Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Déjà Vu (1970)

When Neil Young joined Crosby, Stills and Nash in July 1969, the supposition was that he'd been added to the group to add muscle and bite to their music. (Their Atlantic Records debut album had won as many detractors as admirers for what Rolling Stone's John Morthland called an "adult bubblegum" sound.) In fact, Young had joined at the urging of Atlantic Records founder and legend Ahmet Ertegun to provide a second lead guitar for live shows, despite the misgivings of Stephen Stills, who felt he'd been burned by Young's mercurial behavior in the Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash, who saw CSN as something exclusive between him, Stills and David Crosby. The group went ahead with the gambit, unwittingly upsetting the delicate balance of talent and ego that made Crosby, Stills and Nash one of the few all-star bands, or "supergroups," that had any chance of lasting more than a year or two.

Déjà Vu, released in March 1970, reflects that lack of balance. The album was recorded in an excruciatingly contentious atmosphere, with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young bogged down in petty arguments over . . . everything. And yet, Déjà Vu works. It doesn't work spectacularly, but it works. Déjà Vu succeeds not because the tracks belong together - in fact, they sound a little random next to each other - but because they happen to be wonderful songs that each have a wholeness outshining the four imperfectly fit parts behind them. Nash's contributions are just as uplifting as anything he'd offered up on Crosby, Stills and Nash, from the simple, plaintive message of hope in "Teach Your Children" to the bright, resonant harpsichord on the fiery gem that is "Our House." Stills' "4 + 20," a song about an old man in perpetual poverty, is just about the most moving acoustic ballad he's ever written, while Crosby's title track is a number about reincarnation (long before the subject became steeped in the New Age culture that derived from the very hippie ethic Crosby, Stills and Nash represented in the first place) that has some quirky phrase turns and tempo shifts. And "Carry On," the opening track, has a lot of energy.

Despite the reputation of Déjà Vu as a rudderless album with no communication between its progenitors, a group is actually at work here, enhancing each other's songs with their own worthy ideas. Stills improved Nash's "Teach Your Children" by changing it from an English folk song to an American country tune (Jerry Garcia shows his genius here with a pedal steel guitar line), while Stills ended up recording "4 + 20" solo after Crosby and Nash  realized that Stills' own harmony arrangements didn't do it justice.

So, how did Neil Young enhance these songs? He didn't. He doesn't actually appear on any of the aforementioned tunes, and his own contributions, such as "Helpless," a very relaxed ballad, aren't exactly the sort of rockers he's worked up with Crazy Horse. Young's heaviest moments are on other people's songs; the angrily defiant "Almost Cut My Hair," with Young's chunky leads, is a Crosby tune. Young doesn't really belong here; he's more like a guest artist here than a full-fledged member. His work on Déjà Vu is like a sunroof on a car - a nice but unnecessary optional extra. All he did was make this record more erratic and undisciplined than it already was. (The fact that drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves got credits on the front cover showed how integral they were in keeping Déjà Vu as consistent as possible.) Had this only been a Crosby, Stills and Nash effort, without a fourth member altering the chemistry and changing the group dynamic, it could have been a great album, not just a collection of great songs. Indeed, the gritty, sharp take on Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" (which did, in fairness, include Young) expanded the group's abilities as an act that could effectively interpret other artists' songs as well as write their own, providing only a mere hint of such greatness.

At the time of Déjà Vu's release, rock and roll was at its cultural peak, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young represented the idealism and communitarian values of a generation. The lack of such hopeful unity in the group broke up CSNY and helped dash hopes for the harmonious society that rock embodied. Indeed, while they were singing about teaching your children well, the children who would create hip-hop - a culture of a much different ethic - were being born. And he not busy being born is . . .

We have all been here before.