by Graham Nash
Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness
You got to speak your mind
if you dare.
Don’t, no don’t try to get yourself elected
If you do, you had better cut your hair.
As a lyric, “Long Time Gone” rolled right off the tongue, but our tongues were tied when it came time to record it. We tried it over and over and couldn’t get the track. You know what the track is when you hear it, but it wasn’t happening for us. Who knows why. We’d worked all night on it, never coming close to anything that satisfied. Frustration started to cloud our objectivity. About three o’clock in the morning, Stephen said, “Hey, why don’t you guys get a burger and go home?” So we did … no use beating a dead horse.
When we came back the next day, Stephen said to David, “Want to hear your song, man?”
In the hours after Croz and I had left the studio, he, with Dallas Taylor on drums, had created the entire track. It had an incredible arrangement—dark, moody, ethereal, sonically beautiful. There was space in it, a lot of space for David to sing his ass off, space for the vocals to come in on the choruses. The track was right there, it spoke for itself. And Stephen earned a new nickname: Captain Manyhands.
It was easier with “Lady of the Island.” That was a three-track record on an eight-track tape that we got on one take. Me singing and playing guitar, with Crosby sitting right next to me, blending in that beautiful cellolike fugue. We also got a gorgeous take of “Guinevere,” which is a motherfucker to sing. Years later, it was catnip for a cat like Miles Davis. He was working on Bitches Brew at the time and bumped into Crosby in the Village. “Hey Dave,” he said, “I recorded that tune of yours, ‘Guinevere.’ Want to hear it?” Miles had his arm around a tall leggy blonde he wanted to screw, so all three of them went back to his apartment to hear “Guinevere.” Miles put on the song, a twenty-minute version that riffed in myriad cosmic directions, and went into the bedroom with the blonde, leaving David there to smoke it and listen to the track. A half hour later, Miles emerged from the bedroom rendezvous. “So, Dave, what do you think?” Crosby threw him one of his trademark glares. “Well, Miles, you can use the tune, but you have to take my name off of it.” Miles was crestfallen. “You don’t like it?” he asked. Crosby refused to temper his opinion, even for royalty like Miles Davis. “No, man—no. I don’t like it at all.”
About ten years later, I was at an after-party event for the Grammys at Mr. Chow in LA and saw Miles come in with Cicely Tyson. He caught my eye and started waving insistently at me. I looked over my shoulder, certain he must be gesturing to somebody else. “No, no, c’mere, man,” he insisted. When I got within earshot, he leaned close and asked in his low, gravelly voice, “Crosby still pissed at me?”
I said, “You mean about ‘Guinevere’?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “He still pissed?”
“I don’t think so, Miles. He was either too high or he wasn’t in the right mood to hear your take on it. He probably expected the chords to be the same as his, but I don’t think he’s pissed at you one bit.”
Miles pondered this with Socratic intensity. “Okay. Tell David hello. Tell him I hope he’s not still pissed.”
In any case, we put the finishing touches on the album, delivered it to Ahmet at the beginning of April, and reveled in his reaction to it, which was sincere and emotional. He was genuinely delighted, even a bit overwhelmed. He recognized right away that we had made a stunning piece of music. It was exactly the album we wanted to make, no second guesses, no regrets. We knew! Everything we wanted to say was on that tape. And we were pretty full of ourselves for pulling it off.
Over the next couple weeks, we took our acoustic guitars everywhere, went to visit friends, our musical peers, and sang the entire album live for them, start to finish. We covered the entire Laurel Canyon circuit: Cass Elliot, Peter Tork, Peter Fonda, Elliot Roberts, Paul Rothchild, Jennifer Warnes, Barry McGuire, they all got a private performance. We gave them what we called an ear fuck: put one of them in the middle of us and sang in their ear, which never failed to blow their minds because the music was great, it was something brand-new. The feedback we got was pretty spectacular. They were stunned at how beautiful we sounded. So we knew—we knew we had something special.
