In the absence of new recordings and sustained touring by major acts such as The Who, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, this a year when releases by David Bowie and the Rolling Stones met with a mixed critical reaction, the biggest rock event of 1974 was the reconvening of superstar folk-rock aggregation Crosby Stills Nash & Young.
Taking a concert stage together for the first time in four years, in 1969 former-Byrd David Crosby, one-time Buffalo Springfield leader Stephen Stills and ex-Hollie Graham Nash had struck gold in every sense with their big-selling self-titled debut LP, a record that embraced an agreeable mix of introspective ballads, country pop and folk jazz.
Shortly after release Canadian guitar whiz/word wizard Neil Young came aboard. Formerly a Springfield bandmate of Stills’ he arrived in time for the era-defining ‘Deja Vu‘ (1970), a record that generated enormous worldwide sales and on the basis of this album and hit single ‘Ohio’ (a Young composition lamenting the deaths of four protesting students gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio), Crosby, Stills Nash & Young were perceived as spokesmen of a generation, the mouthpiece of the counterculture.
The enormity of their talent, however, was almost matched by four clashing, competitive egos, the fragile foundations on which the entity was built giving way before 1970 was out, a year in which Stills and Young each released outstanding solo albums. For their part Crosby and Nash weighed in with an excellent offering apiece in 1971 before making a likeable effort as a duo the following year – 1972 also resulting in Young’s highly successful ‘Harvest‘ and the record at the top of this particular tree, namely ‘Manassas‘ a magnificent double album from Stills.
In dividing they had still conquered, any album bearing their name (or two), returning healthy sales figures. But in the background always loomed the spectre of a CSNY reunion, overtures to each party bringing alignment in the spring of 1974 when it was announced they would be undertaking a stadium tour of the US during the summer – guarded references also made to the possibility of finally producing a follow-up to ‘Deja Vu‘.
In the event they played thirty, often lengthy shows featuring material from all their various incarnations while also showcasing new songs from each of the quartet. Yet hopes these would form the basis of the proposed studio album were dashed when time spent together in the studio resulted in an all-too familiar round of wrangling and walk-outs, ‘Tour ’74‘ already slipping further into the past when Stills plied ‘Stills‘ (June 1975) with his best available material.
Indeed, no longer prepared to wait around for a four or three-way project to come their way, Crosby and Nash signed a three-album deal with ABC Records as a twosome and with a welter of new tracks at their disposal conceived ‘WIND ON THE WATER‘ (September 1975) – a record that not only validated the decision to work as a duo but enhanced the reputation of each as a fine songwriter and vocalist.
With both men over ten years along their career path and well beyond thirty years of age, Englishman Nash and Los Angeles-born Crosby present a suitably mature, often engrossing collection in which they both have interesting things to say about themselves and the wider world – song topics ranging from straightforward biography, relationships with those in the CSNY inner circle (Young, Stills, Joni Mitchell) and ecology, to life from the perspective of a migrant worker with even the 1974 tour coming in for appraisal.
All through they receive stellar support from an impressive cast of L.A. session players – guitarists David Lindley and Danny Kortchmar, keyboard player Craig Doerge, bassists Leland Sklar and Tim Drummond, drummer Russ Kunkel (the latter named bass player and drummer having played on the CSNY tour) – while there are guest turns from James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Band drummer Levon Helm and sometime Young sideman, pedal steel virtuoso Ben Keith.
The soft-rock sensibilities set the music firmly in mid-70s Los Angeles where the Eagles, Taylor, Browne and Linda Ronstadt had honed the sound Crosby, Stills and Nash in particular brought to prominence. Crosby and Nash reached 1975 not necessarily having any answers for an audience wearied by the travails of Vietnam and Watergate but were still prepared to ask questions on behalf of a generation who came of age at Woodstock – only to see their ideology lose traction as the 70s unfolded.
The songwriting honours on this 11-track set are split evenly between the two main protagonists, both contributing five tracks apiece and sharing a co-write – Crosby starting things off in assured fashion with the resonant ‘Carry Me‘.
