The liner notes helpfully pinpoint the dates each of the songs were committed to posterity; for the most part the recordings came immediately in the wake of the underwhelming release of American Dream, proving that they didn’t pay attention to their own bad reviews. The hideous title track was contributed by constant sideman Joe Vitale and recorded as far back as 1986, which is only part of the problem, but it’s followed “If Anybody Had A Heart”, penned by buddies J.D. Souther and Danny Kortchmar, supposedly featuring Roger McGuinn on 12-string, and first heard over the closing credits of that same year’s About Last Night (aka Demi Moore’s finest nude scenes before the implants). Stills steps forward with two polar opposites. “Tomboy” is another Latin-tinged drag, while “Haven’t We Lost Enough” is a very appealing and welcome acoustic tune, even though it was written with the singer from REO Speedwagon. Crosby and Nash team up on “Yours And Mine”, which pleads for someone, someone to think of the children. (Guest star: Branford Marsalis on sax, what else?)
After that downer, Stills and Nash bring back the “carnivále!” atmosphere for the unnecessarily parenthesed “(Got To Keep) Open”, with Bruce Hornsby on piano and accordion somewhere in there. Nash thought well enough of the drummer from Go West to spearhead the inclusion of “Straight Line” (guest star: Peter Frampton!), followed by his own “House Of Broken Dreams”. “Arrows” is a Crosby collaboration with buddy Michael Hedges, who plays keyboards and not guitar on the track, perhaps to make room for Branford Marsalis again. This tune would have been a low light on any Hedges album, which might explain how it got here instead. Finally, there’s “After The Dolphin”, which is not about the endangered mammal for once, but refers to a pub destroyed during World War I. A different angle for an anti-war statement, but badly tied to a synth program that jars with the canned radio reports.
So that’s one decent song out of ten, and surprisingly, the best thing Stills did all decade. The rest of Live It Up is beyond defense, and deserves to be buried.
Crosby, Stills & Nash Live It Up (1990)—1
I asked my brother if I could borrow his CD. He told me not to bother to bring it back when I was done with it. That should have been a big clue.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t think that they could get worse than “American Dream”. This sounds less than a follow up to that album and more like one to Nash’s “Innocent Eyes”. There’s that same awful 80’s production, with lots of programming apparent. The choices of outside material were obviously influenced by him, and he sings half of the lead vocals.
His lapse of judgement is apparent from the start with the title track, which was recorded either during or right after the sessions for “IE”, well over a year before the sessions for “AD” started. While Joe Vitale would collaborate on several of the worst songs on “AD”, he wrote this turkey alone.
The band’s other touring keyboardist, Craig Doerge, was Nash’s main partner on “IE”. So, he “helps out” Graham once again by constructing more 80’s “soundscapes” for “Yours and Mine” and “After the Dolphin”. The total tackiness, once again, obscures the social commentary. Graham’s other three sung contributions are entirely dismissible, but “If Anybody Had a Heart” deserves its own special dig. Written by two of their L.A. sessioneer buddies, it has horribly ungrammatical lyrics (“If everyone had a heart/yours would never be broken”. Really?). You didn’t mention that the “About Last Night” version was sung by John Waite (ugh!). This only illustrates Nash’s further deteriorating taste.
It’s left for the other two to rescue the album, but fat chance of that. With “Arrows”, Crosby begins his descent into dull adult contemporary, which would continue into his solo career. As for Stills, even though he’s writing solo again, he didn’t bounce back from his debacles on “AD”. At least, we had a break from his Latinisms there. “Open” is his worst in that genre, because of the over processed production. “Tomboy” may be my new least favorite, thanks to the appalling lyrics, coming from a guy who was 45 years old when the album was released. Who did he think he was, Mike Love? That leaves, of course, “Haven’t We Lost Enough?”, the universal choice for best song. Their harmonies were a bit ragged, but it does sound like a CSN classic.
This, in fact, was their worst seller up to this point. They had learned a lesson from this critical and commercial drubbing by their next album, but it was too late. Nirvana came along to sweep a number of classic acts into the oldies column, including CSN. Oh well…