Alan's Album Archives: Chicago

In-depth reviews of classic or neglected albums, mainly from the 1960s and 70s, now a 30 volume e-book series.Artists covered include Beach Boys, Beatles,Byrds, CSNY, Dire Straits, Grateful Dead, Hollies, Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Kinks, Monkees, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Searchers, Simon and Garfunkel, Small Faces, 10cc, The Who+Neil Young.Sister site to https://kindredspiritbooks.blogspot.com/ (scifi novels) and https://alonsyaliensdrwho.blogspot.com/ (Dr Who episode reviews)

Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts

Friday, 21 August 2009

Crosby, Stills and Nash "Demos" (2009) (News, Views and Music 41)

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

“Everybody saying that music is love...” “Help us make some more...”

Crosby, Stills and Nash “Demos” (recorded 1968-71, released 2009)

Marrakesh Express/Almost Cut My Hair/You Don’t Have To Cry/Deja Vu/Sleep Song/My Love Is A Gentle Thing/Be Yourself/Music Is Love/Singing Call/Long Time Gone/Chicago/Love The One You’re With

Actually, it’s not such an old favourite this album – it came out at the end of June this year, but what with our computer breaking down and one thing or another we never got round to reviewing it, so the time seemed right to revive it for our ‘Woodstock’ special. Now, had this set come out even just five years ago it would have seemed pretty amazing – Graham Nash has been talking about putting a collection of demos together ever since he started cataloguing the vaults for the 1991 CSN box-set and we’ve been promised oodles of fascinating recordings sporadically ever since.

Finally issuing this set of some of the earliest CSN recordings seems like a perfect way to celebrate CSN’s 40^th birthday then – but, alas, most of the really interesting material has already trickled out on various collections (the excellent though expensive Crosby and Nash box-sets for example) and what we’re left with here is the dregs of the studio vaults after Young refused access to his songs (some of which are out on his Anthology box set, though again not as many as we’d hoped). Technically none of these 12 recordings have been issued before, but if you have even some of the afore-mentioned sets some of these mixes sound near enough to repeats of previously released archive gems as to sound the same. (Deja Vu, Almost Cut My Hair and a slightly edited version of Long Time Gone all appeared on Crosby’s ‘Voyage’ set of 2006 – albeit the former demo runs much longer this time around, the demo for Music Is Love is just the released version unedited and running about 30 seconds longer and a slightly later demo of Marrakesh Express appeared on the re-issue of ‘Crosby, Stills and Nash’ in 2005; that’s five recordings out of 12 for crying out loud!) Even the previously unheard demos – mainly the Stills songs, seeing as he’s the only member of the quartet yet to get his own box-set retrospective – sound pretty darned similar to the finished songs (perhaps if we’d had the demos of the electric songs instead of the acoustic ‘Singin’ Call’ and ‘My Love Is A Gentle Thing’ this set might have fared better). Nash’s demos, meanwhile, nearly all sound like out-takes rather than demos, given how stripped down his solo material often is anyway. If this was a bootleg you’d be slightly disappointed, albeit pleased at the one or two goodies on offer here. For an official release, this smacks of desperation and marks an unwelcome first instance of CSN failing to give value for money (well, OK, that’s assuming you find ‘American Dream’ and ‘Looking Forward’ at a very cheap price).

Record company Rhino are usually superb at sets like these, cramming them full of fan-friendly goodies and extending the running times as far as is humanly possible. For this set I can only imagine that their hands were tied or that unexpectedly good sales for Stills’ excellent ‘Just Roll Tape’ in 2007 forced the issue as what’s most annoying about this short, barely-half-hour set is what’s missing. Had CSN gone the whole hog and re-issued the ‘other’ previously released demos (Crosby’s exquisite Guinnevere, one of the highlights of the CSN box-set, Stills’ other charming attempt at the unfinished ‘My Love Is A Gentle Thing’ and the other extras included on the 1^st CSN album re-issue) plus a few other ‘famous’ but unheard recordings (CSNY’s ‘Pushed It Over The End’, ‘Traces’, ‘Hawaiian Sunset’ ‘Little Blind Fish’ plus unheard recordings of, allegedly, ‘Prison Song’ ‘Human Highway’ ‘Wind On The Water’ and many of the Stills/Young album songs – see news and views no 33) this could have been the best CSN/Y release in 20 years. Even the sleevenotes are poor, with a coffee-mug stained front cover that tries to replicate the tape-reel back-to-basics feel of the ‘Just Roll Tape’ without the same reasons. The track listing is brief, too, to the point of covering up how many of these demos have been heard before. Even the inner shot of CSN gathered round a microphone is one that’s been used on the back cover of 1977’s ‘CSN’ and the box-set back front cover already (it is a great picture, though, summing up Crosby’s dreaminess, Stills’ intenseness and Nash’s blissfulness and saying more about the three men’s characters than most books on the trio).

There are highlights, though. Many many highlights. This is, after all, CSN one of the greatest bands on the planet if not the greatest bands and even the trio’s leftovers have a charm and importance lacking from other artist’s million-selling records. Not for the first time Stills is the shining member here. The ‘Just Roll Tape’ from 1968 reminded us all, I think, what a master Stills was on the acoustic guitar before electric amplifiers and Neil Young got in his way and urged him to concentrate on riffs and spliffs instead of chords and words. The amount of unreleased songs on that forgotten tape was ridiculous – the fact that songs sprinkled across the next six years’ worth of Stills’ work were already in place before CSN sang their first note together seems staggering in retrospect. There are no unreleased songs this time around but each are at least subtly different from their finished masters.

‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ is the first song CSN ever sang together and as such holds a high place in people’s reflections, even if its easily the most generic song on that first album (not to say its bad, it just might feasibly have been written by somebody else; the other nine songs never could). The version here is a 90-second extract with just the first verse and chorus before the song abruptly ends on a ringing chord. According to the sleeve-notes it dates from August 1968, just four months after the ‘Just Roll Tape’, and is in a similar fragmented-but-somehow-finished mould to those recordings. Stills sings falsetto on this recording, more or less the part that Nash sings on the finished product, which offers an interesting insight into how different this song could have been had CSN never met and already the song’s pop sensibilities are firmly in place. It’s frustratingly short though – like the Lennon Anthology, why is it the best out-takes are always the one that are just seconds long rather than the ones that last for hours?

‘My Love Is A Gentle Thing’ is a similarly fragmented song that was never completely finished and can be heard in a later, more polished form on the CSN box-set. However, this acoustic demo is more of a revelation than the other demo-songs previously heard, slowing down the tempo to a curious waltz-time trot and stretching out in a completely different direction after the first few notes. It sounds much better here than in its 1991 form, making you wonder why Nash passed over the recording for the box set back then, and Stills’ impressive playing is right at the fore-front of this song. You can hear lots of future Stills songs in this demo, from the descending down-riff from ‘Black Queen’ to the tempo for ‘Know You’ve Got To Run’, not to mention the laid-back pastoral beauty of ‘Singin’ call’ (sorry, ‘Singing Call’ – the ‘g’ has been re-instated on this record after going missing for 38 years).

Talking of ‘Singing Call’, this lovely, under-rated acoustic song is lovely to hear in any format, even though this now marks the third almost-identical version of it released to date (you can hear the original on ‘Stephen Stills II’, see review no 48, and a re-make on 1991’s ‘Stills Alone’). This version may well be the weakest of the three, with Stills getting to know the lyrics and missing the lovely harmonies and gentle percussion of the first version. It’s still mesmerising, however, with Stills at his blues-wailing best, desperate to get back to nature and ‘tell my brothers what I saw’. The best part of this ‘new’ version is the ending, when Stills finally dispenses with the niceties and ends the song with a roaring repeat of the chorus, strumming his guitar with such desperation it sounds as if its about to break.

Stills also ends the set with a stunning version of ‘Love The One You’re With’, which might be the highlight of the entire record. The song begins with Stills’ ‘goofy’ voice uttering ‘this is really a fun game!’ before embarking on a spectacularly funky acoustic reading of one of his best known songs. Now, I’m not as big a fan of this song as most CSN-ers seem to be, as its a bit too trivial for Stills’ usual style and is largely built on one note without the vast range of ideas that are usually packed into Stills’ mini-epics (it also stamps so close to Crosby’s lyrical territory as to be virtually on his toes), although even I admit that the rousing performance of the original takes the song to heights it probably doesn’t deserve. I much prefer this demo, however – this is Stills roaring the vocal with a passion he’ll rarely have again and replacing the somewhat awkward stop-start rhythms of the finished product with a massacring of his guitar, changing from chord to chord with wild abandon. Unlike the other demos here, this song sounds complete without the overdubs and makes you wonder why he ever bothered to re-record it – the definitive version of this song is right here in April 1970, all ready and waiting to take on the world.

Thereafter the Crosby and Nash songs are a bit of a mixed bag, more because we’ve heard these songs and recordings before than because of any fault with the demos. Nash’s ‘Marrakesh Express’ never really gets grooving and his vocal is too far off the microphone to register properly. It also badly misses the harmonies of Stills – something surprisingly few of the other demos do – and Crosby enters the song much too late. Having said that, it’s fun to hear an early, tentative version of a song that is about to become one of the best known songs Nash ever wrote and it’s clear that both Crosby and Nash are having fun with this song, even as early as January 1969.

‘Almost Cut My Hair’ would be jaw-droppingly stupendous had we not already heard this demo on ‘Voyage’. You see, this slow, dream-like demo couldn’t be further from the spiky, angry bitter rant that appears on CSNY’s ‘Deja Vu’ album and seems to share only the vaguest DNA with its finished cousin. It’s easy to see why Crosby changed his plans as this version’s five minutes seem to take forever (compared to the unedited final version’s nine minutes which still seem way too short) and Crosby’s vocal is, while still stunning, less raw and less passionate than on the final recording which just makes the recording of that song. Again, though, its a fascinating study of an alternate CSN universe which would have been worth the price of admission on its own – had we not already forked out £50 for the ‘Voyage’ box-set a few years back.

‘Deja Vu’ is a real curio – we’ve already been given one demo for this song on ‘Voyage’, but that version was a Crosby-Nash demo which formed the basis for the finished song. This is a much rougher, solo version of the same song with an extended running time that replaces the scat singing intro of the original with a scat-sung fade that goes on for hours. What’s interesting about this song is how ordinary and simple this song sounds without the magical harmonies, the elaborate production techniques or the sleepy haze-inducing middle section. Crosby’s tale of past lives and trying to get things right before another ‘turn on the wheel’ is a classic, open for just about every interpretation under the sun – and Crosby/Nash, CSN, CSNY, CPR and Crosby solo have given us some very different interpretations down the years. Here, though, the song is down to the barest threadbare bones and that’s not quite the angle that suits it best, interesting as it is. The best part of the song is that ending, where Crosby has obviously not worked out quite what he wants to do with the song yet and just improvises his way round the song’s (soon to be) instrumental passage, apparently unclear about what to do with it. This end segment runs for nearly three minutes and yet it neatly mirrors what the whole band are about to add to it in a year or so’s time – the only part missing is the end ‘we have all been here before’ section. Only, of course, we have all been here before – this makes for the sixth official version of the song yet to be released and is really beginning to scrape the barrel a little bit now.

