CSNY To Open Tour In Detroit In January
Richard B. Simon - Sat., October 9, 5:14 PM EDT
1999

Folk-rock quartet won't play Neil Young's Bridge Concerts at the end of October, will let Graham Nash's broken legs   to heal for tour.

SAN FRANCISCO ; Looking Forward isn't just the name of the new Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album due Oct. 26. It also describes the attitude the folk-rock veterans displayed in a jovial conversation at the St. Francis hotel Friday.

"All the questions about the past ... are huge distractions to us, " Neil Young, 53, said. "We don't spend any time thinking about our past at all," David Crosby, 58, concurred. "We don't care. We care about what we're doing now."

They are doing plenty now. Along with their new album, only their third studio effort after 1970's Deja Vu and 1988's American Dream, CSNY embark on their first tour in 30 years Jan. 25 in Detroit.

The tour, dubbed CSNY2K, will find the foursome playing songs it hasn't even written yet, according to Crosby (born David Van Cortland). But a hoped-for preview ; a CSNY performance at Young's Bridge School concerts Oct. 30 and 31 ; most likely won't happen, because Graham Nash's bandmates want him fully healed for the tour; the former member of the Hollies broke both of his legs in a boating accident in September.

"Above the waist, my spirits are fine," Nash, 57, said. Sitting in a wheelchair, both legs in casts extending above his knees, Nash said it was worth "the excruciating pain" to attend the interview session with his friends.

All four were dressed casually. Young wore a gray fedora, his familiar mutton chop sideburns, a blue blazer, a black T-shirt with Mexican Day of the Dead imagery, khaki shorts and hiking boots. The mustached Crosby wore a gray baseball cap and purple and indigo tie-dyed T-shirt. Steven Stills, 54, the only one of the four not showing any gray hair, wore his hair long in the back and sported a goatee and Hawaiian shirt. Nash also wore a Hawaiian shirt.

The bandmembers ; including Stills and Young, who have had a volatile relationship over the years since they formed Buffalo Springfield in 1966 ; appeared relaxed, friendly and jokey. At one point, Young grabbed an ottoman and solicitously slid it beneath Nash's feet. Every time Stills said something Nash found clever or important, such as when Stills responded to a question about the foursome's history ; "We're not looking backward, we're looking forward" ; Nash would give his bandmate a high five.

The group balked at any characterization of its recording or touring again as a reunion. "I really think we've been together since we [first] got together," Young said.

The band's decision to record and tour again had its seeds in a visit Young made to a studio where CSN were recording, because he said he felt like seeing his friends. Impressed that the trio ; whose first, eponymous 1969 album contained the hit "Marrakesh Express" ; were funding their album themselves because they were between record deals, he signed on. Meanwhile, he and Stills had been working on putting together a Buffalo Springfield retrospective and it seemed as if the time to work together again was right.

"What CSNY is all about is, we seize the moment. Our moment is now, " Young said. "God only knows why," he added, tongue in cheek. More seriously, he said, "I want my children to see me playing with these guys."

To select the songs that would make it onto the 12-track album, Nash said they'd put song titles on a board and each member would put a check next to a song he thought had to be on the album. "When a song had four check marks ... then we had a record," Young said.

Bob Dylan has a co-writing credit on one Stills song on the album, "Seen Enough." But Stills said he and the folk-rock legend didn't actually write the song together. While writing the song ; which touches on the Littleton,

CO., shootings, Internet addiction and TV news ; Stills said he realized he'd given it Dylan's melody for "Subterranean Homesick Blues." So he called Dylan and sent him the song. "Fortunately, he liked it," Stills said, and he gave him a credit.

The foursome clearly appeared to relish collaborating again and seemed eager to extend it. "This isn't all you're going to get," Crosby promised. "We got a good start on our next record. I don't know if you've seen our best work yet. I love what we did, but there's better things to come."