the making of DÉJÀ VU by crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - featuring graham nash and david browne

Intro: 

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Crosby, Stills & Nash formed in 1968 in Los Angeles, California by Stephen Stills, David Crosby and Graham Nash. Each of them had been members of successful rock bands, including Crosby in the Byrds, Stills in Buffalo Springfield and Nash in the Hollies. After singing together at a social gathering, they realized they had a unique harmony blend and decided to form a group. They signed a deal with Atlantic Records and released their self-titled debut album in 1969. The album became a hit so they began planning for their live shows and realized they would benefit from bringing in an additional band member. Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records suggested Neil Young, since Young and Stills had been former bandmates in Buffalo Springfield. They started playing live as a four piece before turning their attention to recording their second album. Déjà Vu was eventually released in 1970. 

In this episode, Graham Nash and David Browne, author of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup reflect on how the album came together. This is the making of Déjà Vu.

Graham Nash:  Hello everyone, this is Graham Nash, and right now we're talking about our album Déjà Vu. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves were a great band. We knew it, we knew we had the songs, we knew we had the musicianship, we knew we had the voices. We thought it was gonna be a great album, and I think it was. In looking back at it, you know, 50-odd years later, it still holds up. I played it about a week ago. I played it loud. It's still a fabulous, fabulous record.

It happened in the end of 1967. I was visiting Joni (Mitchell) in Los Angeles at Lookout Mountain. When I got to her parking lot there, I heard other voices, and that was a little upsetting for me because I just wanted to spend time with Joni. But it was David and Stephen, and they were having dinner with Joni. So after dinner, and Joni even remembers what we had for dinner, it was salmon (laughs). After dinner, David said, "Hey, Stephen, play Willie that song we're doing." Now then, the Byrds had thrown David out. The Buffalo Springfield had broken up, and David and Stephen were trying to get a kind of, I guess, an Everly Brothers two-part harmony thing together. And so Stephen said, "Okay," and they played a song, uh, of Stephen's called You Don't Have to Cry, uh, which was on the first, uh, CSN record. They got to the end of it. I said, "First of all, Stephen, that's a beautiful song. That really is a beautiful song. Do me a favor. Sing it again." They looked to each other, they shrugged, and they sang it again.

When they got to the end of it, I said, "Okay." I'm a decent harmony singer myself. I've learned the body language of when David or Stephen holds a note and how long they do and how they breathe and I said, "Do me a favor. Sing it one last time." Within 45 seconds of me adding my voice to David and Stephen, we knew that we had discovered magic. Yes the other bands, all the bands we were in were decent harmony singers, but nothing sounded like what me and David and Stephen sounded like the first time that we ever put our voices together. And Joni was the only witness, and I, as a matter of fact, I went to that very house, about a year and a half ago. I was driving around Los Angeles with Blair Woods, our tour manager, and I said, "Hey, do you wanna see the house where we started?" He said, "Yeah, sure." So we were very close in Laurel Canyon, so I took him to the house. And there was a guy in the parking lot fixing a van, and I said, "I don't want to disturb you, but my name is Graham Nash." And he goes, "Oh, yeah, sure, sure. You wanna come in and see the house?" I said, "Absolutely." So we actually were standing and had our picture taken in that house where we started all those many years ago. 

David Browne: Hi, this is David Browne. I'm a longtime music journalist and the author of eight books, including a biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I'm a contributing writer at Rolling Stone, and I also have a Substack called The Debrief. Crosby, Stills, and Nash got together in the summer of '68, so they had a good six months on and off where they were hanging out together in LA and playing songs for each other. And really working on that harmony blend that they had, where you had, Nash in the high range, and Stills in the lower, and Crosby kind of in the middle. And the blend of those three voices, the sort of little bit of a bluesy rasp in Stills' and the very high almost tenor of Nash's, and then Crosby also having kind of a tenor, but a little more fluid vocally. They worked really hard on that for months and months, and you hear that on the first Crosby, Stills, and Nash record.

Graham Nash:  Once we had that moment of me and David and Stephen singing together in Joni's living room, I knew two things. One, that I had to go back to England and leave the Hollies, and two, I wanted to make music with these guys forever. And that's what happened to me. I had to go back to England and, and leave the Hollies and, and come back and live in America and follow that magic sound. And that's exactly what I did. 

David Browne: Nash had been in the Hollies for a few years before that and, and, you know, he had a hand here or there in songwriting, but by, you know, '67, '68, he was really being very influenced by what was happening in LA and other parts of rock and roll, and really wanted to develop his own songwriting some more. And, you know, famously brought “Marrakesh Express” to the Hollies, as well as a song called “Horses Through a Rainstorm,” which was a Déjà Vu outtake, and wanted them to record those songs, and he was very proud of them. And, the Hollies did cut a version of “Horses Through a Rainstorm,” but it was not a priority for the Hollies, and “Marrakesh Express,” they thought it was kind of an oddball song, and they were kind of dismissive of him, and that was a big reason for him also wanting to leave the group. You know, he just felt like he was tapping into his own creative well at that point, and really starting to discover himself as a songwriter. And certainly being around all those people in LA that he was hanging out with, that very creative community that was, you know, being around Joni Mitchell and Stephen Stills in particular, you can only imagine how inspiring it must have been to him to really want to write songs on his own.

Graham Nash:  What a wonderful decision. A lot of people say, "Wow, it must have been hard to leave the Hollies, you know, all that fame and all those hits and all that stuff." I said, "No, no. You haven't heard what I've heard." And that was the magic that David and Stephen and I had created that night. 

David Browne: The first Crosby, Stills, Nash record was kind of set apart in many different ways. First of all, starting with the group name. You didn't really have many groups back then who used just their names as the band name. Usually had a band name. And so that was a very conscious effort on their part to distinguish themselves and to kind of make the public familiar with their names in a way. But also just sonically, it was part of a sort of back to the roots movement that we were seeing in rock and roll at the time. I think there was a sense that, you know, psychedelia, what was called acid rock at the time, by 1968, had sort of started playing itself out, and there was a kind of back to the country vibe that was starting to permeate rock and roll. You know, (Bob) Dylan's John Wesley Harding in late '67 was one of the early signs of that, I mean, he was someone who went electric and kind of pushed that as far as he could, and suddenly he was, like, stripping his music back to just acoustic backup and vocals. You had The Band's first album come around the same time. So there was this real interest in records that focused more on kind of the songs and the voices and more kind of unplugged instrumentation than on electricity. So Crosby, Stills & Nash very much kind of fit into that mode, but it also was a record that had sort of a jubilant, joyous feel to it. And again, like, the times, especially in the year before, 1968 into '69, were pretty tumultuous in America. You had the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., you had the utterly chaotic Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. You had Richard Nixon elected at the end of '68. The country had been really convulsing for the last few years leading up to that, and I think a record like Crosby, Stills & Nash offered a kind of counterpoint to that, even though there were parts of that record, like “Long Time Gone,” that were very intense and reflected the times going on around them. That song was written by Crosby after Bobby Kennedy's death. But it was such a kind of beautiful, jubilant record. The vocal harmonies were just so beautiful, and, and there was a kind of an uplifting feel to that record, even if they were singing about breakups and things. It just felt like a light pouring into a window or something, kind of feel to that record, and I think people were really kind of hungry for that, too, after several really disquieting years in the country. There was something captivating about the sound of those voices and, and the overall kind of hopeful mood of that album. 

