<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For some reason, years ending in \u20180\u2019 or \u201800\u2019 carry some aura that make them more memorable than those bearing other year ending the digits like 1 – 9.\u00a0 With that said, looking back at 1974 through a 45 year historical perspective allows us to note how different things were before and after that year. It would seem that 1974 was a pivotal year across the board:\u00a0 socially, politically, personally, and musically.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It seems that 1974\u2019s social and political happenings were a mixed bag of events, some of which crossed over the line in the sand that is supposed to separate these categories.\u00a0 Washington D.C. was in the midst of a full blown upheaval as the Watergate Hearings were leading the nation toward the premature end of President Nixon\u2019s second term in office. OPEC began dictating oil prices and it showed up at the gas pumps with \u2018outrageous prices\u2019 (author\u2019s note:\u00a0 I would LOVE to pay those outrageous 75 cents per gallon prices today, wouldn\u2019t you?). The OPEC crunch was felt even more significantly as many areas experienced the first gas shortages since WWII. The shortages resulted in \u2018rationing\u2019 – one could buy gas only on alternating days of the week (another first since WWII).\u00a0 Gas rationing was regulated by the odd or even last number on one\u2019s vehicle license plate, unless you worked in an \u2018essential area\u2019 like trucking or emergency services. Gas prices also affected shipping costs and everyone experienced increased prices for consumer goods (the price of sugar, for example, went up some 300 percent from the pre-oil embargo days).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Musically, 1974 saw the beginning of the \u2018major bands play stadiums and large sports arenas\u2019 era.\u00a0 The Beatles had actually pioneered these big event type of concerts (for example, the fabled Shea Stadium show that set a record for selling out a huge venue in a short period of time), but the concept was so new in the mid-1960s that no one could hear the music.\u00a0 Band equipment was made with clubs and perhaps theaters in mind. As The Beatles found at a large show like this, tens of thousands of screaming fans even prevented the band from hearing what they were playing. For stadiums and large sports arenas to become viable concert draws, instrument amplification and public address (PA) systems needed to be upgraded.\u00a0 The first hints of what would become common place were seen at events like the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock in the late 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Each of the PA speaker cabinets that were manufactured specifically for 1969\u2019s fabled \u2018Concert and Aquarian Exposition\u2019 (aka:\u00a0 Woodstock) weighed half a ton. Each PA tower erected at the site contained 16 speaker cabinets arrayed on 70-foot towers that ran up the hill for a combined weight of 8 tons minus the weight of the towers themselves. Sound engineer Bill Hanley designed the system utilizing three backstage transformers delivering 2,000 amperes of current (which gave him some anxiety when a severe thunderstorm rolled through on the second day).\u00a0 Stage announcer Chip Monck can be heard warning the people climbing the towers for a better view to get down for good reason (especially when the wind and lightning started). Large venue concerts were then were viewed as one off affairs due to the high equipment costs. It was one of the bands who appeared at Woodstock who pioneered turning these large venue concerts into a staple of the major band tour circuit: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0CSNY weren\u2019t the first so called \u2018supergroup\u2019 assembled from parts of other well known bands.\u00a0 The concept had been tried before with mixed results. David Crosby (guitar\/vocals) was more or less booted out of his other famous band, The Byrds.\u00a0 Steven Stills (guitar\/vocals) and Neil Young (guitar\/keyboards\/vocals) were both members of the short lived Buffalo Springfield. Graham Nash (vocals\/guitar) was a founding member of one of England\u2019s biggest pop bands, The Hollies.\u00a0 The Hollies were touring the United States and Nash was feeling constricted by the direction the band was taking. The rest of The Hollies not cuddling up to a song he wrote called <\/span>King Midas in Reverse<\/span><\/i> certainly didn\u2019t help matters.\u00a0 A chance meeting of Crosby, Stills and Nash at a party in the hills of Los Angeles led to the first magical blending of their voices.