Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young: C/D, S/D

Written for this film IIRC

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9c/Home_fries_poster.jpg/220px-Home_fries_poster.jpg

did Don 'n' Glenn see this tour?

"a very, very decent rock band."

as opposed to coke-fueled Stills declaration: "We were the best fucking band in the history of the world, and that includes the Beatles, and Paul could barely play bass anyway."

DON: The CSNY tour of 1974 changed the way we all did things. Never before could a group or performer who wasn't Elvis do this massive, anything goes stadium touring party with all their friends in tow. Not the Stones. Not The Who. Nobody had that power yet. We thought, "We've got the harmonies, the meaningful songs, all the right friends, great PA equipment--we can do this!"

GLENN: But there were downsides to that excess. Three Sets? Solo Segments? Four hour shows? Fuck that noise! Two hours, one encore, wine, coke & an Eagles handjob backstage, punch Felder in the nose in the limo, call Randy a dickweed in the lobby, chainsaw party with Walsh back at the hotel--that's a show!

DON: Well, yeah.

my inner 16-year-old remembers a massive neil/joni duet on "sugar mountain" at the roosevelt raceway show. doesn't look like it made the cut tho.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-oral-history-of-csnys-infamous-doom-tour-20140619?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

haha that is great, so many quotable lines. there should be a whole book of this shit.

I would have been happy to read 200% more of that article (except for the goddamn typos, Jesus H. Christ).

"Stills: "I had just come back from coral diving in Hawaii. I was tan and really cut. There's an album cover of a solo album [1975's Stills] shot at those rehearsals. I look at it now and go, 'I want that body back!"I wore football jerseys before it was cool. People like Jann Wenner would always ask me, 'What's with the football uniform?' I'd say, 'We're in a football stadium and they're loud and colorful. And I like football.' The next year Mick Jagger shows up with a Philadelphia Eagles uniform at a show."

evidently still(s) on the rails

lmao @ stills throughout this piece:

Stills: "They didn't have video screens back then. I remember seeing the Beatles at Dodger Stadium. I thought to myself, 'There should be drive-in movie screens. What's wrong with these people?' Years later, I went to New York and tried to sell these pretty heavy-duty guys on how to do concerts. I said to them, 'You should have drive-in screens with a closed circuit feed of the show if you're doing things this big.' They looked at me like I was from Mars. Who knew that would become the standard for the industry? I was a very inventive twenty-three year old punk."

Nash: "Somewhere in the Midwest, I think in Minneapolis, we were at the hotel after the show and Bob Dylan came by. Stephen and Tim Drummond immediately corralled him into a different room and shut the door. That wasn't nice."

Drummond: "He played us all the songs from Blood on the Tracks on acoustic guitar. We were on twin beds, across from each other. Oh God, I can't tell you how great it was. At one point Stephen said something to him about the songs not being good. I was so Goddamn embarrassed. He was probably coked out. Dylan, being the arrogant man that he was said, 'Well, Stephen, play me one of your songs.' That was the end of it. Stephen couldn't even find one string from another at that point."

Nash: "Stephen walked out of the room and said to me, 'Bob's no musician.' In the back of my mind, I also remember Stephen buying a Precision bass for Paul McCartney and telling him it was time to start playing a 'real' instrument and not his old Hoffman. He's saying this to one of the greatest bass players in the world."

feel like drummond needs to write a memoir

Love Tim Drummond, but surely Macca was playing the Rickenbacker at that point.

McCartney has never retired the Höfner, apparently. At every point in his career, he has kept it around (although yes there have been Rickenbackers and Wals).

I would love to get this '74 set on vinyl but afaik the only vinyl version is that $500 boxset beast which does sound awesome. but no way.

is it like an eight-record set?

The Limited Edition Box Set of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live 1974 is now available for pre-order on official CSNY | Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set site.

The Limited Edition Box Set includes:

All 40 tracks on six 180-gram 12” vinyl records, housed in a custom laser-etched birch LP folio case. LP folio case.
40 high-quality audio tracks on a Pure Audio Blu-Ray disc
Digital download of full 40 tracks.
Bonus DVD
Coffee Table size book of never before seen photos from the 1974 tour.

Set is limited to 1000 copies, individually numbered, and housed in a custom laser-etched birch wood box. $499 plus shipping and handling.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NEucFyJQm3I/U4eQpLJiAYI/AAAAAAAAJsQ/NaU5nGwI3Ks/s1600/CSNY-DELUXE-BOX-SET-DISPLAY1.jpg

No Joni-designed sleeves?

ultra special edition comes with a pair of neil young jorts
http://assets-s3.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/the-oral-history-of-csnys-infamous-doom-tour-20140619/1000x600/20140618-csny3-x600-1403128269.jpg

jorts
i wear jorts
i keep wearing jorts

that was a rough haircut neil was sporting at the time

Six records, 2 DVDs, and a coffee table book for $500. Wow.

Stills: "I had just come back from coral diving in Hawaii

Have you ever been down deep?
I mean way down under the ocean

i think i have an issue of crawdaddy magazine with that csny photo on the cover with neil in shorts.

http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/crosby-stills-nash-young-crawdaddy-magazine/

“I’ve done it all. All of it,” Stills insisted. It seemed almost a penitent’s pride. “I’ve been the most obnoxious, arrogant superstar to walk the streets of Hollywood . . . I’m still arrogant. I can be an absolute bastard. I have a bad habit of stating things pretty bluntly. I’m not known for my tact. But look, I can see that I really got carried away with myself. Being a rich man at twenty-five is sometimes difficult to deal with . . . you make mistakes. I’ve made all of ‘em. But I’m thirty now and at this point it’s all very funny.

