CSN |
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Recorded: 1968-1991 Released: September 30, 1991 Peak: 109 US, -- UK, -- CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Genre: folk rock/classic rock |
Rating: 4.509 out of 5.00 (average of 13 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the AlbumThis four-disc box set covered the CSN albums as well as each artist’s solo work. Rather than feeling like filler, the generous amount of solo recordings paints a sort of alternate picture of what CSN’s history might have looked like if they’d recorded more albums together. The box also contains a fair amount of previously unreleased material.The SongsThis page covers songs not featured on any of Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes) Young’s studio albums. That means these are largely solo songs not featured on any other DMDB pages. For the CSN/Y songs on their albums, click on the song titles to go to the appropriate pages.The songs on this page are presented chronologically by recording dates. There are a few songs on this page that were not featured on the CSN box set but were featured on other CSN/Y compilations. |
Songs Recorded in 1970 |
Old Times Good TimesStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: early 1970 Released: Stills: Stephen Stills (1970); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “Hendrix and I cut a bunch of stuff together; this is one of the few things that surfaced. He was a very dear friend of mine, we were lonely in London together and hung out a lot. I left England suddenly, and years later I learned from Mitch Mitchell that Jimi had been looking for me everywhere – wanted me to join the Experience as the bass player, which would have been my greatest dream in life! It had something to do with a manager deciding it was a wrong career move and said, ‘we don’t know where he is.’ I learned to play lead guitar from Jimi he showed me the scales and said things like, ‘You begin by thinking about the chord position and base your improvisations on that.’ Or he’d make some little remark like, ‘F sharp is really cool,’ and we’d develop a jam around that. We’d make up songs, play the blues. He’d improvise until the inspiration began to ebb, then he’d look at me and say, ‘You drive.’ You had to hear that cat play acoustic guitar! We once jammed for about five days, one long marathon session in my beach house in Malibu. The sheriff’s deputy overheard our guitar playing. When he found out it was us he asked permission to park his police car directly outside the house so he could listen in while he fielded radio calls. Told us not to worry about a thing, he’d be looking out for us.” |
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Love the One You’re WithStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: March 1970 Released: Stills: Stephen Stills (1970); CSNY: 4 Way Street (live, 1971), Replay (compilation, 1980), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Charted: December 4, 1970 Peak: 14 BB, 16 CB, 6 GR, 10 HR, 32 AC, 5 CL, 37 UK, 6 CN, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “This song has been very good to me. The title came from a party with Billy Preston. I asked him if I could pinch this line he had, and he said, ‘Sure. ‘ So I took the phrase and wrote a song around it. It’s a good times song, just a bit of fun. My favorite part is the steel drums. I played them before a little bit but I just kept diddling around till I found the right notes.” LN |
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OhioCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young |
Writer(s): Neil Young Recorded: May 15, 1970 First Charted: June 20, 1970 Released: So Far (compilation, 1974), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) B-Side: “Find the Cost of Freedom” Peak: 14 BB, 14 CB, 25 GR, 13 HR, 2 CL, 16 CN, 44 AU, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 24.25 video, 120.89 streaming |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:“ CSNY recorded Ohio, a song written by Young in response to the killing of four students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen during an antiwar protest. Of the political content that marked many of their songs, Nash has said: ‘In speaking for ourselves, [listeners] recognized that we were speaking for them, too.’” RHDavid Crosby: “The way I recall it, I was with Neil at a friend’s house and handed him Life magazine with the Kent State photos. He was silent for a long time, then picked up his guitar and twenty minutes later had this song. I called Stephen and Graham, and we immediately booked a studio. We gave the master to Ahmet Ertegun who flew it to New York the next day and it was released within the week. ‘Teach Your Children’ was heading straight for Number One, and we knocked it right off the charts with our own song, and Nash never said one word about it, to his great credit. He knew how important it was that this song be out there. For me ‘Ohio’ was a high point of the band, a major point of validity. There we were, reacting to reality, dealing with it on the highest level we could – relevant, immediate. It named names and pointed the finger. It said ‘Nixon. ‘ I was so moved by it that I completely lost it at the end of the song, in the recording studio, screaming ‘ ... Four ... Why? ... ‘How many more?” LN
