by Graham Nash
A glaring absence was Crosby, Stills & Nash. Jackson asked me to get the group together, but it seemed like folly so I flat-out refused. I didn’t feel that we had anything to contribute, and there were plenty of unresolved feelings between us. So much of our music depended on how the three of us were relating, and if the bond wasn’t there it was useless to perform.
I went to New York City early in September in an effort to lay down some organizational groundwork. In addition to the five-night concert at the Garden, we planned a rally in Battery Park City for Sunday morning, September 23. A number of us would be on hand to perform, interspersed with speakers to enlighten the crowd. I’d done my own research on the nuclear industry, but Tom Campbell made sure we were all up to speed. None of us wanted to go into something so important without having all the facts at our fingertips.
A few days before the first concert, I stopped in to visit Jackson in his hotel room. “I hate to tell you this,” he informed me, “but we’re going to have to cancel the fifth night. We just don’t have a headline act.”
I thought this spelled disaster for MUSE. The first three nights would only cover our expenses. Nights four and five were when we’d raise money for the cause. It would be tragic to let that slip away.
“I know things look a little bleak between you, David, and Stephen,” he continued, “but would you reconsider and have CSN take over the fifth night?”
Damn it!
I’d been trying to insulate myself from just such a request. Everything in my life had returned to normal. I was happy with my latest solo album. My marriage was wonderful, I loved being a father, and Susan was pregnant again with our second son, Will. I hadn’t been in touch with Stephen and David for a while. Did I want to set off that time bomb again?
Good Lord!
I thought over what I’d learned in the last few weeks, how the Three Mile Island incident was far worse than what we’d been told. Inevitably, what came out was not the whole truth. The media reported that no one died at Three Mile Island, which is complete bullshit. Independent research revealed horror stories about birth deformities and actual deaths, but they were covered up to avoid panic. The problems we were facing with the nuclear industry were far greater than my differences with Stephen and David.
“Let me give it a try,” I told Jackson.
I called Croz first—he agreed right away—and once I had him, Stephen came on board. They were on the next plane to New York. It was that easy. I had no idea what condition they were in, but they sounded good on the phone, very positive. Plus, they understood all of our kids and families were in danger and wanted to do anything they could to help out.
Now we had the fifth night intact. I hadn’t performed with David and Stephen in a long time, but it was pretty good—not the best, a little ragged around the edges. We didn’t have time to work on recent material, so we stuck with the hits: “Teach Your Children,” “Long Time Gone,” “You Don’t Have to Cry,” and the rest. I also did a solo set earlier in the week.
The concerts, promoted by Ron Delsener and Tom Campbell, were incredibly successful. The production team and enormous crew were outstanding. Jackson, Bonnie, James, John, and I did a half dozen press conferences about what we expected, how to spread awareness. Because a benefit of this type was new and unprecedented, we got extraordinary press coverage and turned out the crowds. The rally in Battery Park drew a quarter of a million people. As a result, the nuclear problem became an important social issue. I’d like to say “Mission accomplished,” but lately that phrase gives me the creeps.
The No Nukes concerts, as they were called, were all filmed and recorded. But we didn’t have the kind of funds it would take to make a movie. Joe Smith convinced Warner Bros. to lend the board of MUSE a half million dollars to make a feature from the footage. Then, at the end of August, Smith cashed in his chit. He said, “You remember that favor I did for you with the money for the movie? Do you think there’s any chance you could get the album out for Christmas?”
Now, I know damn well it takes about three months to prepare an album for release. And that’s a standard album: one artist with an identifiable sound. This was slated to showcase twenty groups with twenty different identities. The request came in a few days before September. I did the calculations: basically an impossibility. To get it out for Christmas, somebody was going to have to work like a fucking maniac. Jackson and I decided that to repay Joe’s kindness we would give it a shot. We brought all the tapes to my studio at Rudy Records and started to produce a three-record set.
