Only a few times in a life have I heard record albums
that when I heard them I thought to myself, "this changes
everything." Nirvana's Nevermind
is one, but its influence fade after about a decade. If I had had such
thoughts that far back, Sgt.
Pepper's would have been another such album. But Crosby Stills
& Nash's premier,
self-titled album made me think that I had stepped into a new world
the first time that I heard it back in 1969.
I first learned of the album at my high school's math
club shortly after the album was released in May 1969 when I overheard
some soon-to-be-graduating seniors talking about the new "Crosby
album." I did not think much of these guys, so I thought they were
talking about Bing
Crosby, unaware of the brand new supergroup that melded The Byrds
(David Crosby), Buffalo Springfield (Stephen Stills) and (rather
surprisingly) The Hollies (Graham Nash). Even their engineer and
co-producer, Bill Halverson, was fresh from his engineering gig with
Cream, generally considered the original Sixties supergroup.
I don't recall when I actually heard any of the songs
from the album, but I know that at a time when I had only enough cash to
buy three or four albums a year, I quickly bought it and played it nonstop
on my rather pitiful portable monophonic record player. The first song,
"Suite:
Judy Blue Eyes" (S:JBE), came as a complete revelation
to me. The rest of the album was groovy, too. The album and its two
singles was a bit of a sleeper at first. But soon came Woodstock and fame
followed quickly. Crosby, Still, and Nash had played a 16-song
set in the middle of the third (and final) night of the festival with
Neil Young joining in on occasion. I would finally get to see and hear a
small part of their set the following summer when the movie and its
soundtrack were released. (I was "too young" to attend
Woodstock, as were all of my friends/cohort.) While some groups sound
better live, at that time (and place), CS&N (even with the addition of
Neil Young) certainly did not. I still consider the Woodstock version of S:JBE
to be unlistenably out-of-tune.
Despite Crosby's top billing, the group is really about
the magical combination of Stills and Nash. (Crosby and Nash actually did
their own album shortly after the original CS&N effort, but while good
in places, it is far from magical.) Stephen Stills hailed from the
country-rock group Buffalo Springfield, which probably sold more albums
after it broke up than when it was together. Stills wrote and sang lead on
the Springfield's one big hit single, "For
What It's Worth", a quirky, but socially significant song
that was both atypical of the group's output and ahead of its time in
1966. Britpop pioneer Graham Nash (before Britpop was a word), was the
special sauce that turned Stills' quirkiness into transcendence. S:JBE
was vastly more ambitious than "For What It's Worth" and the
song could easily have been a fiasco, but CS&N pulled it off.
One way to appreciate CS&N is to listen to
what it is not. While Neil Young was another Buffalo Springfield alum that
would join CS&N on occasion (making it CSN&Y), the other key
members of the Springfield went on the form Poco,
a group that has had its moments. (Effectively, Graham Nash's contract was
acquired from his record label in exchange for Poco.). Their first single,
"Pickin'
Up the Pieces," which obviously refers to the pieces of
Buffalo Springfield left after the departures of Stills and Young, is
rather embarrassing from the perspective of 2012 and was a flop at the
time. "Pick Up the Pieces" is very, very, very country song (and
no YouTube version does the original justice because they have all
"toned it down" and the current Poco is a mere shadow of the
original). Indeed, a key phrase in the song, "pickin' and grinnin',"
would later in 1969 become the catchphrase on Hee
Haw, a television show that would define "hayseed" long
before John Mellencamp would use the word in a song.
An important element of CS&N's special appeal was
that it had country roots, but did not sound particularly country itself.
No twang to the guitars and not even a Byrdsian jangle. CS&N's first
album was discernibly folk, however, but the folk influence was global in
nature, especially on the first two songs, S:JBE and Nash's "Marrakesh
Express."
While CS&N was a hit at the time, the album
reached #6 on the Billboard Pop Charts and #35 on the "Black"
Charts (presumably because Atlantic was still a "soul" label),
those numbers understate its vast influence. While my own music
reproduction equipment would remain lacking until 1975, I did have access
to good equipment through friends and relatives, so I could appreciate
just how great the CS&N album sounded. The harmonies are right there
with the Everly Brothers and Beach Boys. Notwithstanding a glitch in
"Guinnevere,"
the album is clean and crisp unlike almost anything before it in rock and
roll. Both stereo and multi-track recording were still in their infancy
and it was common for albums to sound muddy or have the vocal and
instrumental tracks spread out in perverse ways. (Early Beatles albums had
such horrific stereo mixes, that many enthusiasts prefer the monophonic
version.) As the "dean of American rock critics," Robert
Christgau, wrote, "the album (CS&N) is perfect,"
though he noted that this was not necessarily a compliment. Compliment or
not, CS&N served as the aural template for rock albums for
years to come. The Grateful Dead, for example, quickly broke through with
two superb studio albums that directly drew their inspiration from
CS&N (while retaining the group's unique character). CS&N's
manager, Robert Geffen,
would take the CS&N formula and repeat it many times, building a major
media empire and a multi-billion dollar fortune in the process. The
group's label, Atlantic Records, which was on a bit of a roll even before
CS&N, would arguably wrest the dominance of the recording industry
away from Capitol Records. (According to Wikipedia, Apple Records, the
Beatles' label after they spun out of Capitol, but keeping the label as
their US distributor, had the first shot at CS&N and turned them
down.)
For CS&N, it was a long downhill ride after their
first album. The addition of Neil Young (making the group CSN&Y)
helped their second album,Déjà Vu, reach the top of the album charts, but the group
lost the cohesiveness that made it first effort so special. While Young is
arguably more talented than Crosby, Stills and Nash combined, he just does
not mix well with them. His most famous backup group, Crazy Horse, does a
better job backing him than CS&N and he really did not serve any
meaningful role in their songs (indeed, he did even not play on most of
them). Young may ably span genres such as country, hard rock, and punk,
but he cannot have been said to have invented his own.
While the lead track off Déjà Vu, "Carry
On," is but a mere shadow of Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue
Eyes," there is a song on that album rises to the level of their
freshman outing. That song is "Our
House," which is essentially a Graham Nash solo effort that
predates his solo album, Songs
for Beginners. "Our House" sounded corny to the
high-school version of me (and the source of the "very, very,
very" that I slipped in earlier in this commentary), but years later
when I actually lived in a Southern California house (albeit a
"townhouse" with a fake fireplace) with the love of my life
would I grok the song as the ultimate ode to domesticity. I also
discovered that what starts innocently as flowers (presumably handpicked)
and vases can turn into Marimekko sheets and towels.
While many cuts from CS&N still generate
hefty royalties from their play on classic rock stations today, my
remaining summer albums have sunk into the pit of obscurity. My second
album, early 1971's Nantucket
Sleighride came from Mountain, another group featured at
Woodstock. While CS&N was a precursor (if not the source) of
the "yuppie music" that I featured my commentaries a few summers
ago, Mountain's music was a precursor of a special brand of heavy metal
music. Elements of Nantucket Sleighride would re-emerge by the end
of 1971 in the work of a group that did not attend Woodstock because it
was paid more money to perform at Asbury Park that weekend.
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