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Trips by Ellen Sander A book published by: Charles Scribner's Sons-New York, 1973. Reprinted here with permission from author: Ellen Sander In the wake of Chicago, David Crosby and Stephen Stills were moping around in Crosby's Los Angeles home one morning as summer was drawing to an inconclusive end, reflecting on the urgency and the same time the idiocy of revolution. "I don't think a violent revolution is what we're going to have here," said David. "I think it's going to be some of that, the spades are going to give it and they're going to be some of that, the spades are going to give it and they're going to get it. That's probably what will happen to the cities." "If you don't believe it," said Stephen, "go hang out with some of those little ladies with blue hair that elected Lyndon Johnson. The right wing is a lot stronger than the left wing and that's where the trouble is going to come from. It's a fact. And when it start to come down, boy, I'm going fishing!" "I'm just trying to stay alive," retorted Crosby. "Nobody's come along and sold me a political bill of goods. I'm not playing parlor revolution, that is not a game. Those idiots are endangering us all, the best they can do is take some of the heat off me." "It's not a game!" glowered Stephen, jumping to his feet, grabbing Crosby's rifle, which was sitting in the corner of the room. "It's not a game but that's how they're playing it and it's dangerous, just as dangerous as having this gun in your room!" "Of course," agreed Crosby, "if we get into that we're beat, they've got us totally covered. They've been doing it for years, and they know how to slaughter." "And later, one stony night in his Beverly Glen house, Crosby sat hanging out with Carl Gottlieb, of the Committee, discussing a medal Joni Mitchell had given Crosby, "for conspicuous nudity in the face of the enemy." They were improvising on the possible history of the porcelain medal for the benefit of household and everyone was giggling at his own clever repartee. "In this house, even bullshit is an art," I yocked. Crosby grinned on me and squinted his eyes. "Everything is an art," he said, "and it's all bullshit." David still had no gig together. Stephen had been sitting around since the Buffalo Springfield broke up, staring at the side of a mountain. They had been hanging in and hanging out with one another, jamming, singing, trying out new songs. Graham Nash, having left the Hollies, came to Los Angeles from England. It was simply the place to be in that quivering of time when everyone was in between groups and trying hard not to think about it while the days got imperceptibly shorter and shadows of insecurity crept up the canyon wall. One afternoon Crosby and Stills were at Cass Elliot's house, sitting on the floor and singing. John Sebastian was there too, and some other friends and Nash dropped by. Crosby and Stills were wailing, into their songs so heavily they were unaware of where they were. They harmonized, trading off lead parts by instinct, their voices twining like longtime lovers together, sure and rhythmically. Nash followed the song in his head for a few moments and then opened up his throat and laid a high harmony over the top of them, skimming the sound, peaking the energy, completing the soul of the song. Something in the room changed the moment he did that, it was like a split second of destiny come to pass, after which none of them, or their music, would ever be the same. In the months that followed they did little more than sing together; there was nothing more gratifying for any of them to do. In every other respect those boys were a mess. Crosby had never really gotten over Joni Mitchell, who had jilted him for Leonard Cohen, who had jilted her. Stills was sensing that desparately involved affair with Judy Collins was coming to a real end. He spent half his time agonizing over it, the rest of it trying to convince her to marry him. To keep his sanity, he sang his hungry heart out. Graham Nash was falling in love with Joni Mitchell; she was falling in love with him. And quite perceptibly Crosby, Stills, and Nash were falling in love with one another. Their sound sent everyone within earshot into rapture. As winter bore down they went east to Sag Harbor, a small whaling town near the tip of Long Island, and lived there with John Sebastian, polishing their music. Sessions bassist Harvey Brooks was called in briefly to play bass with them but, according to Crosby, he was too good. He put Stephen Stills uptight and was dropped. Brooks didn't even know he was dropped until the day he went to pick up some tickets to join the boys in London and was informed that there were no tickets left for him. Egos were high and flying. The sound