Wild Tales

by Graham Nash

  I kind of fell in love with Haight-Ashbury. The neighborhood was coming out of its seamy, post–“Summer of Love” period and slowly undergoing a revitalization. A real estate broker took me to a beautiful little oasis, Buena Vista Park West, overlooking the Haight. On the west side of the street that ringed the park was a four-story Victorian that had been built in the 1890s and had made it through several earthquakes and the Great Fire. That was it for me. It would need a lot of work, a top-to-bottom gutting, but I was more than willing to take on the project. So I bought it immediately for $59,000, the first serious purchase I’d ever made. For a kid from Salford, it was an incredible leap. I didn’t tell Joan right away about the house I’d bought for us. I was going to surprise her with it once the renovations were under way.

  CSNY began getting serious about our first album together, which would ultimately become Déjà Vu. We all had songs. We’d started recording in Los Angeles, but the scene shifted quickly to the San Francisco environs. David and Christine were settled in Novato, hanging out with the Grateful Dead, most of whom lived just down the road. My house wasn’t ready yet, so I checked in to the Caravan Lodge Motel, a funky joint in the Tenderloin district, but convenient to Wally Heider’s San Francisco outpost. David took a room there as well, and so did Neil, who moved in with two bush babies, Harriet and Speedy. They looked like rats, with gigantic eyes and big long tails. Invariably, one or the other was always clinging to Neil’s neck, and they would sproiiiing off his shoulder and cling to the wallpaper and sproiiiing to the carpet, a crazy fucking scene indeed.

  A couple days into the rehearsal period, I went up to Novato to visit David and Christine. They were in a big old country house with Debbie Donovan and a number of hippie chicks who came and went. We used to get up around one or two o’clock and go sit by the pool, trying to figure out what we were going to do that night. One thing for sure, there would be plenty of drugs. We were all stoned and pretty well coked out of our minds—everyone, that is, but Christine, who was never a druggie. She was the joint roller; she made sure the boys had enough to smoke. Christine ran the whole show.

  On the last day of September in 1969, we were vegetating at David’s in that near-perfect hippie setting, feasting on the vibe of that perfect day. It was warm and beautiful. The summer was grinding to a halt; a change of spirit was definitely in the air. Mickey Hart, the Dead’s percussionist, had sent a horse over to the house for Christine that afternoon, and there was a communal joy watching her ride across the grounds. I was especially happy for Croz. He was a self-proclaimed satyr with insatiable lust, but Christine had somehow captured his heart. She was a very beautiful woman, such a great spirit, full of laughter.

  Later that afternoon, I was by the pool when Christine sidled over and handed me three joints. “I just rolled these for you,” she said. “Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.”

  That was the last time any of us ever saw her.

  She drove off in David’s van with her friend Barbara Lang, taking the cats to the vet. On her way there, on the main street in Novato, one of the cats jumped into her lap, scratching her. She leaned down to take the cat off her lap and veered into the opposite lane, where she was hit by a school bus and killed instantly.

  I watched a part of David die that day. He was a strong guy, no doubt about it, but Christine’s death was too traumatic for him. When she died, a piece of him was gone. She’d been one of his muses—more than that. He loved her much more than he admitted. He wondered aloud what the universe was doing to him. And he went off the rails; he was never the same again.

  After that tragedy, we somehow continued to make Déjà Vu, but David often wound up in tears in the studio. Drugs helped him mourn—or so he thought—but, of course, they only made things worse. He was inconsolable, falling apart. The love and sunshine that was in the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album had disappeared from Déjà Vu because, in one way or another, we were all tormented, all miserable, all coked out of our minds. David had lost Christine, Stephen had broken up with Judy Collins, and my relationship with Joan was deteriorating. Neil was also having problems with his wife, Susan. Sometime during these sessions, I remember going to Neil’s house in Topanga. I had given him a straight-on portrait I’d taken of him that looked like it was printed on canvas. His wife had posted it on a bulletin board next to the refrigerator—attached with two thumbtacks straight through the eyes. When I saw that, I knew something drastic was going on in that house. So we were all struggling with romance, confused that the universe suddenly wasn’t going right, which is why Déjà Vu is so much darker than the first record.

