Link to a bit on Grantland where they discuss how debauched the CSNY 1974 tour was. Neil Young was apparently fine, but the rest of the boys, especially Stills and Crosby might as well have been in a hair metal band for all of the silly, immature stupidity they engaged in.
[QUOTE=Stills]
In advance of the concerts, Stephen Stills told Cameron Crowe, in reference to CSNY’s prior tours, “We did one for the art and the music, and one for the chicks. This one’s for the cash.”
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[QUOTE=Crosby]
Road manager R. Mac Holbert recalled how Crosby would order him to his hotel room and make him discuss business while one of the two girlfriends accompanying Crosby on the tour went down on Crosby.
[/QUOTE]
Douchebags. Seriously.
I particularly love this one:
[QUOTE=Stills]
Bob Dylan showed up backstage at one point and played all the songs from Blood on the Tracks for Stills and bassist Tim Drummond before the album was released. Stills, coked out of his mind, told Dylan the songs weren’t any good.
[/QUOTE]
I recall reading somewhere else that during the late 60’s, right before the Beatles broke up, Stills walked up to Paul and handed him a Precision Bass and told him to play a real instrument (vs. the Hofner violin bass Paul favored).
What a tool.
I have listened to Super Sessions and recently heard some solo Stills - he can totally play. But what a complete douche…
I’m a big Neil Young fan who’s never been into CSN because the words and the general attitude of their music come off as hippy twaddle to me. When Neil is involved I’m marginally more interested. And OK, I do like Cowboy Movie. They could sing together, I’ll admit that much. The Grantland piece documents some mega-douchey behavior but between their attitude and all the money and drugs that must’ve been flying around those guys in 1974, I’m not surprised in the least. I think they’d probably acknowledge today that they were dicks at the time.
Stills wrote “Love the One You’re With,” quite possibly the douchiest song written by a major artist up to that time, so yeah, not really surprised by any of this.
The first two albums were glorious, but yeeeeesh, there is chapter after chapter of hissy fit, coke feuled, indulgent, one upmanship douchery chronicled in Graham Nash’s biography.
In the case of Stills, there’s plenty of underlying psychology before he even gets to the coke or anything else. I don’t have all the details at hand, but ISTR a military brat childhood and perhaps an abusive father.
In any case, the guy has (or at least had) an asteroid-sized chip on his shoulder. On the one hand, you can sort of understand it, because he is a phenomenally talented guitarist, and was, at least through the first two CSN(Y) albums, a fine pop songwriter when he wasn’t fancying himself a wizened bluesman. Yet he lived in Neil Young’s shadow in many ways, even when Neil wasn’t a part of the band.
I recall the story of one of the epic Buffalo Springfield guitar battles, in which Stills played his usual lacy and lightning-fast runs for a few minutes, then ceded to Young, who proceeded to blow him away and leave him with his mouth hanging open in wonder by playing one passionate and emotional note for every five Stills played. The musician in Stills loved playing with Young, the egotist in him did not.
So add hard drugs and unfiltered adoration to the psychological mix Stills already brought to the table, and you have something pretty ugly. Someone else was just telling me about the '74 tour and Stills playing overbearingly loud and obnoxiously every night thinking he had something to prove, and coming off the stage all puffed up and thinking he’d achieved something great. Everyone else had a different opinion.
As for Crosby, he too was a egotistical, privileged douchebag long before the serious drugs took hold. He now admits that The Byrds were fully justified in firing him during the Notorious Byrd Brothers sessions.
A decade ago, I saw an interview with Roger McGuinn and Crosby, in which Crosby admitted that he’d been a drugged-up jerk, and that McGuinn was absolutely right to kick him out of the Byrds.
For years, Crosby spread the rumor that he’d quit the Byrds because McGuinn was a prude who disapproved of the song “Triad”? In reality, Crosby now concedes, he was fired from the band “for being an asshole.”
It appeared that the two were on friendly terms again, and had been for quite some time. Crosby seems like a guy it’s VERY easy to get mad at, but hard to STAY mad at for long.
Heh, when I read the thread title, I thought you meant musically. If folk has a hair metal equivalent branch of lightweight and non-threating pablum executed well - CSN is a big part of it.
And like the hair metal guys, the money and attention apparently went to their heads. I can’t say it wouldn’t happen to me, but I’m in remarkably little danger of finding out.:mad:
Well put. That said, OK, I also like Almost Cut My Hair, Wooden Ships, Ohio, and come to think of it, Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is pretty good. And the title says a lot about the exploits referenced in this thread.
Well, I can enjoy Sweet Judy Blue Eyes myself, and I even think Crue’s Livewire is a decent song that’s just waiting to be sung through an organ other than the nose.