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Find the Cost of FreedomCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Released: So Far (compilation, 1974), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: 44 CL, 6 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 12.43 streaming About the Song:This may be CSNY’s peak when it comes to four-part harmony.Stephen Stills: “I wrote it at the request of Dennis Hopper for the final scene in Easy Rider, where the dude gets blown away as his motorcycle burns and the camera pans way up in the sky. I played it for Dennis but he was in a fog and just didn’t get it. I was depressed about that for years. The song is about what it says it’s about: the cost of freedom, Abraham Lincoln, Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. And a million others whose names we’ll never know. All the martyrs for this fragile thing called democracy, which we are always in danger of having taken away, never more so than today.” “We ended every CSNY concert with this song. After a long evening and raucous electric set, we’d come back out with acoustic guitars, sit quietly on stools, and play this song. Leave everybody in a quiet space together. We came out of the sixties with a lot of crap but a few wonderful ideals, and one was the sense of community. It’s a positive legacy. The song is a tombstone.” LN |
Black QueenStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: June 7, 1970 Released: Stills: Stephen Stills (1970); CSNY: 4 Way Street (live, 1971), CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Guitarist Michael Hedges: “I got everything I know from Stephen Stills. Those people who thought Clapton was God hadn’t heard Stills play acoustic guitar.” |
Man in the MirrorGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: June 7, 1970 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “It appeared on my first solo album, Songs for Beginners. It was a period of retreat and re-evaluation. I went to the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles for two nights and stayed for months. I had a little Wurlitzer piano in one room. I’d order room service and only come out at night. I wrote this tune there. I was very proud of Songs for Beginners because it stretched my awareness of who I am a bit further. The title for the album implied a beginning, since it was my first solo effort, but it also implied beginning, meaning songs for people who act, begin things. Because people think a lot but then don’t act on their thoughts.” LN |
Simple ManGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: July 24, 1970 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “The day before the Fillmore East show in June of 1970 I broke up with Joni Mitchell and my whole world fell apart. The afternoon of that show I wrote this song and that evening I performed it live for the first time, with Joni sitting in the audience. I don’t know how got through that.” LN |
Music Is LoveDavid Crosby |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: autumn 1970 Released: Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) First Charted: April 24, 1971 Peak: 95 BB, 96 CB, 76 HR, 44 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “‘Music Is Love’ is Nash’s and Neils’ fault. I improvised the tune, we were fooling around, it was a jam, and when it was over I thought ‘That’s nice,’ but I didn’t see it as too impressive. Then Nash and Neil stole the tape. They added congas, vibes, and harmonies, brought the tape back to me and said, ‘This is going on your album, don’t give us any shit.’ They were very firm about it. I learned a long time ago it doesn’t work to say no to Nash or Neil.” |
I’d Swear There Was Somebody HereDavid Crosby |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: early autumn 1970 Released: Crosby: If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “I don’t know where that came from. It was a hallucination. I’ve always been drawn to strange vocal works. I overdubbed six tracks a cappella, with echo. Later I was left with a persistent feeling it was about Christine Hinton, my girlfriend who was killed. I was very much in love with her, and she went away very suddenly. I was not equipped to deal with the loss. This piece was a sudden, improvised, overwhelming requiem.” LN |
Right Between the EyesCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: live 1970 Released: 4 Way Street (live, 1971) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:A |
Songs Recorded in 1971 |
I Used to Be a KingGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: January 9, 1971 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners (1971); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “And King Midas in Reverse is the king I used to be.” LN |
Military MadnessGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: February 12, 1971 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners (1971); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “This is a song we opened our 1991 solo acoustic tour with, and it blows my mind we still have to be singing it. I was quite literally born into wartime conditions. My father was fighting in the service, while my mother gave birth to me in an upstairs room in Blackpool, by the Northern Sea, where we’d been evacuated during World War II. You could say from a very early age I’ve been aware of the absurdity of war. There is always one side that wins out economically and industrially because they were the ones who manufactured the war and the weapons. It’s happening today and it is no different.” LN |
