Wild Tales (24 page)

T
HE ALBUM DID
everything we thought it would. From its release in May 1969, it immediately caught fire and went burning up the charts. “Crosby, Stills & Nash” was on everyone’s lips. The music hit hard; it was a definite game changer. You could hear our songs on almost every station in America, out of every student’s dorm-room window. We had a giant hit on our hands.

Exactly as we’d expected.

Now we had to promote it. It was one thing to sing it acoustically for friends, quite another to play it in a large venue. We could sing it live brilliantly. No problem where that was concerned. And we had Dallas on drums. But Stephen had played bass and keyboards on the album. And he was our lead guitarist. So we knew a bass player was going to be in the cards. I’d be able to cover some of the keyboard parts because Stephen had taught me how to play some simple piano. But even with that, there was a lot of discussion about adding another member to the core.

Stephen and Dallas went to England to ask
Stevie Winwood if he’d join us but he didn’t want to. The same with Al Kooper, who’d recently been kicked out of Blood, Sweat & Tears.
John Sebastian actually made a lot of sense. He was our friend, someone we knew we
could have fun with and get along with musically. He had a sweet voice—just think of the Lovin’ Spoonful—but there was no room for John, vocally or writing-wise. And truthfully, we didn’t need another voice. We weren’t looking to be a choir.

Ahmet appeared to have the answer. One evening at the start of that lazy, amazing summer, he invited Croz and
Elliot Roberts to dinner at his house. There was a lot to celebrate. The CSN album was selling like mad, and requests for concert dates were starting to pile up. Ahmet knew he had a smash on his hands. After the plates were cleared, Ahmet began playing music on the stereo and reminiscing sentimentally about
Buffalo Springfield. He loved the magic that band had created, especially loved the tension in the guitars, the way they balanced each other.

“You know who you ought to talk to?” Ahmet asked. Who was the one guy who could do it all, bring the chops, the songs, the heat? And give CSN the missing elements it needed for an unbeatable live performance? His answer: “You guys need
Neil Young.”

(© Joel Bernstein)

N
EIL
Y
OUNG
: I
T WAS LIKE LOBBING A LIVE GRENADE
into a vacuum. Croz knew too well the potential blowback. Neil was a guy with immense talent who was utterly self-centered. Bands for him were merely stepping-stones, way stations to a personal goal. That’s the way it had gone down with Buffalo Springfield. They could never count on him at crunch time, never be sure he would turn up at gigs. But Ahmet knew the core of the Springfield was unbeatable, and he longed, in some way, to hang on to that value. He also realized what Neil’s presence did to Stephen. It not only kept him off-balance, but prodded him to rise with his guitar licks: “Follow
that
, motherfucker!” In which case, Stephen usually did. Neil brought out something in Stephen that was animal-like. They were like two longhorn stags on either side of a stage.

Stephen’s reaction was predictable. “
Are you fuckin’ kidding me, Ahmet?
” he huffed. “I just spent two years with the guy. He’s disruptive, doesn’t turn up. You want me to go back
there
?”

It was obvious from the stories around town just how explosive their relationship was. But it was hard to say no to Ahmet because you knew he was coming at it from a purely musical point of view, and when Ahmet talked, you listened. He was a very influential and persuasive cat where we were concerned.

The situation got thornier after Croz recalled an incident. One day, he had been sitting on the trunk of his car in Joni’s driveway
when Neil drove up the street, saw him, and pulled over. Crosby, in his suspicious way, asked, “What are you up to, man?”

Neil shrugged and said, “I wrote some new songs. Wanna hear ’em?” And he whipped out a guitar and sang “Country Girl” and “Helpless.”

Croz thought to himself, We’ve gotta have him.

The first I heard about it was in New York, during the remastering of our album. Stephen mentioned, “Maybe we should just get Neil.” I was totally against it. I didn’t want Neil in the band—I didn’t want
anybody
else in the band—and I said as much.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked. “We created this beautiful sound. Why fuck with it?”

Crosby emphasized our need for a lead guitarist when Stephen played keyboards in a concert situation. And, of course, those songs. “This guy is writing some of the best shit I ever heard,” he said. “He’s the guy who wrote ‘Expecting to Fly’ and ‘Clancy.’ When he sings those songs, you want to listen. I want him in the band.”

Stephen was equally adamant. He knew how great Neil really was. And he wanted what he had in the
Springfield, which was Neil the writer, singer, and guitar player who had an aura, real mojo. David and Stephen were two thirds of a democratic band, so it was really a fait accompli.

“Look, I don’t know Neil Young,” I said. “I don’t know if he’s anyone I can hang out with, like I can with the two of you. I don’t know if I can confide in him, if I can go to him and say, ‘I’ve got this tune, what do you think?’ I don’t know
anything
about him. Let me at least meet the guy before we make this gigantic decision.”

I got really worked up over this. We were so personally involved with each other. Did we have room, time, and space for another person in the mix? Another time-bomb personality? I didn’t think so. From a vocal point of view, I was totally opposed. Four-part is very different from three-part. Besides, I felt Stephen played great guitar; he was four times the guitar player Neil was. Wasn’t that enough?

I put my foot down. “I’ve got to meet Neil Young.”

He happened to be in New York at the time, and we arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Bleecker Street, just the two of us. I didn’t want anyone else to influence what I thought about this cat.

I remember walking in, seeing a guy with this dark cloud about him, and strangely enough, a lightness at the same time. Hard to explain. The guy was that sphinxlike, tough to read. It was obvious from the get-go that he knew what he wanted. We talked about what he could bring to the group. Unafraid, I got right in his face.

“Why am I talking to you about this fucking band I happen to think is already complete?” I asked.

Neil threw me one of those inscrutable stares. “Well, man, ever hear me and Stephen play together?”