Jackson, Stanley Johnston, Don Gooch, and I worked our asses off in an around-the-clock marathon. The last week, in an effort to finish, we stayed at it for the entire seven days. I may have had two short naps; otherwise we never went to sleep. It was unlike any drill I’d ever been through. On the last day, heading back to the studio, I was hallucinating like mad and saw a giant blue flash streak across the road. God bless Jackson Browne. At six thirty every morning, he would go home, shower, and take his kid to school before coming right back to the studio, often without eating. And Stephen dropped by for the last three days to help with the mix.
Somehow, we managed to make the right decisions and get the album finished. We had the album cover designed, and delivered it, got all the names on there—twenty major artists who signed off on the project—and got it out on time for Christmas. Needless to say, our efforts paid off. It gave the rock community—meaning all of us—a sense of how powerful our voices could be. And you’ll notice that there hasn’t been a nuclear power plant built since. I’m not saying the No Nukes concerts pulled that off, but we certainly made things difficult for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I’D GOTTEN a taste of that power and liked how it went down. Without wasting time, I got involved with another benefit after No Nukes. A man who worked at the United Nations, Irv Sarnoff, showed up at my studio with a proposal to do something to support people less fortunate than we were. He felt it would be more efficient to funnel money to those in need through local churches, and I agreed. I went away from the meeting committed and enthused, and that night, on the edge of sleep, I mapped out the entire event: who to invite to perform, which people to speak, what organizations to include, the staging, the name. We’d hold it at the Rose Bowl, which held one hundred thousand people, and call it Peace Sunday. I wanted the pope involved, and I plotted to have every church bell in the world go off at a certain time. Most of the religious leaders backed us immediately, although I remember a bizarre conversation with the Reverend Joseph Lowery, head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Afterward, he pulled me aside and asked, “What’s Jesus’s cut?”
What’s Jesus’s cut? Did I just hear him right?
I said, “We’re going to give as much money as we can to all the local churches. I think that’s Jesus’s cut.” End of story.
Everyone we knew was invited. My friend Lisa Law, one of the original Woodstock photographers, put me on the phone with Stevie Wonder, who was the first major artist to sign on to the show. Once Stevie said yes, I used him to seduce the next big act. I called the Eagles and said, “Hey, CSN and Stevie are going to do this. Are you in?” Then I called the next guy and said, “Stevie, the Eagles, and I want to …” Before long, the bill was filled with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jackson, Tom Petty, Gary U.S. Bonds, Stevie Nicks, Nicolette Larson, Don Fogelberg, and Jesse Jackson, who brought Mohammad Ali.
I remember driving to the concert not really knowing whether we could pull this off. The Rose Bowl was an enormous place. But when I arrived and saw it packed with a hundred thousand people, I had to control myself from bursting into tears. It was a spectacular event, an incredible afternoon and evening of nonstop music. And in the process, we raised a ton of money for a damn good cause.
I LOVED THE impact we were making, but at the time I felt as though I were being pulled in twenty directions. My involvement in the No Nukes album and movie was grueling, really exhaustin
g. Rudy Records was taking off as an independent LA studio. And my second son, Will, was born on January 12, 1980, just as Earth & Sky was being shipped out to stores. I was really excited about this rec- ord. Just before it came out, I was full of optimism. In an interview with a writer, I said, “It’s light, it’s airy, it’s a little ominous in the darker areas. There’s hope in it. There are rainbows, good feelings.” It seemed like a natural step forward in my musical evolution.
Unfortunately, the press and general public didn’t share that outlook. The sales were soft, with no help from the record company’s lack of promotion. It just didn’t catch fire. The airwaves were humming with exciting music from the Pretenders, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, the Police, Pink Floyd, and the Wailers, and somehow I got lost in the crowd. My album was softer, more complicated, lyrically abstract. It was very personal—perhaps too personal. And a couple of tracks felt unduly tense, thanks in part to my relationship with David. None of those things were solely responsible, but together they conspired to dampen my prospects.