‘Sleep Song’ is the most dispensable moment on the whole set. Not that it’s a bad song – Nash’s goodbye ode to his first wife is a sweet little romantic number that offered a breakthrough in Graham’s songwriting in two ways – it urged a move towards more autobiographical-sounding songs and managed to annoy the hell out of the other Hollies, who hated this song’s lines about the characters ‘taking off their clothes’. The finished version on ‘Songs For Beginners’ is a minor classic (see review no 46), but this version is identical in tempo, guitarwork, lyrics, melody, vocals, in short everything that makes hearing demos of previously issued work so rewarding. Only Nash’s scat-vocal middle section, in which he hums solo instead of using a multi-track machine, seems at all different and those 10 seconds are not worth issuing this new version for, however much I love the song.

‘Be Yourself’ suffers from the same problem – Nash’s finished version, also from ‘Songs For Beginners’, is similarly acoustic, although this version is at least nice to hear without the booming chorus of soul singers. Again this is a sweet little song that deserves to be better known, but this collaboration with Terry Reid is one of the few demos here that actually sounds unfinished and really benefits from the changes Nash made in the studio. Graham’s voice creaks and crackles like never before – not really a problem for a demo usually but it sounds really out of place on this otherwise immaculately sung set – and the only real points of interest are the occasional lyric change, such as this version’s ‘though you disguise what you see...your reality’ instead of ‘the mirror is free’.

‘Music Is Love’ is one of the more interesting moments of the set but it’s a bit of a cheat – this is the issued version of the record slightly remixed and given a slightly longer running time courtesy of a groovy percussion-led ending. Of course, this song isn’t really a demo at all – its Crosby messing around in the studio as a bit of a warm-up but Nash and Young loved the results so much they overdubbed harmonies, more guitar, a glockenspiel, vibes, percussion and a few other odds and ends as well. The finished product ended up opening Crosby’s first solo album ‘If Only I Could Remember My Name’ (see review no 45), but sadly what we have here isn’t Crosby’s original demo before the others made off with it (something I’m dying to hear) but a first attempt at a mix by Nash and Young, with their harmonies starting much earlier in the song and featuring a repetitive strumming part from Crosby’s acoustic before abruptly cutting off. This is nice to hear and very interesting after getting to know this track so well for the past 20 years – but why oh why wasn’t the Crosby-only version used? And surely there’s tracks that have more differences than this in the vaults still?

‘Long Time Gone’ is a Crosby-Stills demo from June 1968, back in the days when they were still working on the first record as the ‘Frozen Noses’ before Nash joined in the fun. It’s not quite the same as the Crosby/Stills demo first heard on ‘Voyage’ – but it near enough is, with the only real difference being that the song is taken at a slightly quicker lick. That version on ‘Voyage’ was a revelation – Crosby often said that there was an ‘awful’ version of the song in the vaults before Stills’ stunning new arrangement and Nash’s blissful harmonies promoted the finished recording to being one of Crosby’s career highlights (‘Those cats loved me so much they helped me find my voice!’) That version on ‘Voyage’ was it – lopsided, ragged and very very peculiar, it had none of the spooky ambience of the finished product and even though the lyrics were identical seemed to have none of the blistering anger and rage of the recording we know and love. Inspired by the death of Robert Kennedy in 1968, both of these two recordings must have been remarkably quick out of the blocks after Crosby wrote it – but each of them are miserably lacking in everything the finished version got right. But that’s how it goes – outtakes sets like these are an invaluable source in showing true fans just how much effort and skill went into the finished songs and horrors like these are actually more interesting than beautiful recordings that sound more or less the same. However, there’s no excuse for issuing two more-or-less-the-same stabs at the same arrangement within three years – that’s just going too far.

The last track to discuss is Nash’s evergreen ‘Chicago’. Unlike the other Nash demos here this is very different to the finished product, with it’s elaborate production and mass voiced choir. Unfortunately, it’s very very like the way Nash has performed it in virtually every concert since and this version doesn’t even benefit from some nice CSN harmonies. Nash’s basic piano work and gutsy, simple lyrics about how Stills and Young should join in with a Crosby-Nash benefit for the Chicago Seven is a nice piece of work, catchy but deep you could say, but here, it sounds like a monotonous drag that’s more likely to get the Chicago seven hung than set them free. The most illuminating part of the song is the ending with Nash ad lobbing ‘help us make some more!’ – OK, so he’s actually singing to Stills and Young, but this could just as easily be his modern-day self singing to us to get us to fork out for a CSN record once again.

