Crosby and Nash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Crosby and Nash are David Crosby and Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The pair began performing as a duo after the quartet's initial 1970 split.
Contents |
[edit] The Crosby-Nash duo begins
Crosby and Nash first appeared as a duo in concert in 1971, when they toured small venues in the United States. They first appeared live in a benefit concert for a group against the Vietnam War, and the experience encouraged them to play throughout the country. One concert from this period was recorded and issued as the live album Another Stoney Evening in 1998.
Toward the end of the year, they recorded a cover of Joni Mitchell's "Urge For Going," which they planned to release as a single, but it was never issued. Instead, Crosby and Nash went ahead and recorded their first duo album, simply titled Graham Nash/David Crosby, for Atlantic Records in 1972. While that first effort was not a big success, it yielded a hit single, "Immigration Man," and it showed the pair to have an amazing chemistry in a duo context on record as well as onstage.
[edit] The ABC Years
After failed attempts at recording a new Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album in 1973 and 1974, Crosby and Nash decided to go ahead with their duo partnership and signed a deal with ABC Records. Their first ABC album, Wind on the Water from 1975, surprised many listeners with its heavier rock songs and its solid backing group that included contributions from guests such as James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, and Levon Helm of the Band. A subsequent tour with their backing band, nicknamed the Mighty Jitters, further impressed critics and fans. The Mighty Jitters were given free reign with the musical arrangements, and video images were also employed on stage. Whistling Down the Wire, the second ABC album released in 1976, was much more acoustic, and the Crosby and Nash concerts that followed its release took their music into modern jazz and extended jam arrangements. "Nothing was preplanned," drummer Russ Kunel remembered in describing the Crosby and Nash tours of the time. "We'd just smoke it and start playin'."
Before Whistling Down the Wire was completed, though, Neil Young, then working with Stephen Stills on a project simply called the Stills-Young Band, suggested that they pool their resources and produce a Crosby, Stills Nash and Young album. Each pair added harmonies to each other's recordings. But with deadlines for the Crosby-Nash and Stills-Young albums fast apporaching, Stills and Young erased the Crosby and Nash harmonies from their recordings after transferring them to safeties. Nash vowed never to work with Stills and Young again, and the Stills-Young recordings were released as Long May You Run, the Stills-Young Band's only album, in September 1976.
[edit] The Crosby-Nash duo after 1976
After this publicized feud with Stills and Young, Crosby and Nash reconciled with Stills, and the trio recorded CSN in 1977. Ironically, the next CSNY-related project that was to be aborted was another Crosby and Nash album. Recording together in 1979, Crosby and Nash pulled the plug on a fourth album when, during a jam with their backing group, Crosby's freebase pipe vibrated off a speaker and shattered on the floor. Crosby stopped the jam, and Nash felt he had no alternative but to abort the project when he decided that drugs were more important to Crosby than music.
Crosby eventually kicked drugs, but he and Nash devoted most of their time in the recording studio in the eighties and nineties to working with Stills and/or Young. In 2004, they finally released their fourth duo album, a two-disc set simply called Crosby/Nash.
[edit] Albums
- Graham Nash/David Crosby (1972)
- Wind On the Water (1975)
- Whistling Down the Wire (1976)
- Crosby-Nash Live (1978)
- The Best of David Crosby and Graham Nash (1978)
- Another Stoney Evening (1998, recorded in 1971)
- Crosby/Nash (2004)
[edit] Sources
- Crosby, David, with Carl Gottlieb, Long Time Gone, 1988.
- Zimmer, Dave, with Henry Diltz, Crosby, Stills and Nash: The Biogrpahy, Da Capo, 1984, 1999.
