The Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album that fans never got to hear
The entire construction of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was a beautiful mess from the beginning.
Even though each band member helped improve every track through their excellent harmony work and rustic presentation, they were just as likely to snap at each other throughout their career, either leaving songs unfinished or returning to their solo careers. While the band may have released all they wanted to during their tenure together, one album left unnoticed on the shelf for years.
When the group first started cutting their teeth outside of bands like Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds, they had already been musical veterans. Throughout the trio’s debut album, songs like ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ were bound to become classics from the first time that fans heard them, utilising different guitar tunings to sing various songs about the state of the world.
Once Neil Young entered the fold, the band got a meaner edge on Deja Vu, featuring some of the most celebrated cuts they would ever release on tracks like ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House’. For anyone who knows anything about Neil Young, though, this partnership was never meant to last forever.
That tension was always bubbling just beneath the surface. Even when everything clicked musically, there was a sense that no one was fully willing to bend for the sake of keeping things stable, which made every recording session feel like it could tip in either direction at any moment.
It’s part of what made their best work feel so alive. When you have four strong personalities all pulling in slightly different directions, the results can either fall apart completely or come together in a way that no single artist could manage on their own.
Quickly returning to the comfort of Crazy Horse, Young would continue to make songs that reflected where he was at the moment, leaving his bandmates to carry on without him or separating into two duos during the late 1970s. As the band prepared to make a new album to follow up Deja Vu, Young left the fold as they were about to make the album Human Highway.
Modelled after the rustic scenario of their first effort, the album would have been considered a worthy follow-up, especially considering the material that each member was making at the time. While the idea was shelved in 1973 as Young began work on his solo career again, many of the songs intended for the album would see the light of day later, with Young releasing many of his considered tracks on the country-tinged album Comes a Time.
Though the acoustic sounds of the album may have helped the group get back in touch with their roots, it was also becoming apparent that they were starting to drift apart. Aside from all the creative tension, Young was starting to shift his sound into something much heavier, living up to his name as ‘The Godfather of Grunge’ across his later albums like Rust Never Sleeps.
Even though Crosby, Stills, and Nash carried on without one of their resident rockstars, they would continue to see off-and-on success throughout the years, albeit with David Crosby constantly in trouble with the law. While Young would eventually return for albums like American Dream after the fact, many of the reunions have left a little to be desired, with many songs sounding like half-baked attempts at capturing the old magic.
Despite the lack of cohesion for a new album, each member’s solo career would get a shot in the arm as a result, making fans eager to hear what songs may have been considered for the supergroup’s lost project. While Human Highway may never see a proper release, it still serves as a different take on how the band’s musical style could have changed.
