(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 5 February 2026 23:00, UK
When Neil Young joined Crosby, Stills, and Nash, turning them into CSNY, many fans feared that the band’s sound would be plunged into darkness.
The hard-edged Canadian had a heavier style to him, which in many ways felt like the antithesis of the band’s sun-kissed Californian sound. Where Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s 1969 debut album was driven by delicate melodies and lightly crafted harmonies, Young’s album of the same year, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, was more cutting as he lamented on his distaste for life in show business.
So when his name was added to the roster in 1970, it was almost a sure thing that the band would retreat from the sun and play within the shadows. And sure, Young did facilitate that with poignant political track ‘Ohio’ and the deeply personal ‘Helpless’ which mused on the debilitating impacts of polio.
But what many fans of the band overlooked was just how pivotal Young’s inclusion into the band was for David Crosby and his growing songwriting style. Despite being the definitive hippy of the era and seamlessly fitting in with Stephen Stills’ harmonic plan on the first record, Crosby harboured an inner darkness that rivalled Young’s.
Young saw it first hand, recalling that Crosby was “The soul of CSNY, David’s voice and energy were at the heart of our band. His great songs stood for what we believed in, and it was always fun and exciting when we got to play together.”
His cantankerous and uncompromising nature wasn’t just a funny disposition; no, it was symptomatic of his wider disgruntlement towards society. Counterculture was far more than a romantic illusion to him, but rather a necessary movement to help leverage people out of bureaucratic oppression. So as Young joined the band and booted down the door of songwriting sensibilities, Crosby was given much-needed credence to explore that within his music.
In ‘Almost Cut My Hair’, he wrote an anthem for the counterculture movement that encapsulated all of that frustrated resistance. He turned the rather flippant experience of cutting one’s hair into a defiant act of symbolism that rightly represents Crosby as a man who truly withstood conventional ideals.
Did David Crosby sing vocals on ‘Almost Cut My Hair’?
As the writer of the song, Crosby did sing lead vocals on ‘Almost Cut My Hair’. Rather simply, it was a song that couldn’t have belonged to anyone else in the band, for the lyrical sentiment required the gravelly and soulful texture of his voice.
The song was recorded in San Francisco with the remaining members of the band, with Stills and Young specifically laying down guitar parts. Graham Nash played the organ on the final recording, while they enlisted the help of Greg Reeves to play bass and Dallas Taylor on drums.
In fact, it was only one of two songs written by the remaining members of the band that Young played on, with ‘Woodstock’ being the other. But ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ was the perfect track for Young to contribute to because while it wasn’t written by him, it represented all that he was as an artist himself. Since the release of ‘Almost Cut My Hair’, he has called it “Crosby, at what I think is his best.”
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