got tighter and tighter. Recording together was going to be a problem contractually because they were all signed to different companies. A manager worked it out so that Atlantic traded a then new group, Poco, to Columbia for Graham Nash's release so they could all record for Atlantic, and it was set They would make a record soon, but for the time being they went to London to rehearse and hang out some more. A friend of long standing, Dallas Taylor, would be the drummer. Contracts took all winter to work out, huge amounts of money changed hands. Came the first glimmerings of spring, it was time to make an album. By the time Crosby, Stills, and Nash were halfway through making their first album, it had been raining for forty days and forty nights in Los Angeles. The town was uptight, people were cabin-bound, and nothing was happening in the clubs. News of new association of the three musicians was around but nobody saw hide nor hair of them during that time. They were locked up in closed recording sessions almost every night. On a rare night they hung out together with a very few friends, piecing their voices together, conspiring on the technicalities and metaphysics of making a beautiful album. Crosby's house in Beverly Glen was glowing. Inside it was all redwood candles, and incense and they were watching TV. It was a rerun of an old Pete Seeger program featuring the then deceased Mississippi John Hurt and the three were watching intently, rocking softly to the late old man's music. They program ended and they each tried to pick out Hurt's peculiar style of double-thumbing the guitar. Stills got close and started to sing "You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley," culminating in a self parody so perfect it might have been intentional. At twenty-four, Stills already qualified as a veteran of the American music scene. He'd been on the road since he was fifteen, his first job was as a stable boy at a racetrack down south. He craved success, money, and stardom so hard you could feel it in his voice, but he came on like a stone hick whenever he lightened up. His presence was a studied forbiddingnes, he said little, smiled less, dropped perfectly uproarious one-liners when they were the least expected. Star Trek was interrupted by a visit from Jim Dickson, who came to play the original Byrds demonstration tapes for David, to get his permission to issue them as a record (the record that eventually became Preflyte). They sounded like a bunch of guys who used to be the Everly Brothers and wanted to be the Beatles. "Mr Tambourine Man" swarmed out the speakers, its euphoria filling the room, plunging everyone into nostalgia, a remembrance of innocence, a promise of experience, a paen of joy. David Crosby looked at the listings on the tape box and alerted Graham Nash. "Wait'll you hear the next one!" And the next one was a song that reeked of phrasings embarrassingly derivative of the Hollies, but nowhere near as good. "Wot, did you listen to oos?" exploded Nash, slapping his forehead and laughing. "Sure," said Crosby with an overly casual flip of his hand, "the folk process." Crosby winced as he listened closer and heard himself hit a particularly sour note. He giggled. "Sure," he said to Dickson, "go put it out, I'll be a sport if the others will." Dickson stayed and inquired about the new group endeavor. By that time Van Dyke Parks and Paul Williams had joined the household for the evening. "Let's play the album," suggested Nash, grabbing for a guitar. Stills picked up another and began to play the opening riff of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." They ran through the entire album, singing and playing without a pause or a spoken word between them. When it was over the room was silent and stunned, overcome with amazement at how beautiful they sounded. They sang "Blackbird" as an encore and dickered about putting it on the album. Paul Williams had written a poem called "The Word Has New Meaning." David Crosby thought it might make a song and wanted to compose music to it. Paul wrote the words down and Graham Nash looked over his shoulder. "I know that word," said Nash, "it's the same word as, you know, 'all you need is word.'" He grinned at his own cleverness. David Crosby raised his eyes and shook his head softly. "Graham," he said quietly, "you are so stone beautiful I can hardly believe it." The following evening they were at Wally Heider's studio on Cahuenga Boulevard, piecing together tracks for the album. The engineer, Bill Halverson, a beefy blond man, hunkered over the control board, locating instruments on each track of the tapes, isolating and labeling them, playing them one at a time to get a reading on each. The boys were in the studio, through a glass wall. The connecting microphones