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ChicagoGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: February 28, 1971 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners (1971); CSNY: 4 Way Street (live, 1971), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) First Charted: May 21, 1971 Peak: 35 BB, 29 CB, 21 GR, 29 HR, 17 CL, 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “At the time Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy) called David and invited CSNY to go and play at a benefit for the Chicago Seven. David and I wanted to do it, Neil and Stephen didn’t, for whatever reason. Anyway, I wrote this song to Neil and Stephen and to everybody that I thought might want to hear about the fact that what was happening to the Chicago Seven wasn’t fair.” LN |
We Can Change the WorldGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: February 28, 1971 Released: Nash: Songs for Beginners (1971); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming |
Change PartnersStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: early 1971 Released: Stills: Stephen Stills 2 (1971); CSNY: Replay (compilation, 1980), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) First Charted: June 5, 1971 Peak: 43 BB, 38 CB, 38 GR, 40 HR, 19 CL, 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “Ostensibly it was about growing up in the South, attending the debutante balls, although Graham likes to refer to it as the Crosby, Stills and Nash theme song, which I suppose it is. But it should certainly be a crushing bore if we did the same old thing all the time. That’s why we called the group Crosby, Stills and Nash, and not ‘The Spiders,’ or something. Everybody would have the chance to carry on their solo careers and do what we wanted in any combination we wanted, in order to make it as interesting as possible, continually updating our relationships and our approaches to music, always open to other influences.” LN |
Word GameStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: early 1971 Released: Stills: Stephen Stills 2 (1971),: CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “When I was living in England in the early seventies I saw a documentary about South Africa made by underground Black filmmakers. They shot it with hidden cameras, stuffed in a sack, or under a hat. It showed what it’s really, really like to live under apartheid. It made me so mad that I wrote this song in about fifteen minutes. The hard part was making it fit to music. When I began performing it live, I would often segue into ‘Crossroads,’ and the two melted together. The real ‘Crossroads,’ that is, not the rock ‘n’ roll version. The Robert Johnson version, rough and uneven, where he would have an eleven bar phrase, followed by a six bar phrase, followed by seven bars. Before it became contrived. That’s the type of structure ‘Word Game’ followed: it determined its own form based on how I held a word or turned a phrase during the performance.” LN |
Urge for GoingCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): Joni Mitchell Recorded: June 22, 1971 Released: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Pianist Joel Bernstein: “After the break-up of CSN following the 1970 tour, David and Graham began a project on their own. They were both tremendous admirers of Joni Mitchell’s songwriting, and of course David had produced her first album. Together they decided to cover ‘Urge For Going,’ a song Joni had written in Canada in the Spring of 1966 (incidentally one of only two songs she ever wrote in standard tuning). It was intended for the pop singles market, the idea being to record two songs and release a 45. Graham’s vocals hark back to his English sixties pop style, and David is playing very clear twelve-string reminiscent of the Byrds. I came to the studio with Graham just in time to witness a heated argument, as a result of which the song was never completed. The next day David went back to the studio and added vocals on his own to present Graham with a semi-finished version of the song as a peace offering. ‘That tape is the only thing that exists of the song and that’s what you’re listening to now.” LN |
Where Will I Be?Crosby & Nash |
Writer(s): ? Recorded: November 22, 1971 Released: Crosby & Nash: Graham Nash David Crosby (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “A sad song that came out of a very lost period in my life. The question to ‘Page 43’’s answer.” LN |
Page 43Crosby & Nash |
Writer(s): -- Recorded: December 13, 1971 Released: Crosby & Nash: Graham Nash David Crosby (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “It’s about the mythical instruction booklet to life that we all wish we had and don’t. An optimistic song nonetheless.” LN |
Songs Recorded in 1972-1974 |
Southbound TrainCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: January 6, 1972 Released: Crosby & Nash: Graham Nash David Crosby (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “When David and I were staying at the Warwick Hotel in New York, Dylan came to visit. He asked us if we had any new songs and I had just written this. When David and I finished singing, Bob asked us to sing it again. I took it as quite a compliment ... I think.” LN |
