"Neil
Young adds stardust to CSNY's Garden gig"
The supergroup's reunion tour has its share of magical moments
By Jay Lustig
STAFF WRITER
04/05/00
NEW YORK -- It was late in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Monday night show at
Madison Square Garden. Neil Young had just played a howling guitar solo, and "Down By
the River" seemed to be coming to an end.
But actually, the band was just getting started. The beat slowed, and Young and Stephen
Stills improvised together leisurely, talking to each other with their guitars. Then
Stills fired off his own solo, playing dazzling runs as the band chugged along behind him.
One more verse, a triumphant chorus showcasing the band's rich vocal blend, another
feedback-laced guitar solo from Young -- stomping around the stage, his shoulders jerking
violently -- and this rock 'n' roll epic was finally over.
The show, part of the foursome's first joint tour since 1974 (which is scheduled to
come to the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford on Sunday), had its rough
moments. The harmonies were ragged as often as they were glorious, and some of the
material from the group's new album, "Looking Forward," was unsalvageably
lightweight. But at their best, CSNY played with a sense of conviction rare for rock
royalty on a reunion tour.
The band didn't stint on nostalgia, scattering trademark songs like "Suite: Judy
Blue Eyes," "Teach Your Children" and "Woodstock" throughout its
set. Yet it also played nine cuts from "Looking Forward," and came up with
inspired group renditions of songs Young initially recorded on his own, from the enraged
anthem "Rockin' in the Free World" to the wistful "After the
Goldrush." The biggest surprise of the night was "Eight Miles High,"
cowritten and originally recorded by David Crosby during his years with the Byrds; CSNY
reinvented it with three-part harmonies by Crosby, Stills and Graham Nash and a
skittering, psychedelic guitar solo by Young. It's Young's presence on the tour that
makes it such a special event. While Crosby, Stills and Nash have been recording and
touring together for much of the past 30 years, their on-again, off-again relationship
with Young has been mostly off since the early '70s. Only Stills approaches him as a
guitarist, and no one else in the group has written as many classic songs.
Young has always been an explorer of extremes, playing everything from corrosive
hard-rock to gentle ballads, and he brought this flexibility to Monday's show. Young
compositions like "Cinnamon Girl," "Southern Man" and "Ohio"
turned into the band's best hard-rock moments, while the three "Looking Forward"
songs he performed -- "Slowpoke," "Out of Control" and the title track
-- were rueful, heart-tugging meditations on love and aging, by far the best evidence that
CSNY still has as a future as a recording act.
It was a good night for Crosby, too. When singing harmonies, his voice is in the
middle, holding everything together: he isn't always as noticeable as the rumbling Stills
or the ethereal Young and Nash. But in two of the songs where he took the lead,
"Almost Cut My Hair" and the new "Stand and Be Counted," he sang with
the kind of steely intensity that made every word count.
Stills didn't fare as well in the numbers showcasing his voice. Time has been unkind to
it, rendering it froggy at the low end of its range, and the band's two-piece rhythm
section, drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Duck Dunn, was unable to provide the light, funky
touch that songs like "Love the One You're With" and "Faith in Me"
required. Nash was charming as ever singing sentimental ditties ("Our House,"
"Teach Your Children") and pop trifles ("Marrakesh Express,"
"Pre-Road Downs"), but his new songs "Heartland" and "Someday
Soon" were clichéd ("On any given day you can find your way back home," he
sang in "Heartland") and musically bland.
Still, these were fleeting moments in a long (3 1/2 hours) show that was full of
magical ones. Crosby kissing his guitar after the long jam at the end of "Almost Cut
My Hair." Stills hopping up and down while playing his guitar during the same jam.
Young musing, "When I was faster I was always behind," in "Slowpoke."
Nash sitting down at an upright piano and plunking out the simple but hypnotic chords to
"Our House." The four old friends sitting on stools for Stills' delicate ballad
"Helplessly Hoping," jointly lifting four voices that were meant to be together.
"CSN&Y:
Their Time's Long Gone Deja vu all over again at Garden"
Arts and Lifestyle
Wednesday, April 05, 2000
— but Hippie ome concerts by musical legends require more nostalgia than
others. The first local show to feature all four members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
in — yikes! — 30 years, held at the Garden on Monday, demanded listeners blot
out almost every reference to the present.
To override what actually transpired onstage, sympathetic listeners had to lose
themselves in a swirl of personal memory and good will. The better you were at idealizing
your past — and pop culture's — the more you got out of the show.
It's not just that Monday's event wasn't a particularly good performance. Neither was
the problem that the band stressed material from three decades ago during their extremely
languorous 3 1/2-hour show (which comes to the Continental Arena on Saturday). Lots of
boomer-age acts spend as long locked in the past and still manage to sound relevant.
