Déjà Vu (album)

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Déjà Vu
Studio album by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Released	March 11, 1970
Recorded	1969
Genre	Rock, folk rock
Length	36:24
Label	Atlantic Records
Producer	Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Rolling Stone link Robert Christgau (B-) link George Starostin (10/15) link
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young chronology
Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) Déjà Vu (1970) Four Way Street (1971)

Déjà Vu is the second album by rock band Crosby, Stills & Nash, and their first as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, released on March 11, 1970. The premiere CSN collaboration with Neil Young, greatly anticipated after the popularity of its predecessor, it hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, generating three Top 40 singles in the process: "Teach Your Children," "Our House," and "Woodstock."

Contents 1 History 2 Track listing 3 Personnel 3.1 Additional personnel 4 Production 5 References 5.1 Note 6 Charts

[edit] History

Where the debut album was more of a piece with its ringing harmonies, this album presented disparity. The absorption of Young into the group meant the insertion of a volatile element, a writer of oblique imagery, difficult to pin down, a counterweight to the more earnest and direct aspects of his colleagues. They adopted the approach of Buffalo Springfield (featuring two songs recorded by them, "Questions" and the unreleased "Down Down Down") and post-Crosby Byrds in mixing folk and country roots, within both a pop and a rock framework, and succeed in charting better and in writing catchier melodies that run the gamut from "Our House" to "Helpless." The presence of Young, who had gained underground cachet from the FM success of his Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere album, allowed the band to be just about all things to all people. The reclusiveness of Bob Dylan, the break-up of the Beatles, and the darker aspects of the contemporary Rolling Stones -- the band's only real competitors as icons -- amplified this effect enormously. The group's "Ohio" single, hot on this album's heels, sealed the deal, granting CSNY absolute leadership status by the Woodstock Nation, about to flood their ethos above ground into mainstream entertainment, lifestyles, and political movements. Sitting on the cusp as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, Déjà Vu, with its mix of country and rock flavors, the confusion inherent in its multiple points of view arising from four distinct personalities, and its embedding of counterculture values, captured and summarized the spirit of the outgoing times as it simultaneously anticipated the sensibility that would quickly dominate the music and popular culture emanating from California at the time.

Stills estimates that the album took somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 hours of studio time to record; this figure may be exaggerated, even though the individual tracks display meticulous attention to detail.^[1] Critical reaction to the album tends to be divided along generational lines, baby boomers rating it as one of the all-time greats, later cohorts less so. In retrospect, it may be that the criticism that the album is overrated is founded on a reactionary dismissal of the sixties in general, which is further evidence of the album's importance as a cultural artifact of its time.

In May 1970, two months after the album was released, the group recorded Neil Young's quickly penned response to the Kent State shootings, "Ohio." That single, backed with Stephen Stills' "Find the Cost of Freedom," was released in late June of the same year, making it to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100, notwithstanding its accusatory sentiment.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 147 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The same year, the TV network VH1 named Déjà Vu the 61st greatest album of all time. The album ranked at #14 for the Top 100 Albums of 1970 and #217 overall by Rate Your Music.

The album was reissued for compact disc on October 25, 1990, and was re-released after being remastered from the original tapes at Ocean View Digital on September 6, 1994.

[edit] Track listing

1. "Carry On" (Stills) – 4:26
2. "Teach Your Children" (Graham Nash) – 2:53
3. "Almost Cut My Hair" (David Crosby) – 4:31
4. "Helpless" (Young) – 3:33
5. "Woodstock" (Joni Mitchell) – 3:54
6. "Déjà Vu" (Crosby) – 4:12
7. "Our House" (Nash) – 2:59
8. "4 + 20" (Stills) – 2:04
9. "Country Girl" (Young) – 5:11
   • "Whiskey Boot Hill"
   • "Down, Down, Down"
   • Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty)
10. "Everybody I Love You" (Stills, Young) – 2:21

[edit] Personnel

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

• David Crosby : Guitars, vocals.
• Stephen Stills : Guitars, bass guitar, keyboards, vocals.
• Graham Nash: Guitars, keyboards, vocals.
• Neil Young: Guitars, keyboards, piano, harmonica, vocals.

[edit] Additional personnel

• Greg Reeves: Bass guitar, percussion.
• Dallas Taylor: Drums, Percussion.
• Jerry Garcia: Pedal steel guitar on "Teach Your Children"
• John Sebastian: Harmonica on "Déjà vu"

[edit] Production

• Producers: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young
• Engineer: Bill Halverson
• Art direction: Gary Burden
• Design: Gary Burden
• Photography: Henry Diltz, Tom Gundelfinger
• Direction: Elliot Roberts and associates
• Agent: David Geffen
• Digital remastering: Joe Gastwirt

[edit] References