The weight was off our shoulders, but I missed the studio. It was, in many ways, where I felt most at home. So for a few weeks I went to observe at A&M while Joan finished work on Clouds. After one session with Paul Rothchild, she too decided that she didn’t need a producer. Sound familiar? History may not repeat itself, but it does echo. It was fun watching her do her thing without having to worry about the critical consequences. Joan was a happy girl in the studio, and extremely capable. She knew exactly what to do, how she wanted to sound. There was always a fully formed arrangement in her head, a perfect structure for each song, a suitable accompaniment, when other voices should come in—which were all hers, of course—and how to shape each song so that its essence was preserved. Recording is, for the most part, a solitary endeavor, and Joan enjoyed that. She had the same attitude as CSN: “Stay out of my way, I know what I’m doing.” And for Joni, it never failed to pay off.
On April 11, 1969, David, Stephen, and I found ourselves in New York, at David Geffen’s apartment on Central Park West, ready to review the acetate of our first album. Tommy Dowd had remastered it from a fifteen-inch EQ’ed copy. We hadn’t given Atlantic the master two-track tapes, because we didn’t trust record companies, even with Ahmet involved, to take care of something so precious. And lucky thing, because Dowd had remastered the entire album, which pissed us off righteously. Suddenly, Tom’s fingerprints were all over our record, way too much bass on “Suite,” for instance. It sounded slicker, different from what we’d struggled so hard to do. Bottom line was that it wasn’t what we delivered, and that alone—didn’t matter who did it, could have been Saint Spector himself—was enough to piss us off. We wanted it to represent us, not what Atlantic thought we should be. Croz threatened to break Tommy’s legs if he ever did anything like that again, and we remastered it ourselves at Atlantic Studios.
Afterward, we all went our separate ways. Stephen hightailed it to England for a music special of blues performances, filmed for broadcast and featuring Buddy Miles, Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Buddy Guy. A music junkie of the first order, Stills couldn’t tear himself away from the scene. David and Christine Hinton made a beeline for Fort Lauderdale, where his boat, the Mayan, was anchored. The Mayan was a two-masted Alden schooner built in 1947 that Croz had bought in 1967 with $22,500 borrowed from Peter Tork. It was where Croz went when he wanted incredible peace, where he could be the master of his own destiny. And I joined Joni for a few of her concerts, at the Philadelphia Academy of Music and the Fillmore East in New York.
On April 30, 1969, we flew to Nashville for Joni and Bob Dylan’s appearance on The Johnny Cash Show on ABC-TV. The night before the show was taped, Johnny and June had a dinner at their house outside the city for every performer on the bill. Just so happened that Bob was a guest. He’d had his motorcycle accident and hadn’t been seen or heard in public for over a year. He was in town, making Nashville Skyline, so this was a very big deal.
The dinner was the kind of event I wasn’t used to. It was fancy, affluent, gorgeous plates, gold cutlery, maids and waiters scurrying around. At one point in the evening, Johnny rose, picked up a gold knife, and tapped it against a glass to get everyone’s attention.
“Here at the Cash house we have a tradition that you have to sing for your supper,” he said in that lush, gravelly growl. “So—there are some guitars. Let’s go.”
Nobody moved.
Bob was sitting on the stairs with Sara, and both of them looked uncomfortable. Mickey Newbury, a famous Nashville songwriter, was there; so was Kris Kristofferson, and of course, Joni and me. Everyone stared at those guitars as if they were radioactive. My confidence level was ridiculously high as a result of our recent studio hijink
s, so I thought, Fuck it—I’ll get up.
Of course, nobody there knew who Crosby, Stills & Nash were. I doubt anyone knew who I was or that I’d been with the Hollies. I was merely Joan’s boyfriend, along for the ride. So I grabbed a guitar, sat on the stool, and whipped off a version of “Marrakesh Express.” All abooooard … I hit the last chord, knew I’d killed it, put the guitar back on the stand … and walked right into a standing lamp that went crashing to the floor.
