CSN 14: Live At Fillmore East

The big question wasn’t so much why this came out when it did as what took them so long. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had been playing gigs for only a few months when they did a stint at New York’s Fillmore East. (Ten days after these shows, Crosby’s live-in girlfriend would be dead in a car accident, just as they began recording what would become Déjà Vu.)

For decades, 4 Way Street was the only comprehensive live document, captured just as they were starting to fray and splinter. Culled from the two shows on the second night of the stand, Live At Fillmore East is structured the same way, but goes back to the beginning, with the original rhythm section of Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves still on board.

The debut album was still new at these shows, and the joy of singing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” is as fresh as their excitement over what they could do with the Beatles’ “Blackbird”. They can’t help but giggle their way through “Helplessly Hoping”, but calm down a bit for “Guinnevere”. “Lady Of The Island” nicely highlights the Crosby-Nash blend, then Stephen previews “Go Back Home” and “4+20”, with Neil coming out for “On The Way Home” in between. (Only Stephen knows the words, as the other two haven’t figured out what to add yet.) Graham plays “Our House” at the organ—you can just hear the slightest high-hat in the back—and it’s cute, but a little jarring. A few people in the crowd recognize “I’ve Loved Her So Long”, and Graham adds a nice part before they all join in on “You Don’t Have To Cry”.

The wooden portion over, it’s time to rock. “Long Time Gone” and “Wooden Ships” are duly played with Neil and Stephen goading each other. After a drop in volume, “Bluebird Revisited” is a nice surprise from a 55-year perspective. “Sea Of Madness” should be familiar from its strange appearance on the Woodstock 2 compilation, and “Down By The River” runs over 16 minutes, in an initially more intricate version, for lack of a better word than any Crazy Horse rendition. And since you can’t end a CSNY concert without “Find The Cost Of Freedom”, that’s how the disc ends.

The album is dedicated to David Crosby, and brings the listener as well as the artists back to a time when they could still get lost in the wonder of music without too much of the egos getting in the way. In addition to hearing Graham yell “yeah!” after nearly every song, the other three each contribute paragraphs of appreciation to help drive it home. Given the potential, it’s just a shame they didn’t include both shows, complete.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Live At Fillmore East, 1969 (2024)—3½

Graham Nash 10: Now

While he hadn’t suddenly scaled a prolific streak comparable to that of erstwhile partner David Crosby, it was something of a surprise to get a new Graham Nash within ten years of the last one. Now finds him in his eighties, supported by his stalwart touring band, with a state-of-the-Graham address that’s immediately engaging.

His subject matter has barely mutated since 1970—you know, love and politics, not that we’d expect anything different—so there are no bonus points for guessing what “Stars And Stripes”, “Love Of Mine”, or “Follow Your Heart” address. Still, “Right Now” and “Golden Idols” have a spark and tension that have been missing since the Crosby-Nash albums with The Section backing them up, while “A Better Life” and “It Feels Like Home” are more country-tinged sentiments. “Stand Up” loads on some tasty guitars for a fairly pedestrian message, and then there’s “Buddy’s Back”, a reverie in the style of Buddy Holly sung with Hollies mate Allan Clarke. A string quartet provides “Theme From Pastoral”, one of Alan Price’s pieces for the cult film O Lucky Man!, and they continue on the sentimental “In A Dream”, but its use on “I Watched It All Come Down” seems odd, given that it addresses his feelings about the collapse of CSN. It’s followed by the closing piano ballad of “When It Comes To You”.

Now isn’t earth-shaking, but he still sounds good. With the exception of Allan Clarke on that one song, all the vocals are his, and he harmonizes well with himself.

Graham Nash Now (2023)—3

Graham Nash 9: Live

Graham Nash clearly has no qualms about revisiting his catalog to any extent, and in 2019 he undertook a tour wherein his excellent band performed his first two solo albums track by track, in order. Four years later, Live: Songs For Beginners/Wild Tales was culled from four shows, and delivers exactly what the title promises. Outside of a brief greeting before each section, we just hear them play the songs.

The band clearly did their homework, as many of the songs are in much lower keys than they were on the original records, but he’s still in good voice. “Sleep Song” hasn’t aged well, but “There’s Only One” gets a good response for the sax solos and choir. The second half drags a bit, mostly because Wild Tales wasn’t as good as Songs For Beginners, and even the band can’t save it, though Shane Fontayne does a nice job of copping David Lindley’s original licks. The Nixon soundbites in “Grave Concern” have been replaced by Trump rants, and that five-letter word makes it into some of the other songs where the opportunity rises.

Overall the performances are warm and cozy, but as an album they only underscore that the real excitement was likely best experienced in person. Yet we’re always happy to be reminded how good some of his stuff was, and still is.

