Alan's Album Archives: Crosby Stills Nash and Young

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 Crosby Stills Nash and Young. Show all posts

Friday, 2 November 2018

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

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Monday, 16 July 2018

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

Monday, 26 February 2018

CSNY: Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Songs

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

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

FIVE LANDMARK CONCERTS:

I don't know about you, dear reader, but so far this book/website has seemed awfully studio-bound: yes there are the odd live albums dotted round in the discographies but a touring life was usually as important if not more so to our AAA artists. Even we can't go through every gig they ever played however, so what we've decided to do instead is bring you five particularly important gigs with a run-down of what was played, where and when and why we consider these gigs so important, along with one particularly good one that summed up the band's setlist during their live peak (or one of them, anyway). Think of these as a sort of 'highlights' covering from first to (in some cases) last, to whet your appetite and to avoid ignoring a band's live work completely! People don’t tend to think of CSNY as a live act so much as a studio one full of perfectionism and pristine-ness, but back in their day the quartet’s live shows were legendary not least for their length – their 1974 reunion tour regularly saw them play for four and a half hours to their fans. Perhaps that was in response to tales of lavishness and budget on that tour where ticket prices broke new records and audience seats could be miles away from the stage, something that seemed to go against the grain of the CSNY ethos while the band walked around in pricey tour t-shirts and went to bed in special pillow cases embedded with Joni Mitchell’s tour logo. This all gave CSNY a bad reputation down the years and yet perhaps CSNY’s most famous ‘doom tour’ has come to overshadow an actually pretty stellar set of performances, ones where CSNY had a relationship with their audience that was quite unlike that of any other. There are obviously a lot of CSNY shows and only so many bootlegs but all of them from every tour seem to feature some sort of comment about the plight of their fans, complaining about the prices they have to pay or offering up ‘insider’ banter that made the C-N shows especially seem like a meeting of old friends, not a performance by multi-millionaire superstars. Be it acoustic, electric or both, be it CSNY solo, in twos three or fours, unlike some bands (including AAA ones like The Beach Boys) there’s usually something exciting about every CSNY gig, from premieres of unheard songs to revivals of old rarities. Here’s our guide to five key shows.

1) Where: Chicago Auditorium Theatre When: August 16^th 1969 Why: First Gig Setlist includes: [2] So Begins The Task [15] You Don’t Have To Cry [20] Pre-Road Downs [19] Long Time Gone [80] Bluebird Revisited [50] Sea Of Madness [12] Wooden Ships ‘Down By The River’ [47] Find The Cost Of Freedom ‘Get Together’

A little known secret of the CSNY catalogue is the semi-official radio broadcast disc ‘On The Way Home’ which features the partial soundtrack of their first ever gig. We know about the second of course (which was Woodstock two days later, with the Dick Cavett TV show that night – now that’s what I call a productive week!) and is in many ways the opposite kind of a gig. Though CSNY even at their first gig are the ‘headline’ act by dint of the success of their former bands the huge success of the CSN’s debut album (out two months by this time) the whole thing feels smaller, humbler, more intricate. CSNY aren’t ‘scared shitless’ playing their second gig in front of one of the biggest audiences ever but sound on top of their game, buzzing with ideas and energy. What’s notable is that Neil, playing his first anything associated with the band except a studio rehearsal take of [2] ‘So Begins The Task’ included on the 1991 box set, is silent for much of the night and not even playing much guitar bar a brief solo set as he sticks to the organ in the electric second half of the show. So much for him being brought in so Stills could have a guitarist to bounce off! This is a reminder of just how few people in the audience would have known Neil back then, with Buffalo Springfield a distant memory and Stills writing and singing their one big hit – such a change to today! The show goes down well, resulting in no less than three standing ovations and the band are forced to come out and play an extra song – after some demurring they agree to come out with support act Joni Mitchell and sing Dino Valenti’s ‘Get Together’ – Crosby had been singing it for a while during his folkie phase before becoming a Byrd. All in all the evening was a big success with the audience adjusting to the less-than-perfect CSNY harmonies heard in person for the first time. The question was what would a bigger audience make of the quartet at their first big gig as CSN play the first of many rock festivals?...

