Graham Nash says flat out that Crosby Stills
Nash & Young's 2006 "Freedom Of Speech" tour was the
scariest tour he has ever experienced.
"I mean, this was the only tour I've ever
been on in my life with bomb sniffing dogs," Nash said in recent
phone interview. "That was an indication of how intense it got out
there. We had many, many death threats, and we kept that away from our
public. We didn't want them to know. We tried to deal with it as best we
could, and we did. But it was a day-to-day thing."
At this point it appears the dogs will not be
needed for this summer's Crosby Stills & Nash tour. But Nash said
he, David Crosby and Stephen Stills won't shy away from continuing to
express their outrage over the Iraq War and the Bush administration.
"We're probably going to start with (the
song) 'Military Madness,'" Nash said. "We want other people to
know right up front where we stand. I hate with a passion this present
administration. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, what George
Bush and his administration have done to this country is criminal, and
the sooner they're gone, the better. And the sooner the powers that
control those people are gone, the better. This military industrial
commercial complex is insane. The greed, it's just preposterous when
people are hurting badly in this country oil companies are making $40
billion profits in a quarter."
It was the political nature of the
"Freedom Of Speech" tour that created so much of a stir. And
the story of that tour and the reactions it caused will be there for all
to see this July with the release of the documentary movie, "CSNY
— Déjà vu."
Although the "Freedom Of Speech" tour
was a rare opportunity to see Crosby, Stills & Nash reunited with
the group's on-and-off fourth member, Neil Young, it was a different
sort of outing for CSN&Y.
Young recently had released his album
"Living With War," a politically charged broadside against the
Bush administration and the Iraq war, and songs from that album were a
centerpiece of the CSN&Y shows on that tour, along with some of the
topical material from various albums in the group's back catalog.
The movie, while it originated with the tour,
doesn't focus so much on the musical performances, Nash said.
"We did not concentrate on the
music," he said. "Obviously there's music in there. Obviously
there's footage of us playing live, but a lot of it is getting peoples'
reactions, the most flattering reactions that we were gods, the most
(harsh) reactions that we were traitors."
Much of the film project was done by Young, and
Nash feels his occasional bandmate achieved the goals for "CSNY —
Déjà vu."
"I'm very proud of it," Nash said.
"It's not easy making movies, and I think that Neil Young did a
brilliant job of putting together what we as a band thought the essence
of the tour was, which was we're going to say this. This is our opinion.
What do you think?"
To be sure, at least a bit of the political
dialog will continue this summer on the Crosby Stills & Nash tour,
but Nash said the selection of songs won't be so thematically linked. In
fact, the group, which will be backed by a full band, asked visitors to
its website to submit ideas for songs they wanted to hear on the tour.
"We're actually going to do some of their
requests," he said. "It's not a problem, but we have so many
songs. After 40 years of playing we have a tremendous amount of music to
play, and it's very interesting the delicate dance that goes on in
choosing songs because we want to give the audience what they came to
hear. It's very hard to earn a dollar today, and we want to give them
what they wanted. But at the same time they understand, and always have
with CSN, that we have to satisfy ourselves musically also."
After the CSN tour, Crosby and Nash will tour
this fall as a duo, performing a series of full-band shows. Somewhere
along the line in the fall, the group also plans to record a studio
album, its first since 1994's "After The Storm."
Strictly speaking, with this project, CSN will
join the swelling ranks of veteran acts making albums of cover songs,
although Nash was quick to draw a distinction.
"We're not going to do covers," Nash
said, noting the band has a list of 18 songs that are candidates for the
CD. "We're going to do the song, but it will be the way we did it,
like when we did 'In My Life' by John Lennon. Who would have thought you
could have done 'In My Life,' but we turned it into a Crosby Stills
& Nash song, even though John wrote it."
