Day 198: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Déjà Vu

Here’s one thing that could help me chill out more: what if I get really into folk music? That to me seems like a nice and relaxed genre, aside from of course having righteous anger against political injustices and cranking out some effort to stick it to the man. But in general, you probably can’t get much chiller than folk. I’m selling it to myself with a gentle gateway drug of folk rock and going for everyone’s favourite folk rock supergroup, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Album cover courtesy of Atlantic Records

The group was formed in 1968 after the members of the group all found themselves jobless at the same time: David Crosby got fired from the Byrds and Stephen Stills was free due to Buffalo Springfield breaking up, so those two started jamming together. Recollections vary about when Graham Nash joined them, but he had left the Hollies at that time. Stephen Stills says the first time they sang together was at Cass Elliott’s house:

‍David calls me and says, “Get your guitar and come to Cass’s house.” I can see it now—the living room, the dining room, the pool, the kitchen—and we’re in the living room and there’s Graham Nash. Then Cass goes, “So sing.” And we sang “In the morning, when you rise… ”

‍ Graham Nash disagrees, though, as he thinks it’s somewhere else. He said,

Stephen’s completely out of his mind. I remember it clearly and so does David. It was not at Mama Cass’s.

Wherever it was, they realised quickly that they had something. They released their first album, Crosby, Stills & Nash, in 1969. Neil Young joined the group and according to Nash, it was “like lobbing a live grenade into a vacuum.” Stills and Young had simmering beef from their time together in Buffalo Springfield and the rest of the band were regularly getting into cocaine-fuelled screaming matches while recording their second album, Déjà Vu.

It’s such a harmonic and peaceful album that you wouldn’t think that these guys fought like cats and dogs. Apparently Stills had an escalating cocaine problem that led the rest of the band to give up $7 million and stop their tour while they were in the middle of it. The rest of the band flew home without telling Stills who only found out it was over when he was going to the venue to play their next show.

As much as I like the harmonising on the opening track “Carry On”, I wasn’t immediately sold because somehow I associate music like this with some sort of church summer camp, what with the harmonies and screams of “Rejoice!” But the second part of that song is where I started getting a bit more into it. It’s hard not to get sold by its charm, especially on songs like “Our House”, which is pure magic – it’s so simple both in arrangement and lyrics, but it just gets you. Ditto for “Almost Cut My Hair”, it’s deceptively simple in its lyrics and the vocals are far from perfect, and yet it’s one of my favourites from the album.

I listened to it once and I liked it, but I was a bit more in love after the second time around. They might have had their issues with each other, but something about the combination of guys was clearly aligned. It’s a very respectable 9/10. The odds of me becoming a folk fan was about 20% before, now I’d say it’s about a solid 35.