Stephen Stills on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s ‘Fillmore 1969’ Album

It appears to be a long time gone, but objects in the rear-view mirror may be closer than they appear. A new live album from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Live at the Fillmore East, 1969,” captures the supergroup near the point of instigation, soon after Neil Young joined the trio of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, little more than a month after they made a massive impression at Woodstock. It captures the excitement of a band still finding its way but much too brilliant and in-the-moment to lose it.

Stills sat down with Variety to discuss the history of this new release, from CSN’s and CSNY’s most nascent days to the care with which the album was put together. Stills and Young didn’t just sign off on this archival release; they took charge of the mixing, along with Young’s right-hand guy for bringing out the best in vintage tapes, John Hanlon. The alliance between Stills and Young hasn’t just been limited to overseeing blasts from the past like this; they recently have played together, reigniting old sparks.

Stills also shared his thoughts on the election, doing benefits, letting go of grudges, the loss of David Crosby, whether he is or is not retired, and what he jokes about as a possibly finite public appetite for rock “octogenarians.” (He’s not actually there yet, despite including himself in that, being a mere 79.) Although he has had health difficulties, recent evidence in his infrequent live appearances indicate he hasn’t lost his formidable lead guitar chops. One thing is for sure: when he compares the legendary romance between Nash and Joni Mitchell to “Taylor Swift and the tight end,” he hasn’t lost any of his sense of humor, either.

You played a Stills-Young set with Neil recently at the Painted Turtle benefit in California, and you did a couple of sets together in L.A. last year. So you guys still seem to have this real alliance, even though you’re retired, basically, from live performance. It seems like you like to get up there with Neil, still, when the chance arrives — is that right?

Well, first of all, being retired… You shouldn’t announce that because everybody takes it as, “Oh, we don’t have to pay him, so get him!” [Laughs.] I’ve never been so busy as when I retired.

But no, Neil and I have rediscovered our original thing, from when we met and just hit it off, before Richie (Furay) and before anything, up in Canada. We’re the oldest of friends, and enough water goes under the bridge. We don’t have Irish Alzheimer’s, you know, which is defined as “forget everything but the grudges.” We don’t have that anymore. We know each other and we see right through each other, so there’s comfort in that that can only be earned.

People are naturally curious — with David gone, could there ever be a trio thing with you, Neil and Graham, even for just a one-time thing? But that would probably be kind of a strange, different chemistry to try to create.

Well, would we, and should we, you know? Because David was such an integral part… everybody was an integral part of it. I mean, Graham was just as creative vocally as David. But it’s just the physiology of it. My little rasp, and Graham’s Celtic keen, as I call it, and David’s warm little undertones just made for a magic that can’t be duplicated. But not only that…

I mean, the election might be an excuse. I would do that for Kamala Harris. But, otherwise, it’s a Pyrrhic exercise — it’s never gonna be quite the same. So, I don’t know. I’m obviously at loose ends on what I’m gonna do next anyway, because I’m getting bored. So I’ve gotta get out there and do something.

I didn’t mean to retire you before your time, then! I had just heard…

No, I actually started saying it publicly. And I got all these invitations to come and play for freeeeee. And I don’t see the magic in it that Joni Mitchell did. [Laughs.]

Did you happen to see that the other night [Mitchell’s performance], at the Hollywood Bowl? I thought it was fabulous. And Brandi Carlile in particular, but Joni was just her old irascible self, and I love her to death. Anyway, side issue. I lost my place…

There was the question of you being retired from the road…

Yeah. Well, I’ve had a little bad luck, health-wise, last year. So I’ve had to recover from it and it’s been a little slow, but it’s working and I’m starting to feel a spring in my step again. You know, the travel is the part that’s difficult.

Let’s talk about this 1969 live album, which is special, as something recorded so close to the origins of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as a quartet, which was really not so far removed from Crosby, Stills & Nash as a trio. One of the songs on the live album is the group’s performance of “You Don’t Have to Cry.” And people who know the band think that that song holds a special place, because it’s the first song you guys did as a trio. Does the song have any special resonance for you, as the first CSN song?

Well, it does to me, because the memory is so vivid. I mean, I remember that first night when Graham chimed in and we all went, “Oh my God.”

And there have been different stories from different guys about where those fateful first harmonies took place. Everyone agrees it was at a house in Laurel Canyon, but in your telling, that first CSN meetup was at Cass Elliot’s house.

And then the romantic in Graham wants him to place it the next day at Joni’s house because, hey, you know… it’s like Taylor Swift and the tight end, you know? [As an irresistible celebrity romance.] But it was at Cass’s house, and it was basically because of Cass arranging this with David, and her cornering me and then getting Graham over there and being like: “Surprise yourself, you guys.” And we did.