To make matters worse, Rolling Stone sought to pile it on. One of their so-called critics really laid into Earth & Sky, arranging certain lyrics out of context in a mock conversation that, on paper, made the songs seem fanciful and inane. As if that weren’t bad enough, he ended the review saying, “Even his best friends won’t tell him.”
The whole thing was sad, incomprehensible to me. The writer seemed intent on slagging off my work without any real understanding or appreciation of what he was listening to. It lacked insight and any kind of value for the reader. A trained monkey might have brought more to the game. That kind of criticism is the worst kind of journalism, cruel, pointless—and it hurt. I’d put my heart into that record.
Stephen came to my defense in the press. “Nobody talks about a friend of mine like that,” he said. “It’s bullshit journalism. If that writer walked in here right now, I’d deck him.” Spoken like a pal.
Despite all of that, I had to get it up to promote the album. There was a two-month tour, mostly small theaters, just a trio, nice and laid-back to complement the songs. Leah Kunkel, Cass’s sister, opened for me. The only other participant was Joey the Goldfish, who swam in his bowl onstage throughout all forty-eight shows except the show in Canada, where thanks to immigration I replaced the real fish with a slice of carrot.
It was a very satisfying experience. I learned a lot about myself and about performing solo on that tour. You have to work awful hard to hold an audience’s attention, which meant developing an intimacy and a great set of songs. It was easy for me to deliver the new material from Earth & Sky. As I said, those songs were close to my heart and, in concert, you can bring something to them that might be missing on record. Plus, I had the trusty CSN catalogue to mix into the set.
After all was said and done, I spent some time in Hawaii, recuperating and planning my next move. Stephen happened to be vacationing nearby at the same time and, as destiny would have it—as destiny always has it—we found ourselves sharing the same stage, doing a benefit for JoAnn Yukimura, who was running for political office.
Stills & Nash: We’d never explored that permutation. For one reason or another, I’d always partnered with Croz. But just the two of us onstage made a powerful combo. Our voices combined beautifully. We rocked that place in a way that surprised even us. It was eye-opening, on so many fronts.
Later in the year, we decided to explore that synthesis, jamming together at Rudy Records. We locked into a version of Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” that was a killer, just a killer of a track. Stephen was in very good shape—rather, he wasn’t as messed up as he usually got. We had fun, started looking down the pike. I thought it would be interesting if we tried doing something together. I’m a team member; I like working with others. Solo records are reserved for those times when I have absolutely no other choice. David and I were barely talking at that point. He was completely fucked up and kept me out of his dark loop. He wasn’t around, so … screw it. We’d just do it ourselves, a Nash/Stills album.
Joel and I actually went to see David perform at the Marin Civic Center. I went in disguise, in a Groucho Marx mask. I didn’t want anyone, especially David, to know I was there. And he was horrible; it was heartbreaking to watch. He looked like shit. His voice was shot, he fenced with the audience. This was not the Crosby I knew and loved. His world, and part of my world, was crumbling right in front of my eyes. He needed help. He was losing total control at this point.
Later, David claimed that when I decided to make an album without him he was crushed emotionally. That may be true, but part of him understood why I made that decision. He was totally fucked up, and I couldn’t deal with that. Music is supposed to be a joy, it’s supposed to have expression. There was no expression in David at that time. I couldn’t risk that sucking the energy out of our sound. That might sound cold, but not to me. Music is what keeps me going through life. It is a huge part of my essence. I couldn’t dilute that.
Through Mac Holbert, I’d also been following the details of a short tour David had been doing so that he and Jan could remain financially solvent. They went out in a van with a mattress in the back, which allowed them to freebase all day, using propane tanks and a torch. According to Mac, it was a horror show from beginning to end. They were going through an ounce of cocaine a day, thousands of dollars. One night, David had a grand mal seizure from the drugs; the next night, the same thing happened to Jan. I didn’t want to be around that kind of behavior. The studio had always been a sanctuary for me. I couldn’t sacrifice that.