Graham Nash: In a way, the first Crosby, Stills & Nash record was sunny, was, you know, I was in love with and living with Joni Mitchell. Stephen was with Judy Collins, and David was with his girlfriend Christine (Hinton). And by the time we got to starting Déjà Vu, Joni and I were no longer an item, Stephen and Judy had broken up, and Christine had been killed in a tragic road accident. So we were already depressed and, and in a very dark mood, and I think it shows on Déjà Vu. 

David Browne: Here the three guys had made this perfect record that was a huge hit, and you think that would've kind of been enough. But of course, the problem became that they wanted to play it live, and they needed another instrumentalist essentially. You know, Stills played almost all the instruments on the first Crosby, Stills & Nash record except for the drums and some rhythm guitar from Crosby or Nash. But all the lead guitars and organ and bass and things like that, some piano, were played by Stills. So if they wanted to go tour with that record and have a band and not just do a trio acoustic thing, they needed somebody else to kind of fill in to be a keyboard player or some kind of backup player, and that became kind of a sticking point. They were trying to figure out who could that be. 

Graham Nash: It happened one night when David and Stephen were having dinner in New York with our dear friend, Ahmet Ertegun, who was obviously the owner of the record label. And during dinner, Ahmet said to Stephen and David, "I know who you should get, man." And they said, "Tell me more." He said, "You've gotta get Neil Young." So Stephen said, "Ahmet, are you crazy? I just spent the last couple of years, he's in the band, he's out of the band, we are doing the Ed Sullivan Show, we're not doing the Ed Sullivan Show. This has been crazy." And Ahmet said, "I know all that, but I still think you should get Neil." So they both agreed, and when they told me that they were gonna get Neil, I said, "Wait a second. First of all, we just created this wonderful, magic called harmony here with the three of us. And, you know, a three-part harmony is very different than four-part harmony. And most of all, I've never met this guy. I don't know whether I can tell him secrets. I don't know whether he's gonna be my friend. I don't know anything about him. Before, before we invite him into this band, I really need to meet Neil." And so Neil and I set up a breakfast in Greenwich Village, somewhere on Bleecker Street, I think. And at the end of that I was convinced that, yes indeed we needed Neil. First of all, he's a great writer and a great singer, and secondly, he adds, you know, at the end of the conversation, I looked at Neil and I said, "Why should we invite you into this band?" And he says, "Have you ever heard me and Stephen play together?" I said, "Yes, I have, with the Buffalo Springfield, of course." He said, "Yeah, but when we converse with our guitars on stage, it's magic, and that's one of the reasons why you should let me into this band." And so at the end of that meeting, I was convinced also, because obviously Neil is a great writer and a great musician. And that's how it ended up. That's why we started to make Déjà Vu. 

David Browne: It served multiple purposes to have Neil Young join the band. It brought another instrumentalist into the band. So, you know, Neil could play lead guitar and organ, and alternate those roles with Stills so they had, like, they could beef up their sound on stage. And it also benefited Neil a lot. You know, one of the things that we forget, especially with the passage of time, is that in the spring and summer of 1969, Neil Young was not “Neil Young, rock star” at that point. He had put out his first solo album after the Buffalo Springfield early in '69. Great record with “The Loner” and so many cool songs on there, but it was not a hugely successful record commercially speaking. And then he had just put out Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere with Crazy Horse, which again was not a big hit record. So I mean, and yet Crosby, Stills & Nash, an almost out of the box kind of blockbuster. And so in probably one of the first of several instances of this, it benefited Neil greatly to hook up with those guys to up his profile in part of the way, and I can't say this for sure, but he probably got a nice cash infusion also, 'cause they were going on tour and playing some pretty big gigs. They were playing, like, stadiums and arenas already, and big theaters. Neil also wanted to join the band 'cause he did love playing with Stills. They had a great rapport as guitar players. So there was a musical component to that. But overall, it served Neil pretty well to join them, and it served them to bring in another instrumentalist to kind of bolster them. I don't think anybody knew what the ultimate ramifications were gonna be just a few months down the line, but at least on paper it served all parties well, to bring Neil aboard, even though it seemed like, you know, on the surface it might not have really been necessary.

Graham Nash: Once we heard the four of us play, which was the first time that we ever played together here, I think it was in the Village Gate, which was a venue here in New York City, I knew that it was right. Neil definitely added something to our sound, and he, as you said, had a very high voice also. And so what we would do then, he would probably double up my part, and we had to include him, obviously, and that's the way we did it. You know, sometimes Stephen took the high part, too, particularly in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” In the middle part there, it's Stephen on the very high part, not me And so we just used our sense of harmony however it was to be able to include Neil. But that was a pretty easy thing to do. We knew, you know, obviously the Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies and the Byrds were decent harmony bands, but nobody sounded like me and David and Stephen when we put our three voices and made them into one. But yeah, it was pretty easy, you know, we knew exactly where each of us should go to add to the vocal sound. And there was no doubt after first playing together that we had made the right decision. Now, then later of course, we realized that Neil, in a way was in the band but not in the band. He was very interested in everything Neil, and I understand that. As an example, David and Stephen and, and myself were watching A Hard Day's Night, and Neil was watching, you know, Eat the Document, you know, by Bob Dylan. So that shows you exactly where Neil is. But we did make some very, very interesting music together, particularly on the album Déjà Vu.

David Browne: Right from the start, Neil made it very clear that he was in the band, but he was gonna be his own man. 'Cause their original thought when they asked Neil to join the band was that he was just gonna be a backup musician and not be billed. It was still gonna be “Crosby, Stills & Nash,” and if you saw them in concert, there would be Neil on the organ or the guitar, whatever, but he was not gonna be billed. And right from the start Neil was like, "Sorry, no. My name's gotta be there." And again, that really was helpful to him to get his name out there in the public as well, and he probably felt like, "Hey, I, you know, I'm not stale bread here. You know, I'm an important musician too. My name should be in there." So even before they hit the road, he made it clear, "I'm my own person, and I'm not gonna be pushed around, and I have my own rules." And that of course extended into their second gig, which was Woodstock, where he refused to be filmed for it. He was happy to play the festival, but he didn't want to be in the movie. He didn't like the idea of the cameras. And so he demanded that he not be in the finished movie. And so if you actually watch the movie now, you'll hear the announcer say, "Crosby, Stills, Nash..." And then it just ends, and they even made sure they cut out the "and Young" from the MC's introduction to the band. So right away from the first month or two that he was in the band, you know, Neil pretty much laid down the law and said, you know, "There's certain things I'll do, there's certain things I won't do, and that's just the way it is." And that's a pattern that would continue for four or five decades or more (laughs). 

Graham Nash: When we did Woodstock and we saw our section of Woodstock afterwards, we realized that Neil had told all the cameramen never to film him. And it was the first time that we ever really realized that Neil wanted to be in the band, but not be in the band at the same time. And that's why a lot of people don't think that Neil was at Woodstock, but he was indeed. We played it as CSNY, but we didn't realize until afterwards that Neil had told all the cameramen not to film him.

