"CSNY find new inspiration"
By PAUL CANTIN -- Senior Reporter, JAM!
Showbiz
Monday, January 24, 2000

 

DETROIT -- As the members of fabled 70s supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young rehearsed for their reunion tour, Graham Nash says he came up with a new songs he may add to their repertoire called "One In A Million," and there can be little doubt about what inspired it.

"It goes, 'One in a million, two of a kind/Three will make you crazy and four you lose your mind,'" Nash says from a suburban Detroit hotel, on the eve of the tour's Monday kick-off at The Palace at Auburn Hills.

And what would the "four you lose your mind" be in reference to?

"Whatever foursome you can come up with: Four aces, four queens, four musicians."

Listening to Nash -- barefoot and enthusiastic between slurps from a room service bowl of  porridge -- you get the feeling that reuniting this particular foursome of musicians (Nash, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young) brings with it a set of hazards, the least of which could be losing one's mind. Nash himself has made a complete recovery from a boating accident that smashed both his legs and left him in a wheelchair at the reunion tour press conference -- an image that more than one commentator couldn't resist seeing alternately as a holdover from the group's embattled past or a harbinger of an uncertain future.

Over the course of 30 years together (and not-so-together), CSNY haven't produced a large library of music as a collective. Their classic "Deja Vu" album of 1970 and live album "Four Way Street" recorded the same year, then a muddled reunion album "American Dream" and more recently "Looking Forward," which was released in the fall to commercial indifference.

Scattered in between are the four members' varied solo careers, projects carried out by various permutations of the band (CSN, the Stills-Young Band, Crosby and Nash) and at least two potential CSNY albums and one tour that flew apart in a whirl of acrimony and finger-pointing.

Despite the doubts, the current reunion tour was a near-instant sellout as soon as tickets went on sale, with the possibility of more dates to be added. Although the group didn't prep a video for any tracks off "Looking Forward," the American video channel VH-1 is carrying a portion of the tour kick-off Monday live. After all these years, there's still a hunger for the unlikely alchemy of the four once they get together. As upbeat as Nash sounds about this reunion tour, he also seems to temper his zeal with the realization that the whole works could come apart on a moment's notice, which is, he says, part of the reason why the entire tour is being recorded and filmed, with the possibility of a commercial release being mentioned.

"Who knows how long this is going to last? We have done tours where it lasted for one day," he says in reference to the group's 1971 jaunt, which was killed after one performance.  "It's not so much get it while you can. It's just interesting because you must understand; we recorded and filmed the whole tour in 1971. The juxtaposition of the images has got to be pretty interesting. Who will know what will come of it?" He says he can't bring himself to plan beyond the current album and tour, because those kinds of expectations were at the heart of the group's past internecine battles.

"Until the four of us decide we want to continue, we are not getting any expectations. Our hearts get broken," he says. "This band has been awful to its fans, in a way.They must think we are dips--ts, but we have stayed true to ourselves," Nash says. "People say, why didn't you tour behind "American Dream," man? We didn't because the bonding between the four of us wasn't strong enough to support 40 shows. And that shows you where we are at now. The bonding is strong enough to support this whole tour, unless something drastic goes wrong and somebody flies off the deep end, which I don't think is going to happen."

In an hour-long interview, Nash held forth on a wide range of topics: The current tour, Limp Bizkit, corporate monopolies, the Internet, the merger of the record labels Warner and EMI, his outside business plans, the false-starts and missed opportunities that have dogged the group's progress and the music that has been cherished by a generation.

"We never live up to what people thought of us for the past 30 years. It is impossible. We're just four human beings trying to do the best we can," he says, adding that during a recent car trip, he chanced upon a radio station playing "Deja Vu" from beginning to end. It was the first time he'd heard the record in more than 20 years.

"It was amazing. It was a nice piece of work," he says wistfully.

"You people have a great advantage over us. We have never heard us. I've never heard what it is that CSN does. We never had the experience of smoking a big one, taking the shrink rap off, and having never heard anything, listening to it. You've got that over us. We don't know what it is we do. We only know what we do for ourselves. "We're trying to turn ourselves on and keep ourselves moving."

 Graham Nash Q & A Jam! Showbiz Senior Reporter Paul Cantin conducted a 'Question & Answer' session with Graham Nash of CSNY

Q: The reunion tour was a big hit at the box office, but the reunion album, "Looking Forward" has been slow to catch on. Any thoughts on why there is that dichotomy between ticket sales and album sales?