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It Doesn’t MatterManassas |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills, Chris Hillman Recorded: January 7, 1972 Released: Manassas: Manassas (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) First Charted: March 13, 1972 Peak: 61 BB, 49 CB, 46 HR, 36 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Chris Hillman: “I’d been writing with the Byrds, but with Stephen I went up another level. I learned more about songwriting during my two years as Stephen’s second-in-command than at any other time in my life. He taught me how to structure a lyric, how to turn a phrase, how to craft a tune. Plus endless little tricks, like hanging onto phrases and half-finished songs instead of tossing them out, because later you’ll be writing a new one and these spare parts may just happen to fit. The point about the Byrds and the Springfield is we weren’t garage rock bands, we came out of folk music, so the major focus was on the song – if you were gonna get up in front of an audience with just an acoustic guitar, the material had better be good. I think Stephen is one of the most underrated musicians in this country, equally at home with acoustic or electric music.”“Manassas was a crucible for all types of music-folk, rock, jazz, blues, country, Latin, bluegrass – that band could tackle the entire spectrum of music with awesome musicianship and authenticity. When we were on it was killer. In the studio Stephen was an extraordinary arranger, always asking, ‘What can we do to make this a little more interesting. How to take a song and throw in a few left curves?’ I felt the song ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ captured a lot of that Buffalo Springfield sound. There’s a certain moment near the end of the song where there’s a track-layered harmony, and Stephen is doing a guitar figure which sounds like a bass, it’s very rhythmic & it really makes the last chorus great, it boosts the track with something subtle and completely out of context. I really had to stand up on my toes to play with these guys, and I needed to be challenged at that point in my life. He made me try harder, and I like that, I really like that.” LN |
Johnny’s GardenManassas |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: January 8, 1972 Released: Manassas: Manassas (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: 47 CL, 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “Written for my gardener John at Brookfield House in Elston, England where I once owned an estate. He had soul. He was an herbalist, and used to make incredible herbal teas. The song was written at a time in my life when I was on the road constantly, and what I really needed was to stay at home and rend my garden.” LN |
So Begins the TaskManassas |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: January 9, 1972 Released: Manassas: Manassas (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: 18 CL Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “I thought of this song as a poem. It was written immediately after ‘Helplessly Hoping.’ It’s a song of loss but also the freedom that goes with loss. It was conceived of as an acoustic song. We performed it on the CSNY tours a few times, then I cut this version during the Manassas sessions with A Perkins on fine pedal steel.” LN |
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Immigration ManCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: February 9, 1972 Released: Crosby & Nash: Graham Nash David Crosby (1972); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) First Charted: May 6, 1972 Peak: 36 BB, 31 CB, 33 GR, 25 HR, 11 CL, 26 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “I wrote the song after being hassled by a customs official who wasn’t going to let me into this country. He held me up for a very long time. Then people started coming up, asking for my autograph, and he let me through immediately. But it still made me angry. I’m not against local color but why should you fight me because you speak differently than I do? That’s why the sheet music for ‘Immigration Man’ had the world on the front and the moon on the back. When you look at a photograph of the earth you don’t see any borders. That realization is where our hope as a planet lies.” LN |
Another Sleep SongGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: August 18, 1972 Released: Nash: Wild Tales (1974); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “This was written in Barbra Streisand’s living room, on her piano, while she sat on the sofa eating a T.V. dinner. How many people hate to get out of bed in the morning, hate to face the world? You don’t want to answer the phone or talk to anybody. Well, me too, except that all we need is someone to awaken us. That’s what we need, that’s what the song is about. It’s for all you people who need waking.” LN |
As I Come of AgeCrosby, Stills & Nash |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: March 1973 Released: Stills: Stills (1975); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “This song is self-explanatory.” LN |
Prison SongGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: spring 1973 Released: Nash: Wild Tales (1974); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “When I was eleven my father bought a camera from a friend with whom he worked, and he set up the darkroom in my bedroom. And then something tragic happened. The police came to our door and told my father that the camera was stolen, and would he tell them who sold it to him. And my father refused to tell the police who it was that sold him the thirty-dollar camera. My father spent a year in jail for this camera. And he was a very ordinary, God-fearing, good, hard-working man and it broke his heart completely that the judicial system was not fair in this particular case. It really broke him, and he died shortly afterwards.”The other thing that inspired this song was a letter from a young man in Texas who was serving ten years for one joint of marijuana. And I couldn’t figure out why in Ann Arbor, Michigan, you could pay a five dollar fine for the same thing and get off.” LN |
