Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young by David Browne

Author:David Browne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

YET, IN A perverse way, the timing would prove to be ideal for a group reunion. By the middle of 1981, reports of a Stills-Nash album, with contributions from Garfunkel and Schmit, were leaking to the press, leading Nash to comment, “David was being a little difficult about certain things. We didn’t feel like hassling.” When Stills and Nash decided to release the album under their names without Crosby, it was left to their managers to inform Atlantic. In a phone call with label executives, including Ahmet Ertegun, Weiss told them that Crosby was driving Stills and Nash crazy. Nash, in particular, was fed up, and they would be proceeding with a Stills and Nash album.

The answer from one executive was unequivocal: “That’s not going to work.” Stills and Nash had already spent nearly half a million of their own dollars to finance the record. Ertegun now made it clear that he would fork over their contractual $1 million advance—which would help pay the men back—but only if the album was going to be a Crosby, Stills and Nash project. When word of the meeting trickled out, the musicians who’d played on the record so far were stunned. “I thought, ‘Is this the end?’” says Vitale. “‘They don’t have a record deal for this thing?’ It was disheartening. I thought about looking for another job.”

On the beach in Hawaii, Stills, Nash and their musicians watched the sunsets and grappled with how to proceed. It had become glaringly obvious that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fans were far less interested in their individual work than in group reunions, and now their own label was similarly unresponsive. Eventually, they knew what they had to do, half-heartedly or not: in order to recoup their investment and release the music they’d slaved over for the better part of a year and a half, they would have to ask Crosby to be part of the album. Nash telegrammed Crosby with the invitation, and Crosby agreed to contribute. “Ahmet said, ‘You can’t do it without him. It’s not a record. You do that and I’ll put it out,’” Crosby recalls. “So they called me.” To ensure that Crosby still had a singing voice, given his freebasing, Stills was in the audience when Crosby and his band played the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach in the fall of 1981.

Starting with Nash, everyone involved in the record felt apprehensive about Crosby’s arrival at Rudy Records that fall. Since none of the local hotels were likely to give Crosby a room, because of his growing reputation, Nash recruited Susan Rogers to use his credit card and check into a room. After securing one, Rogers drove across town, picked up Crosby and Dance and sneaked them into the hotel by way of a back entrance and service elevator. To Rogers’ dismay, Crosby carried a cardboard box that read “David’s Clothes.” In the room, Crosby lit up and started freebasing, burning a hole in the mattress.

On the designated day in late 1981, Crosby arrived wearing a parka.

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