MUSIC HISTORY: Graham Nash / David Crosby

Cultural historians have long made note of the fact that the sixties didn’t really end until somewhere around 1974, culminating in the resignation of one Richard M. Nixon. While the argument can be made that the sixties truly did end with the Rolling Stones' December 1969 Altamont concert -- washing solemnly away a good portion of the promising spirit of change begun at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival just three and a half months before -- the musical spirit which either tainted or illuminated the end of the nineteen-sixties (depending on your perspective) continued on through the early seventies as well.

For Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, there is proof of the transcendent chemistry that gave birth to great music -- it can be found now whenever one puts on the CD of Stephen Stills (1970), Neil Young’s On The Beach (1974), or Graham Nash/David Crosby.

By 1972, the four parties that made up Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were on three separate paths, following the dissolution of the quartet’s working relationship. Stills had formed Manassas, hoping to forge a collective of musicians that would allow him free reign to service his muse as he saw fit. (Stills, by his own admission, could apparently be fairly blunt, unforgiving and demanding when in the throes of creativity, too much so at this stage for the likes of C, N & Y). The main attribute of Manassas was firstly their range: they could play hard rock, blues, Latin, Cuban, and country music with an authenticity well beyond mere efficiency and tribute. Thus Stills’ path was set for the next two years.

Young had hit the road in 1973 after an extended convalescence due to back trouble that sidelined him immediately following the billowing success of 1972’s Harvest. He was already looking to move beyond the then-popular formula that Harvest had help forge, and the death of Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten in November of 1972 (and later CSN&Y roadie Bruce Berry) were to take a sizeable emotional toll on Young. His path had diverged from that of CSN, at least until later in 1973 when Crosby and Nash came to his aid (by request) in order to help him finish the difficult tour documented on the fascinating recording Time Fades Away (1973). In the meantime, Young was on his own.

David Crosby and Graham Nash had also taken to the road in 1971 as an acoustic duo; rarely has a better-matched pair been offered in the firmament of rock. They seemed to be focused on the further nurturing of the spirit that was born of and squandered by CSN and CSN&Y, amply demonstrating that there was more music to be offered within the set parameters of the music made by the trio and/or quartet. This acoustic duo was caught live on an archive recording (belatedly released in 1998) entitled Another Stoney Evening, the name of which was a nod to a well-known bootleg recording from the same period. That album essentially represents the groundwork laid by the duo that would later result in the formidable display of chemistry unveiled with their new material for Graham Nash/David Crosby.

Without Stills -- who was responsible for most of the instrumentation and arranging on the debut CSN album in 1969, and much of the work on 1970’s Deja Vu -- Nash and Crosby had managed to assemble behind them “The Section,” a group of largely session musicians who had enough high caliber talent to go on to become one of the most well known posses in studios and concert halls across the country (they later backed James Taylor and Jackson Browne, among others). Guitarist Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar, drummer Russell Kunkel, keyboard player Craig Doerge, and bassist Leland Sklar were nothing short of perfect to back Crosby and Nash. This was no faceless band of “knock it out in two-takes-or-less and let’s break for lunch” players; these were highly attuned musicians who succinctly translated each nuance and vibe that Crosby and Nash’s latest works called for -- with balls, finesse, and technique in surplus.

The album opens with Nash’s acoustic folk paean, “Southbound Train,” which, when played for the ever-impenetrable Bob Dylan (with the hope of eliciting a response), Nash was simply asked to play it again. Suffice it to say Dylan felt it was worth hearing more than once. A high harmonica note careens through the song’s intro (in a relaxed 3/4 tempo), before Nash’s unmistakable voice sails over the music: Liberty laughing / and shaking your head / can you carry the torch / that’ll bring home the dead. Hardly the fodder of the upbeat, peace-loving hippie aesthetic that CSN were "supposed" to be the quintessential representation thereof.

The first thing that comes to mind when hearing Graham Nash/David Crosby is how dark, how exposed, how somber and stark the lyrics are. (Only "Black Notes," Nash's improvised instruction to musical expression, provided what amounts to a fifty-eight-second flash of tenebrific light.) It was as if Crosby and Nash were serving notice to their listeners: “OK, so the sixties are over; CSN&Y and the whole decade didn’t go how we thought they would. Now what?” But simply by forging ahead with what was working -- their collaboration and friendship -- they were showing their audience that they would persevere, even when they were as unsure and frazzled as everyone else was by 1972. Vietnam was still raging, Nixon’s reign was granted a landslide continuance (luckily only to be exposed in shame a scant two years later), and the culture was still reeling from the fracturing events of the sixties: assassinations, protests, social and sexual reevaluation.

Crosby had seen quite a time. Since being kicked out of the Byrds in 1968, he had forged an alliance with Stills that led to CSN; had his pick of numerous women for all sorts of experimental dalliances (resulting in one of his most controversial songs, “Triad”); developed a reputation for being a scene-maker with the most potent supply of Marijuana in either hemisphere; as well as being creator of an ever growing cache of the most unique and inventive songs rock had seen thus far (though not apparently in the eyes of his fellow Byrds). He’d bought an Alden schooner with money borrowed from the newly financially-flush Peter Tork, and suffered a terrible loss in September of 1969 when his girlfriend Christine Gail Hinton was killed in a head-on collision. Her death would haunt him -- as well as his songwriting -- for years to come, as well as contribute to his downward spiral of self-abuse through drug addiction. Much of the sessions for CSN&Y's Deja Vu took place with Crosby literally in tears.