I’d never heard the
Springfield live, I admitted, but I’d heard plenty of stories.

“Yeah, man—we’ve got it, man. And I’ve got the songs, too.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I told him. I’d heard “Expecting to Fly” and “Nowadays, Clancy.” Songwise, he could pull his own weight. But my concern was more about chemistry. Crosby, Stills & Nash was a stable compound; adding another element was potentially combustible. Like Crosby said, “Juggling four bottles of nitroglycerin is fine—until you drop one … ”

Turns out Neil Young was a funny motherfucker. I knew he had this dark, looming presence, a scowl and a loner tendency. But Neil was
funny.
Now, maybe he understood that I was the group’s lone holdout where he was concerned and he was on his best behavior, but at the end of breakfast I would have nominated him to be the prime minister of Canada. Based on his personality and my intuition, I went back to the guys and said, “I get it—he’s in. Let’s give it a shot.”

It so happened that Neil was managed by
Elliot Roberts, same guy who managed Joni and us. So, first, we ran the whole business thing by him. Because we were Crosby, Stills & Nash, the question was whether Neil would become one of our band members or part of the corporate entity. Elliot insisted that Neil have his name up
there with ours:
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It sounded more like a law firm at that point. I lost my ampersand and Neil got it. But that made sense, and I admired Neil for his attitude, which was: “If I’m going to join this band, I want my name up there and an equal share.” He was joining us
after
we’d made the first album, so we agreed to give him an equal cut of the gigs and anything else we recorded together, but nothing from the first record.

In any case, we had to move fast putting something together. The timing was delicate. The album was riding high on the charts and it was necessary for us to get out there and promote it. We wanted to be out in front of an audience while the record was fresh and hot. There were already a few upcoming gigs on our dance card. So we rented out the Village Gate in New York for a few days in June and rehearsed there, to get a feel for CSNY.

I hadn’t been inside the Village Gate since I’d first come to New York in 1965 with the Hollies. Back then, I was really into
jazz, so I’d already seen
Miles Davis at the Vanguard. Richard Alpert, who became Ram Dass, opened for him in a suit and a tie. He just walked onstage and talked about a new psychedelic era that was coming and turned on a strobe light—the first one I’d ever seen—with his tie swinging as the light hit it, just like acid. It was also the first time I ever saw a musician blow an incredible solo and just walk offstage, still playing, and go to the bar to have a drink while his bass player soloed. I later learned that was
so
Miles. Entering the Village Gate again brought back many fond memories.

Otherwise, there was a lot of work to be done. We had to slot Neil into what we were doing without losing the essence of what we’d created. Tough to do musically. It was going to change the sound of the band. And it was going to change the sound of the first record, live, because we were about to sing those songs in concert. We showed Neil what the vocals were, CSN style, then asked, “How do you fit into this chorus?” When we did a Neil Young song and came to the chorus, it was: “This is what we would do here, but we
need to make room for your harmony.” He had an unusually high voice, so often I would go under him to make it four-part, but there were also times we agreed to double the high part, which gave the harmonies an extra edge.

We began rehearsals at Stephen’s house on Shady Oak, a beast of a place he was renting from
Peter Tork on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, in Studio City. It was a big, strange sprawling structure that had originally belonged to the actor Wally Cox, with a music room covered in oriental carpets and a swimming pool and a storehouse of drugs that kept everyone mellow. Stephen had a studio on the premises, with a B-3 and an ever-ready drum kit. I’m not sure how many people lived there. Lots of very nubile young women. Friends who needed a place to crash for a while. It was an all-purpose hippie haven. We spent lots of lovely days there, using the sauna, feasting on steak dinners, indulging ourselves on the food and various other tasty treats.

Jimi Hendrix stopped by when he was in town. And
Eric Clapton.
David Geffen and Elliot Roberts came to hear us rehearse. Man, Geffen was so full of himself at the time. He’d done the record deal and worked out the trade of me for
Richie Furay. There was the whiff of a
Woodstock deal in the air. He was strutting around like a dandy peacock, so we threw him into the pool. Stephen and Croz picked him up and did the dirty work. He had this expensive white shirt on, a pair of designer slacks, patent-leather loafers. “You think you’re full of yourself? Well, watch this!” He was completely soaked, and then we chucked a bunch of roses in after him. I took a photo of him standing there, soaked to the skin.

He came out of the water with a rose in his teeth. He had to know it was a joke and that we grudgingly loved him. When you have someone like Crosby in your band, you have to play it nice and loose, otherwise you’re not going to survive. And Geffen, if anything, was a long-term survivor.

Those rehearsals went better than anyone expected. Musically,
Stephen was on fire. He and Neil picked up right where they’d left off with the
Springfield, playing amazing barnburner solos together. Stephen made room for Neil in the solos, and Neil expressed himself accordingly, just as we hoped, saying, “Follow that, motherfucker.” Stephen’s riffs would say, “No problem, listen to this. Take
that
, motherfucker.” At the end, they’d be
right there
together, building to a brilliant crescendo.

I’ve got to admit that Neil added an element to Crosby, Stills & Nash that we didn’t have: that dark edge, that biting Neil Young thing. It was obvious after those first few days at the Gate that we had made the right decision. The music went somewhere else that was equally great, if not better. We were smart enough to realize what was happening. It wasn’t like we did this because our manager or record guy thought it would be a good idea. We did it because of the music.

Our coming-out party, so to speak, was at the Chicago Auditorium Theatre on August 17, 1969. It was a warm-up date before we played
Woodstock, which we heard was going to be a giant thing, maybe twenty thousand kids. Joni opened for us in Chicago—how ballsy was that? Our album was in the top five; the buzz on both coasts and everywhere in between was enormous. It was the first time I’d performed since being with the Hollies. I could hardly wait.