David Browne: Well, the making of Déjà Vu was a little chaotic. They started in the summer of '69, Los Angeles, then moved to Wally Heider's in San Francisco, in the fall, and it ended up taking about six months, which these days would not be any big deal. Records can take a while sometimes these days to make. Back then, it was kind of rare, and it was a result of many different things, one of which is that during those six months, they had concerts scheduled, not just Woodstock, but a whole tour of the West Coast and the Fillmore East in New York and all these shows that were set up to promote their first album. David Crosby's girlfriend, Christine, was killed in a car accident in September, so that, you know, put a halt to things for a while. That situation alone complicated matters. There was a fits and starts aspect to it. But also you had, again, the Neil aspect to this, and you know, there's a real fundamental difference between Neil and Crosby, Stills, & Nash that I don't think was ever fully resolved in terms of record-making. You know, Crosby, Stills, & Nash always approached record-making as a real craft that you worked on in terms of overdubbing vocals and instruments and kind of really fine-tuning a record. You didn't just do one or two takes and boom, it's done, and you do a little sonic tweaking, but the bulk of it is there. They, and Stills in particular, really liked to massage the tracks and, you know, had a real precision aspect to it. Neil, not so much. You know, Neil has always famously liked to do things kind of a little bit more on the fly and have a little more spontaneity in the recording sessions. We certainly heard that later, a few years later on Tonight's the Night, you know, which is, kind of a wild, sometimes out of tune record, but brilliant. But that's not the way, you know, CSN made records. So I think there was a little bit of that going on during the early Déjà Vu sessions and, you know, when they cut “Almost Cut My Hair,” for example, you know, Crosby's vocal on that is really raspy. Neil loved it, you know, Stills didn't like it at all and wanted him to redo it. The first version of “Woodstock,” Neil thought Stills' vocal was great and powerful, and Stills later on, listened to it and changed it, put a new vocal on, which Neil wasn't crazy about. Neil also, you know, on a song like “Country Girl,” recorded the basic track with the band, but then, like, would take his basic tracks out of the studio and just work on them on his own and add all kinds of things, other instruments without the other guys, and then just give it back to them and say, "Here you go. Here's the finished thing," which I think rankled them a little bit. I think Graham is still irked a little bit that Neil's not on “Our House” at all. He's not on “Teach Your Children” either, actually. So Neil is only on half of Déjà Vu, which is another thing people may not realize. So that right there is a sign that it was not a total kind of group effort.

“Carry On”

Graham Nash: I do believe that we started Déjà Vu in Wally Heider's studio in San Francisco. That's where, you know, Stephen and David and Neil were mainly hanging out in northern California. And so I do believe that we started the album in San Francisco. But for instance, I did “Our House” down in Wally Heider's studio in Los Angeles. So it went in between, you know, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When we were starting, Déjà Vu, I turned to Stephen and I said, "You know, we don't have Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." He said, "I know, we used it on the first record." I said, "No, no. We don't have that kind of song where we can guarantee that nobody will get up and take the needle off the record. We need that kind of a song." "Oh," he said, "Yeah, I see what you mean." Two days later, he comes to me and says, "Hey, what about this?" “Dun dun dun dun dun dun” (sings acoustic guitar riff). And then went through “Carry On.” And I said, "Stephen, we have our opening track.” That's exactly how it happened. 

David Browne: Stills said okay, and he, you know, soon afterwards came up with that opening riff of “Carry On,” and he blended it with an old Buffalo Springfield song called “Questions,” and he kind of did a sort of a medley of the two of them. And that acoustic playing it, that opens the song, from Stills is so grabby and so sort of bustling in its way. And then the vocal harmonies kind of come in on the song. But it also kind of sets the tone for the record, I think, in terms of the mood. There's a very distinctive mood between Crosby, Stills & Nash and Déjà Vu. And Déjà Vu, overall as an album is much more kind of, it's a little more subdued, a little moodier of a record, and it reflects lots of different things going on in their personal lives and I think maybe in the country too. And I think “Carry On,” in a way, is a great way to start that because it's a breakup song, you know? And basically saying, you know, “This thing we had is over and I'm moving on.” Dallas Taylor, who was the drummer on the record, who's unfortunately no longer with us, has maintained that that was Stills' message to the band. Stills has never confirmed that, but this idea that they were already starting to fray around the edges as a group, thanks to their success and Neil being in the mix and all sorts of other things, that was his message to the band. But be that as it may, I think it's one of those sort of perfect album openers, and I think the acapella vocal in the middle is really, really gorgeous. And then it goes into this sort of celestial organ part leading into the reprise of the Buffalo Springfield song at the end. And it all works together really well. I mean, two very different song fragments, and I think it's such a testament to the way, especially Stills was just on fire back then, that he could, again, he played almost all the instruments on that, and he could create this almost perfect track from two very disparate songs and have it be this completely cohesive finished product.

Graham Nash: When Stephen wrote “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” you know, of course, it was about his girlfriend, Judy Collins, but it was four pieces that he had threaded together musically to form that song, which was brilliant, you know? And the same happened with “Carry On.” He had a couple of things he needed to say and a couple of pieces of music that he'd already written, and it went from “Carry On” to “Questions.” Once again, musically put together by Stephen. And you've got to understand, Stephen was phenomenal during those early days. He was the leader of CSN, and he wanted to be the leader of CSNY, but you know, Neil was there. But Stephen was brilliant in those early days.

“Teach Your Children” 

Graham Nash: When I first played Stephen, my song “Teach Your Children,” Stephen looked at me and he said, "You know what? That's a very good song. Don't ever play it like that again." I said, "What?" He said, "You sound like ‘Henry VIII.’ Come on." And he said, "It should go like this." And he put that beautiful right hand picking pattern that Stephen is so famous for, and that's how, that's how “Teach Your Children” became a recordable record. It was Stephen. Once again, he was brilliant in those days.

In Wally Heider's studio in San Francisco, there were three studios, A, B, and C. I think we were in A, CSN. In Studio B, were The Jefferson Airplane. And in Studio C were the Grateful Dead. So I'd written this pretty simple song. It was just me and Stephen on acoustic and Dallas Taylor on tambourine, and then Stephen overdubbing the bass. When we got to the part where there's supposed to be a solo, both Stephen and Neil said that, "We played a lot of guitar, both acoustic and electric, on this record. Is there anything we can do differently?" Right then, Crosby said, "You know, I heard Jerry Garcia is just learning to play pedal steel. Maybe if he likes the song and he's good enough, he, you know, maybe he could, I don't know, maybe he could do something." So I made a quick two-track mix of the song, and I gave it to David. I said, "Take it into the Grateful Dead's studio and play it and see if Jerry likes the tune." Well, Jerry loved the song, and he brought his pedal steel and his amp into our studio, and I pressed the red light, of course, 'cause that's kinda who I am. You never know what's going on with these great musicians, you know? And we played it once, and Jerry was playing. We got to the end and I said, "Whew. Jerry, that was phenomenal." He said, "Really?" He said, " I made a couple of mistakes." He said, "Can I do a second track?" And I said, "Of course you can do a second track, but I'm never gonna use it." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because you trying to find your way through a song that you've only heard once was magic." So we did, in fact, take a couple of small mistakes out of the second track, but the first time that Jerry did it was what you heard, and it was brilliant. 

