Dez Reviews Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 'CSNY '74' (1974/2014)

The Doom Tour. Few rock tours are more notorious than CSNY's disasterous 1974 reunion tour. It was one of the first (if not the first) stadium tours. The egos and excess were legendary. They each traveled on their own buses and jets. Neil Young was so detached that the other three only saw him at soundchecks and the shows. The drug use was olympian, with David Crosby and Stephen Stills especially baked out of their minds. Stills was spiraling into paranoid fantasies, telling people that he had served in Vietnam in the late 60's and had performed covert operations for the CIA in Southeast Asia. He was claiming that he did this while he had actually been a star in Buffalo Springfield. Bob Dylan visited the group during the tour, and after he pulled out an acoustic guitar and played Stills the entire Blood on the Tracks record that he was currently working on privately for him in his hotel room, Stills scoffed that Dylan was "no musician." While Paul McCartney visited the group on the road, Stills gave Macca a gift of a Precision bass guitar telling him that he needed to dump his iconic Hofner bass (the one he had used on most of the Beatles recordings) and start playing a "real" instrument. The tour made over $11 million (a massive amount for the 70's), yet they hardly came out on the other end with any profit. They had their roadies empty boxes worth of Marlboro cigarettes of tobacco and replace it with weed. They filled Vitamin C capsules with cocaine and handed them all out like mints. One of them accidently spilled a prodigious amount of coke on the floor in a hotel room, and the story goes that they all got down on all fours and sniffed it out of the carpet. Crosby was constantly accompanied by two young groupies who were constantly giving him oral pleasure as he snorted cocaine and conducted business over the phone. "That might have happened," he now concedes. Since it was one of the first stadium tours, the sound system was wholly inadequate, and the always dueling Young and Stills compensated by turning up their amps to earsplitting decibels, so much so that Crosby says he and Nash couldn't even hear eachother to harmonize. (Thanks to the excellent recent Rolling Stone article detailing the Doom Tour for these juicy details).

They recorded about a dozen of the shows with the intention of releasing a live record, and then planned on recording a new studio one as well. But the acrimony was at such a high level, the shows so notoriously sloppy, the business dealings from the tour so shady, that they all went their separate ways after the tour. They did reconvene to record a record, but when Crosby and Nash were away for a few weeks to fulfill some performance obligations, Stills and Young decided to wipe their vocals from the tracks and promply formed the Stills-Young Band and released Long May You Run instead. Not surprisingly, Crosby and Nash reconvened the Crosby & Nash ventures, and there were two warring camps. It is an incident that Crosby and Nash resent to this day, and Stills and Young refuse to even discuss it. (Of course, Stills learned the hard way the lesson of siding with Neil Young. Mid Stills-Young Band tour, Neil decided to split, sent Stills a note saying "eat a peach" and turned his tour bus towards home. Stills fulfilled the rest of the tour dates solo.) Naturally, the live tracks recorded from The Doom Tour were not revisited for decades, as all four wanted to forget the whole debacle.

With all of this background, how good could this music be? Well, f*cking awesome, it turns out. Nash, who has become the currator of the CSN(Y) legacy, has spent the last four years meticulously combing through all of the tapes from the Doom Tour and constructed a monumental three disc set. Granted, this set is better than any single show you would have heard. He readily admits that it is somewhat an ideal, Frankenstein monster-type set, "if I found one line of one vocal out of tune, I went to a different night and took a line that was in tune and put it in." His Herculean editing efforts have been rewarded, as he has constructed pretty much a dream marathon show from a peak time for these four artists.

One of the reasons this is such a treasure is that it was an incredibly creative time for these guys. The excellent Four Way Street double live album from earlier was outstanding, but by '74 they had all really established their own solo identities. 27 of the 40 tracks on this set are from various member's solo records, side projects or are simply unreleased until now. One of the many joys is hearing how the quartet tackle and often enhance songs from their respective solo records. The highlights are many, many, and Nash has done a fabulous job of creating the perfect pacing over three discs. The middle disc is all acoustic, while discs one and three bookend it with often blistering electric sets. The highlights are too many to list, but some real peaks are a churning, rumbling opener of Stills' "Love the One You're With," a stunning "On the Beach" from Neil, a lovely "Johnny's Garden," a rare blistering electric take on Stills' "Black Queen" and an experimental, extended "Deja Vu."

Two more great things here. The entire acoustic disc is a highlight. It is just brilliant all the way through, again perfectly paced by Nash. Full band acoustic singalongs of "Change Partners," "The Lee Shore," "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Our House," "Old Man" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" are pure joy and make one appreciate the gift of music. The acoustic disc is so wonderful because, like the acoustic disc on Four Way Street, each band member's personality is given space to shine through. There are various combinations to keep it fresh over the entire disc: full band acoustic tunes, Crosby and Nash do their lovely thing over several tracks, Neil gets his quirky solo slot and Stills is given his spotlight to stun with his acoustic guitar prowess (this time on "Word Game," as well as a gorgeous full group cover of The Beatles' "Blackbird" and stunner "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes").

ABOVE: As great as all four are here, Neil Young is on a different level

The other great thing is Neil Young. 1974 captures him at perhaps the most fascinating point in his entire career. This is the time of his own Ditch Trilogy (Time Fades Away, Tonight's the Night and On the Beach). As he was hiding away in his tour bus from his cohorts, he was writing and writing. So the Neil Young songs here are a Neil fan's dream. Outside the fantastic but obligatory chestnuts like "Helpless" and "Ohio," concert rarities show up like "On the Beach," "Mellow My Mind," the blistering Charles Manson-inspired "Revolution Blues" and perhaps his most autobiographical track, "Don't Be Denied." But that's not all, folks. Top shelf Neil Young songs that have not been released before! Neil, why the hell have you been keeping "Traces" in the vaults?! It is an absolutely gorgeous pop song that would have been right at home and a highlight on Comes a Time. Holy sh*t what a great song. Nixon had just resigned weeks before, and Neil has a little fun with an impromptu tune called "Goodbye Dick" that gets a predictable big cheer. I had never heard "Love Art Blues," another fantastic Neil number. "Pushed It Over the End" is another unearthed Neil gem, a brooding number about Patty Hearst. As great as everyone is, you can tell here that Neil Young is on another level as a songwriter. You can understand his decades long ambivalence regarding playing with these other three.

Over three discs, there are going to be a few duds. But surprisingly few. Crosby gives a disappointingly weak performance of his usually lovely autobiographical "Carry Me." Nash's previously unreleased "Grave Concern" is weak, and Neil's previously unreleased "Hawaiian Sunrise" is lightweight for him. A rote run through of "Long Time Gone" and Stills' forgettable "My Angel" mar an otherwise near perfect third disc. And you can always complain about what is missing. It would be nice to hear an epic "Carry On," but Nash claims he could not really find an acceptable version to release, so perhaps it is best that it is missing. Some of the songs clock in at "only" eight or nine minutes, so it would have been nice to have at least one of those famous, epic 15 to 20 minutes guitar duel songs featuring Stills and Young really bringing it, like a "Down By the River" perhaps, which was performed on the tour. But oh well. It is hard to quibble with the vast majority of what is here.

CSNY '74 will quickly become a cornerstone in securing their legacy, and is essential listening for anyone even remotely interested in these guys.

ABOVE: Imagine trying to play an intimate acoustic set to a stadium

****1/2 out of *****