First Things FirstStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: August 17, 1973 Released: Stills: Stills (1975); CSNY: Replay (compilation, 1980) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:A |
Wild TalesGraham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Released: Nash: Wild Tales; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “A friend of Elliott Roberts’ had an incredible series of mishaps in one week. His house was flooded, all his possessions were destroyed, and to top it off his old lady ran away with the milkman. He even went so far as to hire a detective to film her making love to the milkman. When her lawyer came to ask for alimony, his lawyer showed the film Wild Tales from the East.” LN |
Homeward Through the HazeCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: December 16, 1974 Released: Crosby & Nash: Wind on the Water (1975); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “A straightforward live take – the only overdubs are in the vocal harmonies. Stephen and Neil trading off on electric guitars, me on vocals and piano, Nash on organ, Lee Sklar on bass and Russ Kunkel on drums. We’d gotten together to do a CSNY album but this was the only song that got cut. We had an argument that night, everybody went home and never came back. It was a finding-your-way song at a time when it was getting more and more difficult to find the way.” LN |
Songs Recorded in 1975-1989 |
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Turn Back the PagesStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: early 1975 First Charted: August 2, 1975 Released: Stills: Stills (1975); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: 84 BB, 76 CB, 42 CL, 27 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “How close we were, how similar and yet how different. Our music has been an awakening on a subliminal level of what’s been going on in all of us for years.” LN |
Carry MeCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: March 1975 First Charted: November 8, 1975 Released: Crosby & Nash: Wind on the Water (1975); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “A song of transcendence. The third verse is about my mother. This cuts close to the bone. She was lying in hospital, dying of cancer, and wanted to go while she still had some dignity. She asked me to do it, set her free – coupe de grace, the French call it. So I said, ‘Hell, yes. ‘ I learned how to do it from a doctor friend, and I was perfectly willing to do it, I’m not ashamed to say that. But she found out if she didn’t die on the hospital and doctor’s schedule, they’d conduct an autopsy and charge me with murder. So she had to go through an extra couple of months of desperate pain. She was a good lady. She taught me music, and was always writing poetry. I loved her a whole lot. She really nailed me when she said she felt like a bird with weights tied to her feet, that if somebody would just untie them she could fly. What an image – I couldn’t ignore it.” LN |
My Love Is a Gentle ThingStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: April 18, 1975 Released: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “I broke my hand and went to Hawaii to recuperate, where I met a nice beach girl who nursed me. I feel most at home in the tropics. Not the high, mountainous rainforests, but down by the ocean. The Tropic of Capricorn. ‘My Love’ in the song is really Hawaii, I was thinking of the tropics as a woman. When I finished recording the song I wanted to overdub bongos in the background but there weren’t any. So I turned the guitar over and on the back of it thumped out a beat.” LN |
BittersweetCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: June 8, 1975 Released: Crosby & Nash: Wind on the Water; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “This was a completely unique recording experience for me. Written in the morning on a Wurlitzer electric piano in the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. In the studio that afternoon I played it for the guys as they arrived, and we recorded it that night. It was cut the same day it was written. We’ve always tried to find the shortest route from our minds onto the tape. It’s a song about duality, if you want to be intellectual about it.” LN |
Cowboy of DreamsCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Recorded: June 18, 1975 Released: Crosby & Nash: Wind on the Water; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “I wrote this song about Neil Young. I once went down to his ranch and he rowed me out into the middle of a lake – putting my life in his hands once again. He waved at someone invisible and music started to play, in the countryside. I realized Neil had his house wired as the left speaker, and his barn wired as the right speaker. And Elliot Mazer, his engineer, said ‘How is it?’ And Neil shouted back ‘More barn!’” LN |
