“No competition at all”: the 1970 album Graham Nash said had “the best songs”
If you found yourself in a position akin to where Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were, with four of the most esteemed songwriters all working together with a shared goal, do you think that having so many talented figures would be more of a help or a hindrance?
Working individually, there’s no question that the four of them were among the best of the best, writing not just some of the finest songs of a generation, but also being important voices for social change during one of the most complicated and confusing times in American history. Combining the four forces together, on paper, sounds like it would have been a fascinating prospect.
But could that possibly work well together? How many cooks does it take to spoil the proverbial broth, and how easily can the harmony be disrupted by internal disputes over direction… Even with two great minds being bashed together, there can often be tensions when it comes to making compromises over creative decisions, and therefore, the more individuals you insert into the equation, the more prone you might become to causing arguments.
Of course, Stephen Stills and Neil Young had already worked together in Buffalo Springfield and produced works of great magnitude prior to joining forces. In addition to this, there was already one album attributed to the trio of Crosby, Stills and Nash prior to Young entering the fold, so they were clearly able to work together to a degree.
But would adding a fourth voice into the equation be one component too much, or was it going to be more beneficial to them? According to Graham Nash, who was still new to living in the US as a British transplant by the time the quartet came together to record their first album together in 1970, there may have been difficulties present in the studio, but nothing that couldn’t be overcome.
“It took a lot longer than the first record,” Nash told Uncut in a 2018 interview, noting how Déjà Vu took six months to complete compared to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s month of creation. However, while working as a trio may have allowed their work to come to fruition quicker, the conversations between members in times of difficulty still produced incredible results.
Nash went on to recall how he approached Stills towards the end of the sessions with concerns that they hadn’t produced a song of the same magnitude as ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, to which Stills initially proclaimed that it wasn’t necessary, as it had already been done. However, Nash doubled down on his point of view, professing that the album was in need of “a song where you’re not gonna take the needle off the record.”
Evidently, Nash’s protestations inspired something in Stills, and after a period of reflection, he’d produced another exceptional track that would go on to become the album’s opener. “He came back two days later with ‘Carry On’,” Nash added. “But it was all very harmonious; there was no competition at all. We knew we wrote the best songs, we could choose the best songs. Seriously, we never competed with each other about songs.”
Despite all of the potential for things to go awry, it all worked in their favour, and Déjà Vu is frequently seen as being on par with the trio’s debut. Having four distinct voices and styles could have reasonably been perceived as overkill, but the risk paid off.