  Ahmet knew what kind of shape we were in, and he definitely disapproved. He wondered about the longevity of this band, and I think he felt he’d made a mistake by recommending Neil in the first place. The tensions between Neil and Stephen were becoming more obvious, reverting to those games they used to play in Buffalo Springfield. Stephen doesn’t play on “Country Girl,” and the only reason he’s playing on “Helpless” is because we recorded it at Heider’s. We were all irritated with each other to some extent. I had hoped the sessions would at least be pleasant, but it was turning into a fucking nightmare.

  We were losing it, that was for sure. Even the technical stuff was starting to come undone. I would do a mix, Crosby would do a mix, both of us would get those songs right. We’d come back to the studio a day later, play back the mixes we’d done—and they would be completely different. Stephen and Bill Halverson would stay up until five in the morning remixing what we’d done, after takes had been agreed to and finalized. That happened constantly. And, again, we were snorting too much coke. At one point, I went into the studio, got everybody together to talk things over, but became overwhelmed by what I was going to say—and burst into tears.

  “We’re fucking losing it,” I said, weeping uncontrollably. “It’s over. This isn’t any fun.”

  Even though we had great music in the can, it was too much of a struggle. We were battling ourselves. Making the album was turning way too dark. I was twenty-seven years old. I was supposed to be a man, and here I was, crying my eyes out because we were losing it—whatever it was. David’s reaction was to cry with me. He was still dealing with Christine’s death. Very often, I found him sitting against the studio wall, crying. There was nobody to take care of us. Elliot Roberts wasn’t around all that much, and Geffen wasn’t there at all.

  The scene in the studio was all kinds of unstable. A lot of cocaine. A lot of Neil being-in-the-band but not-being-in-the-band. He recorded “Country Girl” in a different studio or at his ranch and brought in the tracks for us to sing on before taking it away for a final mix. He didn’t sing or play a note on “Teach Your Children” or “Our House,” although he was great with David on “Almost Cut My Hair.” He was also great on the live tracks—“Everybody I Love You,” “Helpless,” and “Woodstock”—but wasn’t really a part of the group, which pissed me off big-time. What I suspected from the start.

  The amount of cocaine we snorted during those sessions was ridiculous. On “Helpless”—a very slow song and a beautiful piece of work—there were four guys snorting cocaine and yet trying desperately to slow things down. But it was impossible for us to record that song until two in the morning, after the coke had worn off and we’d wound down enough. Meanwhile, we had to get the song down fast before our dealer would come by and replenish our stash.

  The Dead and the Airplane were also at Heider’s, but in adjacent studios, working on new stuff. I didn’t know Jerry Garcia too well, although I knew he was a fine musician, so Crosby suggested I approach him about playing on “Teach Your Children.” I had played the song first for Stephen after completing it at the Caravan Lodge Motel. He listened distractedly, then said, “Okay, I’ve got it, but in all due respect I think this is the way it should go.” And he gave it a country arrangement that ultimately turned it into a hit. In any case, I’d heard Jerry had just started playing pedal-steel guitar and asked if he would add a pedal track
to my song. After the first take, I said, “Thanks, Jerry, you’re done.”

  “No, no,” he protested, “I fucked up that part when we go right into the chorus. Can I do another?”

  “Absolutely, do it,” I told him, “but I’m never going to use it. The first one was exactly what I wanted.”

  And, of course, his pedal steel was one of the defining elements in that recording.

  About three quarters of the way through the Déjà Vu sessions, I cornered Stephen and said, “Our problem with this record is we don’t have ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.’ ”

  He looked at me as if I were nuts. “I know, man—we did it already.”

  I said, “No, we don’t have what it represented—a kicker, an opening track that stuns you and keeps you glued to the rest. I’m talking about what the ‘Suite’ did for the first record. We don’t have that song!”

