Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
David Crosby (b. 14 August 1941, Los Angeles, California, USA), Stephen Stills (b. 3 January 1945, Dallas, Texas, USA) and Graham Nash (b. 2 February 1942, Blackpool, Lancashire, England) first came together in the 1969 supergroup Crosby, Stills And Nashbefore recruiting Neil Young (b. 12 November 1945, Toronto, Canada). That same year, the quartet appeared at the Woodstock festival and established a format of playing two sets, one acoustic and one electric, which showed off their musicianship to remarkable effect. Instant superstars, their 1970 album, DEJA VU, was one of the biggest sellers of the year and one of the most celebrated works of the early '70s. Its power came from the combined brilliance of the contributors and included some of their finest material, at a time when they were at their most inventive. Stills, the maestro, offered the startling Carry On with its driving rhythm and staggering high harmony, plus the stark melancholia of 4+20. Young contributed the suitably maudlin Helpless and an ambitious song suite, Country Girl, which remains one of his most underrated songs. Nash's Teach Your Children, with Jerry Garcia on steel guitar, was the group's personal favourite and remained a permanent number in their live set over the years. Finally, Crosby provided the jazz-influenced title track and the raw, searing Almost Cut My Hair, one of the great anti-establishment songs of the period. There was even a US Top 10 single, courtesy of their reading of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock. 
During the summer of 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on demonstrators at Kent State University and killed four students. Crosby handed Young a magazine reporting the incident and watched in fascination as the song Ohio emerged. Recorded within 24 hours of its composition, the song captured the foursome at their most musically aggressive and politically relevant. Sadly, it was to remain a frustrating statement of all they might have achieved had they remained together. A series of concerts produced the double set FOUR WAY STREET, which revealed the group's diversity in contrasting acoustic and electric sets. By the time of its release in 1971, the group had scattered in various directions to pursue solo projects. 
Their unexpected and untimely departure left a huge gap in the rock marketplace. During 1971, they were at their peak and could command gold records as soloists or in a variety of other permutations of the original foursome. Many saw them as the closest that America reached in creating an older, second generation Beatles. Part of their charm came from the fact that their ranks contained former members of the Buffalo Springfield, the Hollies and the Byrds. Wherever they played part of the audience's psychological response contained elements of that old fanaticism which is peculiar to teenage heroes. While other contemporaneous groups such as the Bandmight claim similar musical excellence or stylistic diversity, they could never match the charisma or messianic popularity of CSN&Y. The supergroup were perfectly placed in the late '60s/early '70s defining their time with a ready-made set of philosophies and new values which were liberally bestowed on their audience. They brilliantly reflected the peace, music and love ideal, as popularized by the Woodstock promoters. While other groups exploited the hippie ideal, CSN&Y had the courage to take those ideas seriously. At every concert and on every record they eulogized those precepts without a trace of insincerity. It was a philosophy exemplified in their lifestyles and captured in neo-romantic compositions of idealism and melancholia. A brittle edge was added with their political commentaries, both in interviews and on record, where civil unrest in Chicago, Ohio and Alabama were pertinent subjects. 
With such cultural and commercial clout, it was inconceivable that the quartet would not reconvene and, during 1974, they undertook a stupendous stadium tour. A second studio album, HUMAN HIGHWAY, originally begun in Hawaii and resumed after their tour, produced some exceptionally strong material but was shelved prior to completion. Two years later, Crosby And Nash attempted to join forces with the short-lived Stills/Young Band only to have their harmony work erased amid acrimony and misunderstanding. By the late '70s, the CSN&Y concept had lost its appeal to punk-influenced music critics who regarded the quartet's romanticism as narcissism, their political idealism as naïve and their technical perfection as elitist and clinical. It was a clear case of historical inevitability—one set of values replacing another. Remarkably, it was not until 1988 that the quartet at last reunited for AMERICAN DREAMtheir first studio release for 18 years. It was a superlative work, almost one hour long and containing some exceptionally strong material including the sardonic title track, the brooding Night Song, Crosby's redemptive Compass and Nash's epochal Soldiers Of Peace. This time around, however, there was no accompanying CSN&Y tour and the prospects of a third studio album seem decidedly remote.