By Howie Edelson
55 years on, for the first time, Crosby, Stills & Nash’s respective solo debuts have been reissued together in a new deluxe set. The albums, 1970’s Stephen Stills, David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, along with Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners -- both from 1971 -- feature the classic LP’s pressed on 140g black vinyl, housed in a slipcase with original album artwork, along with a newly produced Rarities collection, showcasing tracks from CSN’s respective solo box sets and deluxe reissues.
Rarities marks the first time these songs have been available on vinyl with the compilation sporting new and original artwork.
As the 1970’s took shape, all eyes focused squarely on Crosby, Stills & Nash. The decade began with the release of Déjà Vu -- their first chart-topping collection with Neil Young, followed by the quartet’s second Number One set, 1971’s double-live album, 4 Way Street.
Between the two albums, Stephen Stills issued his self-titled solo debut on November 16th, 1970. Stephen Stills, which topped out at Number Three on the Billboard 200, kicked off with the instant classic “Love The One You’re With.” The song, which would become a Top 20 smash and live CSN perennial, saw Stills backed by a choir of some of the top voices in the industry – including his partners David Crosby and Graham Nash, along with Rita Coolidge, her sister Priscilla Jones, John Sebastian, and the great Cass Elliot.
The Stephen Stills album touched upon all the influences that colored him and acts as an artistic travelogue for his listeners, bringing them along through his adventures riding bareback across the deserts of the American Southwest, up through Colorado’s tough and icy Rocky Mountains, the dappled English forests, going dark and low into the bayous of Alabama and Louisiana, down below to the sun and tides of Florida, Cuba, Panama -- and the deep and wide riverbanks of South America. His music is all of these sights and sounds -- and so much more.
Stephen Stills featured him collaborating with such legends as Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix, who sadly passed before the album was released. Back in 1970, Stills told Circus magazine, “Jimi and I just stayed in the studio for about four or five days jamming, and we did four or five tracks. It ended up that there's one I'm going to use. When it comes down to picking the tracks, you have to do it on the strength of the songs, rather than just how well they're played.” Stills’ sessions with Eric Clapton also unveiled a unique collaboration with a kindred spirit: “We also dubbed in a few guitars, Eric and I both, and I'll leave it to everybody to guess who's playing what where. Eric's my brother. Well, we've kind of been through the same changes, we fought the same battles and we're both just coming out the other side.”
In 1970, following Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s final tour dates, Stephen Stills relocated to England, where he purchased Ringo Starr’s 16th century family home in Elstead, Surrey, dubbed Brookfield House. Stills enlisted the help of the Beatles’ drummer to add his skills behind the kit for the new sessions, which took place, in part, at London’s famed Island Studios and told Circus: “Ringo is very good at playing to the earphones, besides being very good, period. I sort of saved those tracks especially for him. So, I'd play acoustic and he'd play drums and we'd get the basic (track) down, and then I'd go in and do the piano, organ, bass, other guitars -- up to 15 of them -- and the voices, and then finally, the strings and brass.”
David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name was released on February 22nd, 1971 and built upon the musical template touched upon on such signature tunes as “Guinnevere,” “Almost Cut My Hair,” and “Triad.” Reeling from the then-recent tragic death of girlfriend Christine Hinton, yet bolstered by complete artist freedom buoyed by a red-hot muse, Crosby crossed the boundaries from music into pure sonic mood. The album, which shed so many traditional musical guardrails, cross-pollinated the talents of Crosby’s closest friends including Joni Mitchell, bandmates Graham Nash and Neil Young -- along with his Northern California crew; Santana’s Gregg Rolie and Michael Shrieve, Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady, Quicksilver Messenger’s David Freiberg, as well as The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart. Although the musical vision was pure Crosby, If I Could Only Remember My Name was created within a brilliantly sympatico community.
Back in 2008, David Crosby recalled the sessions to Mojo and explained he didn’t set out to record a surefire hit, all-star album: “They were my friends. That was who I was close with. I think a lot of it had to do with Jerry Garcia. He was there almost every night, as was Graham Nash. And the two of them really cared about this record. I knew I wanted to do a lot of stacking vocals and I had some songs, which I felt were good and that was as much of a plan as I needed. I would have had hopes about who was gonna show up but we were never really sure until the evening. That was characteristic of my writing. If I can get away from that structured style, I try to. I try to bust the form.”