But unlike every other CSN record made, there seems to be no purpose to this one, even a misguided one. We can kind of guess at the circumstances behind it. CSN don’t have a long-standing record contract any more, their concert sales aren’t enough to get them by and their back catalogue is woefully out of fashion (which is the fault of the public’s not theirs, I reiterate). We also know that David Crosby, particularly, is struggling for money after being hit by the Inland Revenue yet again for unpaid taxes (back in the days of the mid-80s when he was on the run from the law and spent all the money he had and more on drugs) and even had to sell his precious yacht The Mayan, source of many of his greatest songs and an icon for CSN like no other (he managed to avoid selling it in the 1980s, so he must be really in trouble if he’s sold it now). I’m sure every CSN fan would be more than willing to pay their share to help Crosby out but, sadly, this means the first ever sub-par album from the trio (as opposed to CSNY). If only Rhino had put out a ‘proper’ CSN outtakes set, re-issued the original tapes of abandoned albums like Crosby’s ‘Drive My Car’ from 1979, CSNY’s ‘Human Highway’ (1974), ‘Long May You Run’ (1976) or even the abandoned Crosby-Nash LP that became ‘Live It Up’ (1990) the cost would very much have been worth it. But the tiny trickle of rarities on this set compared to the sheer volume of unreleased recordings still in the vaults makes this a very sad way to mark 40 years of the most magical group. Having said all that, however, the music is still stunning, even in unheard form, and well worth seeking out for newcomer CSN fans who don’t want to fork out for the superior ‘Voyage’ and ‘Reflections’ sets. Let’s hope, though, if Rhino do continue to look back in the CSN vaults they find something a bit longer and a bit more interesting the next time around.

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

Friday, 4 July 2008

Graham Nash "Songs For Beginners" (1971) ('Core Review #46; Revised Review 2014)

Available to buy in ebook format 'Change Partners - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of CSNY' by clicking here!

On which Nash proves himself to be a ‘beginner’ at relationships but a dab hand as a songwriter…

Track Listing: Military Madness/ Better Days/ Wounded Bird/ I Used To Be A King/ Be Yourself// Simple Man/ Man In The Mirror/ There’s Only One/ Sleep Song/ Chicago/ We Can Change The World (UK and

tracklisting)

"In a downstairs room in Ormskirk, not too far from the Northern sea, I was a-reviewing this album and this album was reviewing me, military madness still killing our country, solitary sadness creeping over me, while you wear the coat of questions till the answer top hat appears to thee..."

There's a lot going on in this album's front cover. Keen photographer Graham Nash is trying to shoot a self-portrait and finds himself shooting a typically mad scene from his current life. He's in a crowded dressing room, with objects piled up all around him and in front of the mirror, but weirdly enough the picture seems to have been taken...outside! (Either that of Graham's dressing room is lined with wallpaper the colour of trees). Graham is now a 'star', a prized bachelor about town and a rockstar God and now a city boy at the heart of the California/San Francisco music scenes. But when he looks back into the camera all he can see is the English 'country boy' everyone thought he'd left behind. It's no coincidence that this troubled-soul searching album should return so frequently to the moment when Nash's life changed in 1968 and the awful pull and tug between staying with the familiar he'd known all his life (England, The Hollies, his first wife Rose) and the new and exciting (California, Crosby and Stills, the second love of his life Joni Mitchell). After all, Graham was almost back in the same boat - while he'd made a new life for himself in America his second band (CSNY if you hadn't guessed) had broken up spectacularly and in 1971 seemed as if they would never ever get back together. He's just split up with Joni after an intense couple of years together and is alone and single for the first time since around 1964 (nobody is quite sure when Nash married Rose Eccles, but it was no later than 1965 and knowing Nash he's have married the minute he turned 21). He must have been asking 'what on earth was all that for?' It's no coincidence either that this album starts with those power lines reminding himself and his audience of where it all began: 'In an upstairs room in Blackpool, by the side of the Northern sea...' And it's certainly no coincidence that this album is wittily titled 'Songs For Beginners' - here comes one of the most famous musicians of his age, forced into making his first every solo album at the comparatively late age of 29, suddenly realising that he barely knows anything about the world and how it works just yet. Finally, it's also no coincidence that the camera is left full on in shot as 'Songs For Beginners' is one of those albums that tries it's hardest to pull the wool out from over our eyes and let us know what being a 'star' is really like. What's more Nash then takes that mirror and shines it on his audience: 'this is you as well as me' the album seems to be saying, 'what are we all going to do about it?' The result is one of the best and certainly most likeable albums in the CSNY canon.

The various members of CSN/Y could do no wrong in the early part of the 1970s, whether together or apart. Coming hard on the heels of best-selling works like David Crosby’s If Only I Could Remember My Name, Neil Young’s After The Goldrush and the always-great-with-album-names Stephen Stills, Beginners has been rather forgotten and neglected, released in the midst of these other great albums, but it’s easily the equal of the other releases of this prolific period. Nash is back to his Butterfly best for the most part of this album; swapping the commercial songs and romantic epics he sang on the first two CSN/Y records for something a bit deeper and introspective, more like the songs produced by his comrades than Marrakesh Express and Our House (although the tunes are still as catchy and lovable as ever). Like his companions, Nash is surrounded by a cast of thousands on this album including Crosby on harmonies, Neil Young on – unusually - piano (Neil’s credited as ‘Joe Yankee’ on this album sleeve, for reasons best known to himself), the ubiquitous Jerry Garcia (did he ever go home in 1971, because he seems to appear on just about every American record that came out in the early 1970s?!?), the soulful PP Arnold who seems to crop up on this list with some regularity (The Small Faces back her on a single in 1968 and she becomes part of Pink Floyd's Roger Waters' solo band in the 1990s/00s) and long-time Nash collaborator Terry Reid, a forgotten songwriter who shares similar strengths of melodic melodies and lyrical lyrics. (Terry would have been a huge star himself if he hadn’t been hit by a run of bad luck worse even than The Small Faces', including record companies collapsing while on the verge of releasing his records, to leaving bands just on the brink of becoming worldwide megastars; its nice to see he’s made a bit of a comeback with some well received gigs and albums in the last five years and his The River album is another one recommended to album archive fanatics – although interestingly, while his songs are close cousins of Nash’s warmth and intelligence, his deep soulful and dramatic voice couldn’t be less like Nash’s catchy, gently emotional alto if it tried). Like Crosby and Stills' first solo albums, however this is very much an album of guest stars with Nash in charge throughout - from Beginners’ self-taken portrait on the sleeve to the deeply felt tunes and the clever complex lyrical rhymes within, this album could only have been made by one man. Nash’s later albums have more than their fair share of masterpieces, but this album is still the most consistent of his five solo records, simply brimming with ideas from beginning to end and rarely putting a foot wrong throughout. We CSNY fans were spoilt between 1969-71: here's another very good reason why this quartet were the best band in the universe for one brief shining moment.

