CSN Bio
By Chet Flippo
as it appeared in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Program 1997
When the unprepossessing album Crosby, Stills and Nash was released
in 1969, it flew in the face of the predominant rock & roll wisdom
of the day. Gentle folkish harmonies going up against mega-wattage
Telecasters and Strats? Forget it. Wistful fairy tales about wooden
ships on the water competing with smash-your-head-against-the-wall
full-blown rock and roll? Not gonna happen, man. No way. Get those
wimps outta here! Then a funny thing happened. CS&N happened,
and happened in a big way. To get back to 1969 in the rock and
roll world, that year began as the War of the Guitar Giants. Led
by Jimi Hendrix’s blistering attack, decibels were crashing through
the ceiling. Eric Clapton had just debuted the much-ballyhooed
supergroup Blind Faith with a free concert for 100,000 in London’s
Hyde Park. The Who were just unleashing Tommy. And, even as the
Beatles were breaking up, rock was beginning to discover and test
it’s emerging political and economic power. In the midst of all
this Sturm and Drang, a quiet revolution was waiting in the wings.
In May 1969, CS&N unleashed upon the rock world three-part harmony
with an attitude (and a conscience).
The album had an immediate and lasting impact on both it’s audience
and and the musical community at large. Rolling Stone, which would
develop a tempestuous relationship with the group CS&N, noticed
the album CS&N (although the lead review in that issue was of
the Bonzo Dog Band). “The combination of talents creates a great
sound,” Rolling Stone opined, “and it is a new sound, not merely
music derived from the styles of previous groups. The vocals are
warm and full, with a built-in kinecticism produced by three good
voices emerging asynchronously on the same phrase, with rich,
complementary harmonies reminiscent of Moby Grape’s ‘8:05’.”
Well. That CS&N emerged from the considerable shadow cast by the
late Moby Grape is testament indeed to the group’s staying power.
At any rate, CS&N quickly became rock’s royalty. Their acoustic
music and soaring harmonies effected a permanent shift in American
popular music. Before you could say “Eagles”, there were a hundred
clone bands flourishing.
The fact that CS&N defied convention and went against the grain
of hip rock & roll only served to endear them to their fans. They
also, their fans learned to their eternal appreciation and delight,
were determined to be a fiercely democratic group, as opposed
to the aristocratic bands that rock was breeding. CS&N played
and sang people’s music that they were writing and performing,
and by God, they would act as a people’s band, never rising above
their peers and - above all - living out their professional and
personal lives in public; in sheer view of everyone.
Within the space of six short months, the pattern had pretty much
been set for their lives and careers. They immediately added a
fourth member - Neil Young - although his permanence was up to
debate (as was the group’s, at different times). They were the
stellar attraction at the stellar event, Woodstock (as only their
second gig), and they played the other big people’s gatherings
at Altamont and Big Sur. They played an unprecedented seven-night,
sold-out engagement at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre as their hometown
debut. They blew audiences away at The Fillmore East and in the
process began an internecine warfare that continued in the group
for years. They proved that CS&N (&Y) was a group of equals with
no leader or even leaders. They almost broke up and then set off
to begin a second album. And they continued to make beautiful
music that struck a chord deep in the hearts of a huge number
of listeners.
David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash brought with them
a considerable body of work, an impressive list of songs and a
simmering anger at the nature of groups in rock & roll and at
earlier group experiences that had soured them. The fierce sense
of independence that drove each of them was strong enough to nullify
the possibility of a group effort - had it not been for the fact
that each of them knew straight away that they needed each other
to create a music that was so much more than the sum of it’s parts.
Personally, I will never forget taking a friend to her first CS&N
concert and hearing her ecstatic reaction to what she heard and
saw. The band was extremely visual then: Crosby resembled a swaggering
Buffalo Bill, Stills was a virtual Beach Boy and Nash came straight
out of Dickens. But what most impressed my friend was the almost
mystical allure of the group. She told me the reason CS&N was
so good was that they represented the elements; Crosby was the
water, Stills was fire and Nash, earth. United, she said, they
could not fail.