  David’s contributions—“Déjà Vu” and “I Almost Cut My Hair”—weren’t the “Suite,” and neither were Neil’s “Helpless” and “Country Girl.” Nor was “Everybody I Love You,” which Neil cowrote with Stephen. I knew “Teach Your Children” and “Our House” were going to be hits, but they were nowhere near the opener we needed to make a bold statement. The same thing with “Woodstock,” which rocked out but lacked the necessary grabbing power.

  The very next day, Stephen found me outside the Caravan Lodge Motel and said, “Hey, Willy, remember yesterday how you were telling me we didn’t have a great opening track? Well, listen to this.” And he played “Carry On.”

  Get the fuck outta here!

  He’d gone back to his room and whipped out that song. All there, completely intact.

  We made a great record of “Carry On,” but things were deteriorating much too fast. I was worried about David’s emotional state. He was in shock, no doubt about it. He also seemed suicidal, and I feared greatly for his life. He needed a change of scenery, pronto. So David and I made a pact: to drink together around the world. You don’t snort coke or smoke dope to forget such a tragedy—that’s a drink situation. Courvoisier and Coca-Cola, a horrible drink, but we didn’t care; it did the trick. We talked about where we wanted to go, but wherever he chose, whatever he did, I wanted to be with him. And however he got fucked up, I would get fucked up with him. What are friends for?

  On October 10, 1969, we flew to New York and stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. I took a picture of David standing in the doorway under a pull-down fire escape. There’s a window behind him with a big EXIT sign over it, and I caught Croz staring out, looking worse than miserable. I knew for sure at that point, he was contemplating not being here.

  From there, on October 14, we took off to London and the go-go music scene that was nearing its peak. We didn’t give a shit what kind of music we heard, though. We didn’t go to clubs to hear bands. We went to get fucked up and to pick up women. Anything to distract us from Christine’s death. I was sticking by my friend, still worried for his life.

  But a two-week binge had to be enough to distract Croz. Besides, we owed it to the rest of the guys to get back to Heider’s and finish the album. There were also a number of dates to play interspersed on the schedule: Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Phoenix, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Denver, we hit all of those places in just under a month, all arena shows, wall-to-wall kids.

  John Sebastian opened our show in Honolulu on November 22, the anniversary of the assassination of JFK, and it was unfortunately marked by the death of a female fan who fell from the balcony of the HIC Arena. The gulf between Joan and me was getting wider by the moment. I believe that “Big Yellow Taxi” and her song “River” were both started during this tense time. “Big Yellow Taxi” was really one of the first “environmental” songs, becoming a worldwide hit.

  The weirdest date was on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California. We got a bad vibe from the moment we arrived. Electronic music blared over the PA that was loud, obnoxious, and irritating as hell. That put us in an itchy and distracted mood. More than two hundred thousand people were packed onto that track, most of them ripped on amphetamines and LSD. The Hells Angels were drunk and unruly. It was an ugly scene, and unpredictable.

  The only reason we did Altamont was because Jerry Garcia had called Croz and prevailed on their friendship. But by the time we got there, the Dead had refused to go on after Marty Balin, lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane, got punched in the head. That left it to Santana, the Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Stones, and us to keep a lid on that crowd. Woodstock had been our gig. Altamont was Mick’s gig, and we were cool with that. The Stones were headlining; we’d be long gone by the time they went on.

  Our set went down smoothly and was incident-free, but Stephen was freaked out from the moment we went onstage. He took the temperature of that crowd and sensed the danger in the air. Later, he said he feared that some nut was going to try to shoot Mick, which distracted him from the get-go. And, of course, during the Stones’ set a fan was fatally stabbed by a Hells Angel a short distance from the front of the stage, which more or less signaled the end of the Woodstock era. The minute we finished, we grabbed our guitars and took off for the helicopter at a dead run. We were out of that scene before the applause died down. We flew down to LA and appeared that night at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, where Stephen fainted from exhaustion.

  chapter

  10

  WE FINISHED DÉJÀ VU BEFORE THE END OF 1969. The last week in December, the album was mixed at Heider’s in LA and San Francisco, and the four of us said our good-byes. We were glad to get away from one another. We needed space—not just from each other, but from the business, from the music, from Elliot and Geffen, from being CSNY. We left, although briefly, and planned, individually, to scatter throughout the world. Stephen was set to do a “reverse Nash,” moving to England, where he’d purchased a 350-year-old Tudor manor house on a twenty-acre estate that had belonged to Ringo Starr and, before him, Peter Sellers, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Neil was headed out on tour with Crazy Horse, while David and I planned to resume our debauch.

