"That was the story of
CSNY.
Stephen’s Eli, our fastest gunner, kind of mean & young, from the
south. The Duke, the dynamiter, that’s Nash. Young Billy, that’s
Neil. And Old Weird Harold
with the 12 gauge, that’s me." David Crosby, on his song Cowboy Movie
For Déjà Vu, the
trio added a fourth guitarist and songwriter, Neil Young, and a bass player who wanted to
be a songwriter, Greg Reeves. Actually, Neil was added right after the first album to
shore up the live shows. Live, it was always CSNY until 1977. CSN, composed of players
unable to work with their prior bands, was already a volatile, outspoken, ego-driven
group. Adding the mercurial Young created an even more unstable chemistry
(see
Crosby’s Cowboy Movie on If I Could Only Remember My Name). It also upped the stakes
talent wise.
In many ways Déjà
Vu was a success. It was a chart topper, and became a classic rock album.
In hindsight, though, Déjà
Vu really shows all the problems that would haunt this group forever. As THE album by
CSNY, it falls very far short of showcasing their talents. The conception that they
weren’t really a band, that they were free to work outside the group, was a
beautiful, hippie type of thing driven by their previous bad experience in bands. The fact
that they may have been in part responsible for these bad experiences seems not to have
been considered. For all their professed hippie ethos, however, sharing turned out to be a
difficult thing to do. They were all eyeing solo careers, and reluctant to give up their
best songs. Given that, Déjà Vu is a memorial to the depth of
their song writing talent. While there were hundreds of hours of sessions, they were
rarely in the studio together.
Picture two double albums
CSNY(tr) went
into the studio and recorded together in ’69/’70. Love the One You’re
With. Laughing. Teach Your Children. Birds. Go Back Home. Southern Man.
Orleans. Tell Me Why.
Traction in the Rain. Simple Man. So Begins the Task. When You Dance. As I Come of
Age. Déjà
Vu. Military Madness. 4+20. Lee Shore. Our House. After the Gold Rush. Do For
Others.
Right Between the Eyes. Helpless. Woodstock. Cherokee. Almost Cut My Hair. Song With No
Words. Sit Yourself Down. I Used to Be a King. After the Gold Rush. As a
whole, CSNY made
a lot of great music during the early 1970’s. They did not make most of it
together.
If they had worked together and put our their best stuff, they could have been more
prolific and made better music than any of their contemporaries. As it is, exploring CSNY
is difficult, involving solo, Crosby/Nash and Stills/Young projects. Most people just
won’t bother (or can’t afford to).
On Déjà Vu, each
member contributes only two songs. Graham brought Our House and Teach Your Children (the
single), showing full commitment to the project. Neil brought the first rate Helpless, and
the rambling, pleasant, but in the end un-satisfying Country Girl medley. It is
interesting that, except for Ohio, Neil has never brought his rocking side to CSNY,
despite live evidence that it really works well. A much stronger set of Young songs would
show up on After the Gold Rush. Crosby brought Déjà Vu and the
loose, fun Almost Cut My Hair. The best part of Déjà Vu was a
false start, a serendipitous studio moment. Cut My Hair ran the risk of being a cartoonish
parody of Crosby, but was saved by a blistering live in studio performance. This was good
but not great work from a talent like Crosby, who was about to put together a classic solo
album, If I could Only Remember My Name. Stills brought the haunting 4+20, and rewrote the
Buffalo Springfield number Questions as Carry On. This was the beginning of an odd habit
of redoing classic material that he had already done right. Questions was a much better
interpretation of the song. But Stills was saving up chestnuts for his excellent first
solo album.
To fill out the album they covered Joni
Mitchell’s Woodstock (doing a damn fine job) and seemingly made up the inane Everbody
I Love You in the studio. Sadly, that "Everybody" did not include each
other,
and it would be seven years before the next CSN album would be made.
Déjà Vu was very
good, and so were the first round of solo projects. But the "me first" attitude
that pervaded the group, the addition of the mercurial Neil Young to what was already an
unstable mix, and the impact of the tragic loss of Crosby’s girlfriend Christine
Hinton (and his equally tragic drug use, partially in response) doomed the
group. CSNY
would never live up to it’s promise. This should have been a landmark album, but the
process of making it turned out to be a blueprint for CSNY’s subsequent wanderings in
the desert.
Raincheck.
