Customer Reviews

Crosby Stills & Nash

5 star:		(94)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From the very beginning it was clear that this was to be the first of the new super-groups, composed of discontented refugees who either quit or were bounced from monster groups like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Hollies. And when the star-crossed trio finally started harmonizing amid the crisp clear echoes of their sparkling acoustic guitar work, it was obvious that the sky was the limit for their wonderful songs and music. This was the album that introduced them to a waiting world, with the album becoming an instant success based on the smash hit of "Suite Judy Blue Eyes", Stephen Stills' love paean to paramour Judy Collins.

The album is full of innovative pop sounds, from Crosby's evocative "Guinevere" to Graham Nash's perky "Marrakesh Express" to Stills' "49 Bye-Byes". Of course, the fact that they were informally introduced to 500,000 potential fans at Woodstock didn't hurt, nor did the fact that the movie version of "Woodstock" prominently featured a number of the songs from this album as part of its soundtrack. Finally, it was their brilliance in quickly following the success of this album with "Déjà Vu" that cemented their rise to the top of the rock world. My favorites here are "Wooden Ships", "You Don't Have To Cry", and of course, "Long Time Gone", David Crosby's moving albeit cynical tribute to Robert F. Kennedy. This is a classic album that every rock fan should have on his or her top shelf, as a part of the history of rock music. Enjoy!

In a word, magical. I recently found a copy of this classic album on vinyl with the cool, wintery, double gatefold photo and creepy back cover photo in tact. As for the music inside, what can I say that hasn't been said. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" is still a fun, ambling journey through the mind of a helpless romantic. The doo-wop inspired harmonies that serve as this song's coda is still the coolest thing to hear on a classic rock station. "Marakesh Express" is just plain fun, even for a throwaway. "Guinnevere" is THE acoustic ballad that has yet to be topped, and sounds simply gorgeous without being too cutesy or cloying. My other personal faves are; "Wooden Ships" "Helplessly Hoping" and "Long Time Gone" (I still get chills hearing it while I'm watching the opening of the 'Woodstock' film!) All in all, a very enjoyable, effortless listen that captured a perfect utopian moment in pop music and culture in general. Highly Regarded as a Classic, and rightfully so.

Crosby, Stills, & Nash's debut is a fantastic album and arguably their best. Simply put, this is a classic album with excellent songs, beautiful harmonies, and stellar musicianship. Several tracks from this album are still standards on album-oriented radio. All three members are in top form here. Leading the way is their most popular and memorable track, Stephen Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", a beautiful song which has not aged one day since its original release. He also contributes the classic acoustic tracks "Helplessly Hoping" and "You Don't Have To Cry", which are two of the band's best examples of their soaring harmonies. David Crosby's "Guinnevere" and "Long Time Gone" are classic rock standards and are two of the best tracks in his long and illustrious career. Graham Nash also wrote some of his best pop songs here with "Marrakesh Express", "Pre-Road Downs", and "Lady of the Island." But the strongest track would have to be "Wooden Ships", written by Crosby, Stills, and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. This is a powerful track with excellent lyrics and an awesome performance by the band. While CSN would release a few other strong albums after this, such as the excellent Deja Vu album, this is the band at their best. Highly recommended.

I'll make this short. This is simply CSN before all the excess baggage of fame and relationship malfunctions. Amazon is making it available today as a 2.99 download! The harmonies are more beautiful than ever, due to a 2006 remastering. The CD is a pleasure to hear. There is alot of lighthearted fare songwise thanks to the aspect of Neil Young not being involved (sorry N.Y. fans!) and the exuberance of a what was at the time an exciting new project. Most of you probably have had it on vinyl or pre-remaster CD version. Here's some good advice... buy it again anyway!

