Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Newly Discovered '69 Live Album

The album, a significant musical/cultural artifact, is memorable more for the veneration that we hippie kids—I was there—showered on our countercultural heroes than for the so-so quality of the music

In the summer of 1969, Neil Young annexed himself to the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, prompting remarks in the press that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was a more credible name for a law firm than a rock band. The brand-new band played its second gig at the Woodstock Festival that August. I wasn’t there, but from what I heard from some who were, the group’s vocals were noticeably out of tune, so much so that CSN&Y’s set, said one attendee, was “mostly a studio rehash,” ie. had to be sonically corrected for the 1970 movie and album.¹

CSN&Y followed Woodstock with a tour that ran through January 1970, one of their first stops a two-night, four-performance stand on September 19th and 20th at the Fillmore East. Manhattan’s reigning rock palace at the time (it was in business from March 1968 through June 1971), the place was a dump. Believe me—I was there, not merely for one of those four CSN&Y shows, but for many others as well. A raw tape of CSN&Y’s final Fillmore show—second night, late show—recently turned up. Mixed by Stephen Stills, Young, and an L.A. recording engineer, the album will be released this Friday, October 25th as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Live at Fillmore East, 1969.

The show consisted of an acoustic set followed by an electric—CSN&Y’s, and many of the day’s bands’, standard MO. For the electric set, the four stars were backed by Dallas Taylor, one of the day’s best, most sorely underrecognized drummers, and bassist Greg Reeves. The song list draws from a number of sources, albums both released and as-yet-unreleased: Buffalo Springfield's Last Time Around (Buffalo Springfield was a short-lived but hugely influential band that spawned many others; its major members were Young, Stills, and Richie Furay, who went on to found the country-rockers Poco); Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the trio’s eponymous first album (the one with the guys sitting on a semi-collapsed couch outside a run-down shack), released that May (it’s a great album, standard listening for us kids that summer of ‘69; Stills's first solo album, released in November 1970; Young's May 1969 release Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, in which, on two nine-plus-minute songs, “Down By the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand,” Young established one of his trademarks, guitar solos that amounted to Category 5 firestorms; and from CSN&Y's first studio album, Déjà Vu, released in March 1970, which went on to sell eight million copies, the top-selling album of every member’s career. (I considered Déjà Vu a poor relation to Crosby, Stills and Nash, and I was not alone.) The brief, mournfully stoical "Find the Cost of Freedom," which ends this album, was commissioned by Dennis Hopper to accompany the closing shot from Hopper's movie Easy Rider but wasn’t used in the film; it eventually appeared as the B-side of CSN&Y's "Ohio," the band's 1970 protest song that denounced that spring’s Kent State shootings.

At the Fillmore East shows, the still-new ensemble had its act reasonably together for the acoustic set. Wracking my memory, I recall only Crosby and Stills, no Nash, opening the set. Seating himself, Crosby looked across the stage at his partner and announced to the audience, “Steve is so wrecked, he can hardly tune his guitar,” or “can hardly sit up.” Whatever the second clause, I clearly remember the “Steve is so wrecked” part, which aptly captures the ethos of the day. In 1969, a significant portion of Americans under 32 (David Crosby in particular) spent hours per day in a pot-induced daze.

With or without Nash, Crosby and Stills would have opened the set with Stills’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” dedicated to the woman who was in the process of dumping him, Judy Collins. I do recall the full trio singing Stills’s “Helplessly Hoping,” a genuinely moving ballad also directed at Collins, irritatingly played for laughs here. Next came Nash’s solo performance of “Lady of the Island,” written for his girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, whom Nash badly wanted to marry. Mitchell wasn’t buying it. If I’d been her, I would have turned Nash down solely for writing his second solo number of the evening, the cringe-inducingly sappy “Our House”, one of my generation’s most ridiculed songs.

Graham Nash’s gag-worthily treacly “Our House.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Joni Mitchell spurned his offers of marriage solely because he wrote this song.