A: I think the record business is very different nowadays. I'm amazed our record debuted at 22. It amazed me with the hip-hop and rap and all the music going on now. And I don't think the record is dead. We released "Stand And Be Counted" and "Heartland" to radio this week. A lot of the Reprise promotional machine is kicking into gear now because we are going on tour and people can see us. We may have released the record a little early. We released it four months before the tour ... We were trapped in the eight million albums coming out at Christmas and no one has any money after and the Y2K, so we released it when we did.

Q: Aside from "One In A Million," is there going to be any other unrecorded new songs in the live set?

A: I just wrote a very beautiful song for my wife who has been by my side since the (boating) accident, and that is one of the reasons why I healed so quickly, because I was cared for so well. Neil is just about to release his solo record (titled "Silver And Gold"), so he has some songs. He probably will do (the song) "Silver and Gold." The truth is, we have a lot of history. We have 35 years of music each and there are four of us. It was difficult job, choosing the set list. We rehearsed fifty songs and there are 30 in the show. Thirty songs is a lot of songs to play. Some of them are intense. A lot of what we are known for is our acoustic and a lot of what we are known for is our pointed rock and roll songs. An interesting discussion was how to balance all that out. We do "Long Time Gone" different, because in this quest to not bore ourselves to death, we keep changing the way we do it. When Neil came into it, we decided we would go back right to the beginning. It has been really, really interesting. I think people that have good, hard-earned money to buy tickets are going to be pleased.

Q: You've played in all these different permutations of the group. What is so special about the four of you when you get together?

A: It is exponential growth. It is not one plus two makes three. It is one, two, three and four is 26,000. That's just the way it is with this band. It is a very different band when Neil Young comes in. He brings edge. He brings focus. And he brings Neil Young music. And I'll take any of those any time. The man is a brilliant musician. He is a very truthful musician and a very observant musician.

Q: How so?

A: I had been playing with David and Stephen for close on 30 years. You get into, not a rut, it's not the right word, but...

Q: A habit?

A: Yeah. Because a song was popular, we would do three choruses to please the audience. We did that in rehearsals and Neil said, why are you doing it three times? Because that's what we used to do. He said, why don't you do one great chorus at the end and leave it? Sure enough, it went off like a bandit. He has been very insightful, Neil. Those are the things, because he has not been as close a part of our family for the 30 years, his viewpoint of what we do is astoundingly clear.  Neil is much more objective about us than we are right now. We're perfectly happy to let him take a very forceful role. We agree with his vision. I think Neil wants everyone to know that this band never reached their potential. All the stuff, regardless of what we have done for 30 years, you have never seen this band and what we could do.

Q: Obviously, I should ask him this. But put modesty aside for a moment. What do you bring to his music that makes him better, or do you bring something unique he can't do on his own?

A: When we chose the three Neil Young songs we thought we could really do (for "Looking Forward"), what we meant is, how do we make that better with the gift that CSN is. The perfect example is the track "Looking Forward." When that is just Neil with his acoustic guitar and the bass and drums come in later, it is beautiful and completely charming. It is completely different when me and David and Stephen do our thing to it. I don't think it is going to be in the set tomorrow.
But we rehearsed a song of Neil's called "Old Man." On "Harvest" it is just Neil and a guitar. Beautiful. But you should hear it in four-part harmony. It's killer. Those are the things. What we bring to Neil's music, he can't get anywhere else on the planet. Can he do his music alone? Of course. Can he do it brilliantly? Of course. Is it the same as with CSN? No. We do something to his music that he does to our music. It's not the same thing. But there is an equal exchange of what we can give to his music and what he can give to ours. That's what music is all about.

Q: You guys played at the original Woodstock festival and at the 1994 one as well. What did you think of what happened at the Woodstock show this summer, where rioting and looting went down?

A: It would seem to me the first Woodstock represented where the youth of the country was at. And this one represented where a certain percentage of the country is at. It is obvious that the youth of the country is angry, resentful of the way parents have handled this country for the last 10-15 years.

Q: Wasn't that what the original Woodstock was all about?