2) Where: Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, New York When: August 18^th 1969 Why: Biggest Gig Setlist: [10] Suite: Judy Blue Eyes [20] Blackbird [11] Helplessly Hoping [13] Guinevere [18] Marrakesh Express [30] 4+20 ‘Mr Soul’ ‘Wonderin’ [15] You Don’t Have To Cry [20] Pre-Road Downs [19] Long Time Gone [80] Bluebird Revisited [50] Sea Of Madness [12] Wooden Ships [47] Find The Cost Of Freedom [16] 49 Bye-Byes

CSNY will, in fact, go down rather well – so well that their songs take up a sizeable proportion of the resulting Woodstock movie (with ‘Judy’ performed live and remixes of studio songs ‘Long Time Gone’ and ‘Wooden Ships’ making the early part of the film when the stage is being erected) and the press reports on the festival’s second day claimed that the quartet were the big hit of the festival and that the festival ‘belonged’ to them. It certainly seems that way from their reception: the audience of millions take well to their mixture of big ideas and humble banter, while Stills’ comment at being ‘scared shitless’ was actually more because so many of the band’s peers were curious to hear what they sounded like and had gathered backstage rather than the crowds. CSNY didn’t actually realize how big the show was until they were going home and were flown out by helicopter so they could perform on the Dick Cavett Show – Crosby comments there that it looked like ‘the troops of the Macedonian army’ as the Woodstock crowd officially becomes the third biggest ‘populated city’ in America at that point in time – as far as CSNY was concerned this was just another big crowd and nobody quite expected how swamped the show was going to get. Back home with all the fun and epicness taken out their gig isn’t always the best though. The film features audible re-touching of their performance and it’s still about the roughest they ever played their signature song, while the full performance had such slim pickings for the compilers of the Woodstock soundtrack set that they actually raided a completely different show from later in the year with a performance of [50] ‘Sea Of Madness’ – a song CSNY didn’t even flipping play at Woodstock! Neil, never one to be there at big moments in history, refused to give permission to appear in the film, which is why their introduction tails off ‘Crosby, Stills, Nash….’ And has been trying to pretend he wasn’t there ever since, with digs at the festival and all it stood for both in song (‘Roll Another Number’ from 1975’s ‘Tonight’s The Night’ criticises a ‘helicopter day’ and jokes ‘I won’t be going back to Woodstock for a while’) and in speech (‘How did I spend the 25^th anniversary of Woodstock? By painting vultures on the neck of my guitar!’) At the time Neil was blasted for being shirt-sighted, then critics began to see it as brilliance as Young was the only performer at the world’s biggest rock concert who wasn’t stuck in time in the idea of the public ten-twenty-thirty years later. I sense, though, that the tide is moving back again: in the past fifty years there has never been a concert that size which was that peaceful and the fact that the world never followed it up is the fault of the crooked politicians and greedy bankers, not the musicians who gave their all that night – CSNY included.

3) Where: Big Sur Festival, California When: September 13^th 1969 Why: Messy Gig Setlist: [11] Helplessly Hoping [13] Guinevere [21] Lady Of The Island ‘Birds’ [30] 4+20 [15] You Don’t Have To Cry [50] Sea Of Madness [12] Wooden Ships ‘Down By The River’ [10] Suite: Judy Blue Eyes [20] Pre-Road Downs [19] Long Time Gone [80]

