IT'S about halfway through the Crosby, Stills and Nash show on
Saturday night and all is very pleasant.
This was an outdoor show under a balmy breeze at Brisbane's River Stage.
The flow of hits keeps coming, the sound quality is just about perfect.
Sure, Stephen Stills's voice isn't quite the thing it used to be, but
his electric guitar-playing is still jaw-dropping stuff, a forceful
reminder that Neil Young wasn't the only hotshot in that regard back
when it was CSN&Y and a post-Woodstock generation flipped for their
harmony-laden brew of folk, soul, country and rock.
Graham Nash looks fit and trim, barefoot and chatty, obviously still
very happy to be sharing the stage with his two (not-so-trim) road
brothers plus four-piece band.
Of course, it's a miracle that David Crosby is even alive, given his
trials and tribulations over the years. To hear his voice soaring
through harmonies and intertwining with Nash's on songs like Guineverre
and Winchester Cathedral is certainly worth the price of attendance.
They all take solo spots and turns at lead vocal. Stills explains that
he long ago moved on from the very dark place that produced his solo
spot 4+20, a song as drenched in pain as anything that Young has written.
He rips into a raw, bluesy version of Isn't It About Time.
Nash sends the crowd into a singalong swoon with Military Madness and
Our House, which he dedicated to his old love Joni Mitchell. Crosby
still keeps hitting notes and harmonies that no 66-year-old as a right
to hit.
So far, so good. For this we can overlook some lesser new material.
Then something extraodinary happens. Stills steps up to the microphone,
Nash hints at the telltale opening chords to Stills's very first hit,
For What It's Worth, written for his early band with Young, Buffalo
Springfield.
I was always going to be a sucker for this one, since I've always been a
big fan of all three pre-CS&N outfits, the Springfield, Nash's The
Hollies and Crosby's The Byrds. And I know for sure I'm not going to get
any Hollies and Byrds songs.
From there, the show lifted from pleasant to overdrive, Stills's solos
growing in intensity, Crosby's voice a thing of wonder on Almost Cut My
Hair, the wall of sound building ever higher on Wooden Ships, an
ecstatic Woodstock to close leaving everyone with a grin on their faces.
It's easy to knock old rockers, still out on the road, churning out the
favourites and selling the T-shirts.
But there's a reason why CS&N (and, occasionally still, Y) keep packing
them in, there for all to hear in the blazing conclusion to this
concert.
Sixty-somethings or not, that was great rock 'n' roll.