A: Yes, it was true, but they decided to deal with those negative things with a positive point of view, rather than just burning everything down. There is a difference. You can have anger and deal with it positively. Or you can have anger and really flip out. Yes, it was probably exactly the same with the civil rights and the Vietnam war and Nixon lying to the country and ... Kent State, there was a lot to be angry at. But I felt they dealt with it as positively as they could.

Q: So what's the big change in the way people deal with their anger?

A: The way they were brought up, I think. I think less and less parents are taking part in the upbringing of their children.

Q: There's a good chance that a lot of the kids who rioted at Woodstock '99 had parents who were part of the original Woodstock generation.

A: Just because you've seen the spirit doesn't mean you have it.

Q: What about the music of this generation?

A: Stuff like Limp Bizkit, I completely understand their popularity, but it is not a record I would go and buy. From the stage, I heard he invited people to riot ... I can't get with music like that. It doesn't give anything positive to me. Now, there are people who say, maybe civil rights wouldn't happen unless Martin was assassinated. There's people who say you have to create mayhem to get anything done, and maybe that is true to a certain extent. It's just that I can't live my life that way. Other people can live their lives however they want, but I can't live my life that way. I believe that you have a responsibility for what you say and do. But let's not get too carried away. It is rock and roll when all is said and done.  But if we got up there, during the acoustic set and started saying "bitches and 'hos and slap her?" It's not us. We can only be the best CSNY we can be. You have to take note of that stuff because it is in the headlines. But it is not like we check every record that comes out to see if we can follow it. We just don't care. It's not that we don't care, but right now, we are so focussed on being the best us we can be that everything else is a distraction.

Q: How close have you come in the past to reuniting CSNY?

A: Unfortunately, people know most of our shortcomings and failings. Once, at the end of 1974, we went to Hawaii with this great album planned called "Human Highway." Great songs. We had "Human Highway," we had "Wind On The Water." We had "Carry Me." We had a lot of great stuff. We ended up arguing about something silly and never ended up making it (note: Young's song "Human Highway" ended up on his LP "Comes A Time"). And then, in 1977, me and David weren't talking to Stephen. I was living in San Francisco, and Neil comes to my house and says, "Hey, listen to this." He puts a cassette of six songs. Three of his and three of Stephen's. They were damn good. Neil gets you like that, every time. No matter what you are arguing about, you can't argue about something great coming off tape, through speakers. He didn't argue. He put the tape on and it was great.
I said, what's this? He said, it is something me and Stephen are working on in Miami. You wanna piece? And it was great music. I said, f--k! I called David and said, you better get over to my house. Neil is here. David comes over. Neil plays him the tape. I mean, what an a--hole! He knows we can't deny it.Me and David were in the middle of making our own record called "Whistling Down The Wire," we didn't have a release date. It wasn't finished yet. We put our plans on hold. We go to Miami and sing for a month in Miami. It all sounds great.  We had to get back and finish our record. We can't finish the CSNY record. But Neil and Stephen had booked a tour as the Stills-Young Band. They need something out there to promote. So when David and I got back, they had taken off our voices and put it out as a Stills-Young record. I can't tell you how much that hurt, because you know, it is not like we sweat blood, but we do sweat blood for our music. To have it erased for non-musical reasons was very painful for me and David.
I remember in Chicago(in 1971), when Stephen showed up for soundcheck that night, nobody else was there (because of a fight). Where are the boys? They said they are in LA.   With Stephen, in one particular case, he came to my house with a recording, and he wanted me to put a minor vocal run through a major instrumental change. My body wouldn't do it. I'm pretty good at what I do, but he kept making me do it. Every time we came to it, my body would not allow me to sing this minor vocal passage, minor chords in a major key. It didn't work for me. Stephen and I ended up arguing and I never ended up talking to him for two years. Then he comes and ... plays me a song that breaks my heart, and you gotta give it up.

Q: So what gets you through that kind of anger and disappointment?

A: Music. Music really goes a long way to healing wounds, to washing over you and saying I can't not remember who this guy is. You can't forget who these people are, at their essence.  Him sitting down and saying, 'listen to this,' is his way of saying: 'I'm sorry, I was stupid, you should be sorry because you were stupid, let's get on with it, because the best thing we do in this life is music, and listen to this new piece, what do you think?'

Q: Do you remember what the fights were about now?

A: Who the hell can remember? It was not important. We were foolish and young and out of our minds.  That's one of the things that is different now. We are older and out of our minds.