Fire and Rain (15 page)

Nash himself wasn't immune to pickiness. He was so unhappy with the last note on “Our House” that Halverson had to fly down to L.A.
and find a Steinway piano to re-record that one concluding, sustained piano note. “They were second-guessing themselves,” Halverson said. “They had so much to live up to. It was, ‘Now what do we do?'” After a bunch of other distractions, like the midwinter European tour that had taken them to London's Royal Albert Hall and Scandinavia, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and now Young completed the album by the end of January. The most important year of their careers had just begun, and already they were weary of one another.

Crosby didn't know what was more surreal: the daytime darkness or the elephant bustling down the street. Was he
that
high? At that moment, all he knew was that he and Nash had set sail from Florida on Crosby's boat, the
Mayan
, sometime in February. They'd just anchored in the seaport town of Salina Cruz, on the southwestern coast of Mexico. Otherwise, nothing about that moment made any sense.

The last few months had been rough ones for Crosby. In October 1969, just before the
Déjà vu
sessions had commenced, his girlfriend, Christine Gail Hinton, had been killed in a car accident near their recently purchased home in Novato. As she was taking their pet cats to the vet, one leapt onto her lap, causing her to swerve into an oncoming bus. “We were at the pool in David's house and she brings out three joints and says, ‘I'm going to take the cats to the vet, so smoke these,'” Nash recalled. “I never saw her again.” Given the carefree, responsibility-free life adventures he'd had before, Crosby wasn't remotely prepared to deal with the loss. The man who was so often the band's cheerleader was now reduced to sobbing on the floor of Heider's studio. A metal Halliburton case stashed away in the Novato home held his only remaining mementos of their relationship—photos and embroidered shirts Hinton had made for him. At the
Déjà vu
photo shoot, Gundelfinger noticed Crosby
wasn't the same jubilant self he'd once been: “You could see he was carrying around a lot of pain.”

After the Royal Albert Hall show, the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tour of Europe played two more shows, in Copenhagen and Stockholm, before it wrapped up. (Road manager Leo Makota later told author Dave Zimmer the band donated its unused drugs to American draft dodgers in Denmark.) With his obligations temporarily fulfilled, Crosby asked Nash to join him on a boat ride. Even though he'd never been on a ship before, Nash liked the idea; Crosby had been an avid sailor since his teen years, after all. Nash assumed they'd be taking a quick day trip to the Catalina Islands from Los Angeles. Not quite, Crosby told him: He'd decided to fulfill his dream of burying Hinton at sea by depositing her ashes in San Francisco Bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. The
Mayan
, the fifty-foot schooner he'd bought after leaving the Byrds, would take him there. Since it was docked in Florida, they'd fly down and then sail from there to San Francisco.

Nash hesitated, then agreed. At first shocked by and angry over Hinton's death, Crosby was now being confronted by the reality of her absence. During a getaway trip to London after the accident, Nash noticed Crosby sitting beneath an exit sign in a hotel (“I knew what he was thinking,” Nash said, implying suicide). Nash decided it was best to keep a close eye on his relatively new friend. With only a few others joining them on and off—Makota, fledgling actress and singer Ronee Blakely, and Bobby Ingram, one of Crosby's folk-circuit buddies—they set sail in mid February, far from the music business and the bad aftertaste of the stressful
Déjà vu
sessions.

In many ways, the trip fulfilled its mission. During the six-week ride, they ate, drank, sang, toked up, and played music; Nash began working on a new song, “Wind on the Water,” after seeing enormous, house-size whales swim past them. Sure, Crosby threw Blakely's typewriter overboard when her
clickety-clacking
began to drive him insane. “In a fit of irritation, I tossed it,” Crosby recalled. “I regretted it later.” But with only
a ship-to-shore radio aboard to communicate with those on land, the trip took them away from it all.

They couldn't entirely escape reminders of their lives back home. From Jamaica to the Panama Canal, they were joined by Joni Mitchell. Only twenty-six, Mitchell had by then a lifetime of experience, both personal and musical. When she was a young Canadian named Roberta Anderson, she'd studied art in college in Calgary, after which she'd lived in Toronto and Detroit. In New York, she met her future manager, Elliot Roberts, and, in Florida, her future producer and (briefly) boyfriend, Crosby. Crosby oversaw her first album,
Song to a Seagull,
in 1968—the same year Judy Collins had a hit with a twinkling, radiofriendly version of Mitchell's “Both Sides Now.” By then Mitchell also been through one marriage and had a child she'd given up for adoption. She and Nash had met at a party for the Hollies in Ottawa. Instantly smitten by the woman with the stately cheekbones and penetratingly observed songs, he moved into her home on Lookout Mountain after he'd deserted the Hollies (and divorced his first wife, Rose Eccles) and relocated to Los Angeles.

By the time of the
Déjà vu
sessions, Nash and Mitchell were living a hippie-domestic life at Mitchell's house, a life Nash immortalized in “Our House,” a song on the new album. “Lady of the Island,” from
Crosby, Stills & Nash
, had also been about Mitchell, and everyone was so nonchalant about the intermingling relationships that Nash and Crosby sang it together in the studio while looking at each other knowingly.

