“It was a very interesting project”: the album Crosby, Stills & Nash refused to release
To think about two chapters of music history colliding is often the work of a music nerd’s dream. Maybe it’s imagining Liam Gallagher face to face with his hero John Lennon, or perhaps Dave Grohl at the foot of the drums for any of the million bands he’s publicly declared his love for. In the case of Crosby, Stills & Nash, few names crop up because of the sheer mercurial quality of their own in-house collaboration.
“It was absolutely completely a unique sound. It was one voice made up of three individual strains of voice,” Graham Nash explained. “There was no doubt we knew what we had. We were in love with each other, we were in love with the music. We were in love with each other’s songs. We couldn’t wait to get out there, ‘get out of our way, we’re coming forward.’ We were unstoppable then.”
From the minute they uttered the same harmonic syllable, a sonic alchemy was forged and the likes of which we’ve rarely seen since. But while they may have sported the disposition of free and easy West-coast dwellers and sounded like the songbirds who flew above it, their greatness was steeped firmly in their fastidious recording methodology. Songs were hammered out with due diligence, and they were fiercely protective of the legacy they felt they were beginning to establish.
This was so much so that the introduction of Neil Young to the band after their debut album was pondered over intently, and Nash, in particular, had to be wholly convinced by the idea. A band whose formation was born upon collaboration deemed it necessary to shut up shop and keep it in-house from there on out.
So, if fellow musicians were quickly deemed off limits, what is the capacity for a super-producer to oversee proceedings? Especially if they wander the same barefooted Californian paths and have a haircut to boot?
In 2011, Rick Rubin was at the helm of the band’s highly anticipated comeback album. Much like the Johnny Cash projects Rubin had worked on, Crosby, Stills & Nash were working on a covers record before the two parties headed their separate ways. “We write down a list of songs we think are potentials, learn them, make up our version, and sing them for him,” Crosby explained to Spinner about the origin of the creative difference. “He’ll like maybe one out of eight.”
While the group as a whole stepped back from the project, it seems that Rubin’s classic rock doppelganger David Crosby was the source of most contention. In an interview with Catalyst, Nash said, “I was listening to it recently. And I’m sorry that Rick and David didn’t see eye-to-eye. It was a very interesting project. I love Rick Rubin. I love the way that he produces because he senses that something great’s gonna happen, and he waits for it to happen, and I love him for that. I don’t know whether that’ll see the light of day. Who knows in the future?”
Over a decade on, and with Crosby no longer with us, it’s unlikely that the project will ever see the light of day. While the original formation of Crosby, Stills & Nash bucked the trend of supergroups being a melting pot of uncooperative egos, the introduction of a contemporary icon was perhaps a step too far and fuels claims that sometimes, heroes are best left unmet.