David Browne: What was sort of also cool about that song when they recorded it, of course, is that they were joined by Jerry Garcia. And Jerry, you know, had sort of was just learning how to play pedal steel guitar, and added that great pedal steel part on it, that gave this completely different flavor to, like, almost anything CSN or CSNY ever recorded. It lent it a, a bit of a country music kinda feel. And that really jumped apart. 

Graham Nash: But yeah, that's exactly how “Teach Your Children” happened. And that, I gave him a guitar because of it, and that became the alligator guitar. It used to be, "Bring me the Nash guitar, bring me the Nash guitar." But then he put a decal of an alligator on the front of the Fender Strat that I'd given him, and then it became the alligator guitar. They came to see us record how we recorded ourselves. And normally we would put a microphone up and open it all the way around, and David and Stephen would stand where they were, and I would stand about a foot further back, because for some reason, my voice always made it to the tape louder than anybody else. And so we had to learn how to sing. And then, of course, we would double track that exactly. So the Grateful Dead saw how we were doing it, and I think it changed the way that they started to harmonize. And they definitely had to learn how to sing harmony around one microphone.

David Browne: By 1969, the worlds of CSNY and, and the Grateful Dead were pretty intertwined. CSN were increasingly making a move up to the Bay Area. Neil would eventually buy a ranch up around there. And the Dead were also getting caught up in that, you know, paring it back vibe in music. You know, they were an example of a band that, you know, made some pretty intricate, elaborate, multi-layered albums in their first couple of records like Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa. And by that point, they too were thinking, "Maybe we should pare it down a little bit." And in their situation, it was also dictated by money because they had gone way overboard making their third album, and they needed to spend less money making what would be their next record called Workingman’s Dead. And they had written a bunch of songs that were kind of more rooted in kind of folk music and country music. But also, they wanted to emphasize or boost their harmonies. The Grateful Dead were never really known as a harmony group, so they took some tips from Crosby and Stills and Nash in terms of working on their blend, and Crosby gave a lot of suggestions to Garcia and Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, who were basically were the three guys in the band at that point who were doing the harmony singing. And you kind of hear that in Workingman’s Dead and “Uncle John's Band” and songs like that, where they're sort of trying to be Crosby, Stills & Nash. They couldn't quite be, because their voices were just so different and didn't quite blend in that same gorgeous way that CSN did. But it's an example of the way that I think also Crosby, Stills & Nash were, were so kind of well-regarded, you know, in that world, rock world at the time.

Graham Nash: I like to write simple songs. I've said it before, but I'm not interested in songs where you have to listen all the way through to the 15th verse before you know what they're talking about. I want your heart right now. And I like to write simple songs and, you know, a great example, of course, is “Simple Man,” which is probably the simplest song I ever did. I had learned when I was in the Hollies how to write a melody that you probably couldn't forget if you'd heard it a couple of times, and I was good at that. But my lyrics were “moon, June, screw me in the back of the car” kind of lyrics and they weren't very good. But when I heard, when I came to America and heard what David, and Stephen, and Neil, and Joni were doing, I realized that if I put better lyrics to my song, to my melodies that I'd learned I would have better songs, and that's exactly what happened.

David Browne: Yeah “Teach Your Children” was inspired by a Diane Arbus photograph called “Boy in Central Park with Hand Grenade” that Nash had seen, and he was really struck by the image of a young child with any kind of weapon, sort of what we're teaching our children as they're growing up in this world where there were assassinations happening, and the Vietnam War. And so he wrote that song. 

Graham Nash: Yes, I had collected what I considered to be great photographs. And at one particular, at the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara in California, I had given them, I think, about 32 of the images that I had collected, and I put one of mine in there. And it was of my son Jackson when he was about three or four years old, and he's looking into an aquarium, and it looks like he's out in space looking back at the Earth. And I realized when I put those two together, because of course images next to each other on a wall kind of talk to each other, you know, and they have to be correct. And I realized that if we didn't teach our children a better way of dealing with humanity, that humanity itself was in great danger. And so I had started “Teach Your Children” when I was in England, but I finished it after I saw those two images together. 

“Almost Cut My Hair” 

Graham Nash: Our three or four kinds of music made a wonderful blend somehow, you know? Stephen was, was very, as you said, bluesy, you know, a Latin kind of feel. Neil was incredibly, I don't mean this in a negative sense, but he, Neil was darker, you know, in his playing. And David, of course, was influenced by the Everly Brothers and by his brother Ethan, who listened to a lot of jazz, you know. And I'm from the north of England, you know, and brought my kind of music. And all four types of music all blended together. So whenever we heard a song, we knew exactly how to record it.

David Browne: Along with “Woodstock,” “Almost Cut My Hair” is probably the best example of the dynamic of that new group with Neil working together in a recording studio and playing all live together. You know, that's an example of a song where there were different takes of it, but, you know, what we're hearing on that record is, like, them playing together live in the studio with minimal, if any, overdubs. Stills and Young going back and forth on the lead guitars. That song as a recording really captures the kind of volcanic energy of that they could conjure as a quartet and with Greg Reeves and Dallas Taylor behind them in the recording studio, and what Neil could bring and the fire that he could bring to that band and push them musically.

Graham Nash: I remember that Stephen and Neil, were obviously, loved the song. But David had to get slightly drunk to be able to sing the melody. And that's what I remember about recording “Almost Cut My Hair,” and it worked out well. It, you know, we obviously always loved the first take of a song. When you've done a song 12 times, you know, you might be getting it more correct musically, but it loses something. So we like the earlier takes and “Almost Cut My Hair” was exactly one of those.

David Browne: Crosby, you know, right up to his death I'm sure, was embarrassed by that song and the lyrics, and he thought that they were juvenile and kind of ridiculous. And I think the fact that he had to keep singing that song for almost his entire career because people loved it drove him a little crazy. And, you know, a lot of people see it as this sort of, the embodiment of the hippy solipsism mentality. You know, “I'm gonna let my hair grow long. I'm not gonna cut it so I can stick it to the man." But I think that song, for all of that criticism, you know, that song spoke to that generation as much as any song on that album. You know, people just so related to that at that moment 'cause you also have to remember, that was a time when if you had long hair, especially if you were in the American South, but not even just there, you could get hassled big time. I was a little kid around that time, and I remember going into my local post office in suburban New Jersey, and my hair was probably just a little bit over my ears. I didn't have long hair to my shoulders, I never did, but I remember, like, my hair was a little bit over my ears, and I remember going to the post office to run an errand for my mom, and the person behind the counter, I think it was a guy, said, "Can I help you, miss?" Which was, I was like, "What?" And I’d say he wasn't harassing me, but it was a telling moment for me of, like, yeah, that if you had longish hair, you were, certain people would mock you and ridicule you and call, if you were a guy, they would, you know, call you a girl or make fun of you or whatever. And so I think for Crosby to sing a song like that was a pretty powerful statement for a lot of people at that time. 