Graham Nash Live: Songs For Beginners/Wild Tales (2022)—3

Graham Nash 8: Over The Years

For no reason we can fathom, except maybe that the oldest song was turning fifty, Graham Nash decided to put together an anthology of his work. Over The Years… consisted of two discs—one of the album tracks we all know, and the other with demo versions of eight of the songs, plus seven others.

The first disc is enjoyable by itself. Most of it features Crosby, Stills, and sometimes Young, and from the fertile four-year period that straddled the turn of the ‘70s. Starting with “Marrakesh Express”, there are no real surprises or eye-raisers. Two of the five Songs For Beginners tracks are “previously unreleased mixes” for those who notice such things. Just one song comes from the ‘80s, and the disc ends with “Myself At Last” from his most recent album.

The demos disc is mostly previously unreleased, and provides an alternative view of most of the same period. These aren’t the lo-fi cassette variety we often get with demos, but studio-quality recordings. Beginning again with “Marrakesh Express”, it continues chronologically but still doesn’t get past 1972 until the last three songs. Each track is denoted with not only the year, but the city where it was recorded. Generally the demos aren’t too different from the final product, but there are some rarities. There’s “Horses Through A Rainstorm”, recorded by both the Hollies and CSNY but not released until decades later by either of them. The intricacies of “Pre-Road Downs” turn out to be built-in, which is unexpected, just as the piano on “Wind On The Water” is better than we thought him capable. (“Just A Song Before I Go” is another surprise on piano.) “Man In The Mirror” sports an almost jaunty intro that went unused, and “I Miss You” and “You’ll Never Be The Same”—both from Wild Tales—actually work better here. “Wasted On The Way” features Stephen Stills and Timothy B. Schmit, just like the album version would.

But for the repetition, Over The Years… nicely recaps what people like about Graham Nash. It also says something about his output that he seems to have very little that hasn’t been heard, nor does he put much stock into much over the last three decades.

Graham Nash Over The Years… (2018)—3

Graham Nash 7: This Path Tonight

One might think Graham Nash was busy curating his past, between CSN-related box sets, printing old photos, and writing a memoir in which he extolled the genius of his partners and his happy existence as a family man. But within a few years, he’d left his wife, took up with a younger woman, and vowed to never work with David Crosby again. He also made his first solo album in fourteen years.

This Path Tonight is notable among his work in that it was written completely in collaboration with another, lesser-known musician. Oddly, that musician was Shane Fontayne, who’d been a large presence on David Crosby’s most recent first-album-in-years. Nonetheless, it was a smart move, as Graham has a tendency to play in a very small sandbox.

The title track and “Myself At Last” cover the same basic metaphorical ground as depicted on the cover (hint: he’s on a lonely road and traveling, traveling, traveling), alternately edgy and contemplative. “Cracks In The City” and “Beneath The Waves” both consider the ongoing struggles humanity in such a cruel world, and to some extent, so does “Fire Down Below”, but it stands out thanks to a vibe more along the lines of his mid-‘70s work. “Another Broken Heart” would seem to be designed to comfort the woman he left, but comes off more berating than sympathetic.

He finally seems to address his future in “Target” with its blatantly phallic imagery of what he’s going to do with his bow and arrow. Then, he looks back at when he “used to be in a band” and music was all anybody needed in “Golden Days”. There’s a sad fake string arrangement here, and that mood continues on “Back Home”, a blunt examination of the end of life, on which “Encore” expands more kindly, touching on passing lovers, friends, and concerts. Only on the digital and download versions of the album does he get political, with the racial charged “Mississippi Burning” and “Watch Out For The Wind”, while “The Last Fall” is another melancholy end-of-relationship tune.

Throughout This Path Tonight, the band is well-placed and the production provides good atmosphere. While it isn’t a masterpiece, it is strikingly fresh in places, making it his most worthwhile solo album since his first.

Graham Nash This Path Tonight (2016)—3

CSN 13: CSNY 1974

In the summer of 1974, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young embarked on a massive tour that brought their particular brand of singer-songwriterness to stadiums packed to the gills with ticket-buyers. Since their previous tour (and album together), roughly 12 albums’ worth of material had been released between the four of them, in addition to all the stuff Neil still had on deck. Supported by the crack rhythm section of Tim Drummond on bass and Russ Kunkel on drums, with Stills buddy Joe Lala on congas and cowbell, each show lasted for three hours on average, all four anxious to get as many of their own songs in. (Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.)

In the decades since then, the tour has been remembered for its excess, both pharmaceutical and egotistical. Even the participants have expressed varying memories about the experience. Graham Nash, in his role as self-appointed archivist, took up the task of re-assessing the tour from the vantage point of the shows that were professionally recorded, and it only took him about five years to finish it.

