{"id":16201,"date":"2023-08-21T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=16201"},"modified":"2023-08-15T08:46:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T07:46:13","slug":"high-ceilings-crosby-stills-nash-and-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2023\/08\/21\/high-ceilings-crosby-stills-nash-and-young\/","title":{"rendered":"HIGH CEILINGS: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

HIGH CEILINGS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DO NOT AN ENDURING CATALOGE MAKE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ralph Dent reminds us of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I felt somehow cheated when Crosby, Stills and Young lured Graham Nash away from my home town group. The Hollies, from Manchester, had already enjoyed a string of UK chart hits, and would continue to do so even without Nash. Indeed, I would argue that Crosby Still Nash and Young subsequently hit some higher ceilings than did the Hollies you it is no suprise how the Hollies back catalogue has stood the tst of time,, Nash, though, , would fully integrate and establish himself among American rock royalty. An example of how his life changed is apparent in the story below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graham Nash was on a helicopter with drummer Dallas Taylor flying into Bethel, N.Y., where their band was scheduled to perform at a festival. As they neared their destination, Taylor asked what lake they were flying over. It wasn\u2019t water, the pilot replied. It was the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Los Angeles – CIRCA 1988: (L-R) Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and David Crosby pose for a portrait circa 1988 in Los Angeles, California (Photo by Aaron Rapoport\/Corbis\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The gig was Woodstock. The band was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (right)<\/em><\/strong>. The gathering on Max Yasgur\u2019s farm would be their second-ever live performance, after recently solidifying a touring line-up with Neil Young, Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves. The weekend would prove to be a high point for the counterculture that Woodstock quickly came to represent\u2014and for Crosby, Stills, Nash & (sometimes) Young, the ensemble that was in some ways the house band for the Woodstock generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTheir music and their image became indissolubly linked with the fate of the baby-boomer era,\u201d music historian Peter Doggett writes in CSNY<\/em> (left), one of two engaging biographies released this week tracing the band\u2019s fractious history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The other is Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young<\/em> by David Browne (near right)<\/em><\/strong>, a senior writer for Rolling Stone<\/em>. Browne covers the full arc of the band\u2019s career, from its members\u2019 musical origins in other groups in the \u201860s to the present. Doggett focuses on the musicians\u2019 early lives and careers through 1974, when David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young toured together for the last time. Though both books cover some of the same ground, Doggett\u2019s is far more detailed about the beginnings of the band and the musicians\u2019 upbringings. Browne takes on the monumental task of summarizing a half-century\u2019s worth of conflict, self-sabotage and, when the musicians managed to get out of their own way, music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crosby, Stills & Nash wasn\u2019t intended to be a \u201cband\u201d at all, at least not in the late-\u201860s sense of the word, which implied a specific identity, expectations and business commitments. Those things amounted to limitations, in the minds of Crosby, Stills and Nash, who had each dealt with all that in the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies, respectively. They started singing together for the thrill of it, and they quickly realized that they harmonized with an uncommon purity that astonished their friends. That feeling of amazement carried over to the listening public when the trio released Crosby, Stills & Nash<\/em> at the end of May 1969, thanks to songs including \u201cSuite: Judy Blue Eyes,\u201d \u201cLong Time Gone\u201d and \u201cHelplessly Hoping.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The singers intended CSN to be a sort of \u201cmothership\u201d situation that would, whilst being shared between group efforts, permit solo projects, outside collaborations and plenty of musical experimentation. Yet converting their \u201cparty trick\u201d harmonies (Browne and Doggett both use the term) into something that certainly looked like a band, with a record deal and all the attendant obligations, quickly subsumed the idea of singing together for its own sake. If bringing in Young (left)<\/em><\/strong> to help flesh out the songs onstage made sense from a musical standpoint, each book illustrates how adding a fourth massive ego also hastened the band\u2019s descent into creative disputes and power struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Grham Nash (right)<\/em><\/strong> Though both authors admire the group and its songs, the musicians come off as intensely dislikable, especially as money and fame transform them. Stills is a taskmaster perfectionist with control issues. Crosby is a blowhard, a drug-addled hedonist with an attitude toward women that is startlingly chauvinistic, even for the era. Young, who had been part of Buffalo Springfield with Stills, is a cynical opportunist who sees joining CSN as a way to jumpstart his own then-lackluster career. Only Nash sometimes seems sympathetic; the most level-headed, he tries to act as a go-between among warring factions with limited success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together (and, just as often, separately), they cut a path through popular music in the late \u201860s and early \u201870s. Doggett writes vividly about the L.A. scene that produced Crosby, Stills & Nash, chronicling their interactions with Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, Peter Tork of the Monkees, Joni Mitchell (who was romantically involved with Crosby, then Nash), Judy Collins (whose relationship with Stills inspired \u201cSuite: Judy Blue Eyes\u201d), Jimi Hendrix, Atlantic Records impresario Ahmet Ertegun, David Geffen and more. Doggett does his best to tame the mythology of CSN, sorting through various stories and inconsistent recollections about when and where they first sang together (Was it at Elliot\u2019s house, or Mitchell\u2019s? The night the Hollies played the Whisky in February 1968, or sometime afterward?) and when various songs were written and recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browne in many ways has the harder task, as the band\u2019s earlier years were its most thrilling and creatively rewarding. Surprisingly little of the music they made together still resonates; after their first two studio LPs, CSN<\/em> and 1970\u2019s D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu<\/em> with Young, and the 1971 live album 4 Way Street<\/em>, the Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) catalog is a study in diminishing returns. In the latter half of Browne\u2019s book, there\u2019s almost a numb inevitability to the musicians\u2019 fumbling attempts in the \u201880s to contemporize their sound, Crosby\u2019s ever-deeper descent into drug addiction that led to a stint in prison, and Young\u2019s inability to stop dangling the possibility of a full-scale reunion in front of his bandmates, only to flake out nearly every time for inscrutable reasons of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together, CSNY<\/em> and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young<\/em> present as full a picture of the group as is ever likely to emerge. It\u2019s not a triumphant story. Beneath the promise of those early songs\u2014and that initial camaraderie\u2014lurks an mostly unwritten, certainly unanswerable question that poses itself again and again: What if?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much like the dream of the Woodstock generation, the tale of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is awash in senseless vanity, squandered chances and potential left tragically unfulfilled. Yet it\u2019s often hard to look away\u2014just like with any car wreck<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

tills and Nash, who had each dealt with all that in the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies, respectively. They started singing together for the thrill of it, and they quickly realized that they harmonized with an uncommon purity that astonished their friends. That feeling of amazement carried over to the listening public when the trio released\u00a0Crosby, Stills & Nash\u00a0at the end of May 1969, thanks to songs including \u201cSuite: Judy Blue Eyes,\u201d \u201cLong Time Gone\u201d and \u201cHelplessly Hoping.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16211,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16201\/revisions\/16211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}