Crosby, Stills & Nash

Three bands, one room

Crosby, Stills & Nash came out of three other groups. David Crosby had played in the Byrds, Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield and Graham Nash in the Hollies. Crosby and Stills began jamming after they met at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Crosby filled in for Neil Young with Buffalo Springfield. One result was Wooden Ships, written in Florida on Crosby's boat with Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. Nash had met Crosby on a Byrds tour of Britain in 1966. He moved to California in 1968 and met Stills at a party at Peter Tork's house.

In July 1968, at another Laurel Canyon party, Nash asked Stills and Crosby to perform Stills's song You Don't Have to Cry. After they sang it twice he improvised a harmony on the third time through, and the three realized how well their voices fitted. Nash said in 2014 that their sound was born in 30 seconds. He left the Hollies that December. After an unsuccessful audition for the Beatles' Apple label in London, the trio signed to Atlantic Records through Ahmet Ertegun, with Elliot Roberts and David Geffen as managers. They used their surnames as the band's name so that nobody could carry on without the others.

The first album

Crosby, Stills & Nash came out on 29 May 1969. Stills played nearly all the bass, organ and lead guitar, and Dallas Taylor drummed on most tracks. It reached number six on the Billboard chart, stayed 107 weeks and was later certified four times platinum. Two singles reached the Top 40: Marrakesh Express, which Nash wrote after a train ride in Morocco, at number 28, and Stills's four-part Suite: Judy Blue Eyes at number 21. The album also held Helplessly Hoping and Long Time Gone. Rolling Stone's Barry Franklin called it an eminently playable record.

The success meant the group needed a live band, and they added Neil Young. As Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young they played Woodstock in the early hours of 18 August 1969, and Stills told the crowd it was only the second time they had played in front of people. Deja Vu followed in March 1970, topped the Billboard chart and sold more than eight million copies, with Woodstock, Teach Your Children and Our House as Top 40 singles. The 1970 tour produced the live double album 4 Way Street, and at the end of that tour the four disbanded.

Trio again

Between September 1970 and May 1971 each member released a solo album. A CSNY tour of 31 dates followed in 1974, directed by Bill Graham, and the compilation So Far topped the Billboard album chart that November. In 1976 and 1977 the trio reformed, recording in Miami with Ron and Howard Albert. CSN was released on 17 June 1977, peaked at number two and became their best-selling trio album. Its single Just a Song Before I Go reached number seven, their highest-charting hit.

Daylight Again (1982) reached number eight. Nash's Wasted on the Way went to nine and Stills's Southern Cross to 18, and the Southern Cross video, with a sailing ship in it, got heavy rotation on MTV. Young rejoined for American Dream (1988) and Looking Forward (1999), and the trio made Live It Up (1990) and After the Storm (1994) without him.

Honors and the end

Crosby, Stills & Nash entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998. They played Glastonbury in June 2009, and the last CSNY concert was a Bridge School Benefit show on 27 October 2013. CSN toured until 2015. On 6 March 2016 Nash announced that the trio would never perform again. David Crosby died in January 2023. In 2024 Rhino issued Live at Fillmore East, 1969, taken from a newly found eight-track recording of the concert of 20 September 1969 and mixed by Stills and Young. Nash's own biography notes that the original classic union lasted twenty months, yet calls their songs lightning rods embedded in our DNA. The group's logo, used from the mid-1970s, was designed by Phil Hartman, then a young graphic designer, who said he was never credited for it.