The 1960s legend Graham Nash wanted to join CSN: “They didn’t want to”
There were no real rules when Graham Nash began working with Stephen Stills and David Crosby.
All of them had spent years feeling stifled by their own bands, and even if they had a lot more to offer together than apart, they always stressed that they were solo artists that happened to be coming together to make a couple of good tunes every now and again. But whereas Nash would have been fine with the band remaining a trio for the rest of his days, he felt that there were some musicians who seemed to fit perfectly with the maverick style that all of them were looking for.
But it’s not like all of them were looking to make some random musical cacophony compared to their old gigs. Nash was still writing pop tunes the same way that he did with The Hollies, but he needed to go the extra mile to get them to sound right. ‘Marrakesh Express’ was never going to work for the old incarnation of the band, and he was trying his best to work off of Crosby to help get the song over the line.
Everyone may have come for the harmonies, but they needed a little bit more edge in the instrumental department. Stills was already doing most of the heavy lifting on their debut by playing most of the instruments, so if they were going to make another record, getting someone like Neil Young into the group was the perfect fit. Or at least that’s what Stills thought when he first suggested him joining.
You see, Young is one of the most fickle men in the music industry, and he would have gladly left the group if he felt that something wasn’t working. His songs worked like a charm when working on Deja Vu, but when looking at all the choices that they had to work with, Nash had other ideas for bringing someone else in when he talked to Jimi Hendrix about jamming on a few of their songs.
Randomly calling up one of the greatest guitarists that ever lived wasn’t going to be easy, but Nash said that Hendrix was the guy that he had on his mind when the band wanted to start looking for someone new, saying, “Stephen played every instrument on that record except for the drums and the acoustic guitars that David and I played on our songs. He played bass, he played organ, he played lead guitar, he played rhythm guitar, he played everything.”
Adding, “Captain Many Hands, we called him. You can’t do that live. You need help. So who would we get to help? We talked to Hendrix, we talked to a bunch of people who we thought might want to join. They didn’t want to do it.”
Young may have been the right choice when looking at songs like ‘Helpless’, but just imagine what the band would have sounded like had Hendrix said yes. Sure, they would have had to work around his guitar prowess, and the guitar genius probably wasn’t going to blend as well with their voices as they all did, but joining a supergroup like this right after the Jimi Hendrix Experience would have been the best he could have hoped for.
And since CSN were already known for writing a number of protest songs, Hendrix could have easily found his way into that songwriting mode. ‘Machine Gun’ was already becoming one of the biggest live songs he ever made on Band of Gypsys, so having three other legends by his side to help flesh everything out would have turned it into one of the most intense anti-war songs that he ever made.
While the band ended up getting a musical brother out of Young in the end, Hendrix would have served the perfect role in their ranks the same way that Young did. ‘Uncle Neil’ was all about bringing an edge to their sound that wasn’t there before, and if he could get vicious, Hendrix was bound to get the kind of sound that created new sonic colours for them to play around with on their records.