It may seem strange that someone who had spent all of their adult life in the music business and was celebrating the release of their 10^th album in eight years (that’s eight with the Hollies, one with CSN and 1 with CSNY) chose to call their debut solo effort Songs For Beginners. The album name isn’t about beginnings in a songwriting sense, although its true that as Nash’s first solo album this LP does account for a fresh start to some extent. The ‘beginners’ part of this title seems to come from the ‘re-birth’ theme of the lyrics, with Nash’s characters all coming to some sort of new realisation about the world, looking at it anew and finding it a deeper, scarier or more beautiful place than they had first imagined. Nash continues his recent creative re-awakening started in his CSN days and like Cat Stevens before him writes as if he has suddenly found a new insight into life that makes his pop-star past could never give him. There’s definitely a sense of starting anew in the lyrics on this album and a sort of head-scratching puzzlement about what the 60s were all about. Time and again on this album the world proves to be very different below the surface than it appeared to be at the time: for instance the military macho posing of warfare that seemed such a faraway part of Nash's childhood is now everywhere again and he views the trial of the Chicago Eight in a very different way to most of the Nixon-friendly papers. More than just the outer world, though, this is a highly personal album where Nash is still kicking himself for leaving something that was nearly-perfect for a chance at something perfect that turned out not to be perfect at all, sighing over both the upheavals of 1968 and his recent split with Joni ('I Used To Be A King', for instance, realises that even the miserable existence of The Hollies' 'King Midas - who turns everything to gold but finds it doesn't bring him anything but misery - was a more preferable existence to this one). All of that ends up with the pithy statement: 'Though you're where you want to be, you're not where you belong'. For 'Songs For Beginners' is a very thoughtful album, arguably the most reflective in Nash's back catalogue and gave fans a chance to see that behind the fun of 'Marrakesh Express', the seriousness of 'Teach Your Children' and the warmth of 'Our House' beat a very tender and emotional heart and a very fragile shell. Nash's most emotional record by some margin (he'll only be this upset again on parts of 'Wild Tales', which may or may not be grieving of a different kind...), 'Songs For Beginners' is a special record and easily Nash's finest solo half hour.

As we've seen, Joni Mitchell is a key figure on this album, even though unusually she doesn't sing on it (she's conspicuous by her absence in fact and will be back in some style on 'Wild Tales'). In many ways the songs here are the downside to Nash's utopian dreams of life with Joni as heard in the song Our House, their cosy comfortable easy way of living descending into chaos as the pair end up rowing about all sorts of things (including which of the creatives got to have time at the all-important piano they shared; a lot of this album seems to have been written for piano, perhaps out of necessity or perhaps out of penance, with Nash trying to sound more like his ex than ever; funnily enough though Nash brings Neil Young - under the typically erroneous pseudonym 'Joe Yankee' - to play those parts for him). By 1971 Nash had taken up with singer Rita Coolidge (who is on this album, as one of the members of the 'We Can Change The World' choir), figuring that Joni is just too much trouble and too full of her own career not his. (Nash's later response on this album can be best heard on 'Simple Man': 'I just wanna hold you, I don't wanna hold you down'). This too will have ructions: Rita wasn't single, she's been Stills' girlfriend for some time yet seemed only too eager to elope with Nash (Stephen blew his top especially over the speed and comments from Graham that 'she didn't really love him', CSNY dissolved less than amicably in the madness reported by Crosby on his solo track 'Cowboy Movie' and Nash discovered that she wasn't the one for him either). While Rita seems to have been ;largely oblivious of the drama she caused to the CSNY family unit, Joni for her part sounds as miserable as her partner. I came to Joni's work late, long after getting to know everything written by Graham and still don't own everything she did but her 1970/71 period is especially haunting, full of similar ghosts and spectres to the 'Beginners' album. Most remarkable of all is her yuletide 1970 song 'River' (spot on for when these album songs were written too), looking out at everyone else planting Christmas Trees and being merry when all she wants to do is sob (her final verse 'I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad, now I've gone and lost the best baby that I'm ever going to have' could well have been taken from this similarly melancholy guilt-laden album). Nash is effectively left to begin again.

In fact, Beginners comes about as close to bitter recrimination as the diplomatic Nash ever got to on record, but it’s self-doubt creeping in on this album for pretty much the first time that makes for the most memorable lines: ‘Humble pie is always hard to swallow with your pride’, ‘It’s because I built my life on sand and watched it crumble into dust’, ‘The way that I feel all my hang-ups are down’; all these lyrics are a logical culmination of Nash’s growing self-awareness in the Hollies’ late period and whose personal songwriting was in part interrupted by CSN’s social feelings and universal subject matters. This album is generally less like the social conscience of Teach Your Children and effectively says 'I can't even teach myself'; it's more like the Hollies’ glorious flop single King Midas In Reverse, full of songs where belief turns out to be misguided and accepted facts turn out to be misinterpreted. This songwriting trait had been interrupted first by the late-60s need for ‘safe’ Holies singles like Jennifer Eccles and Listen To Me and later the glorious burst of late-60s sunshine when CSN brought light into Nash’s life as well as record collectors the world over—but its perhaps a more integral part of Nash’s songwriting outlook than both of these styles and one he returns to, off and on, throughout his solo catalogue. Nash's thoughts: make peace with yourself, as best you can, for in the end it's with you you have to live.