The group was famously going through some tough personal times compared to the making of the first album. During when they made the first album, David Crosby's girlfriend, Christine, was very much part of his life. Graham Nash was with Joni Mitchell, and Stephen Stills was with Judy Collins. There's a great photograph around from the sessions of the first record where you see Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell in the control room of the studio looking out from the recording console, looking out into the studio, watching something happening in the studio. I asked Judy Collins about that, I showed her the picture, she said, "Oh, I remember exactly being there." She goes, "I don't remember what Joni and I were looking at, but it might've been just the three of those guys in the studio, you know, singing." And they, both Judy and Joni have these kind of smiles on their face. By the time Déjà Vu was around, things were, on all three of those fronts, had completely changed. Christine Hinton had, of course, died in a horrible car accident. Judy Collins and Stephen Stills had broken up, and things between Joni and Graham Nash were starting to dissolve as well. And so their personal lives were kind of unraveling, and the dynamic within the group was changing at the same time, just imbue so much of the album and so many of those songs.

Graham Nash: He loved Christine. She was a very beautiful soul, not only physically beautiful, but, mentally beautiful also. I remember the morning David and I, and Stephen were in Novato in northern California, and we were at the house, and we were lying by the pool. And Christine came up to me, and she handed me three joints that she had rolled, and she said, "Here, smoke these while I'm gone." I said, "Where are you going?" She said, "I'm just taking the cat to the vet." That was the last time we ever saw her, you know? She was in David's van, she had the cat, and she had a friend of hers with her. But the cat at some point scratched Christine, and she reacted by looking down at the cat, and ran into a bus and was killed instantly. And David's life has never been the same since, actually. 

David Browne: Crosby was, you know, deeply, deeply impacted by Christine Hinton's death in September of '69. It was just after they were starting the record, and he'd been the real, like, cheerleader of the band, you know? I mean, and Neil has said this too, that, like, they were all into it, but Crosby was really into the whole idea of the four of them and the sound they made together. And, you know, if you go to YouTube or whatever, you occasionally will find a clip of them from 1970 on stage at the Fillmore East doing “Southern Man.” Actually, it's in Neil's Journey Through the Past movie as well. And there's a close-up of Crosby just, you know, he's just comping chords on the guitar while Stills and Young are playing solos. He has this beatific smile on his face, that he's just loving being on stage, just playing this music with these guys, and just, you know, maybe was a little high as well (laughs). But, you know, he just, there's such an enraptured look on his face, that he's just loving this whole thing. And that completely was gone for a while they were finishing Déjà Vu, and he would talk about, you know, just crumpling up in a fetal position in the studio sometimes. Just he was, he just didn't know how to deal with death, really. I mean, who does when you're in your mid to late 20s, as those guys were, and, you know, your girlfriend suddenly dies when she accidentally, you know, slams her VW into a bus? And, you know, he just didn't know how to deal with that at all. And so Crosby provided such a glue to that group at that point, as did Nash, and I think to not have that made a real impact on the group. And I think you hear that in “Almost Cut My Hair,” even though it was written before Christine died. He recorded it with the group after she had passed, and that anguish that you hear in his voice in that song isn't necessarily just about being harassed, you know, by cops for your hair, or wanting to make a statement. I think you're hearing some of what he was going through personally in that vocal, and I think it makes it even more poignant. 

Graham Nash: We had almost finished Déjà Vu, and after Christine was killed, I knew that David needed a friend. And David and I went drinking around the world. We started out at the Chelsea Hotel here in New York City, and we went to England. We would drink cognac with Coca-Cola. I've taken a couple of pictures of David, particularly in the Chelsea Hotel where, when he was looking out of the window and a neon sign above him says exit, and I knew at that point that he was thinking about, you know, throwing himself out the window. Anyway, he needed a friend, and I stuck with him there and, and then we ended up in Mexico. And Gary Burden, who was our art director and did the album cover for CSN and did the album cover for Déjà Vu from one of Stephen's ideas of trying to bring the Civil War into our music, and that's the cover of Déjà Vu. But they flew down to Mexico to see us, and we approved the artwork and David and I were okay after that.

“Helpless”

Graham Nash: We were doing a lot of cocaine, particularly the three of us, not necessarily Neil. And Neil had waited until about 3:00 in the morning when we finally had slowed down enough to do “Helpless,” and that's what I remember about “Helpless.” It was a great couple of takes. Neil then took the tapes down to his studio where he lived in just south of San Francisco and played around with them and brought them back to us to mix for the album itself. But that's what I remember most about recording “Helpless” was that Neil waited until we were slow enough for him. 

David Browne: What's funny about “Helpless,” which I think is one of the greatest things Neil ever recorded with those guys, is that in a typical Neil Young way, it wasn't meant for those guys. He had been recording that song earlier that day with Crazy Horse. That's how he first envisioned it, recording it with those guys for what would've been After the Gold Rush. And they just, you know, they weren't getting a satisfactory take, or Neil just wasn't happy with it, so he brought it to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sessions, I think it was later that day, and they worked on it all night, and they got the final take in, 'cause Neil wanted the tempo to be slower. You know, Dallas Taylor could kind of rush the tempo sometimes on the drums, so they all worked at it for hours and hours till everybody was pretty tired. And then they got the right take. 

Graham Nash: Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves were beautifully linked with the four of us. As a matter of fact, Greg Reeves may have only been about 16 or 17 years old when he played with us. We got the idea from Rick James, who had played with Neil earlier in both their careers. It was Rick James that suggested that we get Greg Reeves, 'cause Greg had been playing at Motown, and who didn't love Motown's music? And we loved James Jamerson, who was the bass player on most of that great Motown music. And yes, both Dallas and Greg Reeves were perfect for the band. 

David Browne: It's such a telling example of Neil's priorities. Because here he has this great song that, you know, would probably be perfect for CSNY, but he was gonna keep it for his own record first. And, you know, who knows? Maybe if he'd been happy with the Crazy Horse version, he wouldn't have given it to CSNY. It wouldn't be on Déjà Vu. But it was just one of those magical happenstance situations where Crazy Horse weren't nailing it, he brought it to the other guys, and especially the way that, with the vocals were arranged on it, the harmonies really made that song, and it is such an example of Neil's methodology and sort of prioritizing at the time. And it worked out really well, though, in this case. 

Graham Nash: It seems that Neil is always on top of his game. I mean, he does follow the muse of music, and sometimes that's a beautiful thing, and sometimes it interferes with a lot of people's lives. For instance, when Neil wants to go and do a tour of Europe, and gets his entire team together, and then, you know, a couple of weeks before he's supposed to go he changes his mind and says, "No, it's not right yet," you know. And then those people have to try and find jobs with other people that are going out. And normally it's so close to going out that the jobs that are obtainable, were not very secure. So sometimes following the muse of music is beautiful, and sometimes it interferes with people's lives.

David Browne: With his references to, you know, Ontario, it's a song that sort of proudly proclaims his Canadian roots. 