That broke the ice! Everyone thought it was funny as shit. So, promptly, I think Kris got up and sang “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” Joni played “Both Sides Now,” and even Bob got up and did “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Don’t Think Twice,” and a few other songs. His performance that night was overwhelming. Everyone was in tears. This was Bob Dylan, for God’s sake. No one had known if he’d ever sing again. It was an incredible moment, especially for me. I revered Bob, but I was pretty confident, too. The Crosby, Stills & Nash album was about to be released, and I knew how special it was, even in front of this crowd. “You don’t know it now, but you just wait,” I thought. Yeah, pretty confident—and I had the girl of my dreams with me. What an incredible moment in my life.
THE ALBUM DID everything we thought it would. From its release in May 1969, it immediately caught fire and went burning up the charts. “Crosby, Stills & Nash” was on everyone’s lips. The music hit hard; it was a definite game changer. You could hear our songs on almost every station in America, out of every student’s dorm-room window. We had a giant hit on our hands.
Exactly as we’d expected.
Now we had to promote it. It was one thing to sing it acoustically for friends, quite another to play it in a large venue. We could sing it live brilliantly. No problem where that was concerned. And we had Dallas on drums. But Stephen had played bass and keyboards on the album. And he was our lead guitarist. So we knew a bass player was going to be in the cards. I’d be able to cover some of the keyboard parts because Stephen had taught me how to play some simple piano. But even with that, there was a lot of discussion about adding another member to the core.
Stephen and Dallas went to England to ask Stevie Winwood if he’d join us but he didn’t want to. The same with Al Kooper, who’d recently been kicked out of Blood, Sweat & Tears. John Sebastian actually made a lot of sense. He was our friend, someone we knew we could have fun with and get along with musically. He had a sweet voice—just think of the Lovin’ Spoonful—but there was no room for John, vocally or writing-wise. And truthfully, we didn’t need another voice. We weren’t looking to be a choir.
Ahmet appeared to have the answer. One evening at the start of that lazy, amazing summer, he invited Croz and Elliot Roberts to dinner at his house. There was a lot to celebrate. The CSN album was selling like mad, and requests for concert dates were starting to pile up. Ahmet knew he had a smash on his hands. After the plates were cleared, Ahmet began playing music on the stereo and reminiscing sentimentally about Buffalo Springfield. He loved the magic that band had created, especially loved the tension in the guitars, the way they balanced each other.
“You know who you ought to talk to?” Ahmet asked. Who was the one guy who could do it all, bring the chops, the songs, the heat? And give CSN the missing elements it needed for an unbeatable live performance? His answer: “You guys need Neil Young.”
(© Joel Bernstein)
chapter
9
NEIL YOUNG: IT WAS LIKE LOBBING A LIVE GRENADE into a vacuum. Croz knew too well the potential blowback. Neil was a guy with immense talent who was utterly self-centered. Bands for him were merely stepping-stones, way stations to a personal goal. That’s the way it had gone down with Buffalo Springfield. They could never count on him at crunch time, never be sure he would turn up at gigs. But Ahmet knew the core of the Springfield was unbeatable, and he longed, in some way, to hang on to that value. He also realized what Neil’s presence did to Stephen. It not only kept him off-balance, but prodded him to rise with his guitar licks: “Follow that, motherfucker!” In which case, Stephen usually did. Neil brought out something in Stephen that was animal-like. They were like two longhorn stags on either side of a stage.
Stephen’s reaction was predictable. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me, Ahmet?” he huffed. “I just spent two years with the guy. He’s disruptive, doesn’t turn up. You want me to go back there?”
It was obvious from the stories around town just how explosive their relationship was. But it was hard to say no to Ahmet because you knew he was coming at it from a purely musical point of view, and when Ahmet talked, you listened. He was a very influential and persuasive cat where we were concerned.