Just because I can recognize what I’m listening to doesn’t mean I have any taste.
I’m a great admirer of McGuinn from a musical standpoint, but IMHO he’s the one who’s being an asshole now. Crosby has repeatedly said how much he would like to work with McGuinn and Chris Hillman again, but Roger categorically refuses because his “Christian beliefs” won’t allow him to associate with Crosby.
I don’t know if he’s ever been specific as to which particular Crosby sins make him feel this way (the Melissa Etheridge incident, perhaps?), or if it’s just the fact that Crosby isn’t a Christian.
In any case, let’s hear it once again for religion dividing people instead of bringing them together. Woohoo!
You got that right. Even Mr. Nice Guy Graham Nash comes off as a douche.
I will add that the 1970 tour, the one that resulted in the Four Way Street album, included the worst concert I have ever attended. I believe that they were all too drugged up to play and sing well, and the Stills-Young guitar dueling that I have read so much about sounded like cacaphony to my 16-year-old guitar -playing self.
All I can say is, if in a parallel universe somewhere I’m able to carry on a business discussion while one of my two girlfriends on the tour gives me head, f’in-A right I’m doing it.
I guess my point is that CSN are held up reasonably high in the rock pantheon vs. a band most folks giggle at, like Motley Crue. But at their essence, is there really much difference, in terms of “have 1 - 2 albums that sell well, a handful of songs that get play to this day - but ultimately, a bunch of drugged-out douchebags in it for the money?”
I’m now a bit more curious as to why someone who is at the top of the pantheon and respected on a number of levels like Neil Young continues to have an association with them, however limited. I know he and Stills have a long, long history going all the way back to Canada, but in so many ways, they represent sellouts that he typically scoffs at. I have never looked closely, so have no clue.
I think that, when the stars are aligned right, Neil does it strictly for the music.
My 33-year-old son, who got seriously into music with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, says that the CSNY show he saw a few years ago was the best concert he’s ever seen. He says they played for three hours with only a ten-minute break, and that every one of them was at the top of their game…presumably because Neil whipped them all into shape and would only do it if they were truly committed. This was about the time of Neil’s Living With War album, and they performed most of the songs from that plus the expected favorites.
I didn’t see them live, but I did see a TV special made about that time that showed them in rehearsal and performing informally, and it certainly did seem like Neil was cracking the whip to good effect.
I would agree that, sans Neil, the rest seem to do it most of the time just for the bucks. I saw CSN about 10 years ago at the local fairgrounds, and it did seem that they were pretty much phoning it in.
That’s not what McGuinn told “Rolling Stone” last year. He speaks highly of Crosby but loves the life he and his wife have and doesn’t need the money.
Of course you can also find organized religion haters like John Lennon and Frank Zappa who would not reform with the Beatles or Mothers of Invention. Roger Waters did for a few gigs after 25 years of trashing Gilmour, Mason and Wright. John Fogerty never has made up with CCR mates.
Yes, it’s true that McGuinn has no motivation generally for doing anything musically other than what he’s doing, and that he’s very happy to continue to do it. And that’s fine; he has no obligation to anyone to do something he doesn’t want to do (however much we may wish for it).
But it’s also true that McGuinn earlier made the very comments about not performing with Crosby due to his religious beliefs that I ascribed to him. My earlier post is pretty close to an exact quote.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove. All of those you mentioned had their specific reasons for not wanting to revisit their former bands. None of those reasons had anything to do with other members’ belief systems, religious or otherwise.
Another thing McGuinn said (again pretty close to an exact quote) was “I want to leave The Byrds as a cherished memory and don’t feel the need to go back to them.” If he had left it at that, it would have been more than sufficient. But mixing in his religion (and by implication, Crosby’s failure to conform to it) seems like a gratuitous potshot to me — just as surely as it would be if Crosby were to say “I won’t perform with McGuinn because he’s a born-again Christian.”
Just my two pence on this - but I am Neil Young fan so there is likely inherent bias in this:
I bought the CSNY 1974 set - it’s pretty good - but by God does everything written by Neil Young blow away everything else on the record. All of his songs crackle and spit, whereas the other stuff from the rest of the band just seems so sedate and self-satisfied by comparison - even if they are well played and the acoustic stuff on the second disc really does show off their abilities in harmonising with one another. Bear in mind, that during this period Neil was in “the ditch”, so he’s got these douchebag Laurel Canyon hippies (of which he was one, let’s not forget) playing Revolution Blues with him, whilst he bawls out “I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars but I hate them worse than lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars”. Hard not to hear it as self flagellation (and it’s meant to be written from the point of view of Charles Manson, so there’s that angle too) but it’s also got to have some sort of barb at the people he was hanging around with at times and the extent to which they were dicks.
