by Graham Nash
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.
In any case, we had to move fast putting something together. The timing was delicate. The album was riding high on the charts and it was necessary for us to get out there and promote it. We wanted to be out in front of an audience while the record was fresh and hot. There were already a few upcoming gigs on our dance card. So we rented out the Village Gate in New York for a few days in June and rehearsed there, to get a feel for CSNY.
I hadn’t been inside the Village Gate since I’d first come to New York in 1965 with the Hollies. Back then, I was really into jazz, so I’d already seen Miles Davis at the Vanguard. Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass, opened for him in a suit and a tie. He just walked onstage and talked about a new psychedelic era that was coming and turned on a strobe light—the first one I’d ever seen—with his tie swinging as the light hit it, just like acid. It was also the first time I ever saw a musician blow an incredible solo and just walk offstage, still playing, and go to the bar to have a drink while his bass player soloed. I later learned that was so Miles. Entering the Village Gate again brought back many fond memories.
Otherwise, there was a lot of work to be done. We had to slot Neil into what we were doing without losing the essence of what we’d created. Tough to do musically. It was going to change the sound of the band. And it was going to change the sound of the first record, live, because we were about to sing those songs in concert. We showed Neil what the vocals were, CSN style, then asked, “How do you fit into this chorus?” When we did a Neil Young song and came to the chorus, it was: “This is what we would do here, but we need to make room for your harmony.” He had an unusually high voice, so often I would go under him to make it four-part, but there were also times we agreed to double the high part, which gave the harmonies an extra edge.
We began rehearsals at Stephen’s house on Shady Oak, a beast of a place he was renting from Peter Tork on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, in Studio City. It was a big, strange sprawling structure that had originally belonged to the actor Wally Cox, with a music room covered in oriental carpets and a swimming pool and a storehouse of drugs that kept everyone mellow. Stephen had a studio on the premises, with a B-3 and an ever-ready drum kit. I’m not sure how many people lived there. Lots of very nubile young women. Friends who needed a place to crash for a while. It was an all-purpose hippie haven. We spent lots of lovely days there, using the sauna, feasting on steak dinners, indulging ourselves on the food and various other tasty treats.
Jimi Hendrix stopped by when he was in town. And Eric Clapton. David Geffen and Elliot Roberts came to hear us rehearse. Man, Geffen was so full of himself at the time. He’d done the record deal and worked out the trade of me for Richie Furay. There was the whiff of a Woodstock deal in the air. He was strutting around like a dandy peacock, so we threw him into the pool. Stephen and Croz picked him up and did the dirty work. He had this expensive white shirt on, a pair of designer slacks, patent-leather loafers. “You think you’re full of yourself? Well, watch this!” He was completely soaked, and then we chucked a bunch of roses in after him. I took a photo of him standing there, soaked to the skin.
He came out of the water with a rose in his teeth. He had to know it was a joke and that we grudgingly loved him. When you have someone like Crosby in your band, you have to play it nice and loose, otherwise you’re not going to survive. And Geffen, if anything, was a long-term survivor.
Those rehearsals went better than anyone expected. Musically, Stephen was on fire. He and Neil picked up right where they’d left off with the Springfield, playing amazing barnburner solos together. Stephen made room for Neil in the solos, and Neil expressed himself accordingly, just as we hoped, saying, “Follow that, motherfucker.” Stephen’s riffs would say, “No problem, listen to this. Take that, motherfucker.” At the end, they’d be right there together, building to a brilliant crescendo.
I’ve got to admit that Neil added an element to Crosby, Stills & Nash that we didn’t have: that dark edge, that biting Neil Young thing. It was obvious after those first few days at the Gate that we had made the right decision. The music went somewhere else that was equally great, if not better. We were smart enough to realize what was happening. It wasn’t like we did this because our manager or record guy thought it would be a good idea. We did it because of the music.
Our coming-out party, so to speak, was at the Chicago Auditorium Theatre on August 17, 1969. It was a warm-up date before we played Woodstock, which we heard was going to be a giant thing, maybe twenty thousand kids. Joni opened for us in Chicago—how ballsy was that? Our album was in the top five; the buzz on both coasts and everywhere in between was enormous. It was the first time I’d performed since being with the Hollies. I could hardly wait.
Everyone knew this would be sensational. Geffen and Roberts were antsy. When your artist has that kind of buzz, it makes your job that much easier. You can now say to promoters: “I’m sorry, they won’t go for it.” And whether we did or not, that was their attitude. “We don’t need you. These guys are going to be gigantic. Do you want a taste or not?” It gave the managers great power when the buzz was that undeniable. And the attitude spread throughout every manager and record company. Ahmet was bragging like a proud parent about having this new supergroup on his roster. Atlantic, for the most part, was still considered an R&B label (a term their legendary producer, Jerry Wexler, had coined in 1949), with a primarily black audience. They already had Led Zeppelin and Cream—and now Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. We helped push them right over the edge, into the world of young, white record buyers.