Debuted on the ’74 tour where it quickly became a mainstay of the set, through each of the verses the writer recounts episodes from his life, reflecting on aspirations as a young man, the death in 1969 of girlfriend Christine Hilton (‘Course mostly I remember her laughing/Standing there watching us play‘) and visiting his dying mother for the last time. Built on a sympathetic melody shaped by some superb 12-string guitar from the composer, Crosby and Nash are joined in the harmonies – and on acoustic guitar – by Taylor, the words and vocals particularly poignant in the final verse:
‘And then there was my mother/She was lying in white sheets there/And she was waiting to die/She said if you’d just reach/Underneath this bed/And untie these weights I could surely fly/She’s still smiling but she’s tired/She’d like to hear that last bell ring/You know if she still could she would/Stand up she could sing.’
Remarkably, it was the first time Crosby had been heard on record since the lacklustre reunion album of the five original Byrds over two years before, a finer return to form harder to imagine than this deeply personal but engaging piece. Always the most abstract writer of the CSNY troupe, years later Crosby would lament the fact he had never written a big hit single, something ‘Carry Me‘ should have rectified, only to make little headway when released as a 45 – despite having similar hooks to ‘Lyin Eyes‘ that sold by the truckload for the Eagles in 1975.
Crosby takes to the piano for the brooding ‘Bittersweet‘, a song that would have not sounded out of place on the CSN debut record or his admirable if often overlooked 1971 solo LP. The author allows himself plenty of lyrical scope in addressing the vagaries of life (‘On the one side truth towers like a cliff/On the other side love dangles by a thread’), Crosby from a personal perspective placing great store by the rejuvenating power of sunlight, (‘And the broken cloudy days/Is when I need the sun’s heat.’).
In some quarters it has been suggested ‘Low Down Payment‘ is an exercise in Crosby rebuking estranged compadre Stills for his self-elevation to leadership whenever CSN/Y convene. The fiery guitar work of Kortchmar and Lindley certainly evokes the six-string dueling of Stills and Young, although given the forthright way members of the outfit spoke about each other, Crosby may have been more caustic than ‘Can there be anything left for you to prove/You have already made your move/Don’t you even know who you are/Star’ but there is enough inference for the conclusion to be drawn.
In much the same way Jackson Browne would in ‘Running on Empty‘ eighteen months later, (‘Look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through/Looking into their eyes, I see them running too‘), Crosby finds mid-decade anxieties etched on the faces of those around him in ‘Homeward Through the Haze.’
Full of the soft-jazz inflections that informed much of his songwriting, Crosby notes how many of his contemporaries are embroiled in a confused search for peace and meaning (‘Cause the blind are leading the blind/And I am amazed at how they stumble‘), his observations more direct as the song builds to a conclusion:
‘And all of my fine/My fine fair weather friends, Yeah, Will have no more time/To make their amends.’
One of a handful of tracks cut before acrimony set in after CSNY reconvened following the tour, it is unlikely even input from Stills and Young could have improved on this first-rate reading – which boasts smart guitar work from Crosby and King contributing some eloquent piano.
The Crosby-Nash co-write ‘Naked in the Rain‘ bears fingerprints of Crosby in the lyric, the imagery of a clown unable to remember how to paint his face building to ‘There’s a storm in you/You don’t know what to do/Just when you think you’re going insane/You lie naked in the rain.’
Along the way the melody builds from a restrained opening into a more fluid piece (although at barely two and half minutes does not outstay its welcome), Nash using a similar melodic structure on ‘Mama Lion‘, an aching (some would say over-wrought) paean to his former lover Miss Mitchell – ‘There’s a hole in my destiny/And I’m out on the brink‘ – fleshed out by exemplary guitar lines from Lindley and Kortchmar.
With the fiddle playing of Lindley to the fore, Nash gives ‘Take the Money and Run‘ a folk-rock flavour, the writer aggrieved at various sycophants who feasted at the artists’ expense on ‘Tour ’74‘ – ‘You cannot tell me any more lies/You cannot pull the wool over my eyes/Take the money and run‘ – the reunion junket while hardly producing a pittance for the performers returned nothing like the sums first envisaged, despite every show being sold out.
