“Over-indulged”: Graham Nash reveals the songs CSNY should have never released
The 1980s weren’t kind to the Woodstock generation. While some of the counterculture’s biggest names managed to make the MTV decade their own—Frank Zappa, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and ZZ Top all carving relevancy among the rapidly shifting pop climate—the digital recording trends of the day and the demand for a big-budget video meant some of the 1960s‘ folk and rock icons became lost in a tide of soggy-synth driven tunes and confused promos that only further highlighted they belonged to a long gone age.
The ultimate West Coast supergroup, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were at their critical and cultural zenith following the release of 1970’s Déjà Vu. Possessed with god-given harmonies and political lyrical bite in tune with the radical idyll of the era, the initial success soon gave way to a perennial in-out collapse and internal fracturing that triggered eternal hiatuses and abrupt ‘reunions’ that persisted right up until David Crosby’s death in 2023.
As cocaine replaced LSD for the rest of the decade, ego clashes and respective pushes for solo LPs brought the trio and occasional quartet to a fragile place by the 1970s’ close.
CSN managed 1982’s Daylight Again, and Graham Nash rejoined old band The Hollies for the following year’s What Goes Around…, but despite a healthy touring schedule between the trio, Crosby lapsed into an ugly drug habit which threatened his career and very life. In and out of bail and rehab programmes across the next few years, he turned his back on the freebase crack and heroin-fuelled fugitivity in late 1985 and handed himself into the Fed, resulting in a nine-month spell in Texas’ Huntsville Prison.
Neil Young had enjoyed greater acclaim than his CSN bandmates since Déjà Vu and entered the 1980s in one of his most confoundingly creative eras. Having soaked up punk’s raucous attack on 1978’s Rust Never Sleeps, his next few releases into the 1980s saw him have a stab at synthpop, country, and rockabilly pastiche—much to the chagrin of his Geffen label who had no idea how to market the creative hot potato.
Enjoying his indulge in artistic contrarianism, a promise made to Crosby that he’d record another CSNY album should he get clean resulted in 1988’s American Dream.
Only the most dedicated fans were interested, however. Too many songs and a void of spirit placed American Dream as one the biggest culprits of yesteryear’s folk rock figures clumsily wading through the 1980s’ sea change that lacked the inspiration of former creative heights. “I think it didn’t work for a couple of reasons,” Nash told journalist Bill DeYoung in 2008. “We actually had a great time making it. They were some good songs on it. We may have over-harmonized some of them. We kind of overcompensated. My feeling — and I think David agrees with me — is that Neil over-indulged Stephen on that record. He put a couple of Stephen tracks on there that should not have been on there at all”.
Stills’ songwriting contributions don’t immediately grab as any worse than anyone else’s on American Dream, but all four still had that gift for vocal harmony which would see them soldier on across the following decades—all four regrouping for 1999’s Looking Forward and playing the Freedom of Speech Tour in 2006.