\u00a0 Although they each have conflicting stories about where this took place, all agree this happenstance meeting started the ball rolling. Nash finally got to record <\/span>King Midas in Reverse<\/span><\/i> on the first CSN album that also included some ear catching songs by Stills (<\/span>Suite: Judy Blue Eyes<\/span><\/i>) and Crosby (<\/span>Guiniever<\/span><\/i>). \u00a0 By the time they got to Woodstock (sorry), they had all of one public performance under their belt.\u00a0 By then, they had also picked up the \u2018Y\u2019. Most didn\u2019t realize Neil Young had joined the band prior to Woodstock because he refused to be filmed and subsequently wasn\u2019t shown in the movie.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first time I heard <\/span>Carry On<\/span><\/i> blast out of the speakers at a party during my senior year of high school (<\/span>Deja Vu<\/span><\/i> was released in March of 1970).\u00a0 I was in awe of the group, album, and the message they were sending out to the youth of America.\u00a0 Neil Young came on board during the recording of CSNY\u2019s second record and it was he who told Stills the album needed an upbeat opening track for the album.\u00a0 Stills dutifully went home that night and wrote <\/span>Carry On <\/span><\/i>which went on to be a live favorite for years to come.\u00a0 The album featured other generational framing tracks like Crosby\u2019s defiant <\/span>Almost Cut My Hair, <\/span><\/i>Nash\u2019s <\/span>Teach Your Children<\/span><\/i>, Young\u2019s <\/span>Helpless<\/span><\/i>, and the band\u2019s arrangement of Joni Mitchell\u2019s ode to Woodstock, not surprisingly called <\/span>Woodstock.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While CSNY had been to Woodstock, Mitchell had skipped the event because her manager was fearful that she would not be able to make it back to New York City in time for an early week appearance on the <\/span>Dick Cavett Show<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 She wrote the song while watching TV news accounts in\u00a0 her NYC hotel room. It turned out that CSNY made it back to NYC just fine and appeared along side Mitchell in a panel discussion (including the Jefferson Airplane) about the Summer of Love in general and Woodstock in particular.\u00a0 How did CSNY\u2019s version of <\/span>Woodstock <\/span><\/i>come to be featured in the film rather than Mitchell\u2019s?\u00a0 CSNY\u2019s management threatened to withhold permission to use the band\u2019s footage in the movie unless they also incorporated their version of <\/span>Woodstock <\/span><\/i>(which was recorded after the event and included as the closing track to <\/span>Deja Vu<\/span><\/i>)<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 CSNY sold their image as a band ready to \u2018stick it to the man\u2019 while their management did everything they could to see the band profit from this image.\u00a0 \u2018Get paid by the man\u2019 while appearing to \u2018stick it to the man\u2019 (the record companies in this case) was an odd marketing tool, but it worked for them. I always thought that this was a bit hypocritical but along the way, I began to see that bands often had much more complex histories beyond the image the record companies used to sell records.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The post Woodstock events described above took place in 1969 – 1970, so how does this figure into 1974?\u00a0 The whole Crosby-Stills-Nash and sometimes Young story is so complex that we will disect it further down the line.\u00a0 Suffice to say, it all comes down to those four essentials of rock and roll: marketing, image, money, and ego. As mentioned previously, the counterculture image of CSNY at the release of <\/span>Deja Vu<\/span><\/i> was the public face of the band.\u00a0 The four distinctive voices may have blended in spectacular harmony on record, but the egos involved had a much more difficult time working in harmony.\u00a0 Success brought in vast amounts of money which in turn spurred excessive spending and the conspicuous consumption of mind altering substances that eventually turned the band into an unproductive maelstrom.\u00a0 We will kind of skip over the whole post <\/span>Deja vu <\/span><\/i>period leading up to the spring of 1973.\u00a0 By then, the band\u2019s various solo works had born little notice on the record charts and CSN&Y began contemplating making a new group recording.\u00a0 A new record would be the key that would unlock a new tour which would help refill their rapidly draining coffers. There was also the small issue of proving that CSN&Y were still relevant enough to sell records and fill venues half a decade after their triumphant debut.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As various disagreements and interband squabbles kept CSNY from recording fresh material in the early 1970s, the musical landscape was changing.