Neil Young came onstage for a breezy, refreshing rendition of his acoustic ballad “On the Way Home.” By the time he joined Crosby, Stills & Nash, Young had already established himself as a solo performer, having put out two solo albums. The first, released in 1968 as simply Neil Young, was impressive for a 23-year-old’s first solo outing. Young’s sophomore, 1969, effort, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, was the first in a long line of splendid Young albums (Harvest, Tonight’s the Night, Rust Never Sleeps, Ragged Glory, Weld). Everybody Knows’s “Down By the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” are Young’s first steps on one of two distinct paths that he has followed for 50 years: Loud Neil, or extra-long songs featuring explosive, hell-for-leather, arguably self-indulgent guitar solos: “Southern Man,” a 5:41 quickie on After the Gold Rush but a 13:45 marathon on 1971’s CSN&Y live album 4-Way Street; “Cortez,” on both Zuma (1975) and the 1991 live album Weld); or Weld’s fourteen-minute “Like a Hurricane.” Then there’s Quiet Neil, whose pensive, sorrowful, or gently ironic vocals are accompanied by his acoustic guitar, keyboards, or by a discreet ensemble: “Tell Me Why,” “After the Gold Rush,” the heartbreaking “Birds,” the short but cute “Cripple Creek Ferry,” “Harvest,” the oft-overlooked ballad “Thrasher,” and “Harvest Moon.”

What I’m getting at is that Young has maintained his prestige and his music’s high quality (with a mild dip in the ‘80s) to an extent that none of the others have. (I haven’t listened much to his recent albums, so I’m unable to confidently extend my approval to today.) Stephen Stills was a god, and a potent one, only through the early ‘70s; Crosby went on a steep decline into drug abuse, spending nine months in prison in 1985 (in November of that year, Rolling Stone ran a story entitled “How Drugs Destroyed David Crosby”), and while he rebounded from his mid-Eighties nadir, for the rest of his life Crosby’s emotional, chemical, and legal problems were more actively discussed than his music. As for Nash’s stature over the years, it never really reached sufficient heights to experience a significant fall-off. Always respected, Nash was never taken very seriously. In fact, I recall his pre-CS&N band, the Hollies, especially 1966’s “Bus Stop,” generating more excitement than his subsequent work. (Credit where credit is due dept: Nash did provide the high harmonies that made first CS&N’s, then CSN&Y’s vocals so distinctive. And he was, more often than not, the only grown-up in the room.)

Back to the Fillmore East album: After a mid-concert break, the band came back out, electric guitars strapped on, Taylor and Reeves now on hand. The first electric song, “Long Time Gone,” was from the first CS&N album. According to Crosby, he wrote it immediately after hearing that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. David Crosby was a great harmony singer, but his solo voice was pedestrian (note how rarely the lead vocal was entrusted to him), a flaw he tried to mask at the Fillmore with grating shouts. Sometimes he’s noticeably off-pitch. It’s a poor performance, as is Crosby’s vocal, shared with Stills, on “Wooden Ships,” also from the first CS&N album. Take a listen to this album’s “Long Time Gone”; it’s not pretty.

David Crosby singing lead on “Long Time Gone.” A great harmony singer, he should have left this song’s lead to Stills or Young. (Yes, I know he sings it a little better on the studio version).

In April 1971 (forgive me, I digress again) came Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s only live album released in the 20th century: 4 Way Street, which features the same acoustic set/electric set format as the Fillmore East retread. As it happens, part of 4 Way Street was also cut at the Fillmore East, in June 1970. After extensive touring, the group had polished its sound and its members adjusted to each other; accordingly, 4 Way Street is a much better album than the one under discussion. On 4 Way Street’s electric half, the standout track is the band’s super-long treatment of “Southern Man” (“This is usually a real long song, folks,” Young informs the crowd, “and we’re gonna do it real slow tonight to make it even longer”). The two soloists/duet partners, Young and Stills, lock into a sometimes thrilling synchrony—listen, at 8:09, as Young jumps onto, and dialogues with, the nice little off-center riff that Stills had just come up with. These are musicians who know each other’s habits, styles, tendencies: weathered comrades making great music together. Give 4 Way Street’s “Southern Man” a listen; it’ll be a well-spent thirteen minutes and forty-five seconds.

