Déjà Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Déjà Vu
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Atlantic SD 7200
1970

I have been reading Jimmy McDonough's excellent biography of Neil Young, "Shakey."  Through it I've learned more about CSN&Y than I ever wanted to know.  They all come off pretty badly in the book which confirms what I always suspected about them.  I figured they were all about the money and the egos although I'm not sure that applied to Young.  Even after reading the book, I don't understand why Young got mixed up with these guys nor can I figure out the love/hate thing he had with Stephen Stills.  When I was a budding young record collector growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, these guys were like rock royalty there.  They were always on the radio and their tours were major events.  I remember a couple of guys in high school discussing Stephen Stills as if he were a major artist like Bob Dylan.  I didn't like them at all.  Their hits irritated me and I thought their segment in "Woodstock" was torture but I didn't have enough faith in my critical judgment yet to go against the mainstream.  I figured I must be missing something if everyone thought they were so great.  After all I loved the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield, so how could this be bad?  So despite my misgivings I dutifully purchased a used copy of "Déjà Vu."  One look at the cover could have told me I was in for trouble.  Young is hiding in the background dressed like a gambler ready to fleece me.  Stills is wearing a Confederate army uniform - peace, man.  Graham Nash and David Crosby look like guest stars on "The Beverly Hillbillies."  The whole package with its fake leather cover and gilt lettering reeks of excess and pomposity.  The sidemen, Dallas Taylor and Greg Reeves, are given co-billing and figure prominently in the gatefold photographs like "we're all brothers, man" although according to McDonough the big four basically treated them as hired hands.  The album opens with some promise with Stills' "Carry On."  The song is a propulsive tune about bouncing back from heartbreak and benefits from Stills' biggest strengths as an artist, dynamic shifts in melody and texture and lots of stinging guitar lines.  The album takes a nosedive with Nash's country-rock "Teach Your Children."  Even Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar can't rescue this song from its idiocy.  This guy thought the Hollies were lightweight?  Somehow this became a top 20 hit, but I've always loathed it.  It gets worse with Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair" - don't worry Dave it is going to fall out anyway.  Crosby boasts about being a counter-culture rebel and his smug stupidity infuriates me.  Although there is lots of invigorating guitar noise on this track, I find it practically unlistenable.  Have another snort, David, you are a real hero.  At this point I'm ready to smash this record to bits, but then Neil Young shows up to redeem it with the brilliant "Helpless."  This slow, mournful autobiographical song is one of the best things Young ever wrote and it easily trumps every song CSN&Y ever did.  The side ends with a rocking version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" which I think is the worst song she ever wrote.  CSN&Y demonstrate that if you play it fast and loud it doesn't sound as silly which I consider to be an eternally true rock and roll axiom.  Side two begins with "Déjà Vu" which is Crosby's second contribution to the album.  It is a big improvement over his first one, but then again 4 minutes of silence would have been an improvement too.  It is kind of a trippy tune in which Crosby wonders what's going on, probably a common problem for a guy with a big league dope habit.  Graham Nash demonstrates his consistency with his second tune, the incredibly inane "Our House."  The song was supposedly inspired by his domestic bliss living with Joni Mitchell.  I'll never understand how a genius like Mitchell ever hooked up with this vapid guy, I guess it is true that opposites attract.  The song is insidiously catchy and annoying.  Stills restores the album's dignity with the acoustic "4 + 20" which finds him solemnly feeling sorry for himself.  You can tell he's serious because he doesn't let Crosby and Nash sing with him.  Once again it is up to Young to lift the album above the navel contemplations of his partners.  "Country Girl" is a suite of 4 songs that describe his attraction to the title character although the song covers a lot more territory than that thanks to whole bunch of enigmatic yet evocative metaphors that Young sprinkles throughout his narrative.  The song is overproduced but I still find it just as enthralling as I did when I was a teen.  Young is so much more talented than his three partners, it is like Willie Mays playing on a beer league softball team.  The album finishes with the only collaboration on the album, Stills and Young's "Everybody I Love You."  It is little more than a throwaway about opening yourself up to love but it is still better than most of the rest of the record.  Stills supposedly wanted Young in the group so he would have someone to play with since Nash and Crosby weren't real musicians.  When I listen to the dueling guitars and soaring vocals on this hard rocking cut I do finally get a sense of why they might have thought this band was a good idea.  Still it is pretty slim pickings for a record that is supposedly a classic album - 2 great Neil Young songs, 1 good Stephen Stills song, 1 fun Stills-Young song and a whole bunch of hippie hogwash.  Recommended for people looking for something to play to annoy their roommates, sure worked on my family. 

