A Recipe for Success

Review by Mike Gange

4 Way Street: The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Reader
edited by Dave Zimmer
Da Capo Press, $27.95 382 pages

Take equal parts Hollies, Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, sprinkle luxuriously with layered harmonies and incendiary lyrics, then cover with brilliant call and response guitar licks. Spice with lots of super-sized egos and determination. Cook it all up in a combustible political climate and serve into a generation gap where neither side trusts the other’s message or motives. David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and later, with Neil Young, provided a recipe for success that fed a whole generation.

Certainly CSN&Y’s most memorable songs were written as a protest against the late 1960's and early ‘70's political system. Songs like "Find the Cost of Freedom," "Ohio" and "Almost Cut My Hair" reflected the emotional upheaval many of the Woodstock generation felt at that time. Still, like so many other aspiring musicians trying to get into the music business, their first recording successes were about being heart broken. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" for example, was Stephen Stills’ poignant proposal to Judy Collins. He sang "chestnut brown canary, ruby throated sparrow...thrill me to the marrow...change my life, make it right, be my lady."

They may have started out singing love songs, but

by 1969, Crosby, Stills and Nash emerged from their performance at Woodstock as full blown mature artists with something important to say. They were, then, only in their early 20's.

Now, as CSN&Y reach their 60^th birthdays, a new book by Dave Zimmer helps us understand some of the changes CSN&Y have gone through, personally and professionally. California writer Zimmer has followed the careers of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young since he was a college student in the early 1970's. Later, as editor of BAM: The California Music Magazine, he covered the music scene through to the 1990's. In 4 Way Street: The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Reader, he becomes editor, presenting more than 30 finely written articles that explore the thinking of the four as they weathered break-ups, reunions, solo album successes and rejections.

The articles here were written by many well known writers who covered the music scene, including Ben Fong-Torres, Cameron Crowe, Mark Christensen, and Lowell Cauffiel, and were previously published in magazines such as Rolling Stone, Creem, New Musical Express, Hit Parader and Guitar World.

The first piece in the book, written by Ellen Sander, relates how the magic happened for CS&N during the summer of 1968. Sander writes, "One afternoon, Crosby and Stills were at Cass Elliot’s house, sitting on the floor and singing. John Sebastian was there too, and some other friends, and Nash dropped by. Crosby and Stills were wailing, into their songs so heavily they were unaware of where they were. They harmonized, trading off lead parts by instinct, their voices twining like longtime lovers together, sure and rhythmically. Nash followed the songs in his head for a few moments, then opened up his throat and laid a high harmony over the top of them, skimming the sound, peaking the energy, completing the soul of the song. Something in the room changed the moment he did that."

Listening to the powerful messages in those rock anthems, its easy to forget CSN&Y were once broke and hungry for success, hanging out with their buddies and their girl friends. 4 Way Street: The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Reader reminds us of what helped the four musicians start cooking together, and how they fed a whole generation hungering for change.