It took a very long time to get everything
ready, and the people onstage crowded around the amplifiers and the nine or ten guitars
and the chairs and mikes and organ, more excited in anticipation than they'd been for any
other group that night. A large semicircle of equipment protected the musicians from the
rest of the people. The band was very nervous. Neil Young was stalking around, kissing his
wife, trying to tune his guitar off in a corner, kissing his wife again, staring off away
from the crowd. Stills and Nash, paced back and forth and tested the organ and the mikes,
and drummer Dallas Taylor fiddled with his kit and kept trying to make it more than
perfect.
They opened with "Suite: Judy Blue
Eyes," stretching it out for a long time, exploring the figures of the song for the
crowd, making their quiet music and flashing grimaces at each other when something went
wrong They strummed and picked their way through other numbers, and then began to shift
around, Crosby singing with Stills, then Nash and Crosby, back and forth. They had the
crowd all the way. They seemed like several bands rather than one.
Then they hit it. Right into "Long
Time Gone," a song for a season if there ever was one: Stills on organ, shooting out
the choruses; Neil snapping out lead; Crosby aiming his electric twelve-string out over
the edge of the stage, biting off his words and stretching them out - lyrics as strong as
any we are likely to hear.
There's something, something,
something
Goin' on around here
That surely, surely, surely
Won't stand
The light of day
Ooooooooohhh!
And it appears to a long time
I have never seen a musician more involved
in his music. At one point Crosby nearly fell off the stage in his excitement.
CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG at WOODSTOCK