were shut off and they played and jabbered silently. They were joking around with songs, feeling out parts, and goofing on each other's riffs. A light on the panel indicated someone was at the door, a massive soundproof door that took great strength to open. Outside stood Donovan, like a scrawny scarecrow, coming to visit after taping a Smothers Brothers show. He came in and they played the tapes of material already finished. He danced around the room in delight. They all went into the studio afterward to let Halverson finish the reading; Donovan and Graham Nash played the Beatles' songs together. It was time to record again. Graham Nash sat alone in the studio and played "Lady of the Island." It was perfect, that one take. Everyone was amazed. All the other songs took about thirty takes each to get right. David Crosby went into the studio to sing a second part over it. Halverson played the take Nash had just completed, opened up another track on the tape for Crosby to sing into, and rolled it. Crosby freewheeled it, creating harmonic circles around Nash's voice. He came back into the studio and they all listened to the three parts together, one guitar, and two voices. It was perfect. Halverson moved the volume controls around on the board, adjusting each part to the other and fading it gracefully at the end. Everyone watched the oscilloscope as he did it, to make sure the parts were in phase, not combating one another. The green signals formed ellipses which spun around and around, creating circular designs, winding, spreading, quivering, finally shrinking as the sound faded, compressing into a tiny agitated dot that skipped around the very center of the instrument, then disappeared. The lights were dim. Pungent smoke was heavy in the air. There was silence, heavy, meaningful silence. The doorbell light flickered again, intruding on the almost darkness. The lights were faded up and the door answered. It was Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun. Stills, from the studio, saw Ertegun through the glass, ran through the door and gave him an enormous bear hug. They were made welcome, and in walked their faithful Indian companion, Phil Spector. They played the finished material for everyone again. "Yessir, we're working hard," said Crosby, trying to sound credible. "At two bucks a minute we can't afford to socialize. We may even bring this one in on time, Ahmet. That'll improve our reputation in the business a lot, right? Specially Stills." Stills yocked and guffawed, the laughter hissing out in throaty spasms between his crooked teeth. Ertegun ruffed his hair. They hadn't chosen a title yet for the album and Jerry Wexler suggested Music From Big Ego. It was flatly rejected. "Guess they don't have the distance to appreciate it," mumbled Wexler, amused. Spector, Ertegun, and Wexler left, smiling. A few moments later, with a clatter of hooves and a hearty heigh-ho guru, Donovan left and they got back to work because a more difficult task was at hand: "Long Time Gone." The song wouldn't hang together the way they had been playing it; it sounded overweight, clumsy, preachy, and preposterous. Crosby sang it and he sounded like Stills. It was getting to the point where they were wondering whether it should even be on the first album after all. Crosby was frustrated. Stills was impatient. Nash was concerned. The arrangements between them had been for an equal distribution of each other's songs and whose song it was, in a difference of opinion, got the last word. "Long Time Gone" was coming to a short dead end. It was very late, they had been in the studio for nine straight hours, and had accomplished a great deal. They prepared to go home and get some sleep for the next night's sessions. Stills grumbled about putting away the guitars and stayed late. When the others left, he worked all night long and into daylight, going home on the verge of collapse. The following night the group assembled in the studio again. Stills sat at the control board and ran the tape. Out came an entirely new arrangement for "Long Time Gone" which he had single-handedly put together the night before. It was gorgeous. It churned out rhythmically, the lines meeting with the incredible force the song contained. An organ part undulated along the top of it, insinuating a siren. David was agog. He swigged a lug of wine, went into the studio, and sang in an entirely original way. As if possessed with the intensity of the music, he broke through. He was tearful at the end. "I finally found my voice," he said afterward. "Five years I've been singing and I finally found a voice of my own. Every time I had a lead vocal part with the Byrds I choked up because I was so scared. But these two loved me enough to let me find my own voice." He thanked