The 1971 album David Crosby and Graham Nash agree is “probably the best” of all time
When nothing stands still in the world, just worsens or grows strange, turn to the one constant good, Deja Vu will never change.
While that might be a somewhat heavy-handed adaptation of Phillip Larkin’s famous poem for the purpose of this article, the central point remains: David Crosby and Graham Nash produced some of the most timeless music of all time together as part of CSNY, the pinnacle of which is, undoubtedly, Deja Vu, their 1970 masterpiece.
But only 15 months later, they would be trumped, dumbfounded, envious, and, in the case of Nash, heartbroken. “I first met Joan in Ottawa, Canada in 1967,” the British songwriter who first rose to fame with The Hollies would recall of his fabled encounter with Joni Mitchell.
He recounts that they “hit it off immediately, and I ended up in her room at the Chateau Laurier and she beguiled me with 15 or so of the most incredible songs I’d ever heard,” he told 101 Essential Rock Records. “Obviously, I fell in love right there and then. She touched my heart and soul in a way that they had never been touched before.”
By the time Blue came around in 1971, the relationship sadly appeared to be over and the tale of heartache contained on the record would have the same effect on millions that her bedroom bound serenade had on Nash four years prior. Nash recalls, “I watched her write some of those songs and I believe that one or two of them were about me, but who really knows?”
However, the sad note that must echo through the tunes for Nash, does not stop him from experiencing the deliverance that accompanies the despair, as he adds, “Blue is by far, my most favourite solo album, and the thought that I spent much time with this fine woman and genius of a writer is incredible to me.”
It’s not without irony that it was his badmate, David Crosby, who helped to ensure that the world heard Mitchell in the first place. Crosby stumbled upon Mitchell performing at the Coconut Groove club in Florida, and he was immediately blown away. He was only human.
The former Byrds man was more than happy to sign on as a producer for her upcoming record, and their relationship blossomed from thereon. The two then had a brief – and admittedly volatile love affair – which Crosby later described as being like “falling into a cement mixer. She is a turbulent woman and very, very crazy”. It should come as no surprise that the relationship didn’t last, but the impression of her music did.
Speaking to Rolling Stone about the greatest guitarist of all time, Crosby was quick to point out just how talented Mitchell was and how she needed no extra help in the studio. “The strongest thing I did for Joni as a producer on Song to a Seagull, from 1968, was keep everybody else off of that record,” confessed the Byrds man.
“She was a folkie who had learned to play what they call an indicated arrangement,” continued Crosby in his glowing assessment of a star like no other. “Where you are like a band in the way you approach a chord and string the melody along. She was so new and fresh with how she approached it.”
This minimalist approach reached its apex with Blue where nothing gets in the way of Mitchell exposing the strains of her heart like a poet behind the controls of a radiology scanner. He may have been well aware of her skill and craft already, but this ‘71 pinnacle was so polished that he was almost intimidated by his former apprentice. “Probably the best singer-songwriter record ever made,” he admitted.
It was folk music presented at its most vulnerable. “At that period of my life,” Mitchell later told Rolling Stone, “I had no personal defences. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.”
She continued, “I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defences there either.”
Through the act of making the album, Mitchell escaped the claustrophobia of despair. Blue presents the salvation of music and movement, inviting listeners to bask in the beauty of it all with such beguiling transcendence that you often forgot the songs are even sad at all. As Joni puts it, “There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need to be said.”
Over half a century on, that clearly remains the same, yet nothing has been confessed with such grace ever since. Little wonder that Crosby and Nash saw it as the Everest of their craft.
