Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - So Far (1974)

So Far . . . or so what?

After David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young put their partnership on ice in 1970 to pursue other projects, interest in the group remained high and the urgency for CSNY to release a new album was higher.  Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young made an attempt at a new album together in 1973.  To be titled Human Highway, that album was never released because the foursome devolved into arguments before they even got started.  Their stadium concert tour in the summer of 1974 had a better outcome, going off without a hitch, but the old animosities remained; a second attempt at a CSNY album that autumn also crashed and burned (though their one finished cut from that effort, the first recording of Crosby's "Homeward Through the Haze" - available on Crosby, Stills and Nash's 1991 box set - was a stunningly conceived blues piece in contrast to the more conservative West Coast rock version that David Crosby and Graham Nash taped for their 1975 Wind On the Water album).  With no new CSNY product to offer during the group's stadium tour, Atlantic Records relied on that old stand-by - the greatest-hits package.

So Far, released a year after Human Highway wasn't, compiles tracks from the 1969 self-titled Crosby, Stills and Nash debut and their 1970 Déjà Vu album with Young.  The idea of basing a greatest-hits album on two LPs is rather absurd, and Graham Nash made it clear that the group certainly thought so. To be fair, So Far has some choice highlights from the two earlier LPs.  Stills's best work as a guitarist, arranger, and balladeer are distilled to the essence here with the choice of the quartet's cover of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" (carried by a Stills lead vocal) as well as his own "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "Helplessly Hoping."  Crosby and Nash aren't as well represented; So Far features Crosby's superb ballad "Guinnevere" but not his stirring blues rocker "Long Time Gone" (about Robert Kennedy's assassination).  And does Nash have to be represented by two ballads from the same album?  Both "Teach Your Children" and "Our House" (from Déjà Vu) are great, but how could any serious CSNY compilation not include his pop-rock masterpiece "Marrakesh Express?"  Crosby and Nash, long thought to be the George and Ringo of CSNY, are treated accordingly here, with Stills and Young (Young's "Helpless" is included on So Far) getting all the top honors.

So Far may be an adequate album for neophyte fans with limited budgets who can't have both Crosby, Stills and Nash and Déjà Vu in their record collections, but you have to wonder who in 2014 wouldn't have the money or the storage space for both albums.  And if you do have both of them already, well, why would you want this collection?  Three reasons:  So Far includes the Neil Young-penned single "Ohio," a biting, heavy diatribe about the 1970 Kent State massacre, it also has "Ohio"'s Stills-written B-side, the evocative "Find the Cost of Freedom," and the sleeve bears a wonderful painting from Joni Mitchell.  Two stellar songs previously unavailable on long players and artwork suitable for framing?  Once again, Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun proved why he was a genius.  As it turned out, So Far was so good to Atlantic Records; it topped the charts and went platinum six times.   Ertegun's professional presentation of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's most important work to date in 1974 enhanced the quartet's reputation during one of too many times that they themselves threatened it.

(The long-awaited live album of Crosby Stills Nash and Young's 1974 concerts, CSNY 1974, is finally coming out; read all about it here.   This is going to be my last album review for awhile; I don't know when I'll resume them.)