Crosby’s first solo effort, If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971) was spiked with the same sense of melancholia and confusion that infused and informed his work on Graham Nash/David Crosby a year later. His “Whole Cloth” was a brilliant, spacey, lingeringly atmospheric slice of life-philosophy, summing up Crosby’s sense of loss, confusion and pain:

Clearly Crosby was seeking answers that were not forthcoming, but his lyrics were clear and evocative. Kortchmar’s guitar sprayed out dissonant, careening notes through a (rotating) Leslie speaker, while piano chords hung as if suspended in space before decaying, resonating in the same sonic galaxy as Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way (1969). Somehow much of what was conveyed still came across with the same sense of truth as the best CSN or CSN&Y music, but it was darker -- less optimistic, with more of an air of pain, suffering and displacement. This was the most emotionally expressive music Graham Nash and David Crosby would make before the malaise of the seventies really set in.

Nash’s efforts still had the same musical elements (plaintive piano, folky acoustic guitars), but his lyrics were more probing, showing that he too hadn’t found what he was looking for to achieve some sense of personal and musical fulfillment. He even fired off a song to Stephen Stills that many construed as being written to a woman with “Frozen Smiles” (…and if you carry on the way you did today / all the music in my veins will turn to stone…), giving insight into some of the difficult emotional transitions that diffused and ignited the CSN/CSN&Y synergy.

Crosby was again pushing the limits of what popular song forms could contain with his haunted coupling of “Where Will I Be?” and “Page 43,” the former shimmering with classic Crosby-Nash harmonies on a piece that was as slow and dark as any of Neil Young’s work. It was a sonic display of profound loneliness. “Page 43” was Crosby’s sly answer to those who were seeking philosophical answers to life’s problems, suggesting if they had the proverbial “manual,” they need look no further than page 43. Musically, Crosby’s chords were a nod to James Taylor, whose chord passages and transitions Crosby had long admired.

“Games” was as achingly beautiful a song as anyone could pull off about the complicated nature of love and relationships, and how the inherent elements of fear and insecurity can slowly wreck havoc upon people’s psyches. A slow, circular A-minor electric guitar riff somberly sets up the mood as bass and drums drop into the soundstage, with Crosby’s tentative voice delivering the lines with an emotional depth worthy of Van Morrison:

There is a decided lack of pretension and posturing in the work of Crosby and Nash; they are what they say and play, and are far more honest and real than they are sometimes given credit for. This was an album that simply showed where they were at and what they had to say circa 1972 -- no hippie manifestos, no political theorizing, just two friends and the events and experiences that were shaping their lives and artistic vision. The title they chose for this collection of songs says it all. Rarely has emotional honesty been conveyed in such an interesting and musically engaging fashion.

Nash indicated in Paul Zollo's invaluable 1997 compilation of interviews, Songwriters On Songwriting, that “Girl To Be On My Mind” was written in his house -- overlooking Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, as indicated in the lyric -- on a new Wurlitzer keyboard on New Year’s Eve, 1970. With a simple McCartney-esque melody, this plea for companionship on a night when one especially longs for company was one of many emotionally direct and honest lyrical efforts to come from Nash over the years, but none is as truly and effectively evocative as this one.

Crosby’s “The Wall Song” had another unusual backing band: the Grateful Dead. Followers of the Grateful Dead have long been aware of the musically fruitful friendship between Jerry Garcia and David Crosby (as well as Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane), which spawned numerous jams that have been making the rounds among bootleggers for years. According to producer/engineer Stephen Barncard, languishing in the CSN vault is a ten minute version of “The Wall Song,” complete with extended coda courtesy of the Dead. Crosby’s vocal, complete with smooth vibrato, glides over a lurching, unmistakable Garcia guitar lead, as “The Wall Song”’s rhythm-guitar parts chime and shift as Crosby sings:

Yet another friend lends a hand (on lead guitar) in the form of the elusive ex-Traffic man Dave Mason on Nash’s angry “Immigration Man.” Written in direct response to some visa difficulties Nash had when crossing borders, it clearly illustrated that Crosby and Nash were capable of more driving material with a rocking, rhythmic kick -- even without Stills or Young.

From here, Crosby and Nash would again play their roles in Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, taking part in rock’s first stadium tour in 1974 before going on to make two more revealing records as a duo (1975’s stunning Wind On The Water and Whistling Down the Wire in 1976). But Graham Nash/David Crosby marks the beginning of their amazing studio collaboration, with an atmosphere from a time and era that can never be recaptured. Be glad they got it all down on tape.

Addendum: 1972's Graham Nash/David Crosby was issued on CD very briefly sometime in the late eighties/early nineties, but for reasons unknown, was withdrawn. It was (re)issued in Europe in 1998/99 by Atlantic Records without the knowledge of Crosby or Nash, with loose indications that it had been remastered. It was not in fact actually remastered, and is believed to have been taken from what is known as a "dolby safety copy" transfer tape which was prepared during the making of the CSN box set in 1991. This album is available in the U.S. on CD as an (expensive) import, but again, it is not a release authorized or approved by Graham Nash or David Crosby. It has since been re-released on vinyl by Classic Records in 2001.