In its triple-CD-plus-DVD package, CSNY 1974 offers 40 songs from 10 shows, culled from the 77 different songs played throughout the tour. The program is split into three sets, roughly corresponding to a typical show. (We wouldn’t’ve put it past Rhino to issue a “complete” box of all ten shows start to finish, à la what they’ve been doing with the Grateful Dead lately, but they haven’t.) The “First Set” is full band electric; the “Second Set” is mostly “wooden music”, acoustic and solo; the “Third Set” brings the rhythm section back in full.

Nash has admitted to tweaking the tapes here and there, fixing harmonies and notes, and flying in other parts of the same track to smooth over a rough patch, so we’ll leave it up to other scholars to identify what songs came from where. For all his work, Stills sounds pretty ragged, to the point where his singing is unintelligible. His attempts to sound “soulful” often come off garbled; even when he’s playing guitar, a certain amount of showboating takes over when finesse is preferred. In contrast, Crosby is spot on at all times, and Nash is just happy to be there. For all his contrariness, Neil’s quite the team player, happily contributing harmonies, lead guitar and/or piano on the others’ tunes.

The big excitement (for Neil fans, anyway) is the first official release of several songs yet to be otherwise collected. “Traces” is a highlight of the first disc, in all its brevity, as is “On The Beach”, the title track of his solo album just in stores. The second disc has the most surprises, with an early duet of “Long My You Run” with Stills preceding the one-off “Goodbye Dick”, itself a slight variation of “Mellow My Mind” on the banjo, which follows complete with CSN harmonies and an extra line. “Love Art Blues” and “Hawaiian Sunrise” are nice to have in some form, personal as they are. The third disc has a terrific “Don’t Be Denied” (making its digital debut in any legal form) with an extra verse from its Time Fades Away incarnation, an intense “Revolution Blues” and, best of all, the mesmerizing “Pushed It Over The End”, showcasing the band and singers deftly navigating all those shifts from 5/8 to 4/4 over eight minutes.

Along with a thick booklet crammed with photos, quotes and instrumental credits, CSNY 1974 does provide, literally, hours of entertainment. Whatever surgery was performed to make it sound good took; it probably helps that the recordings were made towards the end of the tour, when most of the kinks had been worked out, and for the most part, the band cooks. (Of course, it only fanned the fire for Neil’s Archives Vol. II, which straddled and overlapped this era when it finally came out.)

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young CSNY 1974 (2014)—3½

CSN 12: Demos

While Neil spent much of the decade promising and delaying his box set, the others in Crosby, Stills & Nash quickly realized that there was gold in them there hills. Nash curated box sets for himself and Crosby, but Stills tinkered with his a lot longer. While we waited, he released Just Roll Tape, purporting to be a long-long demo session recorded in April of 1968. With snippets of songs never revisited, along with the usual embryonic versions of a few classics, the set proves that he wouldn’t truly find his voice until he had other voices to support him. (It also shows him to be a master of time travel, since it’s been established that Buffalo Springfield had a gig in Arizona while this session was supposedly taking place in New York.)

Two years later, the very same day Neil’s Archives box finally emerged, so did a CSN disc called, simply, Demos. Culled from the first three or so years they worked together, it’s a low-key, enjoyable collection of songs you already know, but generally in a basic format. In other words, solo and acoustic, and no harmonies.

Considering how headstrong these guys were, the demo versions aren’t that different, structurally, from the finished productions. In most cases they’re blueprints to be built on; “Music Is Love”, for example, appears to be the simpler basic track before Graham and Neil loaded it up to open Crosby’s first solo album, while “Long Time Gone” is an early band version that hasn’t quite arrived at its proper feel.

And that’s another perk to the set—the songs aren’t limited to just the group albums, but include plenty of ideas that wouldn’t reach fruition until their various solo albums. All of Nash’s songs (save “Marrakesh Express”) would end up on his first album, while Stills’ ideas (as proved on Just Roll Tape) could sit around for years before making one of his albums. “You Don’t Have To Cry” consists of just the one verse that would be repeated for the album version, though Crosby’s unplugged sketches of “Déjà Vu” and “Almost Cut My Hair” are even longer than the released takes.

Demos is for fans only, and might have spurred a sequel had the sales been there. But it does succeed for the reasons mentioned, as well as for sending people back to the first records they made together and apart. While not the cottage industry that runs message boards concerning hypothetical post-1970 Beatle albums culled from solo work, there must be more than a few fans who have compiled their own collections of the best of CSN apart.

Stephen Stills Just Roll Tape: April 26, 1968 (2007)—3
Crosby, Stills & Nash Demos (2009)—3

Graham Nash 6: Reflections

Three years after anthologizing David Crosby, Graham Nash got around to doing the same thing for himself. Like its brother, Reflections covers the man’s career in and out of groups over the decades, taken chronologically. Half of the tracks are denoted as previously unreleased, but about half of those are alternate mixes, which are negligible to these ears.