Graham Nash: I think Neil always brings his personal life into his songwriting. You know, particularly “Ohio,” you know? I mean the story of that is that Stephen and I were in Los Angeles, and I got a call from David, who was up in Northern California with Neil at a friend's house in, cabin in Pescadero. And David said, "We're coming down. Book the studio. Book Halverson." Bill Halverson was our engineer. "Book the band. Book tape. Book everything." I said, "Great. Why?" He said, "Well, I showed Neil," I think it was Life Magazine with an image of one of the students who had been killed at Kent State. He said, "I showed it to Neil, and Neil took his acoustic guitar out into the woods, and he came back an hour later, and he'd written this song called ‘Ohio.’ You have to book everything. We're coming down." And they did, and I did what David said. I booked everybody, and we were in, I think, Sunset Sound in Los Angeles.

And we recorded the song in three takes. We knew that we wanted it out as a single, so we knew we needed a B-side, so we did “Find the Cost of Freedom,” which was Stephen's song about the Civil War. And we recorded that in one take. We overdubbed the voices, and we mixed them both. And at that session was, once again, our dear friend, Ahmet Ertegun. And so we gave him the tape, and we said, "Take it to New York. We want it out as a single immediately." And he said, "Wait a second. You have ‘Teach Your Children’ going up the charts." It was in the top 30 already. "Well, what do we do about that?" And we all said, "Kill it, stone dead. We want this out now." And as a matter of fact, somewhere in my files is a copy of what we wanted the cover of the 45 to look like, and it was a copy of the Constitution of the United States with four bullet holes in it. And we brought it out within 12 days, and we killed our own single, “Teach Your Children,” and we didn't care. We thought it was much more important that people know what's going on, once again, reflecting the times in which we live, than us having another hit single.

“Woodstock” 

Graham Nash: “Woodstock” was the second time we'd ever played in front of people. We had played the previous night in a theater in Chicago, with Joni opening for us. That's how ballsy we were at that point. And Woodstock was the second time we'd ever played in front of people. Joni and I were sharing a suite at the Carlyle Hotel here in New York. It's a pretty famous hotel and our suite had a piano in it. When we came back from Woodstock, and Joni was supposed to play in Woodstock, but, you know, Elliot Roberts and David Geffen, who handled Joni and CSNY, kept hearing that there were, you know, 50,000 people going.  No, the next week it was 100,000 people, and the next week it was 200,000 people. And Joni had to do a TV show with Dick Cavett, which was her first television show, and it was very important for her that she make it. And they realized that she may not be able to get out of Woodstock in time to be able to do the Dick Cavett Show. And so when we got back from Woodstock, Joni played us her version of the song, her version being slower, more purple, if you know what I mean. And when she played it, Stephen said, "Joni, can we have that song? I can turn it into a great rock and roll song." And she trusted Stephen, and she said okay. And that's how we got the song, “Woodstock.”

David Browne: I think “Woodstock” is a great example of what Stills could bring to that band at that point, because of course, famously CSNY played Woodstock, Joni Mitchell didn't. She stayed in New York City, and missed out on it. Stills wrote that song, and then played it for them right afterwards, and yeah, her version, as anyone knows, is slower, it's kind of moodier. It's on an electric piano, and they loved it, and Stills was like, "Can we record that?" And within a few weeks later, he actually made the very first version of that, recorded it with Jimi Hendrix, in New York with, Hendrix playing bass and Buddy Miles playing drums, and Stills is playing organ and singing. And so it's just a trio, and you can hear this. It was released many, many years later on a Jimi Hendrix collection. And the new arrangement of it, the Crosby, Stills, & Nash arrangement, is like all there. It's a completely different groove and rhythmic pattern and arrangement to that song from Joni Mitchell. It's not a cover. It's a completely reconceived song by Stills and the version that we're hearing on Déjà Vu is it builds on that demo with Hendrix. Hendrix is not on it, but they re-recorded it, but very much took a Joni Mitchell song and gave it this added boost of kind of energy and complete with Neil's lead guitar solo. They really completely reconceived it. 

I think starting with that Neil, that kind of gnarly Neil opening guitar lick, and then his solo in it, and Stills' vocal, which is, you know, which was the alternate vocal, but still pretty, really great. I think it's also an example of what the four of them could create together in the studio when they were all together recording, and when they were all kinda locked in. And it's again, like, one of their great moments as a quartet playing together. 

Graham Nash: If you know how Stephen plays and you know how Neil plays, you can tell the difference immediately. And they both loved the song. They both loved Stephen's interpretation of the song. They both loved the rock and rolliness of the song. And we loved “Woodstock,” and we knew that we had a hit record with it. 

“Déjà Vu”

Graham Nash: When David first played us “Déjà Vu,” we realized that, A, it was a beautiful song, and B, it was a strange musical song. But it was perfectly David Crosby

David Browne: One of the things that, that I've always loved about “Déjà Vu” from the moment I first bought it when I was 13, was that it's a record that shouldn't be as cohesive as it is, because you have four men with four very different singing voices and four very different approaches to writing songs. You know, Stills more rooted in kind of vernacular, kind of folk blues stuff. Nash, much more of a pop guy. Crosby coming up with jazz and standards. You know, as he told me, he didn't really listen to rock in the '50s, which kind of blew my mind when he said that, but you hear that. And of course, Neil being his own man as well. And yet it somehow, it all kinda comes together. I mean, the blending of the voices and the styles makes for a really consistent album, and I think the song “Déjà Vu” is such a great example of that because from the opening chords of Crosby's acoustic guitar chords, it's a very unconventional song, musically speaking and rhythmically speaking. And it was very tricky for them to kinda get that down on a record. It shifts tempo and the chord changes toward the end, kind of meander a bit, and yet it all kinda really comes together kinda beautifully. 

Graham Nash: We realized that not only could we make a great record of it, but it sounded like a great album title too, and that's why it became Déjà Vu. Because David had always thought that he had been here before. He thought that we'd all been here before, and it was an interesting musical point of view. And yeah, it was a style of Crosby's writing that we loved, you know? Once again, it was very different than what Neil and Stephen and I had, were able to write. But it was, it was beautifully Crosby. Slightly jazzy, very unusual, in tunings. We realized that it was a great David Crosby song. I mean, we loved it. We would never have named the album itself as Déjà Vu if we had not really truly loved the song. 

David Browne: “Déjà Vu”, another song that Neil did not play on, and, and Stills, you know, kinda plays the bulk of the instruments on that. Stills playing bass, yeah, Greg Reeves is not on that recording. Stills' nickname back then was “Captain Many Hands,” 'cause he could play all these different instruments, and I think that's one of the things he kind of brought to that group, in that he was, the other guys could, you know, could play different instruments, but he was much more of a musician. He was the musician in that band, the guy who liked to, he just loved to grab instruments and play different things on them. That's, “Déjà Vu” was a real showcase for that. It's a very eerie, spooky kind of song that I think, again, there's something about it that sort of rattled, that I think captured what was going on with Crosby. And I think it also kind of captured what was sort of starting to happen in the country at the time. Things got more complicated after Déjà Vu came out with Kent State and so forth, but there were already signs that the country was entering a new decade, and a very troubled new decade. And I think there's something about Déjà Vu that kinda beautifully captures that, and it also captures what Crosby brought to the group with those, those chord changes are very jazz. They're not conventional chord changes and guitar playing in that song, and it even took them a long time to even learn how to play it on stage. And yet, it's a perfect vehicle for them at the same time.