There was also no doubt a bit of professional pride at stake. Nash had left the stability of The Hollies for the turbulence of CSNY not just because of their lack of boundaries and a chance to shake the world but because he felt sure their warring natures could be tamed (every CSNY biography will tell you that, despite being the one who shook The Hollies out of their comfort zones with wild ideas, Nash was the stable one in CSNY, the workhorse who kept them all together). Now CSNY have split, this time because of something's he's done. I sincerely doubt there'd have been another CSNY album before 1974 (when there ever so nearly was one and the split wasn't Nash's fault) but there might have been without that sudden division between Stills and Nash. Instead of conquering the world in 1971, using music to bring peace to the world and boot Richard Nixon out of office, CSNY have splintered, leaving the under-dogs they'd always stood up for with four separate voices that had put far less pressure on world politics. Add in the horrors of the Altamont festival that Nash had just seen saw first-hand in December 1969, (despite CSNY’s performance being cut from the film and most traces being cut from band biographies since, the quartet were most definitely there), the lingering darkness during and after 'Deja Vu', the growing move in 1970s music away from peace-and-love harmonies into something harder and noisier and the continuing drama of Watergate and Vietnam despite CSN’s belief they could change the outcome of both and you can see why Nash might not be sounding his usual perky self on this album. This isn't just picking yourself and carrying on, it's trying to learn how to function as a solo artist for the first time in a landscape where all the rules have changed. Nash is also beginning again.

In anybody else’s hands this collection of self-kicking sentiment and self-failure lyrics would be a sob story, even without Jerry Garcia’s heavy lashings of pedal-steel to make the mood even more mournful. Yet Nash is also at his creative commercial best here, dispelling the doom and gloom cobwebs with some bright sing-a-long melodies that complement rather than compete with each song’s quiet sadness and the presence of the last great CSNY we-can-change-the-world singalong on Chicago is the last time any member of CSN sound quite so sure of themselves and their optimistic ideals again. The year 1971 may have been the beginning of the end for the huge part CSN/Y had to play on the world’s stage, but one listen to this album and its respective Crosby, Stills and Young solo albums will show you what a great new beginning there could have been for the foursome had things turned out just a little differently. 'Songs For Beginners' is special because it does have it's cake and eats it: Nash as a writer grows like never before, finding new layers in himself and pursuing his need to console his guilty conscience rather than simply comment on world politics or his latest love affair and yet he never sacrifices that winning commercial sound that had made his work so popular with fans.

There's been a growing feeling, especially amongst 'non' fans, that Nash was a lightweight who joined CSN purely to provide a high voice the other's didn't have and the occasional hit single to keep them in the public eye. But at his best Nash is weirder than Crosby, even more melodic than Stills and a lot easier on the ear than Neil, whilst being as deep as original and as moving as all three of them. Like Crosby's 'If Only I Could Remember My Name' and 'Stephen Stills', I'm not sure if I'd ever trade this album for the trio and quartet albums of 1969 and 1970 so you could argue that this is in some ways a backwards step, the four individuals less potent separately than together. But if this is a step backwards then I'll take it any day, being another of those remarkably consistent early 70s CSN/Y albums ('Man In The Mirror' is the only song here that's less than fabulous) and covers so much new ground. What's interesting too is what comes next: even the few people who realised what a melancholic album this was assumed, 'well Nash is just upset over Joni - he'll be back to his normal self any day now!' As it turned out - and for a variety of reasons - it's not until as late as 1975 that Nash will return to his old bouncy self. 'Songs For Beginners' and the causes behind it had a lasting effect on songwriter as well as audience and is an impressively honest open record that deserves to be even better known that it already is (funnily enough it followed Crosby's record released just before it throughout its whole charts, peaking one place lower in the UK and three in the US, still one of the highest charting of all CSNY records).

The Songs:

[60] Military Madness starts the album as it means to go on – a relatively famous, catchy song that in typical Nash style marries the personal and the universal together in one place. As Nash sings on this track, he really was born ‘in an upstairs room in Blackpool’ while his dad was away fighting in World War Two and, just as he probably did in his childhood, can’t quite get his head round the fact that people are still fighting wars somewhere round the planet every hour of the day no matter how many years have passed by. It’s interesting, bearing in mind the above comments of self-analysis possibly going on in Nash’s head at the time, to hear Nash going back to his upbringing on this song for pretty much the first time and the line about never ‘losing my pride’ despite ‘losing’ his country of birth when leaving for CSN speaks volumes. This song, a long time CSN/Y fan favourite, was surely too personal for Nash to put on a group record but more than deserves its place in their ever-expanding play-list. A dollop of spiky guitar off-sets Nash’s rockabilly piano playing on this recording, playing the song’s seemingly deliberately simplified tune, perhaps to emphasise the need for humanity to find simple solutions to their problems that don’t involve weaponry and terror. PP Arnold pops up on the chorus, her soulful tones turning the song into a gospel-pop hybrid, making this plea for peace something of a spiritual quest as well as a political one.