For the Fillmore East, 1969 album’s penultimate number, CSN&Y essay an endless (16:17) “Down By the River.” You can guess what I’m going to say: it’s inferior to Young’s solo version. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere was the first of the many albums that Young has made with his faithful compatriots, the trio Crazy Horse. When Young plays with Crazy Horse, he is usually the only soloist. On Everybody Knows’s “Down By the River,” Crazy Horse’s guitarist, Danny Whitten, accepted a secondary, if essential, role, skilfully and selflessly complementing, and grounding, Young’s machine-gun runs (every note of which I memorized decades ago, and it’s all still up there). The Everybody Knows performance wouldn’t have come off nearly as well without Whitten’s deft touch. (Whitten was Crazy Horse’s first of several guitarists; he fatally overdosed in 1973. Young’s song “The Needle and the Damage Done” is dedicated to him.)

Neil Young’s epochal take on “Down By the River”: a great performer’s great performance.

On the Fillmore, 1969’s “Down By the River” Young had, for one thing, much less room than on the Everybody Knows version. On the Fillmore version, he swaps solos, and shares improvised duets, with Stills. They cramp each other’s style. While they’d learned to complement each other in their Buffalo Springfield days (listen to that band’s great “Bluebird”), they had likely never shared extended jams, and the gratifying mutual encounters of 4 Way Street’s “Southern Man” are nowhere in evidence on the Fillmore album. Young, moreover, who was used to playing extended versions of “Down By the River,” plays coherently, Stills less so.

Aside from David Crosby’s opening remark about his colleague’s drug-addled state, I retain one other vivid memory of CSN&Y’s 1969 Fillmore East stand. During this “Down By the River,” Stills and Young were busy soloing and intertwining, or trying to, Crosby was playing reasonably propulsive rhythm guitar, Dallas Taylor was throwing off technically advanced drum licks that landed inevitably right in the pocket—and poor Graham Nash had nothing to do. They had to do something with him, so they set him up at the organ. I recall feeling truly embarrassed for the poor guy, sitting quietly off to one side, his head bent over the keyboard, probably as much to hide as to concentrate, playing the same two chords (“Down By the River” is not harmonically complex) over and over again. Yes, pity and embarrassment for Graham Nash during :Down by the River” were two of the emotions I felt most strongly that night, the poor guy relegated to an essentially useless role (the song didn’t need an organ, Graham Nash needed something to do). He was in over his head in “River.”

Which crested, then ended, to thunderous applause. And after a brief closer, the dolorous, hymnlike “Find the Cost of Freedom,” out onto Second Avenue we freaks and hippies surged, entirely sated. To me, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Live at Fillmore East, 1969 provides an almost visceral flashback to a time when rock stars were heroes as venerated as, or more than, Yehudi Menuhin and Leonard Bernstein were by the day’s classical-music audiences; embraced more warmly than even Taylor Swift is in 2024—Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s defiant attitude towards those in political and military power—the opposite of a Swift’s long, coy flirtation with “Will I or won’t I endorse this candidate?”) was a big part of my admiration for them. When I watched my heroes perform that September, more than 55 years ago, I didn’t hear the raggedness of the playing or the off-key harmonies. I was entranced to be in the living presence of heroic figures at the peak of their powers.

It’s a long-vanished world. Stephen Stills is 79. Neil Young turns 80 in three weeks. Graham Nash is 82. David Crosby is dead. I am 71.

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1. If Young is not a presence in the Woodstock movie, it’s because he refused to be filmed. Years later, he told the talk-show host Charlie Rose that “I thought these guys with their cameras on the stage were in the way of the music. They were a distraction. So I told them, ‘Don’t come near me. I have a heavy guitar. If you come near me, I’m going to hit you with it.’”