I promised I would be bringing back my occasional Listen To The Band series, and was planning to do so a couple of weeks ago before the sudden untimely passing of Sinead O’Connor took me down another path. As I said then, I had chosen the band and the songs, and am now ready to go. For anyone who hasn’t seen one of these before, I started them back in 2021 and ran five that year, plus another last September. All of the previous posts are available from the links in the header. In these pieces I take a more detailed look at one of my favourite bands or artists, and play you a whole batch of their songs. The posts are longer than my norm, but you aren’t compelled to take them all in at the first attempt! What you get is some information and a load of great music. For the series return I’m featuring Crosby Stills Nash & Young: regular readers will know I love their music!

Wikipedia describes them thus: “Crosby, Stills & Nash (CS&N) was a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young as a fourth member, they were called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y). They are noted for their intricate vocal harmonies and lasting influence on American music and culture, as well as their political activism and often tumultuous interpersonal relationships.” That seems a fair outline of the band, not least the relationships part: it was well documented that other members had difficulties with David Crosby at various times, though I’m not sure if they had resolved those sufficiently to be able to work together again before David died this past January. They originally formed as CS&N in 1968 shortly after the trio had performed together informally in July of that year, discovering they harmonised well. David had been asked to leave the Byrds in late 1967 (spot the pattern?), Stephen’s band Buffalo Springfield had broken up in early 1968, and Graham left his band The Hollies in December 1967. Their first album was released in May 1969, peaking at #6 in the US and #25 in the UK. I’ve played several of its songs before, including the album’s opener, which featured last month in a Song Lyric Sunday post. At the risk of repetition, this is the live performance I gave you then:

An absolutely superb version of an epic song. This one was also released as a single, making #21 in the US. I got the album as an advance birthday present that year, as a little reward for managing to keep committed to my first full time (six days a week) summer holiday job: my Mum liked The Hollies, and Graham Nash was her favourite, so she was quite keen to hear what his new band were like. We listened to it together, and at the end of this track her response was, simply, “Wow!” I think she summed it up rather well. The title Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (a play on words for “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes”) refers to Stephen Stills’ former girlfriend, singer/songwriter Judy Collins, and the lyrics are his thoughts about her and their imminent breakup.

The second song on that first album was also released as a single, and I’d imagine it is familiar to many:

Marrakesh Express was actually the first single taken from the album, released in July 1969 and reaching #28 in the US and #17 in the UK. It was written by Graham and again Wikipedia has been kind enough to fill in the details: “Nash recalled his inspiration for the song occurring during a Moroccan vacation he took in 1966. On the trip, Nash traveled by train from Casablanca to Marrakesh. He began the journey in First Class, surrounded by people he found to be uninteresting – as he described it, they were all “ladies with blue hair.” He decided the compartment was “completely fucking boring,” so left his seat to explore the other train carriages, and was fascinated by what he saw.” The imagery of ducks and pigs and chickens is what he did see on the journey, making the song a kind of mini-travelogue. He had offered it to The Hollies, but they rejected it as not being sufficiently commercial. I think it found its proper home in the end, anyway.

I’m playing you a third track from that album. This was actually released as the B-side to Marrakesh Express, and I’ve always thought it a beautiful song. This is a later live performance, from 1991:

Helplessly Hoping was written by Stephen Stills, and I probably don’t need to say any more: just listen to the beauty of the music. The album has sold more than 6.5m copies worldwide, and is to this day one of my all time favourites.

By the time of their second album the band had been joined by Neil Young, making them into CSN&Y. Their first as a four piece was Déjà Vu, and it included this one, which I have played several times before and have used as a feature song for posts. It is another Graham Nash song, which was originally recorded for their first album but not included on it. They then re-recored it for Déjà Vu, although without Neil Young’s involvement. This live version from 1970 (with what looks like a later version added as an encore) is just the original trio, and it is a song which I think speaks volumes to us:

The album was released in March 1970 and reached #1 in the US and several other countries, and peaked at #5 in the UK. Teach Your Children was the second single taken from it, in May 1970, and got to #16 in the US. It didn’t make the UK chart: the only top 50 hit they have ever had here here was Marrakesh Express. I find that very strange, but we’ve always been good at ignoring great music and shovelling crap into our charts!

