You Can Listen To Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's 'Déjà Vu' Tonight From Midnight

It was one of the most hotly awaited second albums in history — right up there with those by The Beatles and The Band– Déjà Vu lived up to its expectations and rose to number one on the charts. Those achievements are all the more astonishing given the fact that the group barely held together through the estimated 800 hours it took to record Déjà Vu and scarcely functioned as a group for most of that time.

Déjà Vu  worked as an album, a product of four potent musical talents who were all ascending to the top of their game coupled with some very skilled production, engineering, and editing. There were also some obvious virtues in evidence — the addition of Neil Young to the Crosby, Stills, Nash lineup added to the level of virtuosity, with Young and Stephens Stills rising to new levels of complexity and volume on their guitars.

Young’s presence also ratcheted up the range of available voices one notch and added a uniquely idiosyncratic songwriter to the fold, though most of Young’s contributions in this area were confined to the second side of the LP. Most of the music, apart from the quartet’s version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’, was done as individual sessions by each of the members when they turned up (which was seldom together), contributing whatever was needed that could be agreed upon.

‘Carry On’worked as the album’s opener when Stills ”sacrificed” another copyright, ‘Questions’,which comprised the second half of the track and made it more substantial. ‘Woodstock’ and ‘Carry On’ represented the group as a whole, while the rest of the record was a showcase for the individual members. David Crosby’s ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ was a piece of high-energy hippie-era paranoia not too far removed in subject from The Byrds ‘Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man’, only angrier in mood and texture (especially amid the pumping organ and slashing guitars); the title track, also by Crosby, took 100 hours to work out and it was well worth the time it took.

All of this variety made Déjà Vu a rich musical banquet for the most serious and personal listeners, while mass audiences revelled in the glorious harmonies and the thundering electric guitars, which were presented in even more dramatic and expansive fashion on the tour that followed.

Tracklist:

1. Carry On

2. Teach Your Children

3. Almost Cut My Hair

4. Helpless

5. Woodstock

6. Déjà Vu

7. Our House

8. 4+20

9. Country Girl

10. Everybody I Love You

Photo Credit: Piano,Piano!