The set starts wisely with three Hollies tracks, all singles from 1967. “On A Carousel” and “Carrie-Anne” still have pop charm, but “King Midas In Reverse” sounds overblown compared to the acoustic version he’d trot out later. From there we go through all of his songwriting contributions to the first two CSN albums, most of his first two solo albums, and the bookend tracks from the first Crosby/Nash album. The one rarity is a studio demo of “Right Between The Eyes”, heretofore known only from 4 Way Street.

The second disc races through the rest of the ‘70s and all of the sparse ‘80s, beginning with selections from two more Crosby/Nash albums, with a “previously unreleased mix” of the CSNY version of “Taken At All” in the midst. The later solo albums are more sparsely represented, and the listener can be comforted knowing that any gems were excluded, because they weren’t. There are some rarities, like “Love Is The Reason” from the Fast Times At Ridgemont High soundtrack and “Raise Your Voice”, one of the studio tracks from CSN’s Allies live cash-in, but there are also justifiable rejects from that period, culminating in “Soldiers Of Peace” from American Dream.
The third disc is even spottier, considering what the ‘90s and ‘00s wrought. Two stripped-down live performances from 1993 (“Unequal Love” and “Liar’s Nightmare”) are proof that big productions were best avoided, and “Two Hearts” is an intriguing collaboration with Carole King, but the other unreleased songs are a mixed bag, to say the least, from syrupy to hokum.

We can’t completely condemn Reflections since some of the music—namely most of disc one, and maybe half of the rest—is certainly good. However, there’s just too much excess to make it worthwhile. As a harmonizer, he’s without parallel, but even he knows his legacy is in the past.

Graham Nash Reflections (2009)—3

Crosby & Nash 5: Crosby-Nash

They could wait around for Neil to call, or see if Stephen wanted to do anything. Instead, while not exactly teeming with songs dying to be recorded, David Crosby and Graham Nash hooked up with some old and new friends for their first duo album in over 25 years.

And not just any album; Crosby-Nash was spread across two discs—one 45 minutes, the other half an hour—to give the impression that they really were teeming with songs dying to be recorded. They start strong with “Lay Me Down” and “Puppeteer”, both from the pen of James Raymond, Crosby’s long-lost son, with whom he’d reconnected in the mid-‘90s and started collaborating almost immediately. After that it gets pretty quiet—a little too quiet, especially if you’re waiting for an “Almost Cut My Hair” to blow the roof off the proceedings. Instead we get more immaculately recorded adult contemporary pop designed to accompany a gently swaying sailboat. Things pick up whenever the two harmonize, but as usual, they write separately or with anybody else in the band but each other, and cover people like Marc Cohn.

There’s nothing wrong with quiet and pretty; “Grace” is a very pretty piano interlude, but it’s used to set up an inferior song. “Luck Dragon” (again, written with James Raymond) comes close to rocking, while “Don’t Dig Here” (also written with guess who) gives Graham a chance to lament the environment over a riff that eventually rips off “Come Together”. “Michael (Hedges Here)” is a shaky but well-intentioned tribute to the late guitarist, who’s also credited with the arrangement of “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” that closes the set.

Graham’s getting a little mushmouthed in his old age, and Crosby’s mellowed right with him, only the anger he used to exercise is now demonstrated by the warmed-over Steely Dan of “They Want It All”. He spends five minutes on the scat-sung “How Does It Shine?” (the answer: not as brightly as “Song With No Words” or even “Orleans”), the last minute or so turning into a faux-samba for anybody who misses Stephen Stills’ forays into the same. “Samurai” is an a cappella piece that obviously means something to him.

A shuffled “highlights” disc was made available around the same time, leaving some of us to wonder why they didn’t just leave it at that. Rather than alternating between the guys, the sequencing goes two and two, adding to the general tedium. Being the 21st century, it sounds great, thanks to ProTools and close miking. But there’s not a lot here that will compete with their old stuff.

Crosby-Nash Crosby-Nash (2004)—2½

Graham Nash 5: Songs For Survivors

For the first time, the winner of the “who’s gonna be the first of CSN to do a solo album” contest went to Graham Nash, though apparently it took him two years to find a label that would distribute it. The nod to the title of his first solo album 30 years before is clever, but as with most sequels, Songs For Survivors has a high hill to climb.

The first drawback is his voice, which shows the effect of time, and gets in the way when he tries to sound sincere. “Dirty Little Secret” is a strong opener, referencing the specter of racism, but “Blizzard Of Lies” and “Lost Another One” are just too cheerful musically to match the lyric content. It’s dangerous for anyone but Leonard Cohen to write about “The Chelsea Hotel”, but at least he stays away from overt references to that song (or Joni’s “Chelsea Morning”, for that matter), choosing instead to celebrate the artists who led mostly bleak lives there. Just when you think he couldn’t possibly still be sappy, “I’ll Be There For You” is the pick-me-up nobody we know requested. (Maybe it got somebody through a crisis, which would be fine.) “Nothing In The World” delivers the same sentiment, but it’s a better song all around.

