Wild Tales (36 page)

I
KNOW WHAT
you’re thinking: Didn’t we learn a thing or two about four superegos trying to coexist in one studio? Why in heaven’s name were we gonna do that again? But it’s the music. It’s
always
the music. It’s like a drug, irresistible. And we’re both smart enough—and dumb enough—to recognize that.

There was plenty of music to listen to when we got to Miami. Lots of great songs were already in the can: “Midnight on the Bay,”
“Human Highway,” “Long May You Run,” “Ocean Girl,” “Black Coral,” “Guardian Angel,” “Make Love to You”—one right after the next. I was duly impressed. Croz and I barely had time enough to drop our bags before we were propped in front of microphones, putting harmonies on those babies. It was like an assembly line—
bang! bang! bang! bang!
Yeah, we were banging ’em out like the pros we were, with none of the residual bullshit to sidetrack us.

We also knew this: The minute we put the vocals on those songs, it was going to be a CSNY record. David and I were already making
Whistling Down the Wire
, but we had a few extra tunes that we could contribute to the cause.

For the time being, everything flowed beautifully. We were working at Criteria Studios, which was a great little studio. And we were all staying at the Mutiny Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, an
unbelievable
place. If it was eighteen floors, it seemed like there were seventeen floors of coke dealers. It was one big scoring emporium.

Unfortunately, by mid-May David and I had to get back to LA to finish our new album on time. “We’re sorry,” I told the others, “but we have studio time booked. We have to go. Let’s figure out when to continue this baby.”

That’s the moment when the shit hit the fan. Stephen insisted we stay and finish their album, and suddenly all the positive energy began to shift. You could feel it just get sucked out of the room. Something else was driving this sucker, and it didn’t take us long to learn what it was.
Elliot Roberts had a Stills/Young Band tour booked and ready to roll. They
had
to have an album to support the tour and were counting on us to make sure it got done. Hey, too bad. We had just as important a deadline, and we weren’t about to scrap it for their tour. Everything would get done in due time.

We only had a few days left in Miami, but things were heading perilously downhill. One morning, I couldn’t get any reply from Neil’s room. I called the front desk of the Mutiny and said, “Am I out of it? Am I dialing the wrong number?” The receptionist said, “Oh, no—Mr. Young has checked out.”
Whaaaaat?
“Yes, Mr. Young checked out earlier this morning.”

“Going where?” I asked.

“Back to San Francisco.”

We were supposed to be in the studio in four hours. Man, some things never change. It was another case of Neil having had enough—whatever enough was supposed to be—and he’d split without telling anyone.

I went straight back to my room and began writing “Mutiny.”

I was disgusted with the whole situation. Just when it seemed things were rolling along, all the old demons rose up to embrace us. To make matters worse, when Croz and I went back to LA, with every intention of returning to Miami, I heard that Neil and Stephen had come up with the brilliant idea to take David’s and my vocals off the tracks and turn it into a Stills/Young record. When word of it got back to us, we totally flipped out. I couldn’t believe anyone would be crass enough to wipe our voices off those tracks, and, if true, it was disrespectful to us and, much worse, to the music. All of our good work unheard and wasted. Just completely wrong and unjustifiable. I swore I would never work with them again.

Admittedly, I got some satisfaction hearing war stories about the Stills/Young Band’s tour. Seems that it was snakebit from the start. With too little time to rehearse, the band never felt comfortable onstage. A review in the
New York Times
called the show “an ill-conceived evening,” blaming the sound, which was “rough and overly loud.” The tour needed work. Stephen wanted to stick to a single set list until the band got tight, but that apparently bored Neil. And eventually, Neil reverted to being Neil. Heading to a gig in Atlanta, he was traveling in his bus down the highway when the driver put on his left turn signal to go to the gig. Neil insisted they go right instead. “But, Neil, the gig is to the left,” the driver assured him. Neil got right in his face. “
I said turn right!
” The next day, at the gig in Atlanta, Neil just never turned up. Instead he sent everyone in the band a telegram:
FUNNY HOW SOME THINGS THAT START SPONTANEOUSLY END THAT WAY
.
EAT A PEACH
.
LOVE NEIL
. He’d gone home
and left the entire company—the band, roadies, support staff, and promoters—holding the bag.

I felt relieved not to be part of that scene. Instead, David and I tunneled into and completed
Whistling Down the Wire
, which was released in July 1976. It was a softer album than our previous rec- ords, without the obvious hit singles, but it showcased where we were at in a fine, effective way. I was extremely happy with it. And our subsequent performances, to support its release, were unusually energetic; we were in a terrific groove. Our onstage work with the
Jitters was particularly dynamic. Lots of free-form jams, variations on old standards like
“Déjà Vu,” and yet still intimate, an informal, personal affair. The show took on new life every night. Great way to work. I was enjoying myself again.

On August 10, before heading off to Europe, we began a three-night gig at the Greek Theatre in LA. It was one of those hot-ticket shows where everybody turned out—people we’d worked with, musicians we admired, friends, lovers, the music-business cognoscenti. I was dreading the possibility that Stephen might show up. At the time, he was really down on his heels. His marriage to Veronique had broken up, his band had disintegrated. The guy was watching his life come apart at the seams. Even so, I didn’t want to see him. I was still fuming about the master he’d taken a razor to and his part in wiping our vocals in Miami. Before the show began, I pulled Susan aside and said, “If you see a guy in a football jersey trying to get backstage, keep him the fuck away from me.” Stephen was a big-time Colts fan and had taken to living in the team jersey. I didn’t want him anywhere near us that night. David and I had earned our moment in the spotlight—it was our night to shine.