“Our House”

Graham Nash: I'd taken Joni to breakfast in a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles. And at the tail end of winter, it was a pretty shitty day, even though California is the land of sunshine. After breakfast, we were walking back to find Joan's car, and we passed an antique store, and in the back of the window, Joni saw a vase that she wanted to buy. It was about 10 inches high, with some hand-painted flowers around the top edge, and it was pretty cheap, and Joni bought it. So we took the vase, and we found Joni's car, and we were driving down the hill. And as I said, it was incredibly cold, at the tail end of winter there. And when, when we went through the front door, I said, "Hey, Joan, why don't I light a fire and you put some flowers in that vase that you bought today?" Simple. I had the opening line. At Joan's piano, I'd written “Our House” in less than an hour. 

David Browne: “Our House” was written by Graham Nash about the house where he was living with Joni Mitchell. It was her house in Laurel Canyon. And there's an early demo of him playing that song with Joni kind of giggling along and singing along, and it really captures their dynamic and their relationship at the time. And it's a very sweet song. A lot of people think it's kind of, you know, too sweet, a little insipid. But again, it's a song that I think really spoke to a lot of people at the time because that generation, the baby boomers, were all starting to approach 30. You know, they were all, like, in their mid to late 20s, starting to hit 30, kind of adulthood was coming upon them. That song kind of, I think, tapped into a lot of feelings of that generation suddenly feeling they were maybe a bit more mature or had to be more mature and had to, quote-unquote, settle down, even if they didn't. And I think the idea of having a cozy domestic existence with your partner was something that was maybe starting to be newly appealing to people.

Graham Nash: Stephen taught me how to play piano and, you know, I just played the way Stephen told me. (Sings piano part) “Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.” You know, he showed me how to do that and that's what I did. It was the first, I think the first piano song that I ever wrote. 

David Browne: I heard Graham Nash play that song solo maybe a decade ago, and it really did strike me suddenly, even though I'd heard it so many times. It's almost like a piece of classical music or something. It really does feel like some Bach song, if you just hear the chords. It is a kind of baroque song, and it really does stand apart from the rest of the group. But it also was kind of his style. Like, you know, we would hear that on some of his later songs like “Simple Man.” “Better Days,” another example of songs that, where he kind of played them on the piano and really was establishing his own sound within that group. I don't know if it was consciously trying to be, you know, “classical music,” but it was, you know, he was playing off his own piano skills, and he had a real particular style for playing that, and I think it really kind of came out in that song.

Graham Nash: I recorded “Our House” in Wally Heider’s studio on Selma in Los Angeles. It was me and Greg Reeves and Dallas playing live, and then I overdubbed the voices, and when we figured out what to do in the, in the thing, I just was la-la-ing, you know, a melody that maybe Stephen should play. But David and Stephen both loved the la-la-la bit and, you know, and they were wanting to make that a part of the song. And so yeah, a very simple song. Song I'd written for Joni about our house. 

David Browne: What's interesting is that when they were, um, were touring behind Déjà Vu in the summer of 1970, by that point Joni and Graham had broken up, and Joni actually was in the audience at one of their shows at the Fillmore East, and they didn't, they never performed “Our House” on that tour. They didn't perform a lot of Déjà Vu songs on that tour, strangely enough, but I remember asking Graham, "Well, you know, why didn't you sing ‘Our House’ when Joni was in the audience?" And he said it was, like, too painful for him to sing that song to her now that they'd broken up. To sing that song to her in the audience would've been just too difficult for him at that time, and I thought that was kind of sad to hear. Kind of a, kind of a poignant little, little story. But it's a song that on one hand has been sort of, you know, again, mocked sometimes as being too cloying, but again, it is one of their most beloved songs. And, you know, whenever they play that, I've been to many shows in clubs and arenas with those guys, and they sing that song. You know, Graham sits down at that piano, and the entire audience sings along with the entire song from start to finish, and it's a very emotional moment.

Graham Nash: Doesn't everybody have a house that they love, that they feel safe in, that they feel warm in? Of course, we all do. Every single person I know has a house where they want to be if they could just stay there. “Our House” was a, it turned out to be a very, you know, everybody who has a house or, you know, they play it at their weddings, they want it played at their funeral, they want it, it's one of those songs. And I'm very happy to have written it.

“4 + 20”

Graham Nash: When we were doing “4 + 20,” we knew that it was gonna be just Stephen on his acoustic guitar and vocal. And there's a certain point when he kind of gulps a little, you know, either he's trying to remember the lyric or, or something, but it was a beautifully personal moment. And when Stephen got to the end of it, David and I said, "That's it! One take. Fantastic." He said, "Well, you know, I gulped in the middle of it," and we said, "Yeah, we know. That's what makes it so personal." But that's what I remember about Stephen recording, “4 + 20.” A beautiful song. Very personal, very personal. 

David Browne: I think a lot of people thought that was kind of an autobiographical song, 'cause Stills was about that age when he recorded that. He was in his mid-20s, and he's often said it was kind of about an older man looking back on his life or something. And so it's, what stands out about “4 + 20” is that it's just Stills and his voice and a guitar, and there's no harmonies on it. They did attempt a version of that with Crosby and Nash singing along with it, and it ended up on the cutting room floor. They decided that they, it sounded best with just him singing it, and I think that was probably a wise choice because it's a pretty stark little piece of music in the middle of this record that otherwise, you know, is kind of still overflowing with those harmonies. It's a really kind of powerful song for that. It's a really, it has a kind of a narrative voice to it that you don't necessarily hear in all the other songs. It's very much in kind of like a singer-songwriter mode, in that sort of James Taylor thing, and I would venture to say it maybe was a blessing and a curse for Stills because I think, as I was saying earlier, he's a really multifaceted musician who loves not just folk music, but he loves blues and Latin music and rock and roll, and you heard all that come out two years later on the Manassas double album, which was a real, you know, masterwork of all these different styles. And yet I think a lot of people would associate with him back then songs like “4 + 20,” “Helplessly Hoping,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” as they saw him as this sort of acoustic, tortured soul acoustic balladeer, and that was only one part of his personality as a musician. And I think so later on when he would tour on his own and he'd do all these, you know, these jams and play all these, you know, play Latin rock, people I think people would be a little confused. Like, "Where's that introspective troubadour guy from ‘4 + 20,’” you know? Like, they just didn't know what to make of it. I think “4 + 20” helped kind of stereotype him maybe a little bit, as great a song as it is. 

Stills grew up in Latin America in the South, but he did spend time briefly in Greenwich Village in the mid-'60s, where he met Peter Tork, who would later be in the Monkees. And he did briefly play those coffee houses and folk clubs in the Village, you know, including a place called The Night Owl, where Lovin’ Spoonful and James Taylor in his first band, The Flying Machine, would play. And he played those basket houses and coffee houses where you would pass the basket, and it wasn't very profitable or whatever. But that side of him comes out in “4 + 20,” I think, as much as anything he's ever made. Like that, that sort of sitting on a stool with your acoustic guitar, playing this kind of soul-baring ballad. And that's very much a part of his musical background. 