Live on Sugar Mountain/Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 1971 - Neil Young

Live on Sugar Mountain
Neil Young 
Trademark of Quality  TMQ 71022 
1971

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion 1971

Neil Young

Shakey Pictures Records 093624885139

2021

I found this bootleg in Wisconsin last year.  I was in a combination cheese shop/antique store (which is not as weird as it sounds if you've ever been to Wisconsin) and while my wife was sampling the local fromage, I poked around in the antique store.  I found a bin of records.  I rarely find good records in antique stores, they are usually either overpriced or poor quality.  This bin had a lot of classic rock, but it was not in collectible condition for the most part and I already had much of the desirable stuff in there.  Just as I was about to give up I noticed this record nestled among some Neil Young albums.  As you can see it is just a generic blank sleeve which usually means a bootleg.  Old timers out there probably can recall that a lot of the lesser quality bootleg albums came in generic sleeves with mimeographed sheets identifying the record slipped inside the shrink wrap.  Once the shrink wrap is gone, often the mimeograph sheet gets lost.  The inner label of the record was blank but someone had written "Sugar Mountain" on it.  I figured it must be a Neil Young concert bootleg.  I don't really collect bootlegs especially not vinyl ones and even more so vinyl ones missing their artwork but it was only a buck so I picked it up.  It was a good decision.  It turned out to be Young's February 1, 1971 concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.  On it he previews a bunch of songs that had yet to be recorded on an album.  The concert has been bootlegged in various guises through the years but the original pressing was on Trademark of Quality but I don't think this is one, because all the copies I've seen of those have actual labels on the vinyl.  This has the Trademark of Quality matrix number stamped on the vinyl but I think it is a later generation issue, perhaps a bootleg of the bootleg.  It is a popular bootleg, I imagine at some point Young might want to put it out himself if he hasn't already.  I haven't been keeping up with the abundance of archival recordings he has been releasing.  It is not a professional recording though, it is a lo-fi audience recording.  Nonetheless, the sound is decent, no distortion and not too much audience noise aside from the occasional cough which amazes me since every time I go to a show there is always some jackass nearby yapping all the way through it.  It is a solo acoustic show with just Young and his guitar and occasionally piano.  It opens with "On the Way Home" from the Buffalo Springfield and "Tell Me Why" from "After the Goldrush."  Then he starts with new songs.  There is a moving version of "Old Man" (from "Harvest") and then he goes to the piano to introduce "Journey Through The Past" which would eventually be recorded for "Time Fades Away."  "Sugar Mountain" gets a lengthy introduction with Young exhorting the crowd to sing along.  Young is quite talkative at the show, perhaps because it was the last show on his tour.  In the middle of the song he stops and tells the crowd that he originally wrote 126 verses for the song and had to narrow them down to four and one of them is the worst thing he ever wrote (it is the "Now you're underneath the stairs" verse in case you are wondering) and if he can deal with the embarrassment of singing it they ought to be able to sing along with him and finally the crowd does join in a little.  Next up is "Don't Let It Bring You Down" and the side ends with Young returning to the piano for "Love In Mind" which also wouldn't appear on legitimate vinyl until "Time Fades Away."  Side two begins with "Cowgirl In the Sand" and then he plays "Heart of Gold."  It is back to the piano for "A Man Needs a Maid" which Young explains came to him when he was bedridden.  There is a slightly altered line when Young substitutes "A man feels afraid" for "A man needs a maid" in one of the choruses which I think improves the song.  This performance seems a bit naked without the strings on the recorded version (on "Harvest") but I find it more moving.  There is a lengthy introduction for "Needle and The Damage Done" where Young puts down bootlegs (oh the irony) in particular the CSN&Y "Wooden Nickel" which he calls a "capitalist ripoff."  There are also some comments about the lost accomplishments of people who succumb to heroin addiction.  Next up is "Ohio" and then back to the piano for "See the Sky About To Rain" which wouldn't get released until 1974 on "On The Beach."  The Buffalo Springfield song "I Am a Child" is next and it is one of the loveliest versions I've heard.  The album ends with a rousing performance of the unrecorded song "Dance, Dance, Dance" which features the audience loudly clapping along.  I really enjoy this record but I don't think I'd pay the inflated price it normally costs and if I did I'd probably opt for a CD version since it would probably have better sound quality.  Bootleg vinyl is always a crap shoot, the pressings are usually inferior to commercial ones, this one is okay but the mastering is so poor that you have to crank up the volume to hear it which means the surface noise is amplified as well.  Still I'm very happy to have it and I've been playing it quite a bit.  It is a great concert with a lot of warmth and atmosphere coming through on the recording.  Recommended for people who think "Harvest" is over-produced.

Post Script: Of course ol' Neil had this one in his archive.  It's not a crappy audience tape either, this one was professionally recorded by Joni Mitchell's favorite engineer, Henry Lewy, who was working with Young on "Harvest" at the time.  It sounds much clearer and I could not be happier to finally have it in a quality recording on a properly mastered album.  I do have two minor complaints.  The record packaging is lifted from one of the bootleg versions.  I'm not pleased with the faux ring wear and shoddy artwork.  I get that Young wants the record to look like a bootleg but I think this performance deserves a better package.  It is among my favorites of the many concert albums he has put out in his career and I would like it to look as nice as it sounds.  My bigger complaint is that Young's humorous diatribe against bootlegs in his introduction to "The Needle and the Damage Done" has been edited out.  I'm not sure if it was done to save space or because it seemed hypocritical given the zeal with which Young has been issuing his own "bootlegs."  Curiously the song order is different than the one on my bootleg.  On the boot, "Sugar Mountain" "Don't Let It Bring You Down" and "Love In Mind" follow "Journey Through the Past" to close out side one.  On Young's version they open side two and "Cowgirl in the Sand," Heart of Gold" and "A Man Needs a Maid" take their place on side one.  I don't know which one is correct although several of the other boots follow Young's order so I'm going to assume it is correct.  I find it a more satisfying sequence anyway.  I'm not sure that its worth keeping my bootleg copy just to have a bit of missing between song patter but being the idiot collector that I am, I am going to keep it anyway.