“Where Love Lies Tonight” is pure ‘70s James Taylor, if you like that sort of thing, but the cover of Richard and Linda Thompson’s “Pavanne”, featuring harmonies from one Sydney Forest, is particularly surprising, and very nice. “Liar’s Nightmare” may sound like it rips off “Masters Of War”, but since that stole the melody of the traditional “Nottamun Town”, no harm no foul. Despite the length, it’s the best tune on the album, and somehow makes “Come With Me” bearable.

Despite all we’ve said, Songs For Survivors is still one of his better solo albums, though that’s considering how thin the competition is. Soundwise the production is commendable, thanks to the father-son team of Russ and Nathaniel Kunkel, while instrumental support from the likes of Matt Rollings, Dean Parks, and Viktor Krauss is understated and more than competent.

Graham Nash Songs For Survivors (2002)—3

CSN 10: After The Storm

Even though nobody was asking for a new CSN album, they did one anyway. What was surprising was that they paid some attention to the backlash the greeted their last new set and, save one cut, kept the writing strictly in-house on After The Storm. Everybody sings on everyone’s tunes, too.

Stills is in relatively decent voice, but his tracks are hit or miss. Two Latin-tinged numbers bookend the album; “Only Waiting For You” leans too close to adult contemporary, while the excruciating “Panama” makes one even more squeamish as he recalls how a local girl made him a man. “It Won’t Go Away” and “Bad Boyz” are returns to social commentary, somewhat, though the former is too funky, and the latter, while rocking, shouldn’t be spelled that way by anyone over 30.

Nash comes off the best, mostly. “Find A Dream” and “These Empty Days” are both lifted by the harmonies—Stills being prominent, rare for Nash songs—whereas the simple, affecting “Unequal Love” sports some nice Stills leads straight out of Buffalo Springfield. When those are added to the title track, one wonders if everything is all right at home.

Having written very little for his own album the year before, Crosby kept up with the others by contributing a nearly equal pile of songs—in quantity, anyway. “Camera” has some decent imagery, but is slathered with cowbell and other Latin percussion; Stills gets co-writing credit so we’ll blame him. “Till It Shines” also gives Stills plenty of room to wail, up against Mike Finnegan’s organ. He does his own bit to decry social issues on “Street To Lean On”, which supposedly has Michael Hedges on guitar, but we can’t hear him.

Possibly the best track is their harmony-rich cover of “In My Life”, which Stills had done on his last solo album. Wisely, they stick to the chords, let a harmonica play the main riff, and leave it at that.

While mostly an improvement, that eternal blend that captured the world is only hinted at on After The Storm. They’ll always be able to lean on their old albums, which is just as well, since this one didn’t sell.

Crosby, Stills & Nash After The Storm (1994)—2½

CSN 9: CSN Box

While Neil Young had gone through his own ups and downs in the ‘80s, Crosby, Stills & Nash had an even worse ride. Crosby hit rock bottom, went to prison, and emerged clean and sober. Meanwhile, the other two kept their noses clean, more or less, and failed to excite anyone with their solo efforts. American Dream, which had Neil’s full involvement, was less than stellar but sold; 1990’s Live It Up was even worse.

But being a legacy act with a strong catalog, Atlantic was fully behind the idea of a CSN box set, particularly after the success of a similar Led Zeppelin package. Outside of the usual rarities and album cuts, the CSN set boldly incorporated solo and duet work by each of the members (save Neil, who was keeping his best stuff on ice for his own archival brick). The trio took extra care to sequence the wide-ranging tracks into a logical and somewhat chronological order.

Of course, the bulk of the first two discs comes from the extremely fertile cusp of the ‘70s, when all three were positively teeming with tunes. Most of the first album is here, some in mildly different takes or mixes. By the middle of the second disc, they’ve all started their actual solo albums, so the set practically creates an imaginary 1971 album by the trio. The best of everyone’s work from the mid- to late ‘70s also provides a nice reminder as to why we still cared. As is the case with many such sets, the excitement tails off at disc four, where such hits as “Southern Cross” and “Wasted On The Way” share space with some uninspiring ‘80s solo and group work, including a dull remake of “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, ending with the 1970 B-side version of “Find The Cost Of Freedom” to close the circle.

For true rarities, there’s their lush arrangement of McCartney’s “Blackbird” for three voices and guitar, an earlier “Song With No Words”, a true Déjà Vu outtake in “Horses Through A Rainstorm”, and the full nine-minute take of “Almost Cut My Hair” faded on the LP. One of the more daring experiments that works is a studio take of “The Lee Shore”, but with vocals that weren’t added until the ‘90s. Crosby & Nash duet on a nice version of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge For Going”, and all four come together for alternates of “See The Changes”, “Taken At All” and “Homeward Through The Haze”, for those CSNY albums that never happened.