The first single taken from Déjà Vu was their version of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock, which got to #11 in the US. I preferred its B-side, though:

Helpless is, as you can no doubt tell from the vocals, a Neil Young song. It is one of those songs that still has the ability to make the hairs stand up on your neck – it is that beautiful – and has always been one of my favourite tracks on the album. Neil also played this at the final concert by The Band, which became the movie The Last Waltz. On backing vocals for him was a fellow Canadian: Joni Mitchell. As a bonus, here is a link to a stunning cover version by the Cowboy Junkies – like Neil and Joni they are from Canada, and they really up the ‘spine tingling’ factor with it.

I’m playing you just one more from the band as a four piece, and will then close with two stand out tracks from a later trio album. This is another you will probably know:

Ohio was written by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970. It was recorded on 21 May, just 17 days later, and was rush released as single in early June, peaking at #14 in the US and #16 in Canada. Again, it wasn’t a UK hit, but I can recall it getting much airplay here, as befits one of the most powerful protest songs I know. The shootings of Kent State students received much news coverage here and around the world, and rightly so: they were outrageous, and it is sad that more than fifty years on there seem to be some politicians in the States who would probably do the same thing to quell protests. The song has been on live CS&N albums and compilations, but never on a a studio release.

The final two that I’m sharing are both from the CS&N album Daylight Again, released in June 1982 and getting to #8 in the US. I’ve played this first one several times before and have remarked that it is my favourite of all of their songs, so I wasn’t leaving it out today, was I! Another piece of musical beauty:

I absolutely love everything about this track, and the video is a great accompaniment for it. The song is based on Seven League Boots, which was written by Rick and Michael Curtis. Stephen explained, “The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song, but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It’s about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds. Once again, I was given somebody’s gem and cut and polished it.” It was released as a single in September 1982 and reached #18 in the US: their last US top twenty singles chart appearance.

That might have been an appropriate closing point, but I wanted to save another for the last. This one:

Wasted On The Way is about how we don’t always make the best of the opportunities life gives us, and how we might come to regret that. Having been about wasting time for most of the song, the final chorus takes that into the wider context of love:

So much love to make up everywhere you turn
Love we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away

The song was written by Graham, and the recorded version features harmony vocals by Timothy B Schmit of Eagles fame. At the time the album was released, David was addicted to crack cocaine and was actually in prison, having been arrested in May 1982 in Texas. He was released but eventually served eight months jail time in 1985/6. The story goes that Neil Young had said that he would rejoin the band if David could clean himself up: he managed that, and the result was the band’s 1988 album American Dream. It isn’t their best record, which is why I’m not playing anything from it, but as the video of this song was recorded for MTV in 1990 you can probably tell how much it meant to them and their friendship that they were back together again.

The band finally broke up in 2016, after Graham and David had become estranged beyond the point at which they might record and tour again together. That summer Neil told Rolling Stone that he wouldn’t “rule out” future collaborations with the trio; according to Graham in a follow-up interview, “Well, he’s right, you never know. There have been times when I’ve been so pissed at us all for wasting time and not getting on with the job that I wouldn’t talk to any of them. But if Crosby came and played me four songs that knocked me on my ass, what am I supposed to do as a musician, no matter how pissed we are at each other?” In a May 2021 interview for CBS News Sunday Morning, he said “when that silver thread that connects a band gets broken it’s very difficult to glue the ends together,” but also suggested reuniting with David and the others would be preferable “because of the loss of the music.”

Sadly, it never happened, and after David’s passing it never will now. But the band, in whichever incarnation you look at, has left us an amazing legacy of wonderful songs, at the heart of which are their beautiful harmonies. As my Mum put it all the way back in 1969: “Wow!”