In a press release that just came out for this live album, Neil is quoted as saying that when he joined to transform CSN into CSNY, part of the appeal was that he really felt this was a chance to carry on the Buffalo Springfield vibe that he had already had with you in the previous band. Since you obviously had something already going on with David and Graham, was there any extent to which you also thought, yes, with Neil, we can get a little bit more of that Buffalo Springfield spirit in here?

Well, I remember an incident where I was asked to go down and explain to a big promoter from Chicago: What exactly was this band (Crosby, Stills and Nash) going to do live? And I said, “Well, we’re gonna have acoustic, and then the curtains will part and we’ll play electric.” And then I realized, wait, we don’t quite have a whole band. And I went to Ahmet (Ertegun, head of Atlantic Records), and he said, “Well, why don’t you get Neil?” He of course was looking to give Buffalo Springfield a little more life, but hedging his bets, if you will.

I wondered, “Well, why would I do that? He already quit on me once.” But actually, as it happened, I thought it was a great idea. And I knew that the vibe of the band would change the minute he arrived, because he was more of a spur-of-the-moment, first-take kind of guy. And our harmonies aren’t quite made for that, you know. I mean, David Crosby was the glue that held those vocals together — he had that taste for those wild notes — but Graham Nash was just as prolific and talented, and we would sing things until we were blue in the face and explore all kinds of possibilities and find the right one. And Neil is more “lay it down, get it done” — the life of the first take.

Was the chemistry really working at that point, between the four of you, when you went on stage at the Fillmore, when it was just a month after Woodstock, with the blend still so fresh?

We kind of knew how it was going and we just sort of said, “Hey, let the rough side drag. Let’s keep going. We’ll get better.” But what surprises me is that the playing was a little sloppy back then, but the vocals were really tight. And then later on, when we quit doing what we had there, which is to sing on one mic and stuff like that, the blend sort of suffered, singing 10 feet apart and in front of really loud amps in very big places. That was something that only the Beatles mastered.

Do you take a really active interest in archival projects? Last year, you released your own archival live solo album from 1971 or something. Are you into hearing about tapes like this as they come up, or instigating archival projects yourself?

Well, when one hits a dry spot in the composing arena, a deep dive is called for. [Laughs.] So I instigated the ‘71 project by going down to the vault with my buddy Kevin McCormick, and we unearthed a whole lot of stuff and decided to run with that. And then the record company got wind of it, and they found some dusty old thing in the vault somewhere of this concert from ‘69, right after Woodstock, from the Fillmore.

And they made a mix of it, and I heard it and it was bloody terrible — except the singing on the electric part was really good, and the entire acoustic part was good. And after a second listen, I called Neil and we went to Sunset Sound and remixed it. We discovered that one of the reasons that the original sounded so weird is that on the first song, “Long Time Gone,” the bass had been unplugged on half of it or something, and everybody was baffled. So they turned up the house in order to try and find a bass. So, instrumentally, it was all these noisy guitars — but really good singing. And so it felt very salvageable, to me.

I remembered something that I learned a long time ago from the Allman Brothers down in Miami, when somebody posed a question: “Does anybody remember how to wild-sync?” I did, and I explained it. You know, we had recorded a previous night, so we took the bass (from “Long Time Gone”) and put it on two-track, and then you line it up with the eight-track from the night after. And sure enough, Dallas (Taylor, the drummer), in his genius, had us at the same tempo, and it fit perfectly. So we salvaged the first 16 bars of bass from the opening song, and that allowed me to go through the whole rest of the album and fix the bass. After that, cleaning out the noise became easier. We were playing really loudly, but we managed to diffuse that and diffuse the leakage. There’s all kinds of great gizzes today for doing that stuff. And the result was pretty darn good. I mean, the singing is real good— a couple of stray gators in there, but that’s to be expected. And with the electric playing, what we lacked in finesse, we made up in enthusiasm, and we were certainly having a great time. And the acoustic stuff was a breeze.

So we said, let’s go with it, and cut off the ones where we’re screeching and singing something that’s not quite music. There’s editing involved and stuff like that, but we got a good sound. And that’s back to John Hamlin, who reverted back to Bill Halverson, who recorded our first albums. John got a really good sound on my acoustic guitar, and the band — with the drums, particularly, Dallas was really good. So it’s a process. It took a couple of days of careful attention, but we got it.

And I kind of like it. Whereas “4 Way Street” (the famous live double-album released in 1971), I didn’t like that much, because everybody said, “Oh, it’s too complicated. I don’t want to mess with it.” Then it sounds like it!

With “4 Way Street,” is the problem just the way that it ended up being recorded or mixed, or was there anything else that made you not like that one as much?

Well, it was recorded towards the end of the tour — we were tired, and it shows. Whereas this is right at the beginning, and it’s got a lot of life. “4 Way Street” was kind of haphazard and recorded in a much bigger arena.

