Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Live at Fillmore East, 1969
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had just made their big splash at Woodstock a month earlier when they settled in for a series of shows at New York’s Fillmore East the weekend of Sept. 19-20, 1969. Brimming with a confidence that wasn’t quite theirs yet at the festival—where Stephen Stills even confessed they were “scared shitless”—the musicians divvied their late show on the 20th into acoustic and electric sets, performing songs from the self-titled Crosby, Stills & Nash LP they’d released that May, as well as a sprinkling of tunes that would end up on 1970’s CSN&Y debut, Déjà Vu, Neil Young’s album of that same year with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and other assorted projects. This recently discovered tape, 17 tracks in all, is pristine in quality, and the performances are uniformly grand, particularly in the vocal department. Following an opening “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” that’s as flawless as the familiar Woodstock rendition, the Paul McCartney-authored “Blackbird” is given an arrangement that rivals The Beatles’ own in its sheer beauty— those harmonies! While the bulk of the acoustic portion is given over to familiar songs that both stress the singers’ individual gifts (Nash’s “Lady of the Island,” Crosby’s “Guinnevere” and “Go Back Home,” a Stills track that would land on his solo debut in 1970), there are a couple of surprises, including a workup of “I’ve Loved Her So Long,” a Stills original cut from Buffalo Springfield’s final LP. As tender and intimate as the acoustic music is, things heat up considerably for part two, where CSN&Y were joined by bassist Greg Reeves and drummer Dallas Taylor. Here, on now-classics like “Wooden Ships” and “Long Time Gone,” as well as the Crazy Horse-bound Young staple “Down By the River,” CSN&Y leave no doubt that they could rock with the best of them—although they’d rarely find the time or motivation to do so as the decades unfolded.