Music on the Road
Troubadours Crosby, Stills, Nash salute WTC heroes

By Paul Vercammen
CNN Showbiz Today Reports 
October 12, 2001 Posted: 1:06 p.m. EDT (1706 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- From the moment Crosby, Stills and Nash first harmonized into popular culture in the late 1960s, the group established a reputation for social commentary. 

Now the trio is coming to grips with the September 11 attacks, and making renewed calls for Americans to come together and get involved in a cause. 

Crosby, Stills & Nash is releasing the song "Half Your Angels" as a single in record stores. 

Proceeds will be donated to the Clear Channel Communications relief fund for victims and survivors of the attacks in New York and Washington. 

Graham Nash originally wrote the song after the Oklahoma City bombing. 

Paul Vercammen talked with America's modern-day minstrels of social conscience, in this week's "Music on the Road" segment. 

CNN: You've sung about love, war and hate. What might be different about what's happened to the United States after the September 11 terrorist attacks? 

Graham Nash: All the other conflicts were thousands of miles from here -- Vietnam, Korea, Panama, Grenada, the Gulf War. All terribly far away. This struck at the heart of the country. You can't get closer to the heart of the country than New York City. 

David Crosby: I don't want to see more American guys go out there and lose their lives in another Vietnam. At the same time I feel what everybody does. I feel strongly that we need to get these people back and more importantly keep them from being able to do this again. We have to find out why people dislike us and what we can do to put it right. A large part of why they don't like us, man, is that we have stuff and they don't. 

Stephen Stills: We are our brothers' keeper and we have to make sure the distance between the haves and the have-nots is not so great. We can literally feed the world from the breadbasket in the middle of our country if we just stick to it. 

CNN: "Half Your Angels" was originally written for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Tell us about it. 

Crosby: To me it sounds as if (Nash) wrote it last week. It's about that wounding of the country, the place that hurts the most. Every person in that building (World Trade Center) was somebody's kid, somebody's mother or somebody's father. There is no deeper wound that you can inflict on us. 

Nash: We used to sing historically from centuries back about our heroes. If a hero is not recognized then he is an unsung hero. What that means of course is we used to sing about our heroes. 

Crosby: That's part of our job. We're troubadours. Now when we sing that song "Half Your Angels," we're doing our part of the job. 

Stills: When I saw the faces of our firemen (at the collapsed World Trade Towers in New York) it occurred to me that when you are covered in ash, all of our heroes are the same color. 

CNN: For years, you guys have used songs to express your views. What inspires you? 

Nash: We respond to our lives. We get up every morning. We take our first breath. We get on with life. Whatever happens in our lives, we internalize and bring it out as music. 

Crosby: Music is a unifying factor. In the civil rights (era), people gathered in a church basement and sang "Nobody is Going to Turn Me Around" or "We Shall Overcome" to keep their spirits up, before they went out to face the fire hoses and the dogs. There are going to be great songs that are going to come from this (the September 11 attacks.) You know people like (Bruce) Springsteen are not going to let this pass.