  As always, however, there were dates to play before escape plans could be put into effect. We had a short tour in Europe, with Joni. That wasn’t as strange or as awkward as it sounds. She and I managed to remain friends, even though my heart had been broken. I’ve always been able to compartmentalize, emotionally as well as professionally. The only time I remember it turning weird was in Copenhagen on January 11. A few days earlier, we did a show in Stockholm and, as usual, we engaged our audience in a brisk repartee. The fans considered us a political band. Every chance we got, we rapped about politics onstage with a gentle anti-American slant, especially when it came to the Vietnam War and the myth behind the Kennedy assassination. It upset Joan. The next day, I sensed there was something wrong. We were in our hotel when I asked her what was up.

  “You keep slagging America after it gave you all this opportunity,” she said. “Why are you biting the hand that feeds you?”

  Like us, Joni was opposed to Nixon and the war, but she didn’t think it was fair to throw hand grenades from the side of the stage. We argued, and she ended up pouring a bowl of cornflakes and milk over my head. I was stunned—to say nothing of being pissed.

  There was a maid in the room. I turned to her and said, “Would you kindly leave?” Then I put Joni over my knee and I spanked her.

  Needless to say, it was one of the more interesting moments in our relationship.

  WHEN WE GOT back to the States, Croz said, “Hey, Willy, my boat’s in Fort Lauderdale. We should head down there.”

  Sure thing, I was game. David was a different person when he was on the Mayan. He’s an expert sailor, loves the high seas. As captain, he had certain responsibilities that would distract him from feeling so impenetrably blue. Sailing would give him something to occupy his thoughts rather than obsessing about Christine day and night. He had tortured himself for months over her death. “Could I? Should
I? Would I?”—all the questions one asks oneself. He needed to process Christine’s death, and to deal with it in terms of his own responsibility. And he needed to let go. He had to let it go.

  Honestly, I was expecting a weekend getaway. We’d go to Florida, have dinner, spend the night in a hotel, and then go out the next day for a light, breezy sail. Not a chance. David had other ideas. He was going from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco. Three thousand miles, seven weeks on a boat.

  “Okay.” Aw fuck!

  We took our time provisioning the Mayan. Lots of food and water were stowed on board. A steady supply of weed and a bottomless reserve of coke. And a crew that rivaled the one on Gilligan’s Island: Leo Makota and Steve Cohen from the CSNY road crew, singer-songwriter Ronee Blakley and her boyfriend John Haberlin, our friends Bobby and Gay Ingram from Coconut Grove, and Anita Treash, a friend from Big Sur who paired up with Crosby. I certainly wasn’t going to be of any use. I’m English. I knew about Francis Drake, but in no way was I anything resembling a sailor. Of course, David and I both had our guitars, with grand intentions to write songs galore on the open sea. And Joni planned to come down for part of the trip, so there was going to be plenty of music in the air.

  Once we boarded the Mayan, David’s ghosts were tamed. He was transformed on that boat. All the pain and anguish began melting away as he slipped into the role of an emotionally healthy person. Captain Croz. Man, he was in his element, pulling up sails and coiling the ropes, navigating through treacherous shoals. He needed to deal with the ocean every minute of the day, never knowing if it would do something he didn’t expect. It could turn nasty at any moment. A storm could come in suddenly, with forty-foot waves, and you’re like a cork floating on the ocean. Amazingly enough, we didn’t have any lifeboats, but I trusted Croz. He was as confident and comfortable with the boat as he was with his guitar and music. He put everything he had into it. It was heartening to see him come around like that, taking the edge off a perilous couple of months. The Mayan saved David’s ass, no doubt about it.