“Didn’t get together”: the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album nobody worked on together
Any great rock and roll usually thrives on that sense of camaraderie. Even if not everyone is getting along, it’s easy to put that aside when the music sounds good or if there’s a common goal to make the best record they can. Although Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young needed a miracle to bring themselves together in the late 1980s, their eventual reunion resulted in an album that none of them properly worked on together.
When the band first got together, though, none of them anticipated it lasting for an entire career. The whole reason why they assembled in the first place was to make something that was a separate outlet for their songs from The Hollies or The Byrds, so many of their records felt more like a songwriting committee coming together half the time.
Somewhere along the line, though, that musical brotherhood started the minute they opened their mouths to sing. Every one of them complemented each other musically, but by the time David Crosby went on a downward spiral, it looked like the band would go downhill fast if he didn’t straighten himself out.
Graham Nash had already walked out on Crosby due to drugs, but when he looked like he was a lost cause, Neil Young stepped up to the table with an offer: if Croz got sober, they would make another record. And by all odds, Crosby managed to kick the habit, meaning that fans would finally get the album that most people had been waiting for since the days of Deja Vu and ‘Teach Your Children’.
Then again, a 1980s version of CSNY was much stiffer than anyone could have predicted. Outside of the lacklustre production, most of the record was assembled piecemeal from their different projects, from Nash’s flirtation with Richard Marx levels of cheese on ‘Don’t Say Goodbye’ to Crosby’s ‘Compass’, which sounds like it belongs on the lost recovery album that he never got to make.
According to Young, no one in the band could claim to have collaborated on the project, either, remarking later, “It was part of a bargain that we would get together if David got straightened out. We didn’t really get together. We were just in the same area.” That was echoed by Stephen Stills as well, claiming that he didn’t remember a bit about working on it.
And listening back to the final product, it sounds like it, too. Despite all of them recording at Young’s house, it feels like the band has no idea what they want the record to sound like, so half of the tracks sound like the basis for an idea that no one bothered capitalising on. In fact, the only thing connecting the songs together are the harmonies, which manage to sound shrill with them being so prominent in the mix.
Then again, Young didn’t have time to work with this kind of record for too long. He knew when he was on a sinking ship, and considering that Freedom was right around the corner, chances are he was hoarding all of his A-material for his next solo record rather than wasting it on a dinosaur rock album.
