Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 167

Record label: Atlantic

Produced: Crosby, Stills And Nash and Bill Halverson

Recorded: Wally Heider’s Studio III, Los Angeles; June 26, 1968–April 3, 1969

Released: May 29, 1969

Chart peaks: 25 (UK) 6 (US)

Personnel: David Crosby (v, rg); Stephen Stills (g, b, o, v); Graham Nash (v); Dallas Taylor (d); Bill Halverson (e)

Track listing: Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (S); Marrakesh Express (S); Guinevere; You Don’t Have To Cry; Pre-Road Downs; Wooden Ships; Lady Of The Island; Helplessly Hoping; Long Time Gone; 49 Bye-Byes

Running time: 40.57

Current CD: Warners 8122732902 adds: Do For The Others; Song With No Words; Everybody’s Talkin’; Teach Your Children

Further listening: The Best Of Crosby Stills And Nash boxed set (1991)

Further reading: The Complete Guide To The Music Of Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young (Johnny Rogan, 1998); Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young: The Visual Documentary (Johnny Rogan, 1996); www.crosbystillsnash.com

Download: Not currently legally available

Disillusioned by the commerciality of his work with The Hollies, and increasingly beguiled by the burgeoning underground music scene in the States, Graham Nash was spending more and more time with ex-Byrd David Crosby and former Buffalo Springfield kingpin Stephen Stills. The three were already united by a love of dope and good music when they discovered the flawless compatibility of their voices. Crosby and Stills were working out one of the latter’s compositions, You Don’t Have To Cry, when, as an experiment, Nash added an irresistible third harmony.

‘It was,’ Stills reflected, ‘one of those moments.’

Crosby, Stills & Nash were, on paper, an unbeatable combination, and much was riding on their debut album. They began rehearsing together at Notting Hill’s Moscow Road in late 1968, with The Beatles’ Blackbird as an early vocal try-out, and all three brought their best material to the sessions. Nash, who had been chafing at what he saw as The Hollies’ musical conservatism, supplied the drug-infused Marrakesh Express and Pre-Road Downs; Crosby contributed the beguiling Guinevere and timely Long Time Gone; but it was Stills who felt he had most to prove, and his were the lengthy opening (Suite: Judy Blue Eyes) and closer (49 Bye-Byes), as well as the inimitable Helplessly Hoping – the one song on the album that indicated the trio’s potential for true greatness.

Harmonically intricate and musically potent, the album was more than just a calling card for Messrs Crosby, Stills & Nash; it was an album very much of its time, an Us vs Them broadside across the Hippy–Straight divide. The album spoke directly to the millions of young people who, while disillusioned by a society they saw as without values and despairing of inequality, were also terrified of getting drafted to fight in the war that was raging in Vietnam. Besides the knowing drug innuendoes and heavy emphasis on ‘ladies’, there was Stills’ Spanish coda to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes – a plea to President Nixon to let US citizens visit Cuba.

Short of a fourth member for touring, Neil Young, Stills’ old sparring partner from Buffalo Springfield, was recruited, and within three months of this album’s release, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were playing at Woodstock – it was only their second gig, but the world had got its first supergroup.