To the Last Whale… (a) Critical Mass (b) Wind on the WaterCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): David Crosby, Graham Nash Recorded: 5/11/75 and 7/1/75 Released: Crosby & Nash: Wind on the Water (1975); CSNY: Replay (compilation, 1980), CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby on “To the Last Whale…”: “This may be the best, or at least the purest piece of music I’ve ever written. It was inspired by listening to a lot of classical music around the house as a kid.” LNCrosby on “Wind on the Water”: “This song is about all sea mammals, since virtually every species is in danger in some fashion or another, the whales, the dolphin, the hap seal, the sea otter. For almost two decades tuna fishermen have been slaughtering dolphins at the rate of over a quarter a million a year. The truth is, everything they get from whales can be synthesised or made at an equivalent cost, safely, in other ways. These animals are being made extinct, for no reason. I’m a sailor and I’ve been sailing for over thirty years. I go out there all the time and I love dolphins and whales, I live with them. And they’re gonna wipe them out as a species? That hurts me, I take it personally, and I’m going to do everything I can to fight it.” LN |
Taken at AllCrosby & Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash, David Crosby Recorded: April 1, 1976 Released: Crosby & Nash: Whistling Down the Wire (1976); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “One day in 1976 Neil came by my house in San Francisco. He played us a tape of some sessions he and Stephen had been recording at Criteria Studios in Miami: ‘Black Coral,’ ‘Midnight on the Bay,’ ‘Human Highway.’ It sounded great, but then Neil said, ‘Isn’t there something missing?’ And Crosby goes, ‘Yeah, us,’ meaning me and David. So the next morning we were on a plane to Miami. We added harmonies to their existing tracks, and recorded some new songs, ‘Taken at All’ being one of them. But David and I had to return to Los Angeles to finish our album, and Stephen and Neil had to wrap theirs up so they’d have product to push with the Stills/Young Band tour. The Crosby-Nash harmonies were transferred to safeties, then wiped from the master tapes. Personally, this is my favorite CSNY track. Four guitars, four microphones, one take. Written about the group situation in 1976: Can this road be taken at all?” LN |
Thoroughfare GapStephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills Recorded: early 1978 Released: Stills: Thoroughfare Gap (1978); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “A song about finding your way when life is going too fast. Probably my favorite work, from a literary standpoint. This song doesn’t need a guitar.” LN |
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Drive My CarDavid Crosby |
Writer(s): David Crosby Recorded: late 1978 Released: Crosby: Oh Yes I Can (1989); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: 3 AR, 88 CN, 26 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “Sometimes you take your life’s steering wheel and turn it one direction, and the car careens in the other, right? My life was out of control like that a lot, so I’d get in my car and just drive, because at least it would go where I would steer it.” LN |
Barrel of Pain (Half-Life)Graham Nash |
Writer(s): Graham Nash Released: Nash: Earth & Sky (1979); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Graham Nash: “I wrote this song about the Atomic Energy Commission’s practice of dropping barrels of nuclear waste into the ocean just off the California and Maine coasts. I saw photographs of the mutated sea life that had been exposed to the waste. And I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.” LN |
Dear Mr. FantasyStephen Stills & Graham Nash |
Writer(s): Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood Recorded: November 17, 1980 Released: CSN (box set, 1991), Carry On (compilation, 1991) Peak: 15 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “Stevie Winwood was always my favorite singer, that blue-eyed sound. It had been our ambition from the start to convince him to join Crosby, Stills and Nash - I wanted an organ player who could sing the blues. He was exceptionally kind to me, but every time I trudged across the moors to see him, he was always occupied. I didn’t think there was anyone more shy than me - the phrase ‘painfully shy’ was invented for this man. We’ve recorded ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy’ a number of times, beginning in 1970. It was intended as an homage. Hats off, Stevie.” LN |
50/50Stephen Stills |
Writer(s): Stephen Stills, Joe Lala Recorded: early 1983 Released: Nash: Right by You (1984); CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:Stephen Stills: “I spent my formative years in Panama and Costa Rica. So when all the American kids were dancing to fifties rock ‘n roll, I was in Latin America dancing to Salsa. Those first things you learn stick with you the longest. It’s there by osmosis, it cannot help but be there. There’s an undercurrent of Latin music that’s prevalent through most of my music, my sense of syncopation – I was a drummer first. Latin music is one of the most vibrant and musically alive forms of music on the face of the earth.” LN |
Tracks in the DustDavid Crosby |
Writer(s): ? Released: Crosby: Oh Yes I Can; CSNY: CSN (box set, 1991) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming About the Song:David Crosby: “It was a conversation I had between four of me. A wonderful chance to sing and play with Nash and Michael Hedges.” LN |
Resources/References:
Related DMDB Pages:
First posted 3/20/2026; last updated 3/21/2026. |
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