In the remastered version, Dallas Taylor, CSN’s original drummer, benefits most from the make over. The remix shows him to be a capable and understated timekeeper in the tradition of Ringo Starr – he’s there when you need him, unobtrusive when you don’t. Stills funky bottom bass playing is now much more distinctive. Above all, you’re front and center when three of the most distinct voices in music join together in your speakers as one.

Stills may have sung “Suite Judy Blues” with more conviction and picked his guitar like a mad Maharishi playing a sitar on the Woodstock album, but the studio version is sheer perfection. The three voices blend together like chocolate syrup in milk – it’s simply meant to be. Somewhere Judy Collins (Stills’ muse for this particular classic) is indeed still smiling sweetly.

Stills’ buttery organ playing and harmonic guitar highlight Nash’s Middle Eastern travelogue, “Marrakesh Express.” When Nash sings “All on board the train-“ the trio’s voices rise and sustain until they sound like the primed engine of a gleaming passenger train bound for paradise. “Guinnevere,” Crosby’s sparse romantic ballad, is one of his more conventionally constructed songs. As a result, it is also one of his most memorable. Crosby’s stream-of-consciousness brand of songwriting often produced dense navel-gazing folk and incomprehensible “power to the people” jams. But for five plus minutes, Crosby drops his hedonistic, hip veneer allowing us to see that he has a tender side and can deliver a moving piece, particularly when his smoky voice bobs and weaves with Nash’s bell-like harmonies.

As I said before, few guitarists have Stephen Stills’ skill set on acoustic guitar. On “You Don’t Have to Cry,” he draws upon his Southern roots, blending a bluesy delta influence with California folk. With just Stills’ guitar and a tambourine as accompaniment, it’s up to the voices to carry the day, and CSN give a virtual vocal clinic on how to harmonize. (Time out for trivia: When the Grateful Dead began recording their best selling “American Beauty” album, they actually came to CSN to learn how to sing as an ensemble.)

Nash’s playfully light rocker “Pre-Road Downs” may contain the very un- P.C warning to “hide the roaches,” but it’s also another showcase for Stills, who amazes with his sweeping psychedelic embellishments, and Taylor, who eschews the opportunity to show off and keeps the beat moving at a moderate pace.

The writing credit for “Wooden Ships” has been corrected to include Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner alongside that of Stills and Crosby, and it bears the Airplane’s spacey touch, with lines like “Silver people on the shoreline let us be,” but it’s a rare opportunity to hear what three of the 60s most compassionate songwriters could create. In this not-so veiled allegory of the Vietnam War, Stills and Crosby play two war weary soldiers, unsure of who won the war or why they were even fighting in the first place. Stills’ solos are as sharp and powerful as a broadside from a battleship, and the boys sing with a desperate sense of purpose. They want the war over and they want to go home and live in peace, but they’re not sure they’re going to make it. (Listen closely and you can hear Stills play out an S-O-S on the organ.)

“Lady of the Island” remains one of Nash’s most romantic and touching ballads. It’s also the song that prompted his exit from the Hollies, who thought it was too risqué. Lines like “The brownness of your body in the fire-glow, except the places where the sung refused to go,” did indeed push the envelope way back in 1969, adding another then cutting-edge notch to the group’s already heady reputation musical trend setters. Sung to a quietly strummed guitar, Nash and Crosby trade harmonies with a sixth sense that makes them sound like they’ve been singing together for years instead of months. The separation of the three part harmony in “Helplessly Hoping” is the perfect example of why people were so floored when they first heard CSN, with Stills lyrics reflecting the inner workings of their partnership. Stills occupies the mid-range (“They are one person”), Nash takes the high parts (“They are two alone”), and Crosby solidifies the bottom part (“They are three together”), then their voices coalesce with precision and ease (“They are for each other”).

“Long Time Coming” focuses on Crosby’s sometimes controversial and mostly confrontational look at politics and the world. At this point in time (the turbulent late 60s) Crosby was a force to be reckoned with, a rebel with a cause; long before drugs became his cause and he became a farce to be avoided. Here Crosby is in strong “J’accuse” mode, an advocate for change, who’s also smart enough to warn the hippies that if they really want to stand in the forefront they’d better watch their backs as well: “Speak out, you’ve got to speak out against the madness. You’ve got to speak your mind, if you dare. But don’t, no don’t try to get yourself elected. If you do, you had better cut your hair.” Stills guitar is cutting, dirty, and his ominous organ playing swirls in and out of the arrangement like a bad acid trip.

“49 Bye-Byes” revisits the group’s strength – harmony. Stills leads the vocal tidal wave with Nash and Crosby as his harmonic echoes. Stills has been wronged, you can hear the venom and hurt in his delivery. Was it sweet Judy? He doesn’t name the heartbreaker this time, but “49 Bye-Byes” acts as an emotional bookend to “Suite Judy Blue Eyes.” Stills was struggling with his relationship when the album started, and by the time it’s over, he’s lost the girl. When the boys sing “bye, bye baby,” their voices filling virtually every crevice, it’s the perfect send off to a perfect album.

But now there’s more….

Including an introduction by the late Ahmet Ertegun, a record honcho with a real sense of talent who signed and guided the likes of Aretha Franklin, The Rascals and, of course, CSN. The bonus cuts on “Crosby, Stills and Nash” now include a stunning version of “Do It For Others,” a song destined to appear on Stills’ impeccable first solo album. With Crosby and Nash backing this folk-orientated version, one wishes this had made the final cut. “Song With No Words” is just that, Crosby and Nash harmonizing beautifully without a single lyric. This version has a much more vibrant and live feel than the multi-layered, eerie version Crosby would cut for his first solo album, “If I Could Only Remember My Name.” Stills leads a rehearsal of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” later made famous by Harry Nilsson. This gets a working CSN treatment – the boys tend to sing more at the same level than in the high-mid-low range that accompanies their best material and Stills sounds tuckered out, but it’s an interesting take on a song they abandoned and you get to hear why. An early demo of Nash’s "Teach Your Children” is slower, more Joni Mitchell than Graham Nash, but shows he was headed in the right direction.

There are two minor complaints, (but I’m a bit of a complainer anyway!). Crosby’s off-the-cuff rendition of “Come Into My Kitchen” between “Long Time Gone” and “49 Bye Byes” has been axed – a sacrilege you may be willing to live with (I’m not). Secondly, drummer Dallas Taylor, the ghostly image standing in the backdoor on the original recording, has been banished from the back cover, the end result of a nasty royalty law suit between him and his former mates. So much for history.

“Crosby, Stills and Nash “set the bar at a doomed-to-fail level for the trio, which quickly became a quartet when Stills’ Buffalo Springfield combatant, the talented, ferret-voiced Neil Young joined for the near perfect “Déjà vu.” (Only Young’s bloated “Country Girl” medley fails to motivate.) Drugs, too much touring, clashing egos and more drugs would send the group into hibernation for years after only two studio albums. The original trio achieved individual greatness -- for Stills’ it was first solo album, his second, “Stephen Stills 2” and “Manassas;” for Nash, “Songs for Beginners,” and his second and third collaborations with Crosby, “Wind on the Water,” and “Whistling Down Wire” – but “Crosby, Stills and Nash” captures CSN when they were young, relatively innocent, and supremely talented. It’s a must for anyone on this, or any planet.

Posted January 17, 2007 Permalink