220. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, "Déjà Vu"

 

Here's another weird time/nostalgia thing: I was into this album as a much younger person in the mid-late 80's, probably peaking around let's say 1988.  At the time, this album seemed like a relic from a different age; although it was released in 1970, it was unmistakably from THE SIXTIES and it sounded like hippies and long hair and patchouli and all that shit.  There is a song specifically about Woodstock!  Called "Woodstock"!  (Killer song, btw.)  OK so at the time I was super into it, this album was 18 years old.  Only 18 years old!  That's like listening to Arcade Fire's Funeral or Iron & Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days today and thinking of them not just as older albums but albums from an entirely different age, which is not how I think of those albums!  I continue to be puzzled by this phenomenon, where what was "classic rock" in my youth would merely be "stuff I listened to when I was younger" today.  I guess it's just a function of getting older.  If somebody was 20 in 1970 when this came out I guess when they were 40 in 1990 they wouldn't think of it like I did.

CSNY was one of the first "supergroups" in the sense that all the band members had already enjoyed varying degrees of success in other bands or as solo artists.  Interestingly, they didn't really write the songs together as a band, but everyone brought in their own songs and the other guys added whatever they thought sounded good.  There are a few absolute classics, a few good songs, a few not greats, and one excruciating song, as follows:

Absolute classic: "Carry On," "Helpless," and "Woodstock."  I thnk "Carry On" is sort of the prototypical CSNY song; great harmonies, banging guitar, slightly melancholy for reasons you can't put your finger on.  "Helpless" is just Neil with everyone else helping, but it's good Neil.

Few good songs: "Deja Vu," not classic level but such an intricate and memorable song. Stills said it took 100 takes, and that seems right.  Also "4+20" (amazingly, not about marijuana, also the only completely solo song, by Stills). "Country Girl." "Everybody I Love You."  I'm torn about "Teach Your Children."  It's objectively a lovely song, but hearing it again today it sounds kind of, I don't know, childlike?  Like naive, and not in a good way?  Man, the past few decades have really done wonders for my dark cynicism.

Not greats: "Almost Cut My Hair," Crosby 's vocal is, uh, not really there. 

Excruciating: "Our House."  I know it's super famous and all that but come on. Even Graham Nash doesn't like it and he wrote it.  It was used in a few commercials, which is exactly the level of song it is.

ADDENDUM: I was looking at the cover again and started wondering about it and it turns out this website tracked it down and the photo was taken in the backyard of David Crosby's rented house in Novato.  See that very handsome dog?  It just "wandered into the frame and became immortalized!"  I must know whose dog that was! 

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Certainly.