Andrew Wild - Crosby, Stills and Nash: Every Album, Every Song

Sonicbond Publishing Limited

www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk

Email: info@sonicbondpublishing.co.uk

First Published in the United Kingdom 2020

First Published in the United States 2020

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright Andrew Wild 2020

ISBN 978-1-78952-039-2

The right of Andrew Wild to be identified
as the author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Sonicbond Publishing Limited

Printed and bound in England

Graphic design and typesetting: Full Moon Media

Also by Andrew Wild:

108 Steps Around Macclesfield (Sigma Press, 1994 / 2nd edition, Rumble Strips, 2018)

Exploring Chester (Sigma Press, 1996 / re-publication, Rumble Strips, 2018)

Ever Forward (MADS, 1997)

Play On (Twelfth Night, 2009)

One for the Record (Avalon, 2013 / 2nd edition, 2018)

The Difficult Crossing (Stagescripts, 2016)

Pink Floyd Song by Song (Fonthill, 2017)

Queen On Track (Sonicbond, 2018)

The Beatles: An A-Z Guide to Every Song: On Track (Sonicbond, 2019)

Solo Beatles 1969-1980 On Track (Sonicbond, 2020)

James Bond On Screen (Sonicbond, 2021)

Dire Straits On Track (Sonicbond, 2021)

Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s (Sonicbond, 2021)

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Alan Pattinson, Debbie Kruger and Nick Clemson.

With love to Amanda, Rosie and Amy.

This ones dedicated to the memory of AR Bob Murphy.

We lost another one.

One cant deny what has happened to us in the past.
The secret is to enjoy and be proud of the music weve created and the people with whom we have been linked. Its all a long chain of involvement in the world.

Graham Nash, interviewed by Debbie Kruger, 1999.

Contents

Introduction

For me, it started in Oban, Scotland, in 1983.

Aged 17, I had read about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in my battered and well-thumbed 1977 edition of The Illustrated New Musical Express Encyclopaedia of Rock , which Im fairly certain was given to me by my school librarian a year or two beforehand. I soaked up every word of that book. The first album I heard by any of them was Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere , courtesy of a knock-off Saudi cassette lent by my long-term pal Nick Clemson. Imagine, the first Neil Young song I ever heard was Cinnamon Girl

And then, on that Scottish holiday, I picked up a cassette copy of So Far , the first CSNY compilation album released in 1974. Id like to think that it had been sitting there, in the rack of that Scottish record shop, for nine years. The albums eleven tracks comprised half of CSNYs entire studio output to date: Dj Vu, Helplessly Hoping, Wooden Ships, Teach Your Children, Ohio, Find the Cost of Freedom, Woodstock, Our House, Helpless, Guinnevere, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. Thats a strong line-up for any album. I was hooked and started to piece together their group and solo releases, mostly on vinyl, some as cassette copies. By age 19 I was collecting CSNY bootlegs: a triple-vinyl set of CSNY at Oakland in July 1974 comes to mind. Ive been lucky enough to see CSN twice, and Neil Young twice, once with Crazy Horse. The Crosby-Nash, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash concerts Ive seen in Manchester since 2005 have been sublime.

Crosby, Stills and Nash have released nearly fifty studio and live albums as solo artists, duos, trios and as a quartet with Neil Young. Add eight by The Hollies, six by The Byrds, three by Buffalo Springfield and two by The Rides then you have close to 800 songs. This is before we add over fifty solo albums by Neil Young, which are mercifully out of scope of this book.

Crosby, Stills and Nash On Track filters down this massive discography to their eight studio releases and three key live albums, examining each of these track by track. There is an opening chapter which explains how they came to work together and highlights the key songs from their work between 1963 and 1969. Compilations, archive releases and DVDs are also included in a separate chapter.

A further chapter discusses their many unfinished albums and solo and duo work outside the bands group releases, and there is a checklist of the 300 essential songs youll need to listen to if you want to gain a full understanding of their remarkable collective careers.

Ignore the egos, the tantrums, the break-ups, the reconciliations, the drugs, the madness. Go back to the music, where it all began and, eventually, will be all that remains.

Its really about the songs, man. The whole thing always comes down to the songs.

David Crosby interviewed by John Kwit and Dolf van Stijgeren, 2014

Andrew Wild, Rainow, Cheshire, 2020

CSN before CSN

1941: David Van Cortlandt Crosby was born in Los Angeles, on 14 August.

1942: Graham William Nash was born in Blackpool, on 2 February.

1945: Stephen Arthur Stills was born in Dallas, on 3 January.

1947: Nash meets Allan Clarke.

1956-1962: Nash and Clarke perform together as The Two Teens, the Guytones, Ricky and Dane and The Fourtones.

1962: David Crosby joins forces with singer Terry Callier in Chicago. They become part of the Greenwich Village scene in New York.

Nash and Clarke join Manchester band The Deltas.

Crosby joins Les Baxters Balladeers, a conservative folk group. An album, Les Baxters Balladeers , was released in 1963. Baxter himself, an easy-listening arranger and composer, was not part of the group.

Stills earliest available recording: Travelin, at Voice of America radio relay station in San Jose, Costa Rica.

The Deltas rename themselves The Hollies.

1963: Stephen Stills plays in a series of bands, including the Continentals which featured future Eagles guitarist Don Felder. He performs as a solo folk singer in New York.

Crosby leaves the Balladeers and joins the Los Angeles folk circuit. He records his first solo session.

The Hollies release their first three singles: (Aint That) Just Like Me, Searchin and Stay (their first top 10 hit).

1964: Stephen Stills joins the Au Go-Go Singers.

Through Terry Callier, David Crosby meets Roger (then Jim), McGuinn. They form the Jet Set with Gene Clark and after watching the Beatles film A Hard Days Night , add drummer Michael Clarke and bassist Chris Hillman to form The Beefeaters. The single Please Let Me Love You / Dont Be Long is released on 7 October but does not chart. They change their name to The Byrds.

The Hollies release three top ten singles: Just One Look, Here I Go Again and Were Through and the albums Stay with The Hollies and In the Hollies Style .

The Au Go-Go Singers album They Call Us Au Go-Go Singers is released. Stephen Stills sings lead vocals on one song: High Flying Bird.