The Chicago gig lived up to everyone’s expectations, including ours. Stephen, David, and I walked out and hit those kids with the “Suite.” Bam! Right between the eyes. Then we introduced Neil, and the crowd went crazy. We did three and a half hours: all the stuff on the first album, stuff that would later be on Déjà Vu, all of Neil’s songs, some Springfield stuff. And we would talk. A lot. It felt great to finally put it all together and to hear the crowd’s reaction, which was beyond delirious. From that first show in Chicago in 1969, we were Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Believe it or not, after that tour, apart from one concert, an anti–Vietnam War benefit in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Crosby, Stills & Nash didn’t play as a trio again until 1977.
WE MOVED ON TO New York after Chicago. We kept hearing great things about the Woodstock festival. It was going to be monumental, transformative, a cultural flashpoint. Rumors coming out of upstate New York were “Now it’s a hundred thousand people,” “Now it’s two hundred thousand … ” Joni was supposed to go up there with the rest of us, but she was scheduled to appear on The Dick Cavett Show on the Monday after the festival. That TV show was considered a very big deal. So Geffen and Roberts made a decision. If we got held up upstate, she’d blow a big career move. Rather than risk Joni being stranded at
Woodstock, they pulled her off the festival roster and she sat it out in a New York hotel room.
On Sunday evening, August 17, a limo drove us out to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to get a helicopter to the festival. The rumors now were beyond belief. It was a nation, a disaster, a revolution; they were calling out the National Guard. We never thought of not going. In fact, we couldn’t wait to get there. Dallas and I went up in one helicopter, David, Stephen, and Neil in another right behind us, and we tandemed in. It was pretty wild. We flew up along the Hudson River and then over this … sight! David’s description of it was the best. He said it was like flying over an encampment of the Macedonian army. There were a lot of people there. It was more than a city of people—it was tribal. Fires were burning, smoke was rising, a sea of hippies clustered together, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of thousands of them. The focus of it was the well-lit stage. We could see it all from up there. It was intense, a very special moment.
About fifty feet from the ground, something went wrong. The tail rotor on our helicopter failed, and the craft started to spin in opposition to the rotation of the blades. The pilot had to—land it now! Hard. He thumped it down. Dallas freaked out. Later, he said he wanted to punch me in the face, but those feelings dissolved the moment we touched down.
John Sebastian met us with many rolled joints. He, of course, had the best dope at Woodstock. We went straight into his tent at the right-hand side of the stage and got incredibly wasted. “This is crazy, man,” he told us. “Just take a look.” Outside, it was muddy and a little drizzly. Hard to get a grip on the enormity of the scene.
It was such a tumultuous smoke-ridden cocaine-driven moment that it’s hard to remember everything as it went down. I think that Santana was on immediately before us. It was their national debut, as well as ours, and no one had seen Joe Cocker live in the States until then either. And as we shuffled onstage to do our set, we could see all our peers watching from the sidelines: the Band, the Airplane, Richie Havens, Janis, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Jimi … When Stephen announced that we were scared shitless, it was because of all those heavyweights—artists we loved—ready to check us out. They’d heard our album and thought, Okay, now show us. But, truthfully, I wasn’t nervous in the slightest. I didn’t give a shit how many people were out there. I’d already been through six or seven years of madness with the Hollies. The kids at Woodstock were stoned and placid by comparison.
The stage sound sucked. We could hardly hear ourselves, and the sound of the audience was enormous, even if they weren’t saying anything. It was their energy, which thrummed like an engine. So we had to wing it. It was cold, and the guitars immediately went out of tune. Stephen was tuning madly throughout the opening of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” even as he was running down that incredible riff. David and I were on one mike. We knew how to balance our voices. I’m always eight or nine inches away from the mike head. They call me Razorthroat for a good reason. I thought we sounded fabulous. Man, I was getting higher and higher on that stage. The energy was fierce. And we killed ’em.
We played about an hour, beginning with “Suite,” then going on to “Helplessly Hoping,” “Guinevere,” “Marrakesh Express,” “Long Time Gone,” and some of Neil’s songs, including “Mr. Soul” and a new tune of his, “Sea of Madness.” At the time, we had no idea that Neil had refused to have his songs filmed or recorded, something that the rest of us would never have thought of, let alone agreed to. That’s the main reason many people don’t realize that the four of us performed at Woodstock. We only knew that we had done well. We could sense it. And understand: It was only the second time we had ever played together, which was insane (our first performance was at the Chicago Auditorium Theatre just days before). We felt triumphant.
Afterward, we went back to Sebastian’s tent and proceeded to get even higher. By that time, we’d watched a couple of other acts and, sometime just before dawn, it was Jimi’s turn. I got to see most of Jimi’s set, and as we were leaving he was launching into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Woodstock was coming to an end. And what an end—a brilliant piece of musical history.