A few years ago there was a boxed set that came out commemorating the group coming back together for a 1974 stadium tour. But for you, this 1969 recording, is that as good as it gets for capturing the band at a peak?

Well, this is more like the songs were intended to be. If you’ll notice from 1974, there’s a film of us at Wembley, with 124,000 people there, and we’re excited and everything is really incredibly fast. I mean, everybody talking fast, playing fast, singing too fast, not getting the words out —it’s hilarious to me. But see, if you VSO it back (manually decrease the speed)… [Laughs.] The same is true of the Buffalo Springfield records.

How so?

If you slow them down, they sound like the Rolling Stones. [Laughs.]

Do you remember much about that night at the Fillmore?

I remember trying to fix a setlist, and we ended up playing setlist bingo. There’s some strange couplings that didn’t quite work, tempo-wise. But I mean, we were just brand fresh out of the box, and so there wasn’t a lot (to mull over), except, “God, this is fun.” And “Down by the River” is really great. I mean, I wasn’t a lead guitar player really yet, and those tours kind of polished my chops and got me going.

The version of “Down by the River” is 16 minutes, and people got used over time to you and Neil kind of dueling on that. So this was getting a toe in the water for that.

Yeah, everybody called it dueling, but it was just noodling … and then we discovered the Dixieland thing of all playing right on top of each other, where it’s like, “Everybody play lead!” Which everybody thought was great. We thought it was awful, but they thought it was great. [Laughs.] But we were just charging forward.

At this point in time, autumn 1969, the group is introducing some songs that haven’t even been recorded yet, like “Find the Cost of Freedom,” and “4 + 20″ is another one you were introducing of yours at that time. Do you remember where you were as a band in terms of how close you were to recording “Déjà vu” and how far ahead do you all were looking at that point?

Well, it was a pretty productive time for all of us. We had a plethora of songs. I mean, we had way more songs than we needed, so what made the cut led to conflict, but at the same time, there wasn’t room for everything, so it was sort of a catch-as-catch-can. And we didn’t have a proper producer, so it was up to the four of us to sort it out — hence the title “Four Way Street.”

Last year, when you put out your ‘71 solo archival album, that was fairly soon after David’s death, and you talked about it some at the time. He was obviously an irascible personality, and there were ups and downs, so it’s easy to imagine that could be hard to process right away. Has anything changed in your mind with a year and a half of further reflection after he’s gone?

Well, I had never realized that he never expected to live that long. Which is, you know, a strange, fatalistic way to be. And so he thought he was on borrowed time for the whole last part of his life… You know, I just worry about Jan, and I worry about Django. And I miss him. He was an interesting friend to have. But then, that’s like the Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times.” And quite frankly, historically, I’ve had enough of ‘em. [Laughs]

I think I experienced the very slightest touch of what it was like to have him as a friend. I interviewed him a few times and had that warm sensation of feeling like he was my best friend, and then he started to get a little mad at me once, and I go, “Oh, I see”…

[Laughs.] “Okay, I got it!” He was very good at both — about being your best friend and making you feel like absolute dogshit.

You mentioned that the election was one thing that you could have imagined bringing all three remaining members back together for a special event, to help out. Do you have hopes and fears right now since we’re so close to the election going down?

Oh, it’s like one national nightmare is gonna end and the next one’s gonna begin. Whichever way it goes, there’s just gonna be aftershocks. And I think she [Harris] is great, and I think that he’s a moron, and I’ve said so long ago. That would be the only thing that would get S-N-Y together, I think. But I just got a message that Graham can’t do this thing on the 4th, so that’s too bad.

But I’ve still got my hand in it a little. I did a thing for Adam Schiff last week that was really successful, for the whole Democratic slate from Southern California, actually. So I’m contributing. That’s all it has to be. It doesn’t have to be with the presidential candidate. A few congressional races will do fine. Because it’s all important to keep us on track.

Finally, since this album is such a rewarding archival project, do you have more in mind along these lines?

Well, if you saw how much tape is in my locker, you would realize that we have struck the surface of deep diving. We have to get out there and physically carry these things out, look at the box, hope that they’ve been notated right, and figure out what’s on there. And then bake them, and then play them — which is great fun, because there’s some magic in there. And outtakes of a vast hilarity — there’s a comedy album in there, from between takes.

It’s good to hear you might want to be playing more, and that you feel like, as you said, you’re getting a spring back in your step.

Exactly. Yeah, modern medicine is working, and numbers are dropping, and things are going away.

We look forward to whatever you have in store, whether it involves being behind the scenes, baking tapes, or being out in front of the public.

Well, you know, I think there’s a limit to how many octogenarians they can pay attention to. [Laughs.]