[61] Better Days is a far less well known song but it shouldn’t be – Young’s delicate piano matched to Graham singing at the bottom of his high register makes for a lovely yearning song, with the underlying tension finally broken by a sudden angry switch to the chorus. The lyrics are interesting too - more than two years after he left England, The Hollies and his first wife, Graham seems to be having second thoughts about the decision now that CSNY are no more, despite recognising the pull his new American lifestyle has for him (‘Though you’re where you want to be, you’re not where you belong’). Nash isn’t known for writing brooding drama in his songs, but on the few occasions he has used this style it’s nearly always been a success (I’m thinking Cathedral and Wind On The Water here in particular). Nash's almost painfully depressed vocal right at the bottom of his range is particularly striking, as is the heavy thudding organ sound throughout that sounds like the mother of all hangovers (and highly fitting given that it's just sinking into Nash that 'now that you know it's nowhere what's to stop you coming home?' and back to England).

[62] Wounded Bird is more of the same, but this time it’s just Graham and an acoustic guitar, singing a wordy song about how man succeeds through being humble (it obviously wasn’t written with CSNY in mind then!) The lyric is a little too self-conscientiously poetic for its own good (’you’ll wear the coat of questions till the answer hat is here’) but is not without its charms, especially the clever half-line rhymes and the fact that Nash sounds like your big sister here, urging the listener back into the ring of life for another thrashing. Though ostensibly sung to someone else (Joni?), I'm sure that Nash is singing about himself in the third person here, trying to urge himself onwards with a pep talk ('Stand your ground, I think you've got the guts to win!') but this time trying to make himself 'wait' to check his would-be lover feels the same and isn't just infatuated (is he singing for Rita on the line 'You must learn to turn the key before she'll let you in?') Joni though must be the 'wounded bird', lashing out because of her own problems and with Nash getting caught in the way. The result is a clever and moving song, if not quite as deep and detailed as some of the others here. I’m still looking for an answer hat to wear, by the way, I don’t know about you but I can’t get this darned coat of questions off at all!

[63] I Used To Be A King is by far and away the album’s highlight, with a wonderfully downcast, cyclical riff superbly performed by Nash and Crosby with various members of the Grateful Dead providing the backing. The lyrics are another slice from Nash’s humble pie pile, but this time they sound more honest and sincere. Once again lamenting the fact that he ditched his past for an uncertain present, Nash even adds in a nice lyrical touch of the hat to his last ‘progressive’ Hollies song King Midas In Reverse, saying that actually he did use to be a king who turned everything to gold, but like his earlier song things just turn to dust once more. As the song has so many verses, something that adds greatly to the feeling of never-ending untapped grief coming through in the song, Nash cleverly keeps the piece together by using two slightly different lyrics in the chorus, a trick that allows him to really give way to his emotions in the last verse. Garcia’s pedal steel, already a star on several CSN as well as Grateful Dead Records, is at its best here too, mournful without being over the top.

[64a] Be Yourself rounds the first side out in style, with this song a co-write with 60s folkie Terry Reid. The two writers are quite similar in style (if not in voice) and worked together on lots of songs, most of which were booted out by the Hollies when Nash tried to record them in 1968, leaving this as the only official Nash-Reid song-writing credit on an album. Understandably, unlike most of the album, this sounds like a typically Nash song only more so– a long list of complicated words that somehow still manage to rhyme with each other, married to another it-sounds-like-its-always-existed tune and all held together by a simple life-affirming chorus, celebrating the differences that make each of us the unique specimens we are. Listen out too for Nash's lines about 'a prodigal son coming home' - was he really in the process of moving back to Britain as this line suggests?

Side two gets even better, courtesy of Nash’s delicate piano-ballad [65a] Simple Man. A song written for Joni Mitchell after the two split up, it’s the perfect antidote to Our House’s gloriously wonderful but nevertheless sweet-enough-to-rot-your-teeth saccharine by exploring the relationship much more deeply. ‘I wanted to hold you, but I didn’t want to hold you back’ runs the message of the song, with the added pay off that as an artist probing his life for his work, Graham can only wave goodbye to the partnership after the ‘ending of the song’ written about their time together. Most of the recording is Nash alone at the piano, an instrument he hadn’t properly explored at this point in his history (Our House itself being the obvious exception), but it becomes pretty much the dominant instrument for Graham from now on, possibly after the writer ‘borrowed’ Joni Mitchell’s model, which used to sit in their living room. The idea of Nash writing such a highly personal goodbye to Joni on her own instrument, sad and alone while she was out elsewhere, gives the song a whole new meaning and Nash’s emotional vocal makes it clear how much this song means to him too, being one of his best on record. Stunning, gloriously simple stuff. Graham’s friend Barbara Streisand (on whose piano Nash later wrote Another Sleep Song while on a visit) later covered Simple Song on her Butterfly album, gaining plus points for slowing down the tempo of Nash’s original but losing them again for covering the track with the soppy strings Nash tastefully avoids on his version.

[66a] Man In The Mirror is rather less impressive, so its strange to think that it was the one song from this album CSNY ever did regularly in their tours together (one such ragged recording even found it’s way onto the CSN box-set, just about the only questionable judgement among that set’s 110-odd tracks). The track tries hard to reach back to earlier songs about the gap between the performer and his public image (Clown on the Hollies album For Certain Because is the earliest example and is even name-checked in this later song), but can’t quite get beyond the title theme that the performer is in many ways the ‘reverse’ of the real ‘him’ (mirrors and being in reverse play a large part in Nash’s writing in this period—interestingly the front cover for this LP is in fact a ‘mirror’ image, a photo off Graham’s reflection rather than the ‘real’ him). Like many of Nash’s worst songs, this track leans towards country, a style whose often faux-melancholia and OTT drama only works for a select few and certainly doesn’t work for a singer as subtle as Nash, with Young’s guest spot on this track finding him busy practising for the sound he’s about to cement on the country-rock hybrid Harvest the next year. Garcia too is here again, getting his money’s worth out of that pedal steel guitar on its last appearance of many on this list. Another gloriously life-affirming chorus just about rescues the song from mediocrity, however, with a sudden change of tempo and the presence of a chorus sending the pulses racing, albeit only briefly. One question about this song; I can usually follow Graham’s lyrics quite well, but what on earth does the line ‘In the middle of nowhere I found me a tree and the fruit that we live on reminds me of me’ meant to mean? Despite its interesting central idea, this is a fruitless track, in more ways than one.

