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Crosby, Stills & Nash Concert BackStage Passes
6 Backstage Passes beautifully framed with a CSNY photo |
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About this item
The close, high harmonies and soft-rock songs of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, sometimes joined by Neil Young, sold millions of albums and were widely imitated throughout the '70s. The members were as volatile as their songs were dulcet, and since 1970 have continually split up and regrouped. Crosby, Stills and Nash - all singer/songwriter/guitarists - had already recorded before their debut LP, Crosby, Stills and Nash, was released in 1969: Crosby with the Byrds [see entry], Stills and Young with Buffalo Springfield [see entry], and Nash with the Hollies [see entry].
Crosby had worked as a solo performer before joining the Byrds in 1964. In 1967 he quit because of differences with leader Roger “Jim” McGuinn, among them McGuinn’s refusal to allow onto Notorious Byrd Bros. Crosby’s “Triad,” a song about a menage à trios that the Jefferson Airplane recorded on Crown of Creation; Crosby sang it on Four Way Street (and the Byrds’ recording of it eventually surfaced on the 1990 Byrds box set). Crosby began preparation for a solo album, which eventually appeared in 1971 as If I Could Only Remember My Name. He also produced Joni Mitchell’s debut album in 1968; Mitchell’s “Woodstock” later became a hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Young had quit Buffalo Springfield on the eve of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and Crosby sat in for him at that concert. After the Springfield broke up in May 1968, Stills and Crosby began jamming together and were soon joined by Nash. Nash, who had been dissatisfied with the Hollies - they had refused to record his “Marrakesh Express” and “Lady of the Island” - joined Crosby and Stills. The three first sang together at a party in the L.A. home of Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas.
Recorded early in 1969, Crosby, Stills and Nash was an immediate hit, with singles “Marrakesh Express” (#28) and Stills’ “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (#21) (about Judy Collins). At the helm was Stills, playing nearly every instrument on the album, a feat that earned him the nickname Captain Manyhands. Although the trio’s harmonies were less than perfect outside the recording studio, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young began touring in midyear (Young joined them in summer 1969; Stills had originally asked John Sebastian, formerly of the Lovin’ Spoonful, to round out the group). Their second live appearance was before half a million people at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969.
The quartet’s first album, Déjà Vu, took two months to make and had advance orders for 2 million copies - it eventually went on to sell over 7 million - and included three hit singles: “Woodstock” (#11, 1970), “Teach Your Children” (#16, 1970), and “Our House” (#30, 1970). A few weeks after Déjà Vu’s release, the National Guard shot and killed four students during an antiwar demonstration at Kent State University. In response, Young wrote “Ohio,” which the group recorded and released as a single (#14, 1970). They toured that summer, but by the time the double live album Four Way Street was released, they had disbanded. The planned next album, Human Highway, was started in 1973 but was left unfinished. Young later recorded a single and produced a motion picture of the same title. Released in 1982, it failed to find a distributor, but came out on video in 1995.
Crosby and Nash released solo and duo albums in the early ’70s and toured together, while Young returned to his solo career, and Stills started his. Stills’ solo debut, which included “Love the One You’re With” (#4, 1971), featured guest guitarists Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. In 1974 the quartet toured together for the first time since 1970; Young traveled separately. Stills and Young made a duet album, Long May You Run, in 1976, but Young suddenly left Stills mid-tour.
In 1977 Crosby, Stills and Nash regrouped for the quadruple-platinum CSN, which included “Just a Song Before I Go” (#7, 1977). The next summer they toured as an acoustic trio, and in the fall of 1979 they performed at the antinuclear benefit concerts sponsored by Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE). In 1980 the British-born Nash was granted American citizenship. In 1982 the trio released Daylight Again, for which Stills wrote most of the songs, and toured arenas once more. Daylight was a Top 10 LP and boasted two Top 20 singles, “Wasted on the Way” (#9) and “Southern Cross” (#18).
In 1985 Crosby - who’d already had a number of run-ins with the law and been charged with drug and weapons possession - was sentenced to prison for nine months after leaving the drug rehabilitation program he was allowed to enter instead of serving a five-year prison sentence for possessing cocaine and carrying a gun. He appeared with Stills, Nash and Young at Live Aid while out on appeal bond. Shortly after his release from prison in 1986, he wrote a compelling account of his long-term drug abuse entitled Long Time Gone, which was published in 1990. The four reunited to record American Dream (#16, 1989), after which Young refused to tour with his ex–band mates. The trio’s next release, CSN - a reissue with unreleased tracks - did not crack the Top 100.
By the ’90s, Young’s solo status as “Godfather of Grunge” had been established. Nash had been successful with Nash Editions, specializing in digital fine-art printing, as a photographer, and as a host of his own cable television talk show. Crosby had received a liver transplant in 1994 shortly after the release of After the Storm. In 1995 he reunited with a son, James Raymond, whom the child’s mother had given up for adoption in 1962; as CPR, David and Raymond have recorded three albums. By the decade’s end, Crosby had also achieved notoriety as the sperm donor for celebrity lesbian mothers Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher.
In 1999, largely at the instigation of Stephen Stills, CSN&Y re-formed to record Looking Forward. Earlier that year, Nash had broken both legs in a boating accident, but the group’s spirits and creativity were sufficiently high for the album to garner critical praise. It was followed by the ¬band’s first tour since 1974, a heavily hyped cross-country trek entitled the CSNY2K Tour that featured studio veteran Jim Keltner on drums and Donald “Duck” Dunn of Booker T. and the MG’s on bass.
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