The story goes like this: David Crosby shows his bandmate Neil Young that famous photo of a student at Kent State University, screaming over her dead friend. Young goes into the woods. And soon he comes out with this song about four students killed by National Guardsmen, May 4, 1970. The song was recorded immediately and rushed to record stores. You couldn’t hear it on the radio, but this jarring piece of musical journalism became a hit anyway. “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,” warbles the great Canadian, in a song you hate yourself for calling catchy. Young wrote later that Crosby “broke down and cried” after they cut this beautifully horrifying song. By all accounts, Nixon refused to call the dead students’ parents to express his grief. Maybe you have to have a heart to do that.
Song: 4 Way Street. Artist: Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Album: 4 Way Street. Release Date April 7, 1971
“Ohio” is a protest song and counterculture anthem written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 4, 1970, and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
The story goes like this: David Crosby shows his bandmate Neil Young that famous photo of a student at Kent State University, screaming over her dead friend. Young goes into the woods. And soon he comes out with this song about four students killed by National Guardsmen, May 4, 1970. The song was recorded immediately and rushed to record stores. You couldn’t hear it on the radio, but this jarring piece of musical journalism became a hit anyway. “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,” warbles the great Canadian, in a song you hate yourself for calling catchy. Young wrote later that Crosby “broke down and cried” after they cut this beautifully horrifying song. By all accounts, Nixon refused to call the dead students’ parents to express his grief. Maybe you have to have a heart to do that.
Song: 4 Way Street. Artist: Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Album: 4 Way Street. Release Date April 7, 1971
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch Series,”where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
CSN was formed from what was left of three prominent 1960s groups: The Byrds (David Crosby), Buffalo Springfield (Stephen Stills) and The Hollies (Graham Nash). After the release of the band’s first album in 1969, another Buffalo Springfield alum, Neil Young, joined the band.
Their first greatest hits collection featured artwork by Joni Mitchell, whose first album was produced by Crosby.
They performed at both the original and the second Woodstock. Their performance at the original Woodstock was only their third show together. They had a few more under their belts the second time around.
Jimi Hendrix taught Stills how to play lead guitar.
They are the only group to top the charts with three consecutive LPs where one was a studio album (Deja Vu), one was a live album (4 Way Street), and one was a greatest hits album (So Far).
Stills got into a fistfight with an audience member at a festival in Big Sur, California that was being filmed as a showcase for good vibes.
In the group’s various configurations and as solo artists they have collectively released nearly 100 albums.
Each band member has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Crosby with The Byrds, Stills with Buffalo Springfield, Nash with The Hollies, and Young as a solo artist.
The group was somewhat unique in that each of the members were recording solo albums at the height of their success as a group. Other configurations included Crosby Nash (they made eight albums together) and the Stills-Young Band, which made one album in 1976.
The group was successful from the start, beginning with their first album and continuing through the early 1970s. CSNY was one of the few groups selling as many albums as the Beatles.
Young left the group in 1976, returning long enough to record an album in 1988 after Crosby finished a jail term on drug and weapons charges, fulfilling a promise Young had made to record with CSN if Crosby could beat his drug addiction.
Stephen Stills underwent successful surgery for prostate cancer on January 3, 2008, which was his 63rd birthday.
Graham Nash told The Guardian in a 2015 interview that it was a very difficult decision to leave his former group the Hollies. He said: “They were my friends for many, many years, but when I heard myself singing with David and Stephen that first time in Joni’s [Mitchell] living room, my life changed dramatically. I needed to sing those songs.”
Nash is both a keen photographer and collector of photographs. When he sold his 2,000-print collection through Sotheby’s in 1990, it set an auction record for the highest-grossing sale of a single private collection of photography.
Crosby, Stills & Nash’s final performance was at a White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony broadcast live on television on December 3, 2015. They performed Silent Night and sounded woefully out of tune.
“This was very sad,” Nash recalled to Rolling Stone. “Stephen and David ended up fighting after it and I think even Obama had heard something was going on. Basically, it was a national park thing and David was supposed to talk about his favorite park and then I was going to talk about living in Hawaii and my favorite and so on. But David read everyone’s lines. Stephen then threw a pick at David. It was over from that moment.”
VinylLair.com 