Crosby admitted that his material always operated on a slightly different track than Stills and Nash: “I do write stranger stuff than the other guys do. I heard jazz, Cuban music, Broadway shows growing up -- and classical music. My parents played a lot of it. Frequently on a Sunday morning you could hear the Brandenburg Concertos in our house. This helped give me my love of harmony, as did The Everly Brothers.”
Amazingly, nearly 40 years after its release, in 2010, If I Could Only Remember My Name nearly topped the list of the “Best Albums” published by The Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. The paper ranked Crosby classic second only to The Beatles’ 1966 masterpiece, Revolver. Crosby was astonished by the honor, admitting to Q magazine, “No one has yet worked out what the hell that was all about. And why should The Vatican have an opinion on music in the first place? And to choose me?! It baffles me as much as it baffles you, man. I got an email from David Gilmour saying, 'Dammit! -- Pink Floyd only came in third.’”
Of the CSNY members, Graham Nash was the last of the foursome to release his solo debut, with the revered Songs For Beginners dropping on May 28th, 1971. After penning the group’s mainstream hits – “Marrakesh Express,” “Our House,” and “Teach Your Children” – many fans were looking to the album for Nash’s latest home-grown pop confection to further the growing singer/songwriter era.
Songs For Beginners featured a Top 40 studio version of “Chicago,” which had been among the highlights of CSNY’s live 4 Way Street album. The song, which was the album’s lead single, was indicative of the social matters that Nash’s work would tap into over the course of his career and reflective of his new life in America: “I had met David and Stephen, and I began to realize listening to people, like, John and Paul and Bob Dylan that it wasn't enough to just write ‘moon/June/screw me in the back of the car’ kind of songs. The songs had to move you, and they had to be about something, and they had to be about something relatively important.”
Along with such esteemed guest players as Dave Mason, P.P. Arnold, Bobby Keys, and The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh – both David Crosby and Neil Young are featured on Songs For Beginners. Although not physically on the tracks, Stephen Stills is there in spirit – literally. No less than two songs from the album – “Wounded Bird” and “Better Days” were inspired by and written for Stills, who was across the Atlantic nursing a broken heart.
In 2019 Graham Nash performed the entirety of Songs For Beginners while on tour. He shed light on why the album’s music still rings true for new audiences in the here and now: “Many of those songs are incredibly relevant today, and it was amazing to me that a song like ‘Chicago’ or ‘Military Madness’ -- I mean, I've changed the beginning of my shows because of what's going on in Ukraine. There's stuff going on in the world that everybody is aware of, everybody wants to escape the news of. There's incredibly brilliant, wonderful things being done by humanity at the same time as Mariupol in Ukraine is being obliterated.”
The fourth disc on the set, Rarities, culls selections from the handful of deluxe editions and box sets from CSN’s group and solo works. Graham Nash, who has been mining the studio vaults and group members’ personal archives for decades, told this writer that he discovered an entirely new way to chronicle and experience CSN’s deep and rich history: “It started when I was putting together the CSN box set, which came out in 1991. During all that listening for all that stuff I found roughly between 40 and 50 of our demos. And I always thought that it would be an interesting project for people to hear the original concept and then see how it changed when the record came out. And it seems as if I was right.”
Rarities serves as the perfect addendum to the three original CSN solo albums in this package. It spotlights a group that still perfectly fits together even when apart. Highlights on the Rarities set include Stephen Stills’ historic solo demo for “Love The One You’re With,” Graham Nash reinventing David Crosby’s ethereal 1967 Byrds gem, “Everybody’s Been Burned,” and Crosby’s gorgeous 1971 outtake, “Coast Road,” – along with plenty more performances that will fill your heart and inspire the soul. All are tracks that although hidden in the corners of this vast catalogue, still feel just like home.
Spring is here.
Music is love.
CSN remains the perfect soundtrack to it all.