But, sure enough, on the third night, Stephen managed to talk his way backstage. During intermission, I caught sight of him in the crowd as he walked toward the stage. It was one of those tense, potentially explosive moments: What happens now? Part of me wanted to turn and make tracks, but he seemed kind of sheepish, out of sorts. I couldn’t ignore him. The guy is just too much a part
of my life. We’d made too much great music together. So—fuck it. I grabbed him and gave him a hug. And pretty soon Crosby joined the embrace—a threesome, just the way David likes it.

Croz and I went out and finished the show. We ended with
“Wooden Ships,” took a few bows, and left the stage to thunderous applause. A few minutes later, we wandered back onstage, this time with Stephen in tow, and sang an acoustic version of “Teach Your Children.” I hated to admit it, but it felt great singing that way, in a trio, just like that fateful night at Joni’s. There’s something so magical and irresistible about it. I’m a sucker every time.

Meanwhile, instead of keeping Stills away from me, Susan pulled him aside and invited him back to our place for dinner. Smart woman. She thought he seemed shy and sweet, not the two-headed monster I’d made him out to be. In fact, it was Susan’s version of Stephen who showed up that night. He was easygoing, agreeable, the Stephen Stills it was easy to love. We got mightily drunk, talked well into the night, deciding
once again
to put the old group back together. Here it was the summer of 1976, and we hadn’t made a record as CSN since 1969. It was time—time to see if it worked, to see if we still had the magic. Just the three of us: Crosby, Stills, and Nash. We were headed into the studio.

God help us one and all.

I
N DECEMBER OF 1976
, C
ROZ AND
I
VISITED
S
TEPHEN
in the studio at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. He was recording songs of his like
“Run from Tears,” “See the Changes,” and “Dark Star” with his engineer
Michael Braunstein. As usual, David and I weren’t just observers, we got right in there and tried to put down several new songs. I’d written
“Just a Song Before I Go,” “I Watched It All Come Down,”
“Mutiny,” and “Carried Away.” David brought
“In My Dreams,” “Jigsaw,” and “Anything at All” to the party. We all decided that maybe we had enough songs together to start a new CSN record. We ran down Stephen’s “See the Changes” in our old formation, Crosby, Stills & Nash singing around one mike, and it was
all there.
Everything we knew how to do instinctively coalesced in that inimitable three-part blend. All the pieces fell into place. We decided to move everything—lock, stock, and barrel—to Criteria Studios in Miami. Off we went again.

I knew damn well what Neil brought to the equation, but without him the session had a more collaborative feel. The vocals were easier to negotiate with three. There was none of the tension that prevailed, for better or for worse, none of the gamesmanship that gave CSNY its edge. Sure, there’d be plenty that we’d miss by Neil’s absence, but the advantages were stacking up for doing it this way.

The situation in Miami was certainly a bonus. We booked in with a company called Home at Last, two lovely young women who rented out semipalatial, multibedroom homes to bands recording
at Criteria so that everyone could stay together. We had a fabulous Spanish-style villa just a short drive from the studio. The women got the groceries, did the cooking, changed the beds, cleaned the house. All we had to do was show up and go to the studio. And that made it a very attractive setup. The studio was also a contributing factor. Criteria was an out-of-the-way outpost for the West Coast music scene, which meant we could work undisturbed. And the guys who worked there constantly—Ronnie and Howie Albert—were great engineers and producers. All the elements were on our side.

(© Henry Diltz)

Of course, nothing was more powerful than the music we brought with us. Croz’s “Shadow Captain” was a monster of a song, lyrical dreamlike poetry set to Craig Doerge’s fine music, and “In My Dreams” was another of David’s beauties. While his stuff was typically image-laden and descriptive, Stephen’s songs were unusually personal and confessional. He was in tip-top shape as a writer, but an emotional mess, and it all came tumbling out in the music. “I Give You Give Blind” and “Run from Tears” are so fucking powerful. And “Dark Star,” about his relationship with Joan Baez, was achingly self-revealing.

I hadn’t heard Stephen operating at this level in some time. He was on top of his game, churning out great rock ’n’ roll tracks, gorgeous arrangements, heart-wrenching vocals. And he wasn’t drinking, which kept him focused on the music.

I’d also had a run of good luck where songwriting was concerned. A few weeks earlier, I’d been on vacation in Hawaii. Leslie
Morris was with me, and in an effort to score some grass we met up with a dealer named Spider at his house near the beach. This was around one in the afternoon, and I had a four o’clock flight back to Los Angeles. Spider was a cheeky little bastard. He said, “You’re supposed to be some big-shot songwriter. I bet you can’t write a song before you go.”

“Oh, really,” I said. “How much?”

“A hundred bucks.”

I finished “Just a Song Before I Go” in a little under forty minutes. Turned out to be the biggest hit Crosby, Stills & Nash ever had, on the charts for twenty weeks. The original lyric I’d scribbled on school composition-book paper is currently in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I also brought “Cathedral” to the session, which I’d begun writing back in 1971, around the time we played the Royal Festival Hall. After that gig,
Leo Makota, my road manager, and I decided to drop acid around six in the morning. We hired a 1928 Rolls-Royce and a driver because neither of us had any business being behind a wheel. Two hippies tripping. “Let’s go see
Stonehenge!”

Back then, you could actually touch the rocks, embrace them, which I did, perhaps excessively so. The site still had an anything-goes policy. And so I lay on the grass, on acid, in the middle of Stonehenge,
for hours
(although maybe it was twenty minutes). It was an incredible trip. My big revelation was that I was as insignificant as a speck of dust in this vast universe of ours. Acid can be good for perspective.