\u00a0 Bands that they had influenced like the Eagles and America began to dominate the charts. These staples of the FM radio band dominated popular music, but beneath this glossy surface, a new group of rebel bands were fermenting. \u00a0 Even if it wasn\u2019t a terribly long lived phenomenon, the undercurrent of what would become punk music began to stir things up. When Hilly Kristal opened his little club in Manhattan (and thanks to author David Browne\u2019s book <\/span>Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young <\/span><\/i>(2019 DaCapo Books) I now know that the club\u2019s name CBGB & OMFUG stood for \u201ccountry, bluegrass, blues, and other music for uplifting gormandizers\u201d), it became ground zero for this new wave of anti-pop bands.\u00a0 \u2018Bare-bones\u2019 music made by bands like The Ramones bore little resemblance to the intricate vocal arrangements found on the first two CSNY albums. Lumped in with those other big bands like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and ELP, punk fans and bands loathed CSNY as another one of the bloated, overblown bands they viewed as has-beens.\u00a0 Even Stills pronounced CSNY as being \u2018a myth\u2019 in 1973, yet it didn\u2019t stop their manager, Elliot Roberts, from meeting with Stills and Nash to discuss doing an album and tour that summer. He even went so far as to chase down Crosby and Young on Crosby\u2019s boat two miles at sea off Maui to sign the contracts. Old habits die hard and the first attempt at recording together fell apart in June of 1973 and they again scattered to the wind.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0CSNY would make another attempt in May and June of 1974.\u00a0 They began rehearsing on an outdoor stage built in the woods at Young\u2019s California ranch.\u00a0 For all their musical and personal history, they needed to find out if they could still perform a whole show together (their last full tour together happened in 1970, and eon of time in the pop world).\u00a0 It was former Fillmore owner Bill Graham who suggested the best way for them to maximize their profit margin: they would plan a tour of mostly outdoor stadiums. It was something that had not been done before and it promised to generate millions in revenue.\u00a0 Graham was just the man to coordinate such an undertaking. The only big question at hand was whether or not the band could pull it off.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nash and Crosby weren\u2019t thrilled with the stadium tour, but they went along with it.\u00a0 Neil Young had developed a habit of bolting the last few reunions as soon as he felt bad vibes. That Young was more in line with Stills on this project (with Nash and Crosby holding down the other side of the discussion) was another surprising turn of events.\u00a0 A similar alliance prior to another tour in 1987 lead Young\u2019s long time production manager to print up gag T-shirts for that reunion proclaiming \u201cSYNC – Time for a Change\u201d. Either way it played (CSNY or SYNC), Nash and Crosby felt like sidemen rather than part of the band.\u00a0 As they rehearsed, the original ten shows planned grew to thirty one. Two full tour set ups would be used so one could leap-frog to city B while the other crew manned the show going on in city A. It was ambitious and everyone crossed their fingers and hoped it would work. No one was sure which of the top grossing movies of the year the tour would resemble the most:\u00a0 <\/span>Earthquake <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>The Towering Inferno.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The tour began in Seattle and ended a couple of months later at Wembley Stadium in London. The various problems led Crosby to call it \u201cThe Doom Tour\u201d but the fact that all four of them stuck with the whole grind was almost a miracle.\u00a0 CSNY set the template for big rock and roll tours to come, from the unheard practice of catered meals backstage to the more common problem of \u2018consuming an excess of mind altering substances\u2019. The four members of CSNY would weave around each other for another forty years with various attempts at recording and touring.\u00a0 The four distinct personalities would joust for position until finally, they could no longer stand the thought of working together. Circa 2018, the band CSNY seems to have finally run aground.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was a long, hard road CSNY traveled from Woodstock to the pioneering stadium tour of 1974.\u00a0 In a future installment, we will profile each member of CSNY so we can at least try to understand how they managed to play together at all.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0\u00a0Johnny’s Garden<\/em>, a previously unreleased clip from Wembley, 1974<\/p>\n