Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young- Deja Vu 55th Anniversary
As unanticipated as the first Crosby, Stills, and Nash album had been less than a year earlier, the March 1970 follow up Deja Vu included a fourth emerging star, Neil Young (like Stephen Stills, a graduate of the seminal Buffalo Springfield). Deja Vu was heralded like a major Hollywood movie and included the scintillating harmonies and acoustic arrangements like that first effort with “Helpless”and “Our House”, but guitarists Stills and Young helped the quartet find an electric outlet to plug into for “Carry On”, “Teach Your Children”, “Almost Cut My Hair”, and the definitive version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”.
As you hear during this In The Studio Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young classic rock interview regarding making Déjà Vu, rock myth collides head-on with fact regarding Neil Young’s initial integration into Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Young was two years and two albums into a budding solo career after leaving Buffalo Springfield when former bandmate Stephen Stills, ex-Byrd David Crosby, and Graham Nash from the Hollies all realized that the three of them could not pull off the song arrangements live that were on their 1969 debut album. So Young was recruited for the first Crosby, Stills, and Nash tour, not a permanent member of the band.
After Neil Young sat in with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash at the trio’s second gig, some people noticed. The fact that the gig was the Woodstock Festival in July 1969 might have had something to do with it. Where the trio’s debut had few expectations and surprisingly little fanfare, all of that quickly changed for the March 1970 follow-up as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. But after trotting him out on tour, the trio felt that Young needed to be on their sophomore release Déjà Vu.
Deja Vu contained Stephen’s “Carry On”, the definitive version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock”, Graham’s “Our House” and “Teach Your Children”, David’s “Almost Cut My Hair”, and Neil’s “Helpless”. Young contributed only two songs, no doubt saving even stronger material for his own third solo album After the Goldrush barely five months later. David, Stephen, Graham, and Neil all weigh in for the album as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ( This edition dedicated to the quartet’s late drummer then, Dallas Taylor, on the far right ). –Redbeard
