time boyfriend with confidence and passion, this half-century chase of cat-and-mouse fulfilled at last. Stills’ lovely ballad ‘So Begins The Task’, about the time he realises he will leave his lifve, had been hanging around since 1968 but really came into its own when the relationship was over on the first Manassas record. Stills’ version here can’t come close to that stunning piece of work, but its healing somehow to hear him start singing  the song with his usual pain and suffering only to be joined by Judy’s still pure vocal as she gives him hope for the future at last. Judy’s own ‘Houses’, the B-side of her song ‘Send In The Clowns’, is also a welcome addition to the album as a woman with a different house for every big change in her life is now accompanied by her ex playing some truly fabulous bluesy guitar.

Even if the suddenly happy couple couldn’t write any new songs together, this is the way they should have gone, re-tracing old life paths they could have taken and exploring their relationship through old songs. There’s a bucket load more we could have had – including, most obviously, ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ which seems an odd absentee here not to mention ‘49 Bye Byes’ and ‘Bluebird’, all three of which could have sounded stunning with Collins’ still-youthful vocals. Judy too has more than enough songs from her time with Stills to sing. Filling up half of a short running CD with songs we’ve heard before and better (how many times has Stephen sung ‘Girl From The North Country’ now?!) seems a waste of a reunion fans have longed for in such a long time. Sadly the price, the short length, the antiseptic production values (far worse than the Crosby or Nash albums between it) and Stills’ audible struggles with his vocals will mean that this is a record for fans only, for the faithful few who realise what a big deal it is for these two to be in the same room together never mind making sweet music at last. For that reason alone this album should be treasured, but this album feels less like the sweet Leonard Cohen title track (which is far too syrupy here) than Neil’s confused and lost ‘Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere’ – it feels like this album is marking time for both halves rather than the career high it could and should have been. Released the week before Crosby’s ‘Sky Trails’ the album feels like it kind of got lost too - and that one wasn’t exactly a best seller…

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

'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

'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

'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

'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

'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

'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