When we got back to New York City, Joni was waiting for us at our hotel, not at all happy that she’d missed the festival. Frustrated, she’d watched the whole thing unspool on TV news, which had covered it practically from beginning to end. Our babbling and rambling about the experience didn’t make it any easier for her. Instead she’d put all her energy into writing about it and had a good 90 percent of the song finished before we arrived. She played it for us before we even got settled.
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road …
It was a beautiful, gentle ballad, rather smoky, folky and moody. I noticed Stephen listening intently with that strange look in his eyes. When Joni had finished, after delivering that magical refrain—We are stardust, we are golden—he didn’t hesitate. “Can we have that song?” he asked her. “I know exactly what to do with it. But I’d like to change it a little.”
Because Joni was one of the lads, to say nothing of being my girlfriend, she merely shrugged and said, “Sure.” And, of course, Stephen turned her ballad into a balls-out rock ’n’ roll song. He took that songbird, dark-purply approach of hers and attached electric jumper cables to it, with Neil adding that killer of a riff at the top.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young returned to LA after that. Our next shows were at the Greek Theatre, back on our home turf. We asked Joni to open the shows for us (I found out later that Neil had told Joni that we should be opening for her). The shows were rather special for us … not only was Joni a fabulous writer and performer but the atmosphere she helped create was electric. One might even say magical. One night a rainbow-colored contrail from a rocket—fired from the Vandenberg Air Force Base—illuminated the skies. Even the fans who couldn’t get tickets filled the trees behind the theater every night.
From the very start of our relationship, it was obvious to me that Stephen Stills was a hugely talented man. He played nearly every instrument on our first album, everything but drums. Croz and I played our rhythm guitars but there was no question it was Stephen who was the driving force. I recently heard an audience tape of our performance of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from the Greek; to my ears, it is one of our very best performances ever of that great song. It still thrills me to remember the moment that Stephen first sat me down and played me the “Suite.” I was astounded by the melody and structure of the piece … Four completely separate movements blended into one ridiculously fine song. We were most definitely on a roll.
A couple of weeks after that we played the Big Sur Festival on the grounds of the Esalen Institute, overlooking the Pacific Ocean just off Highway 1. It was an intimate affair, nothing at all like Woodstock. Joni was on the show, as were Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Fariña, Cass Elliot, the Flying Burrito Brothers, John Sebastian, and Dorothy Morrison, who sang “Oh Happy Day” (my friend Stanley Johnston recorded that record when he was a young engineer at radio station KPFA). The thing I mostly remember about that event was that there was a swimming pool in front of the stage. Some guy kept screaming something unpleasant at us. People were trying to shut him up, and Crosby delivered one of his best rejoinders: “Peace. Love. Kick his ass!”
Joni and I weren’t very happy together at that point. I think she recognized that our relationship was starting to wind down. Somewhere along the way, the bloom had gone off and, in retrospect, she may have already been looking for a way out. A lot of it stemmed from my inability to make a larger commitment. Sometime before Woodstock we had talked about marriage, but I’d already been in a marriage that ended after three years. And I was recently divorced from Rose and wasn’t sure the time was right—or, even though I was in love, wasn’t sure if I was ready for more. I was very hesitant, and Joan picked right up on that. Some of it also had to do with Joan’s grandmother, Sadie Jane McKee, who had wanted to be a performer but wasn’t able to because, as a mother, she had t
o take care of the kids. My sense was that Joan thought if she married me I would want her to stay home and be a wife, as opposed to a writer and performer, which had never crossed my mind. Never. That’s not what I wanted from a partner. I was too respectful of Joni’s talent and wanted only for her to fulfill her dreams. In any case, she wanted more from me. She didn’t understand how committed I was—but in my own way. I was completely in love. I would have been with her for the rest of my life. I’m certain that she saw it the same way.
All of these conflicting emotions crystallized when she completed her song “Willy,” which she’d begun writing back in March, in a limo we’d taken to Big Bear. I guess that even then she understood that things were coming to an end. That song really pinned what was going on between us. It’s an incredibly sad but truthful song. She first played it for me on the piano in the Laurel Canyon house.
Willy is my child, he is my father
I would be his lady all my life
He says he’d love to live with me
but for an ancient injury that has not healed
The song took my breath away. She put it right there in my face and it made me very uncomfortable. I remembered specifically looking through the lace at the face on the conquered moon, which dates the moment—and Joan’s growing dissatisfaction—to the days following the historic moon walk, three weeks before Woodstock. I’d told her then that I felt I’d given my heart too soon. And it was true, I could not hear the chapel’s pealing silver bells. I was scared to hear them, even though I was completely in love. Nor did I heed the warning that I was bound to lose if I let the blues get me scared to feel.