Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) is a folk rock supergroup made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, also known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) when joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young. They are noted for their intricate vocal harmonies, often tumultuous interpersonal relationships, political activism, and lasting influence on music and culture. All four members of CSNY have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, though Young's multiple inductions were for work not involving the group.
Initially formed by the trio of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, the genesis of the group lies in two 1960s rock bands, The Byrds and The Hollies, and the demise of a third, Buffalo Springfield. Friction existed between David Crosby and his bandmates in the Byrds, and he was dismissed from the Byrds in the autumn of 1967.
By early 1968, Buffalo Springfield had also disintegrated over personal issues, and after aiding in putting together the band’s final album, Stephen Stills found himself unemployed by the summer. He and Crosby began meeting informally and jamming, the results of one encounter in Florida on Crosby’s schooner being the song “Wooden Ships,” composed in collaboration with another guest, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane.
Graham Nash had been introduced to Crosby when the Byrds had toured the UK in 1966, and when the Hollies ventured to California in 1968, Nash resumed his acquaintance with Crosby. At a party in July 1968 at Cass Elliot's house, Nash asked Stills and Crosby to repeat their performance of a new song by Stills, “You Don't Have To Cry,” with Nash improvising a second harmony part. The vocals gelled, and the three realized that they had a unique vocal chemistry.
Creatively frustrated with the Hollies, Nash decided to quit and throw his lot in with Crosby and Stills. After failing an audition with the Beatles' Apple Records, they were signed to Atlantic Records by Ahmet Ertegün, who had been a fan of Buffalo Springfield and was disappointed by that band's demise. From the outset, given their respective band histories, the trio decided not to be locked into a group structure, using their surnames as identification to ensure independence and a guarantee against the band simply continuing without one of them, as had both the Byrds and the Hollies after the departures of Crosby and Nash. Their record contract with Atlantic reflected this, positioning CSN with a unique flexibility unheard of for an untested group. The trio also picked up a unique management team in Elliot Roberts and David Geffen, who had engineered their situation with Atlantic and would help to consolidate clout for the group in the industry. Roberts kept the band focused and dealt with egos, while Geffen handled the business deals, since, in Crosby’s words, they needed a shark and Geffen was it. Roberts and Geffen would play key roles in securing the band’s success during the early years.
When it was announced that the band was forming, they ran into a slight contractual problem. Nash was already signed to Epic Records, the North American distributor of records by the Hollies, while Crosby and Stills were signed to Atlantic. In order to resolve this problem, Geffen engineered a deal whereby Nash was essentially traded to Atlantic for the rights to Richie Furay's band Poco; Furay was signed to Atlantic as a result of his membership in Buffalo Springfield.
The trio's first album, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, was released in May 1969 and was an immediate hit, spawning two Top 40 hit singles and receiving key airplay on the new FM radio format. With the exception of drummer Dallas Taylor, Stills had handled the lion's share of the instrumental parts himself, which left the band in need of additional personnel to be able to tour, now a necessity given the debut album’s commercial impact.
Retaining Taylor, the band decided initially to hire a keyboard player. Stills at one point approached Steve Winwood who was already occupied with newly formed group Blind Faith. Atlantic label head Ahmet Ertegün suggested Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young, also managed by Elliot Roberts, as a fairly obvious choice. Initial reservations were held by Stills and Nash, Stills owing to his history with Young in Buffalo Springfield, and Nash, due to his personal unfamiliarity with Young. But after several meetings, the trio expanded to a quartet with Young a full partner. The terms of the contract allowed Young full freedom to maintain a parallel career with his new back-up band, Crazy Horse.
The band initially completed the rhythm section with bassist Bruce Palmer, who previously played with Young in the short-lived Mynah Birds (fronted by a young Rick James) and with both Young and Stills in Buffalo Springfield. However, whether due to Palmer's persistent personal problems (he had a tendency to get busted for drugs and get deported back to Canada) or due to the simple fact that, with Stills, Young and Palmer handling the instruments, the band looked and sounded like Buffalo Springfield with Crosby and Nash doing little more than some background vocals. Whatever the true reason, Palmer was forced out of the band, and, at Rick James' recommendation, nineteen-year-old Motown bassist Greg Reeves replaced him.
With Young on board, the restructured group went on tour in the late summer of 1969 through the following January. Their first gigs were on Aug. 17, 1969 at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago with Joni Mitchell as their opening act. They mentioned they were going to some place called Woodstock the next day, but they had no idea where that was. They began their second set that night with the same line they uttered at Woodstock, "This is only the second time we've performed in front of people. We're scared shitless." They opened with "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" before launching into a harmony drenched version of the Beatles' "Blackbird".
Ironically, the sweet-sounding hippie symbols of the Woodstock Nation chose the zero year of punk, 1977, to reappear with CSN. It was propelled by solid songs from all three principals, trademark vocals, contemporary production, and as usual a hit single from Nash in “Just a Song Before I Go”. The album soared up the pop albums chart, just missing being their fourth number one in a row, held off the top slot by one of the best-selling LPs of all time, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. The meticulously-crafted CSN fit right in with the ruling commercial sounds of the day, just as Young was imagining his reaction to punk with the Rust tour and albums, illustrating how far the two camps had diverged. Regrouping as a regular touring unit, after a five-year lay-off between releases which saw a solo album apiece by Stills and Nash, they hit the top ten one more time with Daylight Again in 1982. Complications were brewing due to Crosby's increasing dependence on freebase cocaine, making his participation problematic. The Nash record of 1980, Earth & Sky, was to be another Crosby-Nash project, but Crosby’s participation discontinued due to excessive drug use. Daylight Again was initially undertaken by Stills and Nash alone owing to Crosby’s subsequent decline in productivity; however, Atlantic Record executives refused to release the latter LP until Crosby was reinstated. Crosby joined his partners for the track “Delta,” and the album contained two hits, Nash’s “Wasted on the Way” and Stills’ “Southern Cross,” the latter accompanied by a popular video on the nascent MTV network. But the group now relied on outside composers and singers to augment their material and had thus all but ceased to be the force they had been ten years past. The trio continued to tour, but the bottom fell out for Crosby, arrested and jailed on drug and weapons charges in Texas in May 1982. Having recorded a potential title song for the film WarGames that was never used, the band released it as a single and hastily assembled concert recordings around two studio tracks for the album Allies, their lowest charting record to date. Crosby was sentenced to two terms, but the conviction was overturned; arrested several more times, he finally turned himself in to the authorities in December 1985. He would spend eight months in prison, and Nash and Stills released another round of solo albums in the mid-1980s.
Based on a promise he made to Crosby should he clean himself up, Young agreed to rejoin the trio in the studio upon Crosby’s release from prison for American Dream in 1988. Stills and Crosby were barely functioning for the making of the album, and the late eighties production completely swamped the band. It did make it to #16 on the album chart, but the record received poor critical notices, and Young refused to support it with a CSNY tour. The band did produce a video for Young’s title-song single, wherein each member played a character loosely based on certain aspects of their personalities and public image.
CSN was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997; CSNY is the only band to have all its members inducted into the Hall twice. Crosby has also been inducted as a member of the Byrds (1991), and Stills as a member of Buffalo Springfield (1997). In 2010, Nash was inducted as a member of the Hollies. Young has been inducted for his solo work (1995) and for Buffalo Springfield (1997), but has not been inducted with CSN.
The CSN logo that Crosby, Stills and Nash used in the mid-1970s through the 1980s, was designed by comedian Phil Hartman.
In 2006, long-time manager Gerry Tolman died in a car accident.
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