The bandmate Graham Nash called one of the finest musicians in the world: “Heart and soul”
Crosby, Stills, and Nash went a long way towards proving that good music is like a good recipe, where a balance of conflict and harmony is needed in equal measures to make greatness.
Simply put, you can’t have too much of one thing in the hope that the end result with be an exaggerated version of that, and so that’s exactly why this unlikely transatlantic band worked so brilliantly. Stephen Stills was the melodic master of the band, driving them into the heart of Americana, while David Crosby ensured they did so with a cutting and cynical edge. But sat somewhere in between the two, mediating the light and dark was Graham Nash.
Fate brought these conflicting musical icons under one Laurel Canyon roof to create musical harmony that has rarely been seen since. From their very first meeting, when the three spontaneously performed Stills’ ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’, they realised that there was something of an unspoken symbiosis between the three. Keen to capitalise, they penned an iconic debut record that oozed that sort of songwriting harmony, through a catalogue of effortlessly brilliant tracks.
Luckily, the creative chemistry that existed between them did manifest in some bizarre unspoken level because were they to waste time actually conversing with one another, the vast differences that existed between them all would have come to the fore and ruined any potential recording of the greatness that lived beneath the strings of their guitar.
Despite the overwhelming sense of companionship that exists in their music, this was a band fraught with personal feuds and bitter tirades. Stills pissed off Nash, who pissed off Crosby, who, in his cantankerous old ways, pissed them both off.
Then, Stills made a move that no sensible mind would have encouraged and introduced the equally as hostile Neil Young to the mix – a move that resulted in brief brilliance on their four-piece album Deja Vu, but ultimately amplified the inner issues of the original line-up and halted their momentum, robbing fans of sufficient follow-up records.
Solo careers followed, and a subsequent war of words ensued, with all members of this harmonic band taking shots at one another. David Crosby’s ‘Cowboy Movie’ served as the most telling of the lot, leveraging the ongoing feud between Nash and Stills over their shared love for Rita Coolidge, who eventually chose a romantic life with Stills instead of Nash, and so sparked an even deeper feud between the pair.
Ultimately, this unlikely band of brothers were bundled together by some design of musical fate, and what followed were years of fighting that completely contradicted the great work they made. But when it was all said and done, it was the greatness of that debut record that brought the three back together and paled the later squabbles into perspective.
Despite all of the trauma that followed their music, there remained an undying respect amongst the three and in Nash’s case, an unproblematic willingness to concede that in his rivalling bandmate Stills, was “one of the finest musicians in the world; my compadre who has a great heart and soul.”
