Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

Stills wrote it for his former girlfriend, the singer Judy Collins, and the title plays on Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. He said in a 2007 radio interview that Collins was in the studio when the demo tapes were made and that the break-up was imminent, because they were a little too big for one house. The song borrows the form of a classical suite and has four sections. The acoustic guitar is in an altered tuning, EEEEBE, later used on Deja Vu's 4 + 20 and Carry On. The last section is sung in Spanish, and Stills said he made the final stanzas hard on purpose, so nobody would understand them. The conga-like sound at the end comes from his beating the back of a Martin guitar. The single, with several verses cut, reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 11 in Canada.

Robert Christgau called it a structural triumph in the New York Times in 1969. Rolling Stone placed it at number 418 on its 500 greatest songs in 2004, and VH1 ranked it the 51st greatest song in 2000. Weird Al Yankovic's Mission Statement is a style pastiche of it, and Cypress Hill sampled the closing section in Armada Latina in 2010.

Live

The group opened with it at Woodstock and at Live Aid, and the Woodstock performance is in the 1970 film. The final section opens 4 Way Street. The 2024 album Live at Fillmore East, 1969 begins with an acoustic version recorded on 20 September 1969.