It's like 'Deja Vu' all over again
By Tom Roland
staff, The Tennessean
published: March 8, 2000Words are the same, only the generations change for Crosby, Stills, Nash & not-so-Young anymore
When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released the classic Deja Vu album in 1970, the mantra of the Woodstock generation was to "never trust anyone over 30."
So there's an irony that 30 years later, they're out touring again and, at least internally, feeling youthful. The CSNY2K show stops in
Nashville Thursday.
For the record, Stephen Stills says he never bought into the notion that age 30 was a line of demarcation.
"I always thought that was the stupidest ... thing," he says from his California home. "First of all, my grandfather was the most trustworthy person I ever knew. I'm like, 'C'mon.' There were a lot of very, very childish things."
Nonetheless, CSN&Y was something of an icon for that generation. They played at the original Woodstock, even sang about it on Deja Vu. They opened for The Rolling Stones at the infamous Altamont concert. The grouping of Stills and his comrades Graham Nash, David Crosby and Neil Young won the Grammy for best new artist. They railed against the Nixon administration and the Kent State University shootings in Ohio.
When Stills looks back on his own era in the band's current Looking Forward album, he describes his generation as "a little bit flaky" in the song Seen Enough.
Then he fast-forwards to the current generation, mesmerized by celebrity and weaned on technology: "Stay in the limelight, Got your own Web site, Got all the answers, Ain't got a lick of sense."
"There's childishness with every generation," he surmises on the phone.
Indeed, Stills has his issues with current youth culture, and part of his discomfort stems directly from the music. CSN&Y, after all, hinged on social commentary and those tight, stunning harmonies. The layered voices on Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and Our House made them instantly recognizable.
Harmony, however, means nothing in rap music, a sound closely identified with today's youth. Melody and harmony are not factors when the lead voice is blabbing, and a lot of rap is either antisocial or just plain nonsense.
"There's some rap records that I really like," Stills admits. "The best ones are closest to R&B, and not so much noise and screaming. That's the one area that makes me basically understand how the guys in the white leather belts and white patent leather shoes would just look at us (in 1970) and gnash their teeth. I understand."
While parents in the late '60s wrinkled their noses over hip-huggers and bell bottoms, Stills is similarly unmoved by current trouser trends, calling today's kids "the generation with the unfortunate pants, the ones that they wear down around their thighs. I'm like, 'Come on, do you realize how dorky you look?' "
"But," he allows, "I understand something about my previous generation."
It's amazing how age can change a perspective. A band that blossomed when LSD was revered by some now hangs close to the hotel room and works out.
"My wife was remarking on my muscle tone even today," Stills beams.
Bar-hopping is a thing of the past, although Stills will likely visit Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar in Printers' Alley. And the music has somehow changed, both onstage and on record.
Looking Forward, the title intimating that they prefer not to rest on their past, is a fairly mellow album. Crosby's Stand and Be Counted, which shares its title with his new book about rock music and charities, leans heavily on distorted guitars. Seen Enough has a blues-rock character
borrowed from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues. Stills' No Tears Left has a tough exterior. The rest of the album is primarily a folk-pop release, with acoustic guitar arpeggios and their patented harmonies, though a bit less polished than in the past.
Though he doesn't say it, Stills sounds a bit disappointed in the album when he compares it to "the old Woody Allen thing, that line that 'I have a lot of difficulty with mellow. I tend to rust.' "
But he insists that the band is not coated with brown and orange. He says a recent performance was "one of the best rock concerts I've seen in my life, and I was in it." And, he relates, there's an energy and an intensity to the shows that contrasts directly with the low-key approach on the album.
"These are better shows because of how focused internally we are," he says. "We're really focused and everybody's just gotten better. And Neil coming back just kicked it into another gear, a different kind of take on a different approach. We're a lot looser, a lot less structured, a lot less married to the arrangement, which is a habit that we didn't even realize that we'd fallen into."
They're talking about releasing a live album from the tour and plan to go back into the studio after the schedule clears this summer to make another album, one that better reflects where they've arrived musically.
"We don't want to beat this horse to death," Stills says, "but at the same time, we're just now realizing our potential."
They're also able to enjoy their work in a way that didn't seem possible when they were at their commercial peak.
"When we walk offstage and there's a mistake, as there would be in every show, Neil goes, 'Hey, it's like the weather. So we hit some rough air.' We used to think it was somebody's fault when somebody made a mistake onstage."
In other words, even at the time you weren't supposed to trust anyone over 30, they weren't exactly having a good time of it. Everything was such a big deal that CSN&Y couldn't really enjoy their youth.
"Hey," Stills deadpans, "that never happened to anybody from the hippie generation. Taking ourselves too seriously? How dare you."
Tom Roland writes about music for The Tennessean. He can be reached
at 259-8041 or at troland@tennessean.com.