So Stephen and I recorded seven or eight tracks by ourselves, with Mike Finnigan on the extra vocal part. We mixed it at Sea West on the north shore of Oahu and sent it off to Atlantic. A week or so later, Atlantic came back and said, “We’re not interested in Stills/Nash. We want a Crosby, Stills & Nash record in time for Christmas.” Needless to say, Stephen and I were sadly disappointed. We thought we’d made a good album, but if your record company isn’t keen on putting it out, what are you going to do? Instead we cobbled together another greatest-hits package called Replay, but if you ask me, Retread would have been more like it.
The smart thing would have been to put the Stills/Nash tapes aside until we could figure out a way to redo the project. It might have been a case of just needing better material. We were always writing; a great song lay just over the next rise. But we were forced to do something for financial as well as musical reasons, which wasn’t fun. Stephen needed the cash. I’ve been careful with my money over the years, but Stephen’s not as smart with money, never has been. He just spends what he wants, which drives his financial advisors crazy. So it put me in a difficult spot. I didn’t need the money, but my friends did.
Atlantic was so insistent on having CSN that I decided to contact David despite the off-putting performance I’d seen in Marin County. I must have called his house forty times from Hawaii. After the first two or three tries, I got the picture. Jan’s mother, Harper, would always screen the calls. “David’s at the beach.” “David’s at the grocery.” “David’s playing tennis.” (She should have known I wouldn’t buy that one.) There was always some excuse that he couldn’t come to the phone. We took our tapes back to Rudy Records and called David again. By some quirk, I finally got him on the line and explained the situation, how much we missed his voice on the record and the bind we were in. We arranged for him to come to Los Angeles, but his voice was in incredibly bad shape. He couldn’t sing a note. That beautiful mellow Welsh vibrato was completely gone. So we took a couple of his best songs from the album Capitol had rejected—“Delta” and “Might As Well Have a Good Time”—and CSN’ed them, which means that Stephen and I added our voices.
Those early sessions with Stephen had been a joyful experience, but once David came back, the mood turned dark. Everyone was apprehensive. “Can he do this?” “Did we make the right decision?” “Are we torpedoing the positive energy?” The atmosphere was tentative, fragile. The chem
istry was different between David and me. On the one hand, both of us realized that he was now a flat-out junkie. He was freebasing without compunction, not even hiding it discreetly. (Although I didn’t know at the time that he was also chipping with heroin, which shocks me, even to this day.) On the other hand, David felt triumphant that we had to get him back into the band. He listened to what Stephen and I had done and said it wasn’t good enough, that we were kidding ourselves—and, who knows, he may have been right. Maybe we did need David. And that sparked his usual cocky self. “Ah-ha-ha! So you had to come back and get me, didn’t you. You have to have me.” That vibe wasn’t conducive to great music.
I worried about his irrational behavior. I was worried for him physically—he could have dropped dead at any moment. Underneath it all, I knew he was still David, and all I was doing was waiting for him to come back. I had great faith that Crosby would make it through. Whatever makes him an incredible human being was still inside there … somewhere. Maybe I was naïve, maybe I was too optimistic, but I never believed that he would die. When you’re dealing with a dear friend, you can usually take him by the shoulder and say, “Hey, listen to me for a second.” But when that friend is a junkie whose eyes are vacant and whose ears tune you out, you try another approach. I grappled with all these disparate feelings and handled them in my usual way: by examining them in the lyrics of a song. Because David was a sailor and he and I were both familiar with the idea of Valhalla and the Viking funeral of putting a body on a boat and pushing it out to sea, I began to feel there was a way of talking to Crosby that he just might listen to. So I wrote “Into the Darkness,” which is brutal and direct.