A folk rock/rock supergroup known for their distinctive vocal harmonies and activist politics.
Initially formed by the trio of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, the origins of the group lie in two 1960s rock bands, the Byrds and the Hollies, and the demise of a third, Buffalo Springfield.
Friction existed between Crosby and his fellows in the Byrds, which came to a head in 1967 over two specific issues: his substitution, at the invitation of Stills, for an absent Neil Young during Buffalo Springfield’s set at the Monterey Pop Festival in June; and the Byrds’ rejection of Crosby’s Triad as either a single or an album track in August. As a result, Crosby was dismissed from the Byrds in the fall of 1967.
By early 1968, Buffalo Springfield had disintegrated over personal issues. Stills and Crosby began meeting informally and jamming, the results of one encounter in Florida on Crosby’s schooner being the song Wooden Ships, composed in collaboration with another guest, Paul Kantner.
Nash had been introduced to Crosby when the Byrds had toured the UK in 1966 and when the Hollies came to California in 1968 Nash resumed his acquaintance with Crosby. At a party at the home of Cass Elliot, Nash asked Stills and Crosby to repeat their performance of a new song by Stills, You Don't Have To Cry, blending a second harmony on the spot into their singing. The vocals gelled, and the three realised that they had something quite special.
The Hollies, who had enjoyed pop hits in the mid-1960s, had been struggling with the changing music scene in England due to the advent of psychedelia and were planning to do an album of all Dylan covers. Seeing this as a step in the wrong direction, and creatively frustrated with the Hollies, Nash decided to quit and throw his lot in with Crosby and Stills.
After failing an audition with the Beatles' Apple Records, they were signed to Atlantic Records by Ahmet Ertegün, who had been a fan of the Springfield and disappointed by that band's demise.
From the outset, given their respective band histories, the trio decided not to be locked into a group structure, using their surnames as identification to ensure independence and a guarantee against the band simply continuing without one of them, as had both the Byrds and the Hollies after the departures of Crosby and Nash. Their record contract with Atlantic reflected this, positioning CSN with a unique flexibility unheard of for an untested group. The trio also picked up a strong management team in Elliot Roberts and David Geffen, who had engineered their contract with Atlantic.
Their first album, Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) was an immediate hit, spawning two Top 40 hit singles and receiving major radio airplay. Other than the presence of drummer Dallas Taylor, Stills handled most of the instrumental parts himself, a testament to his talent but leaving the band in need of additional personnel to be able to tour, now a necessity given the debut album’s commercial impact.
Retaining Taylor, the band decided initially to hire a keyboard player, Stills at one point approaching Steve Winwood, who declined. Eventually the trio expanded to a quartet with the addition of Neil Young and went on to tour in the late summer of 1969, their second gig being the Woodstock Festival.
They released their first album with Young, Déjà Vu, in 1970. However, the tenuous nature of the partnership, built into the group philosophy from the onset and strained by their success, weighed on the individual personalities and the group imploded after their tour in the summer of 1970.
All four members achieved significant success with solo albums in the early 1970s. Crosby and Nash embarked on a successful acoustic tour accompanied only by their own guitars and piano, captured for the 1998 document Another Stoney Evening. On tour, they rediscovered the joy they had felt with CSN at first, minus the egotistic in-fighting that had made the last CSNY shows so difficult.
Attempts at reuniting CSNY in 1973 and 1974 quickly broke down. Reaching an impasse with the parent band, Crosby and Nash decided to re-activate their duo act, touring regularly, signing to ABC Records and producing two additional studio albums.
CSN resurfaced without Young in 1977 to release the album CSN. Regrouping as a regular touring act, they charted again with Daylight Again in 1982. However, Crosby's increasing dependence on cocaine was making his participation problematic and he was jailed on drug and weapons charges in Texas in May 1982.
CSN recorded two more studio albums in the 1990s, Live It Up and After The Storm, both low sellers by previous standard and mostly ignored by all except for their remaining core fans.
By the late 1990s, CSN found themselves without a record contract. They began financing recordings themselves and in 1999 Stills invited Young to guest on a few tracks, which resulted in a CSNY album, Looking Forward. The album was better received than CSN's previous three albums, and the ensuing CSNY2K tour in 2000 and the CSNY Tour of America of 2002 were major successes.
In 2006, CSNY set off on their Freedom of Speech tour in support of Young's album Living with War. The long setlists included the bulk of the new protest album as well as material from Stills' long delayed solo album Man Alive! and newer material from Crosby and Nash. CSN continue to tour.