[67] There’s Only One is, like Be Yourself, another long list of clever rhymes vaguely jumbled together to tell a story, only this time it’s slower and slightly more sinister-sounding, with enough of a story to reward close attention. This time its Nash back on the ivories for this stately well-arranged song, which adds in another instrument or singer in every verse. The chorus is yet again the most convincing moment of the track, with a true CSN-ish plea for equality and an early glimmer of Nash’s ‘no nukes’ demonstrations and benefits in the 1980s, with the warning that we only have one planet to live on, muck that one up and we’re lost. Nash had obviously been listening closely to the Jefferson Airplane Blows Against the Empire project going on just a couple of albums higher on this list (which Nash partly mixed for them) – from this song’s gentle warnings of Armageddon to the last verse about building up mankind from nothing all over again (‘Do we have the grace to begin our race in another place face to face?’) this song sounds like a close cousin.

[68] Sleep Song, a Hollies reject stretching back to 1968, is a slightly risqué composition for its time about two lovers together the morning after a romantic evening, which just about manages to get away with its not-quite-there acoustic accompaniment and near-sentimentality, courtesy of Nash’s expressive vocal. Rejected outright by the Hollies, who would indeed have offended a large part of their core fan-base had this song about disrobing been released on one of their albums, this song was in the running for both CSN/Y albums, although so simple and sparse is this arrangement that it’s hard to work out what the others would have added to this simple song (bar some Crosby-esque ba-da-daing in the song’s very David-esque instrumental passage, perhaps). A quiet, intimate portrait of the beginning of a romantic encounter, this song is the missing bridge between Nash’s pre and post Hollies work, with a very Hollies-esque ear-catching vocal stretch on the chorus-line (You know I’ll be the-e-e-re’) and a very CSN-era use of personal pronouns in the song, with Nash in first-person as the narrator, not telling a story through another’s eyes as he would have done come 1966 or thereabouts. A Sleep Song’s sequel - Another Sleep Song, available on follow-up album Wild Tales (1974) – is an even better stab at the same idea, being just as cosily intimate but twice as mournful and hypnotically menacing.

After nearly an album’s worth of introspective ballads, there’s nothing left for Graham to do but rock out with another quite well known song, [69] Chicago. A plea to Stills and Young to join him and Crosby in playing a benefit on behalf of the Chicago Eight (and, possibly, a message from the group’s renowned diplomat urging his old band to get back together again in order to ‘change the world’), amazingly the pair of musicians still refused to come even after hearing this song, leaving benefits largely to Crosby-Nash for the rest of the 1970s. Actually it wasn't the counter-cultural figures 'The Chicago Eight' (also known as 'The Chicago Seven' after Bobby Searle was indicted on a separate charge of contempt of court) that included Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin that Nash was trying to protect (though he undoubtedly supported their belief in 'freedom of speech' that so scared Nixon). Instead he was protesting against the treatment of the protestor's protestors, whose outbursts in court were frowned upon too, although he does mention Searle directly, a 'brother' who was 'bound and gagged and chained to a chair' (which really was what the judge ordered in court; the trial resulted in that great and very CSNY quote when one of the men were told off for swearing on court: 'Your idea of justice is the only obscenity in this room!') The trial resulted in good news eventually: while five of the men were convicted, all of these sentences were overthrown in 1972 after finding that judge Hoffman was 'biased' against them all.

Long admired as Nash’s political riposte to Ohio, Young’s famously barbed CSNY song about Nixon’s betrayal of American standards and free speech, this song is actually less about the individual benefit show Nash wants his friends to appear at than a general song about the 60s revolutionary zeal hitting a brick wall in the 1970-71 period, when politics and music didn’t seem to mix too well. Chicago ends with the desperate hippie plea ‘we can change the world’, sadly just about the last time that any singer will be able to say this with any conviction, but the fact that we know Nash and his comrades didn’t quite change the world doesn’t detract at all from this simple, charming song. A pounding piano riff and an ominous walking-pace trot merely add to the desperation of the piece but that catchy singalong chorus dilutes the despair of the rest of the song, transforming it back into hope. Typically Nash, he even pulls off the same trick in the lyrics, telling it like it is (‘its dying…’), before adding an optimistic twist at the end (‘…to get better’). Graham even revives the song’s chorus for a Hey Jude-like minute-long singalong at the album’s end (Indexed separately as [70] 'We Can Change The World') just when you think the track is over, something which is guaranteed to have you singing all the way to your CD player’s repeat button. Magic.

When you hear the calibre of the work Nash and his comrades were writing in 1971 it’s hard not to agree with him: put the songs that CSN and Y made independently all together on one album and these songs really could have changed the world, even more than CSNY already had by 1970. Well, maybe, perhaps I don’t want the world to change if it’s so perfect it no longer inspires such classic songs of hope, despair and outrage. CSNY for America’s greatest band of the period? World’s greatest band of any period, more like…