and complimented Stills on the arrangement for the song. "You make me ashamed of myself," he said, with no small measure of admiration, and even more affection. Stills, who always had trouble accepting open praise from anyone, had his eyes down, and when he raised them the expression on his face said plainly and silently: I arranged your song better than you could have in a thousand years. And don't you forget it. Crosby didn't respond in kind but it wasn't lost on him. The time for real ego clashes was yet to come. They loved and fought like family. They made up to make music and money together. None of them singly had the same kind of weight that they had together. Joni Mitchell, who was working on her own album at the time, dropped in later that night with a big box of homemade cookies. She played some of her new songs for the group. One of them was a song for Nash, whom she'd nicknamed "Willie". She sat at the piano and sang. "I will be his lady all my life..." Nash leaned over the piano, enchanted, and went misty. Crosby watched from across the room, the utter heartbreak on his face unnoticed by either of them, they were so wrapped up in each other. Shortly the group started recording again, doing the last vocal overdubbing on the another song. It worked out so beautifully it even surprised them. Everyone was excited, happy, enthusiastic, tired, and hungry. A break was called. The road manager Chris, had brought some wine, cheese, fresh fruit, and deli. Everyone dug in. Joni and Graham were off getting silly with one another. Stills muttered something about getting back to work. Crosby slumped on the couch, cuddling a bottle of wine. He closed his eyes and his mouth curled into a smile behind his mustache. "I've never had so much fun making an album in my entire life!" In the interim between the time the album was released and their first tour, they had to find a bassist and a keyboard player. Stills got hold of Bruce Palmer from the old Buffalo Springfield. Palmer tried, but couldn't cut it. "It got low," reported Crosby. "We were trying to tell him he wasn't making it and he was insisting 'Yes, I am.' It was really hard to do." A bassist appeared, a very young black boy from Motown who played with them on the first tour only. Stills politicked very hard to get Neil Young into the group over Crosby's and Nash's angry protest. Neil Young was still intent on making it as a single artist but he hadn't broken out yet. By that time Stills was the power in the group and he wielded it with a heavy hand. They broke up, re-formed again. Young was in. The original group was Crosby, Stills, and Nash. The deal was that they were financial partners in the group. They wanted a bass player and keyboard man to tour with them for salary, earning good money but considerably less that the group members, who would get percentages of whatever they brought in, which by the time, they knew, would be in the area of seven figures. Halverson got a small percentage of album receipts, but one that amounted to a great deal of cash. They finally, under protest, gave Dallas Taylor some kind of minute percentage also. Greed was setting in. But when Neil Young joined the group, he joined not only as a keyboard man but as a writer and an additional superstar, giving the group more weight. He was cut in for a considerable percent. Their concert price skyrocketed, promoters revolted but gave it to them, having raised their ticket prices. Dallas Taylor so resented Neil Young's getting a bigger piece that he would mess him up on stage. Young hit the roof when it happened once to often to be accidental and insisted he'd never play on the same stage with Taylor again. Taylor had to leave the group. They never got a better drummer. They broke up and reformed again and again. Finally Graham Nash, who by that time had parted company with Joni Mitchell, became involved with Stephen Stills' newgirlfriend. Stills, whose heart was much too vulnerable, said he was splitting for good. That time Ahmet Ertegun believed him and was quite upset about it. "That group is gone." He shook his head mournfully. "The only way they'll get back together again is for the others to go to Stills and ask him to come back and they'd never do it, they're too proud and they're too hurt." "Why don't you just get another bass player," suggested a well connected friend. "I know of one just as famous, talented, even as crazy as Stills and I bet he's looking for a new band himself." Ertegun, without a trace of suspicion, brightened and bit. "Who?" The friend grinned triumphantly. "Paul McCartney." Ertegun, without missing a beat, replied. "That's a tremendous
idea, tremendous! I wonder how much Apple would give me for the
other three?
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