crosby stills nash

"CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG is alive," Neil Young said, flushed with excitement from the group's first full-blown performance together in thirteen years. Following a stunning all-acoustic Greenpeace benefit concert in Santa Barbara, California, last month, Young revealed that he his decided to work with the group once again primarily because David Crosby has kicked drugs and is now serious about making music. The four have already started recording a new album, and its release will most likely be followed by a major concert tour beginning this summer.

"We're gonna make a great album," insisted forty-five-year-old David Crosby, standing backstage at Santa Barbara's Arlington Theatre. "We're gonna kick ass!"

"Everybody's here now," Young, forty-one, said as he relaxed with Stephen Stills in his dressing room between shows. "Can't be Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young if you don't have Crosby .... He was always the spiritual leader of the group. Now Crosby's back. I told Crosby six years ago, 'Get it together and I'll be there.' " He glanced over at the forty-two-year-old Stills, who added, "It feels like we're a band again."

Though still overweight (he's just begun working out with Neil Young's trainer), David Crosby seemed like a new man - alert, focused, happy - both on and off the stage. When he sang, his voice was strong and sure, hitting every note with a controlled intensity that had not been evident in years. In marked contrast to his freebasing days, when he kept himself holed up in backstage dressing rooms or on a touring bus dubbed the Lab, Crosby mingled freely between sets with backstage guests, striking up conversations, slapping old friends on the back, his face constantly breaking into a big smile. "I figure David used to live for music and drugs," said Bill Siddons, who manages Crosby and Nash. "Now he lives for music." And according to Young, Crosby will soon marry his longtime girlfriend, Jan Dance.

Crosby spent eight months in Dallas County Jail and the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville last year following drug and illegal-weapon convictions. During that time he successfully overcame his addiction to cocaine. He was released on August 8, 1986. As a condition of his parole, Crosby must submit to weekly drug tests. "We got David back almost from the dead," said Graham Nash, forty-five, during a separate interview. "Literally. Snatched him from the jaws of flicking hell. I've known him twenty years, and I've never known him this straight. I thought, What's a straight Crosby going to be? But he's brilliant and he's funny and he's creative .... This first year has been the big test. So far he's passed with flying colors."

In Santa Barbara on February 6, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young performed two separate hour-and-a-half long sets to sellout audiences totaling over 4,000 people. They were the first "complete shows," as Nash put it, the four musicians had played since breaking up in late 1974. Arriving a day early (Crosby cruised into town on a newly purchased Harley-Davidson), they held a hotel-room rehearsal into the early hours of the morning, then regrouped for a two-hour rehearsal the afternoon of the show. "All of those benefits we've done [Live Aid, the Bridge concert] were unrehearsed, very spontaneous," said Young during a forty-five-minute interview conducted during a plane flight back to San Francisco the day after the concert. "Some of them weren't very good. Live Aid was really a disaster ... This was the first time where we seriously rehearsed and learned the songs.

It showed. They immediately won over the crowd with a knockout opening segment of "Wasted on the Way," "Change Partners," "Long May You Run" and "Long Time Coming" that found their voices weaving together to produce the kind of crystalline harmonies that made them one of the biggest rock groups in the early Seventies. Then Crosby was left alone on the stage. Seated on a stool, he broke the ice by joking about how he was raised in Santa Barbara and "thrown out of every school in town." Then he addressed his recent problems. "Actually, I think you all know this," he said. "It was all too public. You all know that I got loaded for a long time and wound up very badly strung out on hard drugs. Now this is not a preach to you on drugs. Frankly, you got to figure that out for yourself. Mind you, if you look at my life you can figure it out in two seconds . . ."

Accompanying himself with just his acoustic guitar, Crosby played a beautiful ballad about "finding your way" called "Compass," which he wrote while in prison. "I have wasted ten years in a blindfold," he began, his distinctive voice sounding particularly fragile.

Rejoined by his band mates, Crosby introduced another new one, "He's an American." More new songs followed, some by Young ("Nothing Is Perfect," "This Old House," "Long Walk Home"), one by Nash ("Try to Find Me"), along with a twelve-year-old Stills tune ("As I Come of Age"). Other highlights included "Daylight Again," "Southern Cross," "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Southern Man," "Teach Your Children" and, toward the end of the second show, a passionate version of "Ohio" and another new song from Neil Young, titled "Mideast Vacation."

"It is different," said Crosby, speaking about the sense of excitement and commitment evident in their performance. "I guess my coming back had something to do with it. We pulled off all these new songs tonight. I can't believe it. I'm so happy."

In mid-February the group began recording in L.A. with producer Bill Szymczyk to begin a record that, if all goes as planned, will become the second Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young studio album. Deja-Vu, released in 1970, is the only previous studio album the four men have made together. (A live set, 4 Way Street, and a compilation LP, So Far, were also issued.) Attempts in 1974 to record a follow-up ended abruptly when Neil Young, upset by arguing within the group, walked out and, as Crosby once put it, "never came back."

"To tell you the truth, when I drifted away from the group, David didn't really have a drug problem," said Young. "At least if he did I didn't know about it. David always said he'd been doing all of these drugs all the time through all of his music and everything, but I don't think so. If he was, I must have been incredibly naive. Of course I was very naive, so it's possible." He laughed. "I didn't know much about drugs during that whole period. Never taken acid or anything like that. Still never have. People have an opinion of us that really isn't based on reality. It's based on what they and their friends were doing while listening to us."

Between the four of them, there is more than enough new material for a record. In addition to the songs they performed, Crosby has another one, "The Monkey and the Underdog," while Nash has at least two others, "Clear Blue Skies" and "Before the Moon Is Full." Stills also said he has some new tunes he'll be bringing into the studio.

One possible hitch in the group's plans has come from David Geffen. Young is currently signed to Geffen Records, and Geffen doesn't want him appearing on a CSNY record unless it comes out on his label. Crosby, Stills and Nash are still signed to Atlantic. Said Nash, "When he [Geffen] wanted the CSNY record and we said no, he then said, 'It's my ball and I'm gonna take my ball and we're not gonna play football. Fuck you.'"

Though he denies using those words, Geffen is adamant about the conditions under which a CSNY record can be released. "If they want to make a record with Neil Young, that record can only be made for me," said Geffen. "Because I will not allow Neil Young to make a record for anybody [else] while he's under exclusive contract to me, for which I paid a healthy amount of money.

"I don't know how that's going to work out," said Young wryly, "but I'm sure that the record companies, in their wisdom, will figure out a way for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to make another record. It's not my problem. We're gonna make a record anyway. No one can stop us from doing what we want. And then when it's done, it's done. Whatever happens to it after that, that's a business deal."

Nash thinks Geffen will relent since Young only owes two more albums to complete his contract: "Neil is about to hand in a record with Crazy Horse. And when you only have one record left to deliver, you have a lot of bargaining power. Because your contract is virtually up. Neil could go in and do 'My Way' six different ways and hand it in. I think if Geffen pisses him off, he's liable to do it."

But it was CSNY's bright future, not problems with Geffen, that Young was contemplating as he glanced out the airplane window at the California coast below. "There's a very strong chance of the group being better and stronger and perhaps bigger than it ever was before," he said. "There's really an audience out there for CSNY. We could have a huge tour, and if we make a great record ... We really don't think that Deja-Vu and the first album [Crosby, Stills & Nash] were really as good as we're capable of doing. There's a lot more depth and rawness and a lot more funk and soul in this band than has ever been heard on record.

"We see ourselves as being able to do this for another twenty years, Young later said. "We don't see that it's over. With us, we can go away for four or five years and come back and our audience is still there. We don't have to stay with what's happening. Because we're happening. We're not in that race. We're in our own slot. I just don't feel competition from anyone. Who's competing with us? If the Beatles were playing today, that would be something that we would think about. Are we doing something as hip as what the Beatles are doing? What else is there?"

PAGE INDEX