Here's the deal, folks: Buy it. Seriously. I don't care if you're a fan of CSN or have never heard of them. This style of music, this sound, this evoked feeling...it's the precursor to what a lot of indie and alternative is today. If you're a CSN fan, of course you know you have to have this. You probably already do, in fact. The people I'm really talking to now are the members of my generation and younger (I'm about 30), many of whom have never been introduced to this music or have turned their noses up at it for being outdated.

I'm telling you, put it on a playlist with DCFC (especially Plans or Transatlanticism), Iron & Wine, Blitzen Trapper, Bon Iver, even some Andrew Bird (just to name a few). It will blend right in. You won't regret it!

C,S,N's first album is their best and is simply one of the best ever. This album DEFINES the word classic. Few songs can match the incredible Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. Each of the ten songs on this album fully expresses the careers of these three great musicians. This album should be in everybody's collection. Few albums can compete with this one.

Full of haunting phrases, air-locked harmonies, folksy finger-picking and chiming guitars, this is an album that stands marginally, but significantly, ahead of all its great neighbours from 1969.

Firstly, you have to admire the candid nature of much of the lyric matter. The honesty and passion Stills gives to his compositions is moving when you consider that he was essentially a remarkably gifted 24 year old at the time. he fills this album with his vision, free from the restraints of buffalo springfield. you can see the influences of freddie neil and the greenwich village scene - 'You don't have to cry', 'Helplessly Hoping' to subtler influences such as hendrix on suite: judy blue eyes, motown on the backing tracks for pre-road downs and marrakesh express and folk-rock on 49 bye-byes. the result is an album virtually flawless musically.

Yet unlike later albums by CSN, the sound is not overproduced. Part of its charm is an earthiness, a bit like on The Band's Music from Big Pink or Nick Drake's Pink Moon. The result is a musical red wine, a lush, deep and absolutely charming album that veers from moments of absolute greatness (suite: judy blue eyes) to moments of touching simplicity (lady of the island).

David Crosby adds a strength to all the compositions in his singing and perhaps unparallelled knowledge of harmonies. Listening to Jazz ( Coltrane's A Love Supreme etc), Gregorian Chant and 1950s vocal groups (like the young Brian Wilson) and Classical music had given Crosby a vast pad from which he could pull his musical colours. His 'Guinnevere' and 'Wooden Ships' demonstrate his commitment to conjuring up an aural landscape of mystery, sic-fi, escape and rejection.

Graham Nash, perhaps more than Stills and crosby, is the singer who really makes the album gell in the end. you can practically hear the joy in his voice, the sense that "yes, all those years touring on cold european days are behind me and now i can be free'. 'you don't have to cry' and '49 bye-byes' are made by him.

but they all come together and make this era-redefining, generation-affirming and musically-gifted masterpiece. from beginnibg to end a very special album - all the better for the innocence and lack of excess when making it - these are three guys high on the joys of life, love and making music!

In less than two years, this album...and I still refer to them as albums...will be 40 years old...funny, doesn't look it....

This is one of the most elegantly produced recordings of all times. I'm not really into things with a "high-gloss" sheen. I like things a little rough around the edges, but there are those times when I don't want something with an edge...I want something soothing...something calm...something that makes me think of driving down PCH in a convertible on a sunny late afternoon day, the sun hitting the ocean just right and everything is is engulfed in a golden glow and 'Wooden Ships' kicks in on the stereo...


If you smile at me you know I will understand
Cause that is something everybody everywhere does
In the same language
I can see by your coat my friend that you're from the other side
There's just one thing I got to know
Can you tell me please who won
You must try some of my purple berries
I been eating them for six or seven weeks now
Haven't got sick once
Probably keep us both alive
Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
Easy you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline leave us be
Very free and easy
Sail away where the mornin sun goes high
Sail away where the wind blows sweet and young birds fly
Take a sister by her hand
Lead her far from this barren land
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cry and
Stare as all you human feelings die
We are leaving
You don't need us
Go and take a sister by her hand
Lead her far from this foreign land
Somewhere where we might laugh again
We are leaving
You don't need us
Sailing ships on the water very free and easy
Easy you know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline leave us be
Very free
And gone...