Taken all together, it’s a fine set, complete with detailed notes for each track. Neil’s contributions, while scattered, are pretty essential for his diehard fans too. What still baffles after all these years is what to call the thing; the spines of the disc and the box itself read Crosby, Stills & Nash, while a stylized CSN on the cover, booklet and jewel cases suggests that’s the title. Both, of course, had already been used as album titles. Meanwhile, a two-disc distillation of the set called Carry On appeared in Europe, so it’s too bad they just couldn’t go with that.

Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash (1991)—3½

CSN 8: Live It Up

Just when you thought they couldn’t get any worse, Crosby, Stills & Nash managed to underperform to the least of their senses, if not their abilities. The embarrassment of Live It Up begins with the cover art, depicting giant hot dogs being roasted on the moon. That should be enough to keep the album far from the cash register, but people bought it anyway. Whether they enjoyed the noisy, unsuited production values remains an equal mystery.

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

Graham Nash 4: Innocent Eyes

Graham was so starved for collaboration in the mid-‘80s that he participated in a Hollies reunion, then defied all the lessons he should have learned from Stephen Stills’ recent monstrosity. The cover of Innocent Eyes may have qualified as cutting-edge computer graphics in 1986, but now it’s just a blurry mess. Speaking of which…

Take away his voice and every track sounds like it was written and recorded for an action/comedy movie soundtrack, probably on MCA. There are guitars, but they’re fighting for space with the Yamaha DX7s and Linn drums. You can hear that third world conch blowing sound that was all the rage, best associated with the opening seconds of “Sledgehammer”. And when there’s a deviation in rhythm, he relies on reggae. (Beats Latin, but still.)

There is no point in doing a track-by-track rundown, since they’re all fairly hideous. He went on the record to say that the sound was his own doing, that he hadn’t been coerced by anything other than his own desire to stay contemporary and rely on other songwriters for help. For the most part, the lyrics don’t say anything particularly profound, though “Chippin’ Away” would be revived by CSN when the Berlin Wall came down. “Glass And Steel” is a welcome departure in tempo and content, another song written in sympathy for David Crosby’s struggles of the time.

Then “I Got A Rock” steps all over everything, and we’re reminded how bad Innocent Eyes is. As ever, stripped-down arrangements might help illuminate whatever assets are in the tunes, but why bother?

Graham Nash Innocent Eyes (1986)—1½

CSN 6: Daylight Again

The story behind Daylight Again is, basically, Crosby was getting too far gone to be a viable partner in the CSN law firm. However, when Stills and Nash started working together without him, various powers that were suggested that maybe something couldn’t be done to make it seem like the three Laurel Canyon musketeers were right there together in one place, and thus facilitate at least a top 40 album, if the top ten was to be considered too greedy.

Even if you weren’t an ‘80s record executive, such logic would make sense. Besides, these guys weren’t doing much on their own anyway. A five-year gap since the last CSN album was nothing compared to the chasm that separated Déjà Vu and CSN, as if anyone was paying attention to any of the solo albums that had sprouted up in the same time.

Stills had been working with a guy named Michael Stergis, whom, despite his songwriting and instrumental credits all over Daylight Again, doesn’t seem to have parlayed that into anything worth creating a Wikipedia page over. “Turn Your Back On Love” is about as bland yet inoffensive as we might hope from Stills at this point. “Wasted On The Way” is Nash’s subtle summary of the previous ten years, all high harmonies lamenting what could have been. Despite itself, “Southern Cross” is the highlight of the album, a simple acoustic strum evoking both the tranquility of the sea and “Back In Black”, which it resembles chord-wise. (Go ahead; listen to them back to back, and damn, if they don’t mesh perfectly.) Nash gets tough on “Into The Darkness”, sung to the syncopation of a basic riff, but it’s eclipsed by one of the songs Crosby actually managed to finish. “Delta” is a positively gorgeous song, proving that even at his least coherent, he had the gift of song. It always seems more of an epic than it is.

Stills was still writing songs, so we get the back-to-back splendor of “Since I Met You” and “Too Much Love To Hide”, both of which are far more interesting musically than they are lyrically; in fact, Nash’s enthusiastic harmonies only underscore how average these songs really are. “Song For Susan” is hardly a substitute for “Our House”, but Nash puts a lot into it, so it’s a good effort. Stills finally slows down long enough to remind us that “You Are Alive”, a good setup for Crosby’s only other contribution, a cover of “Might As Well Have A Good Time” by a couple of fellow travelers. It’s pretty, which helps. To bring everything back home, the title track is basically a new intro welded to the front of “Find The Cost Of Freedom”, now with Art Garfunkel helping out (according to the credits, but good luck picking him out) just in case Crosby couldn’t cut it.