Usually an AAA member’s first tour is poorly recorded with little picture evidence, never mind audio or visual – they’re at the bottom of the bill playing unglamorous places like Slough, Wigan or Cleveland. But CSNY’s lengthy on-off first tour is easily their most fascinating one, usually for all the ‘right’ reasons, but tonight for all the ‘wrong’ ones. There is, I hasten to add, nothing wrong with the music – the little seen movie of ‘Big Sur’ (which got lost in the wake of ‘Woodstock’) includes a mind-blowing fifteen minute version of ‘Down By The River’ that thrashes any of the longer jams on ‘4 Way Street’ and the few selections we have of this gig on bootleg (this is the definitive ‘Sea OF madness’ too!) suggest that if it wasn’t CSNY’s best performance then there wouldn’t have been much in it. But this gig was a talking point for years to come because so much happened and a month from Woodstock feels like it symbolises the death of an era in as big (if less of a brutal) way than Altamont in December. One of the things you learn to understand as a CSNY fan is the contradictions – this is a band who sang about peace and love yet often seemed at war, while they always spoke out for the good of the common man while acting like divas. A member of the audience decided to call them out on this, interrupting the gig as early as the start of the second song to complain that they are singing songs about poverty while dressed in fur coats and are being paid big bucks to sing about peace and brotherhood. Actually the guy’s jumped the gun (they’re actually trying to sing medieval ballad ‘Guinevere’ at this stage) and usually CSNY handle hecklers pretty well, but this show is still so early on in their formation it catches them rather unawares. ‘We’re actually doing this for free and as you didn’t pay shut up ‘cause we’re not civilised!’ is Crosby’s less than usually eloquent response, before he really winds the heckler up by sighing ‘the human comedy rolls on’. Stills gets ever more heated, rushing off the stage to have it out with the heckler personally. Unluckily for both of them the Big Sur festival has the audience separated from the band by a pool of water and as Stills goes up to have a talk with him they both start pacing round each other. Nash finds it hilarious (joking ‘if you push him in the pool Stephen I’ll never forgive you!’) whilst Crosby is more circumspect (‘don’t do it for real man – don’t anybody do anything like that for real’). The defining image of CSNY for me, in all their great contradictions, isn’t Woodstock or any of their soundtracks but Stills being prodded in the chest with a murderous smile on his face while the rest of the band try to calm him down with the words ‘peace and love!’ Stills is taking it all as a joke until the guy says something we can’t hear and he lunges for him, starting a really nasty looking scuffle that had the guy fallen the other way could have had them both in the pool. CSNY seem suitably cowed for the rest of the gig, Crosby urging the crowd not to beat up on the heckler as ‘he’s as much a part of this thing, unfortunately, as we are, man’ while Stills seems to suddenly come to his senses and try to explain that the guy hit a nerve. ‘We think about, like the guy was saying, we look at these fur coats, fancy guitars, fancy cars and say wow man what am I doing? So when somebody gets up and freaks out like that it touches a nerve and you end up right back in that trap…I had some guys to love me out of it, I was lucky!’ The rest of the gig is interrupted by the sight of a whale (did it inspire [182] ‘To The Last Whale’?) a guest appearance by Traffic’s Dave Mason and even more re-turning and set equipment breakdowns than normal. Going from sublime to ridiculous in the space of a few seconds this is a key CSNY moment and was for many fans their first bootleg when ‘Wooden Nickel’, the soundtrack of parts of this show, became the first widely available set that wasn’t by either The Beatles or Bob Dylan.

4) Where: The Coliseum, Seattle When: July 9^th 1974 Why: The First Reunion Setlist: [37] Love The One You’re With [12] Wooden Ships [101] Immigration Man ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’ [3] Change Partners ‘Traces’ [136] Grave Concern [6] Black Queen [29] Almost Cut My Hair [46] Ohio [10] Suite: Judy Blue Eyes [11] Helplessly Hoping [20] Blackbird ‘Human Highway’ [133] Prison Song [169] As I Come Of Age [173] Carry Me [268] He Played Real Good For Free [13] Guinevere [92] Southbound Train [140] Another Sleep Song [33] Our House [30] 4+20 [4] Know You Got To Run [78] Word Game ‘Love Art Blues’ [206] Long May You Run ‘A Man Needs A Maid’ [157] Don’t Be Denied [168] First Things First [23] Déjà vu [164] My Angel [20] Pre-Road Downs [163] My Favourite Changes [19] Long Time Gone ‘Revolution Blues’ [159] Pushed It Over The End [173] Carry Me [57] What Are Their Names? [69] Chicago

While the rest of the world assumed that was it for CSNY when they announced their split in 1970 (this was the era before bands got back together again as a matter of course), they knew differently. It wasn’t that they couldn’t work together, just that it was getting harder and the sessions for ‘Déjà vu’ had led them to need to escape each other for a time. They regrouped slowly, in twos and threes, by guesting at each other’s shows across 1972 and 1973 before a full reunion at a Manassas gig at the Winterland in 1973. We’ve detailed this elsewhere as it’s a stunning moment for the audience who have no idea when they come back for a second set that instead of half an hour of Chris Hillman and banjos they’ve actually got CSNY with the pressure off them for the first time, previewing new songs and bringing out a couple of favourite oldies. An enterprising fan even filmed it for posterity and very good it is too (stuff pricey box set CSNY ’74, ‘CSNY ‘73’ is the live single disc I really want to see in the shops!) However as space is limited we’ve gone for the first billed comeback gig, because back in the days when fans assumed CSNY would never share the same stage again it was a big deal to actually have the concert ticket in your pocket and see those names on the same bit of paper again. Though history has forever labelled this the ‘doom tour’ and individually at different times CSNY all complained of their poor performances (though nobody was saying this in promotion for the box set I noticed!) the tour started on a high note. For starters the audience had sat through not the usual run of the mill nobodies but Joni Mitchell and The Beach Boys, both acts at particularly interesting and inventive points in their career. The group are in a unique position with nothing new to promote (just the greatest hits set ‘So Far’). When CSNY hit the stage they didn’t just play a few songs but virtually everything from their first two albums including songs not performed in 1969 or 1970 and a ridiculously big bag of songs from the intervening solo years with mass harmonies for the first time. There are lots of new songs heard for the first time too, many planned for the ‘Human Highway’ album that only got as far as two songs and an album cover before the rows broke out again. In total nine songs are sung which the audience would never have heard before – three of Neil’s they never will again past the end of the tour until the release of the ‘CSNY ‘74’ set forty years later. July 1974 was also a very interesting time politically and in retrospect feels almost as if the quartet planned it – they broke up in America’s worst hour with the ‘Ohio’ assassinations and returned for the Watergate victory lap as the hated Nixon was all but forced out of office (he’ll resign on August 8^th). The quartet precede tonight’s performance of ‘Grave Concern’ with a unique skit about what has happened to politics since they’ve been away (why oh why was this cut from the box set?!?) Originally planned to end somewhere before midnight, the band are having such fun they don’t get off stage until 1.30am, closing the show with a choral chant version of Crosby’s solo ‘What Are Their Names?’ that won’t be heard again until the ‘Freedom Of Speech’ tour in 2009 that somehow ends up segueing into ‘Chicago’. The longest show any variations of CSNY ever played, with forty songs the most they will ever manage, it may also be the quartet at their best with all worries about whether they could ever reignite the magic of their early days disappearing as soon as the opening song.

5) Where: Oslo Spectrum, Norway When: October 11^th 2015 Why: Final Gig? Setlist: [30] Carry On [18] Marrakesh Express [19] Long Time Gone [60] Military Madness [256] Southern Cross [22] Cathedral [33] Our House [23] Déjà vu ‘Bluebird’ [11] Helplessly Hoping [456] Back Home ‘Somebody Home’ [13] Guinevere ‘Virtual World’ [69] Chicago [29] Almost Cut My Hair [12] Wooden Ships [27] Teach Your Children [10] Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

This is, at the time of writing, CSN’s final ever gig (their last as a quartet being one of Neil’s Bridge Show Benefit Concerts on October 27^th 2013). Never say never of course – we have all been here before, you might say – but what with Crosby insulting Young and Nash insulting Crosby in his autobiography it would take a lot for the quartet to get back together again (or maybe just a victory dance on trump’s grave a la Nixon’s?!?) A career that started with such a bang (certainly by their second gig) feels a little like it ended with a whimper. By 2015 CSN haven’t released a studio album in eleven years and they’ve been all but forgotten, with their attempt at a ‘songs we wished we’d written’ album with Rick Rubin being abandoned for good in 2013). By then the group that were once top of the bill at the biggest rock festivals are reduced to playing medium sized arenas across Europe and were struggling to fill those from the UK gigs I went to. By now they’ve become a streamlined band and something of a family firm with David’s son James Raymond on keyboards and Nash’s future writing partner Shane Fontayne on guitar. There are still moments of magic though, especially when the band step out of their well-worn comfy slippers and stick their rock and roll shoes back on, with occasional bootlegs and youtube videos demonstrating some interesting takes on songs like Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Bluebird’ (Stills’ song for Judy Collins revived now the pair are getting friendly again, now complete with CSN harmonies) and fascinating new songs like Stills’ acerbic ‘Virtual World’ (previewed from the next year’s Rides album) and Nash’s atmospheric ‘Back Home’ (previewed from the next year’s ‘This Path Tonight’). Alas though some things never change, with old warhorse ‘Military Madness’ dusted off for yet another needless war, while sadly the set’s opening cry that ‘love is coming to us allllllll!’ is premature, to say the least. That’s what CSN were here to do though, to bring comfort in times of darkness and their younger selves would surely have been porud that forty-six years later their shows remained so true to their early principles (even if they would no doubt be horrified to still be singing so many old songs – and having to retrace their steps over so many old subjects of racism and intolerance that should have been long over and dealt with). This gig is a good microcosm of CSNY at yet another crossroads in their life, pulled by the weight of the past but also the lure of the new and it ends the only way it could and where it (ever so nearly) began, with a show-stopping performance of ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’. This means that the last words CSN ever sang on stage together appear to be ‘doo doo doo doo doo doo, dit doo doo doo doo doo doo’. And strangely fitting they sound too!