Side one closer ‘Love Work Out‘ has Nash pounding the piano for a fast-paced rock cut in which the writer reflects on lessons learnt from relationship experiences: ‘It seems like a strange thing for me to say/I’m so tired of looking the other way.’
With Jackson Browne adding his voice to the harmonies, there is barely a soft-rock practitioner of the era from James Taylor to J.D. Souther, Carole King to Dan Fogelberg who did not use a variation of this tune, which as they pretty much used the same group of musicians is not altogether surprising.
Containing any number of allusions to to erstwhile colleague Young, for ‘Cowboy of Dreams‘ Nash constructs a country melody featuring fiddle and honky tonk piano, in offering this charming if slightly disarming character sketch – the closing summation of ‘I’ve tried so hard to tell you/In so many ways/That I’m scared of the heartache and scenes/With the cowboy of dreams‘ showing him to be warm and wary in regard to Young in virtually the same breath.
Written from the perspective of a downtrodden migrant worker, ‘Fieldworker‘ (another song first aired on the CSNY tour), demonstrates the commitment of Nash to humanist ideals by addressing subject matter on the radar of very few songwriters. With an unusually feisty vocal he delivers the lines ‘Digging in your fields, pulling up your food/No matter how I feel, don’t do me no good/”Treat me like a human” is all I got to say,’ to the accompaniment of some strident slide work from Keith that adds to the angry atmosphere.
The record comes to a conclusion with the Crosby-composed ‘Critical Mass‘ a baroque-sounding affair that he and Nash perform a cappella (taken to the aborted CSNY sessions of late-1974, Young apparently asked ‘where are the words?’). Their voices fade to be replaced by the sound of whales communicating, thus ushering in the string-laden, piano ballad title-track – a plaintive account of how the marine mammals were being slaughtered:
‘Over the years you have been hunted/By the men who throw harpoons/And in the long run he will kill you/Just to feed the pets we raise/Put the flowers in your vase/And make the lipstick for your face.‘
It is an affecting, clearly heartfelt piece that once again showed Nash was prepared to espouse in song causes in which he believed, (or perhaps more to the point practices he opposed), switching the theme of his writing from the personal to the political almost on a song for song basis.
Critical response for ‘Wind on the Water’ was surprisingly positive. Not that the record was lacking in any way, but in their different formations Crosby, Stills and Nash had spent the 70s being disparaged by much of the rock press – who feted Young no matter how erratic his output.
Rolling Stone, arguably the most vociferous among the dissenters, spoke of a ‘creative renaissance,’ approval from the critics merging with a strong commercial performance as the album climbed to number six on the US Charts – an achievement to afford Crosby and Nash a hearty laugh up their sleeves as it eclipsed that of ‘Stills‘ (1975) and the disappointing Stills-Young duet set ‘Long May You Run‘ of the following year.
Having recorded one of the defining soft-rock albums of the time, Crosby and Nash maintained their high profile by adding vocal harmonies on albums by Taylor, Browne, Dave Mason and Elton John, although reviewers were quick to round on their 1976 effort ‘Whistling Down the Wire‘ that while containing some impressive moments lacked the overall excellence of its predecessor – Rolling Stone returning to its established position by describing the record, ‘smug, elitist and dull.’
Despite Nash declaring midway through 1976 he would ‘never work with Stephen Stills again‘ before the year was out, they were recording as a trio – the CSN bandwagon rolling once more the following summer with release of a new album.
Homeward through the haze, indeed.
CROSBY & NASH – ‘WIND ON THE WATER‘ (Released September 15 1975):
Carry Me/Mama Lion/Bittersweet/Take the Money and Run/Naked in the Rain/Love Work Out/Low Down Payment/Cowboy of Dreams/Homeward Through the Haze/Fieldworker/To The Last Whale – A. Critical Mass B. Wind on the Water;
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.