The usual suspects are all here—Joe Vitale, George “Chocolate” Perry, Craig Doerge, Michael Finnigan. The credits also list other vocalists on several tracks, covering up the initial and general absence of Crosby. Meanwhile, he and Nash don’t add anything instrumentally to the album, underscoring just how non-collaborative Daylight Again was. It’s not a bad album, but it certainly isn’t very exciting. Those two singles were successful enough to send the boys on the road, which resulted in the Allies live album, which was released very quickly compared to usual pace. It included two studio tracks: the hideous “War Games” and “Raise A Voice”, the latter of which would one day be appended to Daylight Again with three other outtakes of vague interest.

Crosby, Stills & Nash Daylight Again (1982)—3
2006 remastered CD: same as 1982, plus 4 extra tracks

CSN 5: Replay

Naturally Atlantic was hoping for another Crosby, Stills & Nash album, but this point only Stills and Nash were working together, so this odd little mix was compiled, according to the back cover note, for Ahmet Ertegun, to whom they could never say no. Astute scholars will already know that they had released only that one album as a trio since 1974, so Replay goes outside the box by including tracks from various solo and duo albums, some of which actually do feature all three on vocals. To their credit, none of the selections had already appeared on So Far, though a couple of the Stills solo and Crosby/Nash tracks had been on previous best-ofs. (Lost yet?)

Since this was a CSN production, “Carry On” is included in a new mix that lops off the “Questions” coda in favor of a new solo and drums that loops back to the chorus. Two Nash songs each from the first album and CSN provide balance with songs from three different Stills solo albums, while “I Give You Give Blind” loses its frenetic string arrangement but still jars. Crosby is represented solely by “Shadow Captain” and the “To The Last Whale” suite with Nash.

Replay isn’t essential, but it’s very cohesive given the disparate sources, from other labels even, and does provide something of a intro to those lesser-known albums. They even managed to get a Joni Mitchell painting for the cover.

Crosby, Stills & Nash Replay (1980)—3
Current availability: streaming only

Graham Nash 3: Earth & Sky

The momentum that led up to 1977’s decent Crosby, Stills & Nash studio reunion didn’t carry over for Crosby, who was too wasted to create, or for Stills, who recorded despite himself. Graham Nash remained the sanest of the three, newly married and fathered, and worked on pet projects like fighting unsafe nuclear energy.

He also corralled various veterans of recent CSN-related bands to record Earth & Sky, an album that has all but vanished from the face of the planet save used record stores and YouTube. It’s not a horrible album, but’s it’s not very exciting either. Given the usual crew—David Lindley, Russ Kunkel, Craig Doerge, Joe Vitale, Danny Kortchmar—the music is typical Southern California via Miami; lots of Hawaiian shirts and Colombian sky candy. Crosby is credited but all but inaudible.

The title track is catchy, but “Love Has Come”, which follows, is practically identical. “Out On The Island” is a recasting of “Another Sleep Song” until the chorus. “Barrel Of Pain (Half-Life)” is a successful attempt to rock, and a surprising high point is “T.V. Guide”, with ambitious piano and dramatic strings, and less than two minutes. Elsewhere it’s sensitive songs about beautiful children, care for the environment, and misplace hope for the new decade. In other words, this is what people did between Jackson Browne albums.

One wants to like Earth & Sky on the sole basis that it’s not hideous, but it only provides more strength for the argument of CSN’s sum being greater than the parts. Yet at 35 minutes, this was Graham’s longest solo album yet.

Graham Nash Earth & Sky (1980)—2½

Crosby & Nash 4: Live and Another Stoney Evening

Presumably to cash in on the reunited CSN’s success, the mustachioed majority of the triad found themselves on a live album to cash in on their time away. Crosby-Nash Live appeared only months after CSN, offering a grab bag of performances from two tours backed by the same guys keeping busy until James Taylor or Jackson Browne called. While the album does offer glimpses of a Crosby yet to be completely derailed by drugs, this duo really weren’t meant to rock. (Well, maybe Crosby, but certainly not Nash.) The best moments are the quietest ones—“Simple Man”, “Page 43”, for example—than the revved-up renditions of “I Used To Be A King”, “Lee Shore” and “Déjà Vu”, the latter of which sounds like they were trying to emulate Miles Davis (whose Bitches Brew-era recording of “Guinnevere” was still in the vaults at that time).

The best live albums show performers in their best element, or at least enhance the songs known inside and out from their studio albums. While not a complete waste of vinyl, Crosby-Nash Live doesn’t fulfill either goal.

Many years later, after their other ABC albums got the digital treatment, Crosby-Nash Live was duly remixed and remastered, and bolstered by two more Crosby performances: a welcome “Bittersweet” and the mega-rare “King Of The Mountain”, which begins with an exploratory, occasionally atonal piano solo, and continues to fight against it.