The situation got thornier after Croz recalled an incident. One day, he had been sitting on the trunk of his car in Joni’s driveway when Neil drove up the street, saw him, and pulled over. Crosby, in his suspicious way, asked, “What are you up to, man?”
Neil shrugged and said, “I wrote some new songs. Wanna hear ’em?” And he whipped out a guitar and sang “Country Girl” and “Helpless.”
Croz thought to himself, We’ve gotta have him.
The first I heard about it was in New York, during the remastering of our album. Stephen mentioned, “Maybe we should just get Neil.” I was totally against it. I didn’t want Neil in the band—I didn’t want anybody else in the band—and I said as much.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “We created this beautiful sound. Why fuck with it?”
Crosby emphasized our need for a lead guitarist when Stephen played keyboards in a concert situation. And, of course, those songs. “This guy is writing some of the best shit I ever heard,” he said. “He’s the guy who wrote ‘Expecting to Fly’ and ‘Clancy.’ When he sings those songs, you want to listen. I want him in the band.”
Stephen was equally adamant. He knew how great Neil really was. And he wanted what he had in the Springfield, which was Neil the writer, singer, and guitar player who had an aura, real mojo. David and Stephen were two thirds of a democratic band, so it was really a fait accompli.
“Look, I don’t know Neil Young,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s anyone I can hang out with, like I can with the two of you. I don’t know if I can confide in him, if I can go to him and say, ‘I’ve got this tune, what do you think?’ I don’t know anything about him. Let me at least meet the guy before we make this gigantic decision.”
I got really worked up over this. We were so personally involved with each other. Did we have room, time, and space for another person in the mix? Another time-bomb personality? I didn’t think so. From a vocal point of view, I was totally opposed. Four-part is very different from three-part. Besides, I felt Stephen played great guitar; he was four times the guitar player Neil was. Wasn’t that enough?
I put my foot down. “I’ve got to meet Neil Young.”
He happened to be in New York at the time, and we arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Bleecker Street, just the two of us. I didn’t want anyone else to influence what I thought about this cat.
I remember walking in, seeing a guy with this dark cloud about him, and strangely enough, a lightness at the same time. Hard to explain. The guy was that sphinxlike, tough to read. It was obvious from the get-go that he knew what he wanted. We talked about what he could bring to the group. Unafraid, I got right in his face.
“Why am I talking to you about this fucking band I happen to think is already complete?” I asked.
Neil threw me one of those inscrutable stares. “Well, man, ever hear me and Stephen play together?”
I’d never heard the Springfield live, I admitted, but I’d heard plenty of stories.
“Yeah, man—we’ve got it, man. And I’ve got the songs, too.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I told him. I’d heard “Expecting to Fly” and “Nowadays, Clancy.” Songwise, he could pull his own weight. But my concern was more about chemistry. Crosby, Stills & Nash was a stable compound; adding another element was potentially combustible. Like Crosby sa
id, “Juggling four bottles of nitroglycerin is fine—until you drop one … ”
Turns out Neil Young was a funny motherfucker. I knew he had this dark, looming presence, a scowl and a loner tendency. But Neil was funny. Now, maybe he understood that I was the group’s lone holdout where he was concerned and he was on his best behavior, but at the end of breakfast I would have nominated him to be the prime minister of Canada. Based on his personality and my intuition, I went back to the guys and said, “I get it—he’s in. Let’s give it a shot.”
It so happened that Neil was managed by Elliot Roberts, same guy who managed Joni and us. So, first, we ran the whole business thing by him. Because we were Crosby, Stills & Nash, the question was whether Neil would become one of our band members or part of the corporate entity. Elliot insisted that Neil have his name up there with ours: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It sounded more like a law firm at that point. I lost my ampersand and Neil got it. But that made sense, and I admired Neil for his attitude, which was: “If I’m going to join this band, I want my name up there and an equal share.” He was joining us after we’d made the first album, so we agreed to give him an equal cut of the gigs and anything else we recorded together, but nothing from the first record.