But when Mitchell hooked up with the
Mayan
and its crew, her romance with Nash was beginning to fray. Mitchell kept thinking of her grandmother, who wanted to be a dancer but instead had to take care of her children; Mitchell thought Nash would thwart her dreams in the same way. Nash kept insisting that wasn't the case. “For some reason, she thought my idea of marriage was that she'd stay home cooking,” he recalled, “and there's no
fucking
way, knowing Joni's music and knowing
her and loving her like I did, that I would have ever asked her to stray from that beautiful path she was on. But that's what she thought.” Mitchell flew to meet him, watched the canal open and close, and then returned to Los Angeles. Nash began to feel as if something was coming to an end. Their talk of marriage stalled.

Meanwhile, the
Mayan
crew continued on its semi-merry way. When the boat docked at Salina Cruz, Crosby and Ingram went into a bank to exchange some money. In their own country, the sight of two bedraggled, slightly stoned longhairs could lead to wisecracks or, at worst, menacing, I-want-you-dead glares. In the Mexican bank, a security guard took notice of two scraggly hippies and unsnapped the gun from his holster, and Crosby's American dollars were carefully scrutinized.

After the transaction was completed, Crosby stepped outside as afternoon darkness descended and the elephant strolled by. He quickly realized he wasn't that stoned after all: An eclipse was enveloping the town, and the elephant was part of a parade to promote a local circus. Once he realized he didn't have to freak out, he laughed. At least it was a moment of welcome relief from the last few emotionally wrenching months.

While Crosby and Nash were sailing and Young was back in Los Angeles working with Crazy Horse, Stills was, to his relief, thousands of miles away from them all.

When the others returned to the States after the European tour finished, Stills decided to stay in London a while longer. He now had the time, opportunity, and money to do it. Just before he'd left Los Angeles, he'd been handed a check for over $450,000 for sales of
Crosby, Stills & Nash
, along with his first American Express card. Between his financial windfall and newfound rock star status, the London nightlife was his for the taking, and Stills hardly shied away.

At one nightclub, a mutual friend introduced him to Ringo Starr. Before long, Stills was at Starr's house in Highgate, sipping tea and shooting pool with the Beatle and Klaus Voormann. Starting February 18, he found himself alongside Starr, Harrison, and Voormann as they helped Starr mold the song initially called “You Gotta Pay Your Dues,” eventually renamed “It Don't Come Easy.” The song would endure many retakes and permutations in the months ahead; parts were recut, horn sections and background singers were added. When it was finally released about a year later, it was a small wonder of a pop single: From Starr's cymbal-wash intro to the delightfully pushy clatter it became, “It Don't Come Easy” was a relentless, almost desperate plea for unity and togetherness: “Use a little love, and we will make it work out better,” Starr sang. Beneath all the instrumental parts and overdubs, Stills' chunky piano could still be heard in the final version.

Just a few years earlier, Stills had seen
A Hard Day's Night
in New York's Greenwich Village during his months as a struggling folkie. (Crosby and his fellow Byrds saw the same movie at the same time, three thousand miles way in Los Angeles.) Now, here he was, making music with half the Beatles and their producer. In contrast, the thought of returning to Los Angeles—and Crosby, Nash, and Young—was far less appealing. “I basically smelled a lot of trouble,” he recalled. “Everyone was getting very high. Being a rock star in the States with those guys—they were all becoming
icons
.” With that, Stills made a decision: “I said, ‘Well, this is great, this is it—I'm stayin'.' I decided to become a really annoying groupie and meet all the British guys.” Before long, he, Starr, and Harrison were together contributing to sessions for an album by the transplanted American R&B singer Doris Troy.

At first, Stills was intimidated by his surroundings and the notorious aloofness of British musicians. “He was very focused on Ringo, that's for sure,” Voormann recalled of their first meeting. “I think he was overwhelmed by being in Ringo's house.” Stills' phlegmy, goodold-boy
guffaw—“I was brash and obnoxious,” he admitted—was also a far cry from British reserve. But thanks to his father's variety of jobs—working tract homes, tool designs, lumber, and real estate, among other vocations—he'd grown accustomed to being the new kid, the stranger in town.

Even before
Déjà vu
was released, Stills had made the decision to make an album under his own name, and one by one, his new acquaintances began arriving at Island Studios. One night, Starr showed up earlier than everyone else; he and his drum kit were ready to go when Stills arrived. Eric Clapton popped in several times, once to add a box-cutter-sharp guitar solo to “Go Back Home,” one of Stills' new songs, and another to get drunk with his new friend on tequila. Clapton had first jammed with Stills and Buffalo Springfield in Los Angeles two years before—the infamous April 1968 day when Clapton and everyone in the band except Stills (who managed a quick escape) was busted for dope while rehearsing at Stills' home in Topanga. When they grew reacquainted in London, Stills helped Clapton finish one of his own new tracks, “Let It Rain,” adding harmony vocals and a bit of bass guitar to its coda. Another evening, Clapton popped in unexpectedly, saying he'd been driving around with a new song in his head and wanted to put it on tape before he forgot it. Stills ended up pitching in on that one, “Easy Now,” as well. (He wanted to overdub guitars and drums, but Clapton demurred, saying he wanted to keep the song simple. To engineer Bill Halverson's surprise, Stills deferred to Clapton—and, Halverson noted, Stills rarely deferred to
anyone
.)

At one of the many parties Stills attended, he met Billy Preston, the American soul-gospel singer and organ player now part of the Beatles' circle (a year earlier, he'd played the electric piano solo on “Get Back”). When Preston cracked, “If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with,” Stills took notice. Preston thought nothing of the remark, but to Stills, it could be “the key line of a song,” and Preston let him keep it. Before long, it became the basis for a new melody that, like
some of Crosby's, encouraged everyone to get it on with whomever was available at the time.