They initially seemed unlikely allies. David Crosby had been fired
from the Byrds, mainly because of attitudinal clashes with the
group. Things, built to a head over the Byrds’ rejection of Crosby’s
song “Triad” (later recorded by both the Jefferson Airplane and
by CSN&Y, it’s threesome-romance theme was unusual even by rock
standards). Stephen Stills had carried the group Buffalo Springfield
along by the sheer force of his will, long after that brilliant
but doomed band should have faltered. He also clashed frequently
with fellow Springfielder Neil Young. Graham Nash had become miserable
in the Hollies in England and finally left over musical differences,
the chief one being that he didn’t want to record a Vegas-style
album of Dylan songs. His breaking point came when the group spurned
his “Sleep Song” as being too realistic in its depiction of sex.
There is no agreement among the group members as to the exact
time and place when and where CS&N discovered their own peculiar
brand of three-part harmony. Crosby remembered that it was either
at Joni Mitchell’s or Cass Elliot’s place. “Cass was the one who
introduced me to Graham,” he recalled. “Joni had been romantically
involved with me and then fell in love with Graham. It could’ve
happened either place.”
Stills insists that “the first song was sung in Cass’s dining
room, looking out at the pool John Sebastian was swimming in.
We went to Joni’s from there.”
Says Nash, “To this day I believe that it was in Joni’s living
room. Cass is the very reason why all of this took place in the
first place. It was Cass who befriended me when I came to Hollywood,
it was Cass who introduced me to Crosby, and Crosby and Cass introduced
me to Stephen. Me being a harmony freak and being the high harmony
in the Hollies, when David and Stephen were singing ‘You Don’t
Have to Cry’, they were singing the two parts and they started
to show off because they wanted to show me that they had worked
on it very diligently. It sounded great, and I asked them to sing
it a second time. They looked at each other and sang it a second
time. Then I asked them to sing it again, and I had by then a
rough idea what my part would be. It turned out to be nothing
short of musical magic. When we heard ourselves for the first
time, it was truly astonishing to us as musicians that these three
people from such diverse backgrounds can meld and come together
with that sound.”
After the first album and the heady rush of success, they were
rehearsing for a four-night gig at Winterland. One afternoon,
Crosby’s love, Christine Gale Hinton, took the cats out to the
vet. She was killed in a head-on collision, and Crosby was never
the same. Their album went gold that day.
They carried on, finishing the Deja Vu album, which was full of
brilliant songs, including Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”, Stills
“Carry On” and Nash’s “Teach Your Children.” Even so, the album
had been difficult to finish, given three entirely different sensibilities
and different work modes. The Carry On Tour wound through America
and Europe in 1970, pioneered the use of self contained massive
light and sound equipment. Then, the group broke up in Chicago
after backstage bickering. They had all agreed at the start that
the group was something they shared but was not all that they
were or would be. Says Nash, “We wanted to let people know that
we weren’t a band in the traditional sense, that we were individuals
who would come together in a group dynamic whenever and with whomever
felt like.”
Deja Vu shipped two million copies, and “Teach Your Children”
was a hit in addition to becoming a hippie anthem. Then came the
Kent State University incident, in which National Guardsmen opened
fire on protesters, killing four. CSN&Y responded with the song
“Ohio”, and that was done, says Nash, for their audience. “I think
the listeners felt less alone,” he recalled, “and less crazy and
less isolated, because I think they recognize that in speaking
for ourselves we were speaking for them too. Now, what other band
would have a song like 'Teach Your Children' racing up the charts
and then immediately kill it stone dead when four students were
killed? Neil wrote ‘Ohio,’ and we recorded it and put it out within
ten days. People in the business thought we were absolutely crazy.”
That sort of commitment will remain a major part of the group’s
continuing legacy of what Nash from the beginning called making
“beautiful and meaningful music.” The meaningful or activist or
politically aware side of the group now amounts to a considerable
list of songs (as well as movements to which they allied): “Long
Time Gone”, “Southern Man”, “49 Bye-Bye’s”, “Military Madness”,
“Barrel of Pain”, “Soldiers of Peace”, “After the Dolphin”, “Find
the Cost of Freedom”, “To The Last Whale”.
“We’ve just tried to be true to ourselves,” Nash says. “I think
one reason people love this band is that they see three people
up there who are going through the same changes its audience is
going through and doing it publicly, and that takes a certain
amount of courage. We could have dodged it, could have hidden
behind smoke bombs and naked girls running around onstage and
slow motion and all that shit. But we never wanted it. Because
that’s not important. What’s important is the emotional connection
between us and our audience.”