Graham Nash reveals the artist that held up every Crosby, Stills and Nash album: “I always wait”
Making an album is always about more than getting the right songs down on tape. The idea of someone pouring their soul out over two sides of vinyl was never going to be easy, and even for someone as experienced as Graham Nash, working with Crosby, Stills, and Nash was always going to be a challenge trying to get three people to agree on everything. Although Nash normally came prepared on every occasion, he knew that one of his bandmates didn’t manage to pull his weight every time they went into the studio.
That’s not to say that pulling one’s weight had to be equal in every group. No one was expecting Ringo Starr to write as many songs as Paul McCartney in The Beatles, but as long as he knew where his role fit best, it always worked right for the song. However, when three seasoned songwriters lead the charge, it gets more complicated.
While most people came to Crosby, Stills, and Nash for the gorgeous harmony vocals on every tune, things were never as harmonious as they seemed on paper. For all of the carefree sounds they made on record, they were about as serious about their tunes as military generals, and when things started going off the rails, it wasn’t out of the question for some of them to refuse to sing on certain songs or take over when they thought someone else wasn’t playing what they heard in their head.
Despite all their hangups, they all had mutual respect for each other. Nash had always brought pop tunes into the mix, and compared to everyone else in the group, Stephen Stills was a creative dynamo, always coming through with the right tune for the song or playing the guitar better than anyone else could. David Crosby was always the songwriting guru, but even the wisest sages have had trouble with their own material.
Aside from Crosby suggesting that they get together to record Nash’s ‘Marrakesh Express’, his track record of writing songs was never as bountiful as the others. He always chose to write tunes when he felt inspired, and even if that didn’t exactly cater to the recording schedule for any given album, that was the method he had to use.
“David writes at a much slower pace than us, we have to wait and that’s why we haven’t done a lot of albums.”
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Still, that didn’t stop Nash from airing his frustration from time to time, saying, “In an effort to keep this band as equal as possible for as long as possible, I always wait for four Crosby songs that we love, four of mine that we love, and four of Stephen’s that we love to make a balanced album. But because David writes at a much slower pace than us, we have to wait and that’s why we haven’t done a lot of albums.”
And even if every album doesn’t include every one of Crosby’s songs, it was hard to blame him during certain parts of his career. On a record like American Dream, for example, Crosby was on the road to recovery after years of drug abuse, and a tune like ‘Compass’ may have been one of the only outlets for him to let out his frustration with those years lost than forcing himself to make a happy tune.
That process doesn’t lend itself well to fans being satisfied, but the deal that Crosby, Stills, and Nash had with their fans is the kind of setup that most artists can only dream of. Everyone knew that any record would be worth the wait, so even if they had a few problems from time to time, they could take up as many hours in the studio as they needed.
