(Credits: Far Out / Marsha Miller / LBJ Library)
Thu 16 October 2025 21:15, UK
When you focus solely on the music, the appeal of Crosby, Stills & Nash is clear: the vocals. As with most groups, however, the dynamics behind the scenes aren’t always so plain sailing.
As with most good things in the music world, Cass Elliot had a hand in David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash together. Anyone who would have witnessed them coming together to sing back then would have likely thought the same thing – that they ought to leave their bands and form a new one, together. Which is exactly what Elliot did. According to Nash, she knew they had something.
“She insisted, and with good reason,” Nash told Uncut 2014. “Nobody else would have the balls to do that, that we loved her dearly. So we agreed. I’ve always thought that Cass understood intuitively what the sound of me, David, and Stephen singing together would sound like, and when she introduced me to them, she knew they were trying to put something together.”
Leaving the Hollies to focus on CSN was Nash’s saving grace. The Hollies, quite literally, made music for the sole purpose of making people feel good, encouraging them to get up and dance. That was it. Nash had talents elsewhere, but he couldn’t even begin to explore that unless he joined a new unit. He could flex those muscles with Stills and Crosby, which is exactly what he did after a crucial nudge from Elliot pushed them closer together.
As with most groups, however, challenges are inevitable. Some of these came in the shape of Crosby’s difficult nature in the studio, a theme often called out by his fellow bandmates. Nash endured a tumultuous relationship with his former band member for years, culminating in public lashing out and diss tracks like ‘Encore’, which was also Nash’s brutal way of addressing his own complicated feelings. For instance, he has good memories with Crosby, but also ones where he feels conflicted, or, as he put it while discussing the song, “Are you a decent person or are you a fucking asshole?’ I’m not sure I have the complete answer yet.”
Nash always admired Crosby, though, knowing firsthand just how much of a genius he actually was. This is also incidentally the reason why, when discussing him, his words come out especially impassioned, a bit like you can’t tell whether he’s giving him compliments or not, even though he definitely is. It’s like when he told Best Classic Bands, “I admire Stephen and love him dearly, but Crosby is a different animal on this planet. And I recognised it from the very first moment I ever met him, which of course was through Cass. I was with two real Yanks. Absolutely. I was with two Americans of doom.”
Looking back, you might have thought that being a Brit among “Americans of doom” might have made him feel out of sorts. Especially with Elliot also on the sidelines, and the general disparity that came with being active through movements like the British Invasion. But Nash knew he had something to bring to the table, and knew that they all shared common passions in harmonies, having all come from “harmony bands” before forming CSN.
These foundations made it possible for them to eventually welcome in Neil Young, especially by the time they were ready to better their live performances and hold the sort of chemistry on stage that people would keep coming back to. “It was obvious that this man was as serious as a heart attack about his music,” Nash later said, recalling the moment he realised Young was the missing link. Young gave them their “edge”, but before, their charge and drive came from a different beast entirely – Crosby.
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