The best song Graham Nash said fans never got to hear: “Just stunningly beautiful”
Chemistry was always the best and worst thing about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Every single one of them was outstanding at what they did, but no matter how many times they came together, it was anyone’s guess whether they were going to be on the same page or Neil Young would decide to throw in the towel and leave the rest of his bandmates hanging for one reason or another. But it’s not like Graham Nash could necessarily blame his bandmates for thinking that they were making an outright turd whenever he looked back on some of their lesser-known albums.
But if there was anyone who was going to make the band a pop machine, it was going to be Nash. He was always the conduit between the heaviness of Young and Stephen Stills and David Crosby’s ethereal harmonies, and whenever he took a crack at writing his own tunes, ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Marrakesh Express’ were some of the best songs they could have hoped for when making their singles.
Then again, not every song meets the moment in the same way, either. Young had written ‘Ohio’ as a reaction to the Kent State shootings, and while ‘Teach Your Children’ would have been a much better hit for the non-political market, they weren’t that kind of band. They were willing to comment on anything and everything they saw, and that wasn’t about to change when they started floating the idea of getting back together in the 1980s.
It was a long shot for any of them to be on speaking terms after Crosby started to lose himself to drugs, but after finally cleaning up his act, everyone seemed to be cordial enough to want to make a few tunes together. Everything seemed lined up for American Dream to be a slam dunk for them, but a lot can change in a few decades, and not everyone has the same spark as they used to.
Young already had his wilderness period of making strange genre detours, but even if he has some great tunes, they don’t always gel with the rest of the band. ‘This Old House’ is a great country song about the government trying to repossess farmers’ houses, but when the rest of the band pile on those massive harmonies, it does feel they’re trying a little bit too hard to keep that spirit alive.
But even if Nash had a few dated songs in the mix like ‘Shadowland’, the insistence on throwing in the Stills song ‘Driving Thunder’ meant losing one of Crosby’s greatest tunes, saying, “[They] left out a version of CSN doing ‘Climber,’ that was written by David, that was just stunningly beautiful. It was decided to take that off and put on ‘Driving Thunder,’ which, to me, is a piece of shit. In an effort to please Stephen, I think Neil made some wrong choices.”
And while Crosby did have a few songs that were still works in progress like ‘Compass’, ‘Driving Thunder’ is definitely the nadir of the band’s catalogue in lots of ways. It’s competently played and all, but this is the sound of what people think a lacklustre dad-rock reunion is supposed to sound like, complete with lyrics that sound like they were written by some middle-aged man trying to sound like they are with the kids by talking about driving fast down the highway.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were never that kind of band to begin with, and when Young eventually left the other band members hanging again to focus on his own records, it wasn’t hard to see why the rest of them quickly shelved the rest of the record. Here was a band that was hanging on by a thread even at their best moments, so seeing them try to keep the magic going on records like Live It Up made them look desperate by comparison.