“Country Girl”

Graham Nash: Neil had basically cut the track when the three of us, four of us were together, cut the track of “Country Girl.” And then he would take the tapes and go down to his studio, once again, in his home in Southern California, and played around, and then he would bring the track back to us, and we would put the voices on. And that's what I remember about “Country Girl.” Beautiful song. Once again, very personal. Neil looking at a woman and falling in love and writing a great song about her. You know, his marriage to, to Susan (Acevedo) his first wife, was coming to an end, and like I said, when we were doing Déjà Vu, I was no longer an item with Joni, and Stephen and Judy had broken up, and Christine had been killed.

David Browne: “Country Girl” to me is almost like a symphony. It's like, you know, three different songs, at least one of which Neil started when he was in Buffalo Springfield, and he kind of merged them all together into this, it's almost like his version of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” or something, just taking three different songs and pulling them together. And I think even more so in a way, or as much as “Helpless,” “Country Girl’ really shows that sort of alchemy that he could get with those other guys. The way that he blends their voices into his song. You know, there's a verse where it's just Stills and Young singing together, having a harmony, and then later on, all four of them are singing together. The way he uses the vocal interplay of that group in different sections of that song is kind of a genius and sort of magical and it's arranged so well in that way. It's not just the four of them sitting around singing together. It's arranged, both musically and vocally, and he uses their voices in such perfect ways at different points in the song. And, you know, it's a kind of song and arrangement that you don't hear that much on his own records. It's this kind of thing that he could kind of only do with them. You know, he couldn't have made that kind of a record with Crazy Horse or the Stray Gators, both great bands that he worked with. But, you know, he couldn't get that sort of cathedral feel, you know, that you have with that song with anybody other than those guys, and it shows what he could bring to them, what they could bring to him when they were all working in tandem. 

“Everybody I Love You” 

David Browne: Neil has always been an incredibly prolific songwriter, and yeah, at that point, he had just finished Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and his first album. He was in the middle of working on Déjà Vu and at the same time writing and recording songs for After the Gold Rush. So he had all this stuff that he was trying to figure out what would go where, and, you know, he attempted “Birds” with Crosby, Stills, & Nash, and then “Sea of Madness,” which is on the Woodstock album in a live version, but they did a studio version of that that wasn't used. So yeah, he and Stills in particular were just, I don't know if they were literally in a competition at that point, but they were both just banging out one song after another at the time, and, and they were, they had so much to choose from. 

Graham Nash: "Everybody I Love You" was something that Stephen and Neil had done together, and it made a perfect, I think it's the last track on Déjà Vu, isn't it? You know, I mean, how beautiful to say at the end of that incredible album, "Everybody, I love you." It was perfect, and it was, very easy to do, very quick to do. And once again, just shows you the brilliance of Stephen Stills and Neil Young. 

David Browne: Yeah, “Everybody I Love You” was welded together from two different songs of Stills'. The very first part of it actually is from the very first recording session they did as a quartet in LA in the summer of '69. It was probably right before Woodstock. So that very opening part where they're kind of jamming, and there's a lead, Stills' lead guitar, and Neil's doing some lead, and that's from the very first time they're playing together, so it's kind of historic. And then the second part is a later thing that came to be, that was “Know You Got To Run,” and so Stills kind of jammed those two together. And again, it would seem kind of a little unwieldy, but it really works, and it's actually a perfect album closer, 'cause it's just a buzzy, energetic little blast of a song. I don't think it's one of the greatest songs Stills or the group recorded, you know, as a song. But between the rhythm section going, Neil and Stephen both playing lead, and then those big open-hearted kind of harmonies that like power in, especially toward the end of the song, and then it just like slams shut at the end, you know, boom, with that organ. It's just a great energetic way to end this record.

Graham Nash: It could have been the second CSN record. You know, we already had “Our House,” we already had “Cut My Hair,” we already had “Woodstock,” we already had “Teach Your Children,” you know? But it turned out to be a better record with Neil. When we finished Déjà Vu, and don't forget that David was incredibly depressed about Christine, and we were together in Mexico, and they came down, flew down to Mexico to meet David and me, and with the final mastered mix of the entire album and the artwork, and it was all perfect.

David Browne: You know, Déjà Vu was probably one of the most eagerly awaited records of its time. Even in the pre-social media days, there was just, like, a lot of buzz about it because the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album had done so well. They had done a bunch of shows in the summer and fall, and they'd been incredibly well received. And also, the record had been dragging on for a long time. And they played some shows in London early in '70 before Déjà Vu came out, and Paul McCartney was in the audience, and all these other people. So they were the new supergroup of the time. So there was this enormous buildup. There was a huge pre-order for Déjà Vu. There was also, the packaging was much more elaborate. Not only did that photo session where they're dressed up as sort of Civil War soldiers on the cover, but they wanted that photograph glued onto the cover of the record and not just in, you know, incorporated into the packaging. They literally, Atlantic Records really had to hire extra people at extra pressing plants around the country to literally glue that photograph onto the cover of all those records. But everybody thought that was worth it because there was such anticipation for that record.

Déjà Vu was just one of those albums that everybody seemed to have in their record collection back in the early '70s. It was one of those albums that appealed to both people listening to FM and AM radio, and Déjà Vu was one of those records that straddled both of those worlds, 'cause it had some hit singles, like “Our House” and “Woodstock,” and yet it was also a cool FM radio kind of record. And it bridged those two formats and those two kinds of audiences in a way that not a lot of records always did at the time. But it was, it was a record that really not just spoke to people musically, it spoke to the times. 1970 was a very troubled time in America, and here was a record that was, like I said, it was a little more somber and a little more clouded than the first Crosby, Stills & Nash record. And I think something about it, the kind of unsettled mood of some of Déjà Vu, I think really unintentionally kind of spoke to the, what was happening, how everybody felt, whether it was, you know, not wanting to cut your hair, or, you know, going through some kind of, like, cathartic breakup on “Carry On” and other songs on that record. It captured not just the group at the time, but I think it captured a mood. 

Graham Nash: We knew when we had finished recording Déjà Vu that it would be a very important album. It's the album that I loved making. It's the album that I think historically in 100 years maybe, journalists will be talking and they'll mention Déjà Vu.

Credits:

"Carry On" (Stills)

"Teach Your Children" (Nash)

"Almost Cut My Hair" (Crosby)

"Helpless" (Young)

"Woodstock" (Joni Mitchell)

"Déjà Vu" (Crosby)

"Our House" (Nash)

"4 + 20" (Stills)

"Country Girl" (Young)

a. "Whiskey Boot Hill"

b. "Down, Down, Down"

c. "Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty)"

"Everybody I Love You" (Stills, Young)

All Selections BMI (Gold Hill Music) (Giving Room Music) (Guerilla Music) (Broken Arrow - Cotillion) (Siquomb Music)

Copyright 1970 Atlantic Recording Corp.

Produced by: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash & Neil Young

Percussion: Dallas Taylor

Bass: Gregory Reeves

Steel Guitar on “Teach Your Children”: Jerry Garcia

Mouth Harp on “Déjà Vu”: John Sebastian

Engineered by Bill Halverson

Recorded at Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles and San Francisco

Episode Credits: 

Intro/Outro Music:

“County Fair” by Flatfoot

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam