Crosby, Stills & Nash - CSN (1977)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had been massively successful in the late 60s as one of rock's first supergroups, being musical figureheads of sort for the hippie movement. However they had only ever actually released two studio albums, and had broken up in 1971. All four of them had gone on to various levels of solo success in the 1970s. Neil Young had been the most successful, managing to follow his own path with no need for the others. Stephen Stills had released some good solo albums, and also for a while led the excellent band Manassas. David Crosby and Graham Nash had both released solo albums, but had seen more success working together as a duo. There was always hope that the four of them would reunite to record another album, and it was attempted in 1973 but the sessions got nowhere as personality conflicts got in the way. They did mange to get back together in 1974 for a reunion tour, but again there was no recorded output. As the 1970s progressed a new CSNY album seemed more and more unlikely.

Eventually the original three of them did get back together. Neil Young was busy with his own exciting solo career, but in 1976 Crosby, Stills & Nash reformed and started recording new material. The long awaited album came out in 1977. However by this time the musical climate around them had drastically changed, and the 60s hippie dream had become a distant memory. How would they fit in with the sounds of 1977? CSN was indeed very different to their original records, with a modern sheen to the production which let it fit in with the soft-rock aesthetics of the day. Though it was different, the songs were still excellent, and the vocal harmonies were as glorious as they had ever been.

It did turn out to be very commercial successful. It reached #2 on the album chart, and Nash's "Just A Song Before I Go" got to #7 when released as a single, actually being their highest charting single ever. It proved that they could still produce worthwhile music beyond the 60s when they did actually succeed in getting together and recording.

Deja Vu (1970) <|> Daylight Again (1982) 
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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Four Way Street (1971)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

After the success of their chart-topping Deja Vu album, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young went on tour together for a second time, accompanied by Fuzzy Samuels on bass and Johnny Barbata on drums. Recordings were made form the concerts, and a live album was produced. Shortly after the tour all four members released high-profile solo albums, the debuts of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and the third for Young. Many of the songs they had debuted on the tour appeared on record for the first time on these albums.
In 1971 the live album taken from the tour was released. Four Way Street was a two-LP set, divided between an acoustic disc and an electric disc. The acoustic segment featured all four members performing both by themselves and in various configurations, all of them getting to take the spotlight in turn. A notable inclusion was Neil Young's "On The Way Home", an old song he had originally written when with Buffalo Springfield (their version featured Richie Furay on vocals). He had been performing it in his solo set for years (usually as the opening song), but this was the first time his version had been released on record (the other three helping out with extra guitar and vocals). Crosby also sang "Triad", a song he had written and recorded when with The Byrds, but never released (Jefferson Airplane instead had released the first version of it), and "The Lee Shore", a number he performed with Nash for years, but did not see its studio version released until their 1991 box set (also available here). The electric half let Stills and Young resume the extensive electric guitar workouts they had originally performed with Buffalo Springfield, in particular on the long jams of "Southern Man" and "Carry On".
The album got to #1. However behind the scenes, tensions between the four members were high, and eventually they were stretched to breaking point. By the time of the album's release, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had officially broken up, and they all went back to work on their respective solo careers (though Crosby & Nash continued to work as a duo). There would be various attempted reunions over the years, and they did tour again in 1974, but attempts to record together again took a long time to see any results. Crosby, Stills & Nash managed to release albums in 1977 and 1982, but another album credited to all four of them had to wait until 1988.

This version of Four Way Street is actually the 1992 expanded edition, which features four bonus acoustic tracks.

Deja Vu (1970) <|> CSN (1977)
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Crosby, Stils, Nash & Young - Find The Cost Of Freedom (1969-1973)

Compilation
Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

Shortly after the massive success of their Deja Vu album, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly followed it by the fantastic single "Ohio". The song was written by Neil Young as a reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 1970, and it quickly made it to #14 on the singles charts. It is today both one of the band's and Young's best-known songs.
However the song and its fantastic Stills-written b-side ("Find The Cost Of Freedom") were never actually released on an album, barring greatest hits packages and live albums. Therefore I've put this ten-song compilation together, both songs bookending a selection of outtakes. Four of these songs were released on the band's 1991 box set, whilst the other four are rarities.
The best song here is surely David Crosby's "The Lee Shore". A live solo version of this song was released on Four Way Street, but this studio outtake (with full band arrangement) is really something else, and perhaps even one of the best ever CSNY recordings. There's also a fantastic version of Joni Mitchell's "Urge For Going", and acoustic readings of The Beatles' "Blackbird" and Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" (the latter performed solo by Stills). For Neil Young fans, there is an early group version of "Human Highway", and a fantastic rocking studio cut of "Sea Of Madness" (a song which has never been released except the live version on the Woodstock soundtrack).

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu (1970)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

After the success of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the trio had to think about going on tour. However to perform as a full electric band they needed extra members. In the end they chose to bring in Neil Young, who had played with Stills in Buffalo Springfield, and had recently started out on his own solo career. Now a quartet, they became Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Stills and Young gave them a formidable double lead guitar attack, and between the four of them they could handle all acoustic and electric guitars as well as keyboard duties. And with four practicing singer-songwriters on board, they already had a huge repertoire of material. They kept drummer Dallas Taylor on board, who had played on their debut album, and brought in 19-year-old Motown bassist Greg Reeves to complete the touring outfit. Young's contract allowed him to continue with his solo career whilst he performed with the group. They went on tour in summer 1969 - their second ever gig together was at the Woodstock Festival. The folk-rock supergroup were becoming a huge success, and expectations were high when they came to record their next album.
Deja Vu proved to differ somewhat from the first album. The group broadened their pallette, resulting in a more diverse collection of songs (and perhaps a less consistent record for that reason). More so than the first album it sounded like a coalition of four singer-songwriters rather than a band. Crosby and Nash's signature songwriting styles become even more apparent. Crosby contributed the hippie blues lament "Almost Cut My Hair" and the surreal, dream-like title track, whilst Nash came up with the radio-friendly country-rock of "Teach Your Children" and the whimsical ode to domesticity of "Our House". Stills contributed the opening song "Carry On", which defined the archetypal CSNY sound, and the quiet solo number "4+20". Young wrote two songs, the slow, aching "Helpless" (which became one of his best-loved songs) and the three-part suite "Country Girl". They also recorded a rocking version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock", and "Everybody I Love You" was a collaboration between Young and Stills. Most of the instruments were played by the four of them with Taylor and Reeves, but there were also guest appearances from Jerry Garcia on pedal steel and John Sebastian on harmonica.
However, was the album actually the perfect coalition that the record sleeve would have you believe? Crosby & Nash added their superb vocal harmonies to all the songs except Stills' solo number, and Stills himself is on every song playing some instrument or another even if he's not singing. But what of Young? Apart from his own two songs he doesn't sing anywhere else, and just adds guitar to three others. He was always the outsider in the foursome (perhaps because he didn't rely on the others - he had by far the most successful solo career), and his presence on Deja Vu is really as a guest guitarist who gets to sing two of his own songs. Various personality clashes and power struggles meant the group eventually imploded after their 1970 tour, and despite numerous sporadic reunions over the years that continue to the present day, they have never come close to the quality of their first two classic albums, upon which their whole reputation as folk-rock's first and foremost supergroup rests.
Because despite the group's hidden flaws, Deja Vu was a commerical success. It reached #1 on the pop album charts, and "Woodstock", "Our House" and "Teach Your Children" all reached the Top 40 on the singles charts.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) <|> Four Way Street (1971)
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Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

The roots of folk-rock's first supergroup goes back to the genre's first popular group - The Byrds. David Crosby had been a founding member of The Byrds, where he sang harmony and played rhythm guitar. However as he began to develop as a songwriter and artistic force in his own right he started to fall out with the rest of the group. After five albums, he was dismissed from the band in Autumn 1967. Buffalo Springfield, another top folk-rock group from L.A., had fallen apart by 1968, leaving guitarist/singer/songwriter Stephen Stills at a loose end. Stills and Crosby were already friends, as both their bands had toured together, and they began to jam in '68. They decided to form a group together, and the trio was filled out by Englishman Graham Nash. Nash was a member of British group The Hollies, but he had begun to grow creatively frustrated, and was eager to embrace the changing musical directions happening in America. He left the Hollies, and folk-rock's first supergroup was formed - Crosby, Stills & Nash (otherwise knows as CSN). They were not just a band, but a coalition of three already successful musicians, each a skilled songwriter and talented singer in his own right. As all three of them were already famous, expectations were high, and when their self-titled debut album came out it did not disappoint.
What made it so unique were the vocal harmonies - the sound of the three of them singing together made for something truly magical. Built on a bed-rock of acoustic folk-rock, their harmonies took the genre to places it hadn't been before. All three of them brought their own unique songwriting styles - Stills fused folk, country and blues together in a rock context and produced archetypal CSN songs ("Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", "You Don't Have To Cry", "Helplessly Hoping", "49 Bye-Byes"), whilst the other two contributed the polar extremes of this sound. Crosby wrote the surreal, dream-like "Guinnevere", whilst Nash produced the melodic radio-friendly "Marrakesh Express". "Wooden Ships" was authored by Stills, Crosby and Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner, and the Airplane recorded their own version the same year on their Volunteers album.
This debut album was very much dominated by Stills. He played almost all the instruments himself (acoustic and electric guitars, bass, organ and percussion), apart from the drums which were played by Dallas Taylor, and it is his songs which define the CSN sound best. However without Crosby & Nash it would never have been anywhere near as special. The album rocketed the three of them to the very top of the American rock & roll counter-culture, reaching #6 on the charts. In their long career together (on and off throughout the years, but still working together to this day), their classic first album has never been bettered.

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