THREE KEY COVER VERSIONS:

Sometimes when artists pick up that musical baton they pay tribute to their heroes by covering their favourite songs. Here are three covers that we consider to be amongst the very best out of the ones we've heard (and no we haven't heard them all - do you know how many AAA albums out there are out there even without adding cover songs as well?!) There aren’t as many CSN covers out there as you might expect for such a legendary band. The few that are seem to really like [10] ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ for some reason, which is odd as it is CSN’s longest song and perhaps one of their most personal, inexplicable to anyone who hasn’t been following the Stephen Stills love story! Nobody quite gets it right either. There are just two ‘tribute’ albums around too for the trio, both of them instrumental bluegrass records – ‘Pickin’ On CSN’ comes in two volumes and is nice if you like that sort of thing (although to be honest it’s a style that works better with the Byrds given that lyrics and harmonies are two of the main features of CSN songs!) As Crosby’s always said, people don’t seem to cover his songs very often, preferring to go with Stills or Nash!

1) [18] Marrakesh Express (Stan Getz, ‘Marrakesh Express’ 1970)

Crosby must have been thrilled when he heard one of his jazz idols was putting together an instrumental version of a song from the first CSN album and naming his album of ‘contemporary’ covers after it too. I wonder what he thought when he discovered it wasn’t one of his own jazz-influenced songs but Nash’s poppy single? Actually Stan plays it well, really getting under the skin of this song’s Eastern Moroccan influences and offers up a lovely free-flowing vibe that sounds like a carnival, perfectly in keeping with the ‘escape’ theme of Nash’s lyrics. The closing jam section, played on an organ on the original, sounds mighty good when played on trumpet over and over. The orchestrator and conductor, incidentally, was Richard Hewson whose next project will be ‘Thrillington’, the instrumental version of Paul McCartney’s ‘Ram’.

2) [12] Wooden Ships (The Ides Of March, ‘Vehicle’ 1970)

Another near-contemporary cover was this song by the 1960s Chicago band, who had branched out from Hollies-style pop into something more prog rock by the time the first CSN album came out. Scoring their biggest hit single that same year (‘Vehicle’), they re-shaped their sound to seem bigger in every way, extending their running times to become lengthy Dead-style jams and adding a horn section. This is a failure more times than it’s a success, but ‘Wooden Ships’ is a song that suits being big (it is, after all, about nuclear annihilation!) and it sounds marvellous here. A lengthy ‘duh-duh-duh’ opening ratchets up the tension as if its nuclear Armageddon time until two minutes in the tension suddenlt explodes and we get the familiar opening from the CSN arrangement (but minus the morse code and full of something sleepier). This version features three cross-over voices not two, incidentally, though the Nash-style harmonies on the chorus suggests the band have learnt their recording from the CSN version rather than the even sleepier Jefferson Airplane cover (skipped as we talk about it so much in our Jefferson book). There’s a terrific guitar solo in the middle that twirls rather than howls as per Stills’ and the urgent tension from a repeat of the riff works remarkably well. There’s even a drum solos, which Dallas Taylor must have been itching to play! Those cheeky blighters in the band title this riff ‘Dharma For One’ and co-credit the song to this, receiving half-royalties on the track. They probably figured CSN were so rich at the time they wouldn’t notice!

3) [11] Helplessly Hoping (The King’s Singers, ‘Simple Gifts’ 2008)

I love The King’s Singers, the most ‘hip’ of all the ‘square’ Conservative bands around. They were even more eclectic than CSN, covering everything in their half-century-and-counting career from the oldest of Madrigals to the most serious of operas to the silliest of comedy songs to the sweetest of pop songs. They even turn up backing Nash’s replacement Terry Sylvester on his eponymous debut solo record and as the Frog Song Chorus on Paul McCartney’s ‘We All Stand Together’. With their snazzy barbershop harmonies they were always going to favour bands who did similar things and their take on one of CSN’s most beautiful songs is gorgeous. There are no instruments, everything is sung a capella, with pinging vocals masquerading as the guitar as the tune hops between all members of the sextet before those full on harmonies sing the main song pretty darn close to the original. I wonder how many people, on hearing this buried in the middle of one of the band’s more eccentric CDs (and their best, check out gorgeous folk song ‘Black Is The Colour’ too!) went to check which Victorian poet wrote these words – Stills’ stately song certainly has more in keeping with their work by Thomas Tallis and Henry Purcell (he gets your songs whiter than white!) than it does with the other pop songs on the record. With a sense of the vulnerability and hurt pride of the album recording, this is more than just intellectual rock too, with one of CSN’s best songs given one of their best treatments. A treasure.