“Ever since I got married, life is just a gas. This tour should be incredible. Joni Mitchell and I had a great discussion about that a couple of weeks ago. I’m basically a blues singer and blues singers are supposed to suffer. I almost feel guilty. I’m trying harder than I have in years. I’m determined to do the best I can. I want to be good.”

holy shit

Don & Glenn were clearly taking notes.

Then, CSNY represented a sophisticated harmonic oasis amid the parching acid rock of the time. Now they are the Founding Fathers, the inspiration for the current generation of prosperous L.A. country rockers. “Hey, man,” Eagle Glenn Frey once said, “I bought that first album and freaked out right along with everyone else. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are, in essence, The Great American Supergroup.” And the kids, more than the fanatical original wave of fans, seem compelled to examine the sweet-singing artifacts.

Years later...

DON: Stephen Stills was the key component amongst many key components in CSN. His vision always came through, be it in his guitar playing, harmonies, and outspoken political views. We took what we could from him--even working down to David Geffen as representation. You can't with 'em all.

GLENN: We had it all--the football jerseys, the French chicks, harmonies. But what threw us was the mutton chops. We tried and tried, but our afros and Fu Manchus didn't quite cut it.

DON: Well, yeah.

I saw both groups in '74, and while the Eagles' harmonies were thin and strained, they suited the butthurt macho wannabeeizm of their songs, well not all their songs, but a lot. CSNY were actually worse,like their voices were changing ("Sweet Judy Bloop Eyes", yeesh). But Crosby and Young were good solo, while Stills-Young guitar wars were worth the ticket and more.
In Stills' defense (!), Dylan did re-record those songs at the last minute, after receiving negative feedback from various sources (xgau said the original promo sounded like "a sell-out to the memory of Dylan's acoustic period," for instance.
Speaking of oral history, don't miss the Cros's autobio, which sometimes looks like the Synoptic Gospels, with ancient heads giving various accounts of the same incident, on the same page (of the book, that is).

christ i almost want to do a poll of stills' claims

For a few years of my solo career the bourbon king showed up and it was just messy. I don't run from it. I own it. It left my voice shot. It's cool now because I've gotten it back. I'm hitting the high notes again. The present for me is fine.

Rehearsing outdoors at Neil's ranch was my idea.

I wore football jerseys before it was cool. People like Jann Wenner would always ask me, 'What's with the football uniform?' I'd say, 'We're in a football stadium and they're loud and colorful. And I like football.' The next year Mick Jagger shows up with a Philadelphia Eagles uniform at a show.

I went to New York and tried to sell these pretty heavy-duty guys on how to do concerts. I said to them, 'You should have drive-in screens with a closed circuit feed of the show if you're doing things this big.' They looked at me like I was from Mars. Who knew that would become the standard for the industry?

I just listened to a piano solo from that tour. I could have sworn we didn't have a piano player on the stage and was I was like, 'What? Who? I can't play piano like that.' Turns out I can.

I saw the cards all lining up for Nixon to resign before they could impeach him. I had friends in Washington.

The last one, of course.

Of all the dynamic duos in rock, i can't imagine any beat stills/young in terms of Mutual Confidence That They're Doing The Other One A Favor.

for how many of you was Shakey the first time you ever thought more than a few seconds about CSN(Y)?

Re what I said about bad "harmonies," good solo shots, excellent guitar wars: all in the one show I saw, which may well have been an off night, and proved they weren't nearly harmony-dependent. Alfred, the way I remember it: for lots and lots of people, CSN and CSNY were a big deal before solo Neil. Harvest was big, yeah, but solo albums before and fairly soon after that, not as much (commercially, anyway).

well, I meant anyone born after 1972, say.

I think that applies to me. I was vaguely aware of them beforehand but always ignored them because everyone in it who is not Neil Young was awful.

shakey otm

haha i knew csn(y) were hugely successful and i was familiar w/ some of the music but yeah hadn't given them any thought at all and was generally anti-hippie enough that i'd never consider listening to them. the degree to which to the world neil young was neil young of crosby, stills, nash, & young and they wondered why he didn't work w/ csn more and kept wasting his time w/ crazy horse was some real 'o right' for someone from a generation where generally the only time you encountered that side of neil was the stuff on decade. i've mellowed enough and become more...hippie sympathetic to enjoy more while not being remotely tempted to dig deep. i think the avalanches working 'carry on' into some mixes was what turned the tide, i had liked 'southern cross' but i think i assumed it was by pure prairie league or something for the first twenty odd years i knew it.

da croupier you should include the stories about Paul McCartney and Dylan even if they're secondhand.

and wow these guys totally did set the stage for the eagles didn't they

'almost cut my hair' is grebt but damn

Every time I hear a tolerable tune like "Dark Star" garbage like "Just a Song Before I Go" and "Marrakesh Express" interferes.

I gave Crosby's If Someone Could Remind Me I Suck thanks to ILM last year, and, sorry, it blows. Maybe I have to like Animal Collective to appreciate the harmonies and echo and shit.

Nah I like all that other stuff and still think its terrible. My least favorite Byrd.

when I discovered Young in the nineties it didn't once occur to me to check out the CSN(Y) materiail; even then I thought it was embarrassing pay-the-bills shit

I really like CSN(Y) - the first 2 albums at least

i know it's not really all that defensible but it's kinda like the Eagles, I'm happy listening to them sing because it beats the hell out of them talking about how great they are

My parents had the CSNY hits album, so I heard that a lot. The best song on it was "Ohio," which set me up for further Neil explorations later.

I'm no great CSN(Y) stan but the first two CSN(Y) records run circles around any full-length the Eagles recorded.