The problem with C,S,N (and sometimes Y) had to do with the subject matter of many of
their songs. Does an ode to hippie domesticity like "Our House" make any
sense outside of its original dreamy context? Does "Marrakesh Express" still
ring true, as it goofily describes an antique travel destination for longhairs? How 'bout
"Love the One You're With," with its zippy ode to free sex? Or
"Woodstock"? Or "Ohio"? Or, most preposterously, "Almost Cut My
Hair"?
They're all shackled to their patchouli-scented era, due to the extreme sentimentality
of the writing. Here they arrived covered in cobwebs.
It might have shaken some of them free if the singers were able to conjure more of
their old harmonic sparkle. But for the most part, the group sounded reedy and
parched.
The once-close vocals in songs like "Helplessly Hoping" and "Teach Your
Children" sounded croaky and loose. And the way the group's voices have aged hasn't
lent them an interesting new character — with the exception of Neil
Young, who always
knew how to wring the most meaning from his strange instrument.
Young's writing has also aged well, by avoiding the idealizations of the others'
work and by containing more perspective. Even the new songs by C, S and N (which accounted
for nine of the 31 numbers here) tend to be strident, cranky or mushy, while Young's deal
realistically with friendship and time. His performances jarringly outclassed the others'.
In terms of the band's interaction, the only passages that had the feel of the
here-and-now were the guitar jams between Young and Stephen Stills. The two traded
stinging and soaring lines with invigorating tension on numbers like "Long Time
Gone," "Cinnamon Girl" or an unexpected cover of The Byrds' "Eight
Miles High." They roared in Young's "Rockin' in the Free World," one of the
fewer more recent solo songs to turn up.
Too bad the rhythm section proved so leaden throughout — a surprise, considering
the star talent involved, specifically drummer Jim Keltner and bassist Donald
(Duck) Dunn.
They even dragged things down during can't-miss numbers like "Carry
On,"
"Southern Man" and "Down by the River." The new, lumbering riff in
"Love the One You're With" — arranged to suit the increasing limitations in
Stills' voice — proved particularly depressing.
Lyrics snatched from both old songs and new seemed to address the problems. "Don't
let the past remind us of what we are not now," pleaded Stills in "Suite: Judy
Blue Eyes." But Young offered something more balanced in his new "Slow
Poke," crooning:
"Something is missing/but something is found."
Too bad he got only the first part right.
"CSN&Y IN
PERFECT HARMONY AT MSG"
NY post.com
By DAN AQUILANTE
They've been a long time gone, so anticipation ran high last night at Madison Square
Garden, where America's first supergroup -- Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young -- reprised
their songbook of soaring harmonies after more than a 25-year concert hiatus.
The quartet of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young achieved
greatness at the first of a two-night Garden engagement by keeping it simple.
Guitars played crisply, harmonies carefully tuned, songs well-selected and -- most
important -- the guys listening to each other made the evening what it was. Where you'd
expect time to have had its way with these folk-rock geezers, they delivered the songs
with near-perfect harmonies and the requisite honesty for songs of peace, love and
idealism.
At last night's 31/2-hour performance, the simplicity won over spectacle. There was no
distracting staging or lighting (unless you count the Oriental rugs and floor lamps). Just
four old-timers who obviously have compassion for their equally "elderly" fans
and red-hot passion for the music that highlighted the guys as individual artists and as a
group.
The 30-song program was peppered with lots of material from the band's underrated new
disc, "Looking Forward." There have been complaints about some of the new
material, but it was in these new songs that the band members proved themselves not to be
fossils reuniting for the cash and reliving lost youth.
These guys, despite their age, are not fossils, and somehow they inspire you to feel
the history of their music. That was evident when Walrus-man Crosby shook the house with
his ode to individualism, "Almost Cut My Hair."
But without Young doing the reflective new piece "Slowpoke," or Crosby's
singing his call to action, "Stand and Be Counted," this would have been a
lesser show.
I've seen the tour opener in Detroit and last night's Garden event, and it's evident
that the band has spent time polishing the edges on its vocals.
During the pretty acoustic set after intermission, the vocals were seamless in
"Our House," in which Nash took the lead, and apparent in "Guinevere,"
in which the singing of Nash and Crosby raised goosebumps.
At this performance, Nash had a number of fine moments, including his version of
"Marrakech Express."
Young's church-like treatment for "After the Gold Rush," in which he
accompanied himself on an antique pipe organ, was beautiful, although it left the audience
a little restless. In a hall as large as the Garden, a song that leans as heavily on
subtlety as this is a risk, and it that worked best for those who had seats close to the
stage.
CSN&Y continue at the Garden tonight and return to the area for an 8 p.m. show at
the Meadowlands sports complex Sunday. Both performances are sold out.