Before that, however, proof for why we should care about these guys—and why their shows were widely bootlegged in the good old days—arrived via a surprising source. Released in the late ‘90s on the Grateful Dead label, of all things, Another Stoney Evening presented a show similar but not identical to a notorious 1971 bootleg. This is “wooden music” start to finish, the boys strumming songs together and apart, some of which the crowd knew from the CSN albums and their solo albums, and some that hadn’t made it to an album yet. Therefore we here virtual premieres of “Where Will I Be”, “Stranger’s Room”, “Southbound Train” and “Immigration Man”. In-jokes aside, it’s a very intimate show, with none of the sterility of that other live album.

David Crosby/Graham Nash Crosby-Nash Live (1977)—2
2000 remastered CD: same as 1977, plus 2 extra tracks
Crosby-Nash Another Stoney Evening (1998)—3½

CSN 4: CSN

Barely a year after a Stills-Young collaboration took on Crosby and Nash, then let them go, resulting in an album apiece by each duo, as well as solo albums from Stills and Young, three of the protagonists managed to forget all that ugliness, with the speed and productivity unique to recreational cocaine users, and give the world CSN. This was only the second album proper by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and while it isn’t remotely as excellent as their modest little debut, each of the boys rises to the occasion.

To underscore the unity, every track credits vocals to “Crosby, Stills, Nash”, as if there was any doubt. Beyond that, each man contributes instrumentally to his own compositions, with Stills more often than not playing lead guitar wherever one calls for it. The rest of the backing is courtesy of various regulars from their work apart, such as Russ Kunkel, Craig Doerge, George Perry and Joe Vitale—Miami meets L.A., if you will.

Crosby was still pulling his weight at this stage, as the excellent “Shadow Captain” demonstrates atop side one. “Anything At All” seems a tad dramatic, but “In My Dreams” is more along the lines of his ruminations. Nash’s high harmony is everywhere, and his songs vary from tedious to striking. “Carried Away”, with its piano and harmonica, almost suggests Neil Young. Like “Cold Rain”, it’s slow and depressing; the same could almost be said of “Cathedral”, but here he manages to nail the dynamics and near-psychedelia. The one everybody remembers is “Just A Song Before I Go”, famously written in ten minutes.

There were five slots open for the rest of the LP, and Stills comes through fairly well. “See The Changes” was left over from three CSNY attempts previous, and has the simplest performance. “Fair Game” and “Dark Star” have just enough of those Latin touches he was starting to put on everything, but both stand out—the former for rhyming “watch” with “crotch”, and the latter for its chorus. “Run From Tears” sports a guitar intro right out of a Neil Young album, with a simple riff that sticks. Finally, “I Give You Give Blind” is stuck underneath a way-too-tense string arrangement.

CSN is a demonstration of the sum being greater than the parts, which they already kind of knew anyway. More so than anything any of them had done in a while, it’s a good album, worth revisiting.

Crosby, Stills & Nash CSN (1977)—3½

Crosby & Nash 3: Whistling Down The Wire

Less than a year after the relatively successful Wind On The Water, Crosby & Nash were back, but it wasn’t necessarily because they had tons of terrific tunes. The story goes that they were briefly part of yet another CSNY reunion. The immediate end product of that was the Stills-Young Band tour and album, neither of which included Crosby or Nash, so they went off and did Whistling Down The Wire with the same guys from the year before. Which left us with two less-than-stellar albums by people we really, really want to like.

“Spotlight” is pretty ordinary (okay, bland) for a mid-‘70s L.A. production, but “Broken Bird” at least has harmonies throughout and a nice “Helplessly Hoping”-style guitar part. “Time After Time” is very brief, over almost before it can sink in. “Dancer” begins like a typically pleasant Crosby strum, but goes way off course when he gets “heavy”. It has the potential to be one of those wonderful wordless Crosby epic, but it’s exactly the type of song that doesn’t need an electric piano. Graham closes the side with “Mutiny”; despite the title, it’s about a sailboat (what is it with these guys and sailboats?) and not about Stills and/or Young.

“J.B.’s Blues” is not a blues per se, but rather appears to be something of a Nash apology to longtime CSNY groupie/cohort Joel Bernstein. A little better is “Marguerita”, which describes a bar encounter in the barest of terms. The best song is “Taken At All”, which is the only song that appears on the box set, but in a full CSNY version that’s even better. Hearing Crosby bemoan his plight as a “Foolish Man” is a little comical considering all the trouble he got himself into over the next decade, although a glimmer of hope is offered in “Out Of The Darkness”, written with go-to keyboard guy Craig Doerge. It’s actually a nice ending to the set.

Whistling Down The Wire is a pleasant Southern California album, impeccably played and kinda dull. Because it doesn’t really have any of the high points as witnessed the year before, it’s docked half a point. If only they weren’t so mad at Stills and Young that they refused to work with them again.

David Crosby/Graham Nash Whistling Down The Wire (1976)—2½