Why Neil Young struggled with the success of CSNY
Following the disbandment of Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young was ready to make a name for himself as a solo star. He soon landed a deal with Reprise Records and set about recording his eponymous debut album. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the desired effect on the general public, who largely ignored the release and left the solo star without the acclaim he deserved. However, one call from Stephen Stills would change the course of his entire career.
Young was previously a bandmate of Stills’ in Buffalo Springfield, but following the end of the group, they veered in two different directions. The Canadian tried to go alone before recruiting the band Crazy Horse, while Stills teamed up with David Crosby and Graham Nash to form Crosby, Stills and Nash. The trio’s debut album was a phenomenal success, but they needed to recruit extra musicians to tour the record.
As Young’s career wasn’t proving to be as commercially viable as Crosby, Stills and Nash, he was prepared to join the group. However, he didn’t want to become a session musician and wanted the same authority as the other band members, which meant they were forced to change their name.
As part of his contract, Young could juggle his work with CSNY, and Crazy Horse, which was quite the paradox. On the one hand, he’d be playing to thousands of fans with CSNY while the shows with Crazy Horse were in a more intimate setting and more relaxed. While the latter were moderately successful, it paled compared to the quartet.
His first album with the group, Déjà Vu, topped the charts in the United States and has sold over 14 million records worldwide. Even though Young had previously had a taste of success with Buffalo Springfield, nothing could prepare him for the success of CSNY, which came as a shock to the system.
Shortly after the release of Déjà Vu in 1970, Young spoke to Rolling Stone and admitted: “It’s like living two different lives. People who see me and come over and want to talk to me because of Crosby, Stills and Nash are weird compared to the people I know through Crazy Horse; and then there’s the people I know who don’t have anything to do with either one of them, who are a whole other trip, and by the time the day’s over I’m just completely screwed up. I start off real well depending on which one I see first.”
When asked to reflect on CSNY’s success, Young revealed it was “blowing my mind”. He said: “The tours we’ve done have been pretty successful. I don’t know, it’s blowing my mind – a lot of the applause, a lot of the reaction and everything. I don’t know how it got so big – I knew it was gonna be big and everything because when I joined them they had a lot of hype out and everything.
“They had a good album out, you know, and they had a rapport there… so I mean I knew they were gonna be pretty big, but I didn’t think it was gonna be as big as this. It’s big. Makes a lot of money, and it’s hard to relate to after what I was doin’ before.”
Although Young’s initial stint in the band was only for a year, the opportunity to express himself on the band’s giant platform helped him immeasurably and turned the masses onto Crazy Horse. However, it wasn’t until the musician joined that he realised the stupefying scale of the operation, which was impossible for Young to fully comprehend.