This song always makes me teary eyed. It's beautiful and sad and yet there's something strangely hopeful about it. That's the tone of the whole album. There's this strange sense of alienation going on and yet a feeling that separation is impossible; that Love always unites and if there is one thing this planet needs more than ever is a knowing that we are ONE.

I know, I sound like an aging hippie, but we could use some idealism these days. Everything is so in your face but this album helps you remember that maybe the Real Things in this world are the Things that only the heart and soul know about.

Buy this album--not for your ears, but for the place within you that still knows Love is the answer.

Be free. Be easy.

Peace and Blessings, people...

Some albums simply define the times in which they were made, and this happens to be one of those albums. Whatever you might think about the late `60s hippie movement, there's no denying that it provided the perfect groundwork for idealistic expression, and you will find a near-perfect representation of those ideals and beliefs on this album. By 1969, hippie idealism had morphed into skepticism while the youth movement became politicized. Somehow - almost miraculously - Crosby, Stills and Nash walked the fine line between idealistic faith and political activism. At the time, it really did seem like we could change the world, and this album provided the soundtrack, and the impetus, for the spirit of change. While the stage at Woodstock was being built, this album played in near-constant rotation, which is a perfect metaphor for what this album truly represents.
Individually, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash had credentials that virtually guaranteed some degree of success. Crosby had recently been unceremoniously booted from the Byrds, Graham Nash was looking for a way out of the pop-music trap that the Hollies had become, and Stephen Stills was recovering after his previous semi-supergroup Buffalo Springfield splintered into matchsticks. Different backgrounds and radically different personality types made for interesting musical combinations, especially since they all wrote music, but taken together, the combination was nearly lethal. Vocally, they were a unit, or to paraphrase "Helplessly Hoping", they were for each other. Stephen Stills took control of the sessions for this album, and he provided most of the instrumentation on each track. Four decades on, I now hear that the basic music tracks are a bit claustrophobic, but their voices disguise this so well that it has taken me four decades to even consider the production techniques that were used.
Nearly forty years later, it is obvious that some songs have held up better than others. Virtually everything written by Stephen Stills still sounds fresh, inventive and original. No matter how many times I hear "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", I will always feel compelled to sing along, while "Helplessly Hoping" and "You Don't Have to Cry" are only marginally less stunning in their originality. Crosby's tunes have aged a bit, especially the anthemic `shot-over-the-bow' polemics of "Long Time Gone," but "Guinnevere" has retained its odd individualistic charm. The Graham Nash songs don't fare as well. "Pre-Road Downs" has grown dated, while "Marrakesh Express" has become one of the most vilified pop songs of the post-hippie era (Iggy Pop referred to it as one of the worst songs he ever heard). Taken as a package, though, "Crosby, Stills and Nash" is a time-capsule item that stands solidly on all three legs.
It might sound a bit ridiculous, but there is one tiny complaint that I have with this otherwise superb re-issue. I have played the original vinyl album so often that every nuance has been committed to memory, and I'm certain that many others have done so perhaps even more than me. Fanatics will surely remember the short bit before "49 Bye-Byes" where David Crosby riffs a vocal line from Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen." It is missing here, and I sense its absence every time the CD reaches that point. To compensate for this gaffe, the disk provides four extra tracks, including a gorgeous version of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talking", so I'll consider it a fair exchange.
A Tom Ryan

Man does this album (I still call them that even in CD form) bring me back to college. We lived in a house that a couch on the front porch (similar to the album cover) and used to pop this album on and sit back and watch the world go by.

49 Bye -Byes is such a powerful song that gives me chills. Wooden Ships is another killer track. Pre-Road Downs is awesome. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is harmonizing at its best. This is a great album that is lost on most of the college age kids today. It is as smooth and sweet sounding as ever. If you ever want to take a trip back and forget the hustle/bustle of the rude world we live in today, pop this on and enjoy.