Tag Archives: Crosby Stills and Nash

♫ Wasted On The Way ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music, Social commentary

In the course of a conversation in the comments section of my post Day Is Done, Clive suggested this one by Crosby, Stills & Nash … one I always did like but hadn’t thought of in years!  I was definitely not aware of the song’s origins or meaning, though!  According to SongFacts …

Crosby, Stills & Nash got off to a very strong start, releasing their acclaimed debut album in 1969 and making a memorable appearance at Woodstock. The next year, they added Neil Young and released an even more successful album, Déjà Vu. The band was never supposed to be all-consuming, so each member took time off to work on solo albums and other projects. But once they drifted apart, they couldn’t find the gravity to draw them back together.

Fans made deep emotional connections to their songs and clamored for more. In 1974, they finally returned to action, releasing a compilation album called So Far that sold over 6 million copies and setting out on the first-ever rock stadium tour. The tour tested their bonds, and a planned album of new material was abandoned after just a few recording sessions. It wasn’t until 1977 that they released another album (CSN), this time without Young.

They clearly had something special when they made music together, but the forces of pride, ego, and addiction intervened. Graham Nash reflected on this when he wrote “Wasted On The Way.” In a Songfacts interview, he explained: “We had wasted a lot of time arguing with each other and debating how we should do this or do that, and that’s what I wanted to say: We wasted a lot of time. CSN&Y only did what, three albums? We had wasted a lot time, and I just wanted to make my partners realize that.”

“Wasted On The Way” was the lead single from Daylight Again, the group’s first album since CSN in 1977. Neil Young wasn’t part of it – after their 1970 album Déjà Vu, he didn’t make another with the band until American Dream in 1988.

The song was a solid hit, earning airplay on Pop, Rock, and Adult Contemporary radio. The next single, the Stephen Stills composition “Southern Cross,” also did well and the album sold over a million copies – not bad for a band that formed 20 years earlier and only worked together sporadically.

David Crosby was, in fact, wasted around this time, a point disc jockeys often made when playing the song. His drug abuse got really bad in the late ’70s and was an issue when they recorded this song in late 1980 and early 1981. He was arrested for freebasing cocaine in 1982 just a few months before the song was released. Crosby only sobered up after spending much of 1986 in jail, which he says probably saved his life.

Timothy B. Schmit, whose band the Eagles had recently broken up, sang on this song along with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.

The song charted at #9 in the U.S., #96 in Australia, and nowhere else as far as I can tell.

Wasted On The Way

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Look around me
I can see my life before me
Running rings around the way it used to be
I am older now
I have more than what I wanted
But I wish that I had started long before I did

And there’s so much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away

Oh, when you were young
Did you question all the answers?
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?
Look around you now
You must go for what you wanted
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved

So much time to make up everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away

So much love to make up everywhere you turn
Love we have wasted on the way
So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away
Let the water come and carry us away

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Graham Nash
Wasted on the Way lyrics © Nash Notes

♫ Blackbird ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under History, music, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I seem to post this one about once a year, probably because I love the song, and because of the deeper meaning of the song.  But this year, my friend Ali sent me a link to another version that I just had to share!  It is a young woman, Emma Stevens, who …

To raise awareness of her native language, 16-year-old Emma Stevens sang a version of The Beatles’ 1968 classic “Blackbird” in the Mi’kmaq language, an Eastern Algonquian language spoken by nearly 11,000 in Canada and the United States. A member of the Eskasoni First Nation, the Nova Scotia student sang lyrics that were painstakingly translated by Katani Julian, a teacher who works in language revitalization. Julian told WBUR. “My language is very different from other ones.” “There’s a lot of syllables in ours. And there’s a lot of long words that translate into something really easy in English.”

Her version is leading the way (for the lyrics in her native tongue, check this link), followed by the two from Paul McCartney.  I hope you find one … or perhaps all three … to your liking!

Paul McCartney wrote this about the civil rights struggle for African-Americans after reading about race riots in the US. He penned it in his kitchen in Scotland not long after Little Rock Nine, when the federal courts forced the racial desegregation of the Arkansas capital’s school system.Little Rock Nine“I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar and I’d heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the ’60s in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular,” he told GQ. “I just thought it would be really good if I could write something that if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might give them a little bit of hope. So, I wrote ‘Blackbird.'”

McCartney-meets-little-rock-nine-2

McCartney with two of the Little Rock Nine

Blackbird
Paul McCartney

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Black-bird fly
Black-bird fly, into the light of a dark black night

Black-bird fly
Black-bird fly, into the light of a dark black night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise
you were only waiting for this moment to arise
you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
Blackbird lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

♫ Marrakesh Express ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music

I played this one a couple of years ago, but it was well-received and so tonight I shall … “Play it again, Sam” … thanks to our friend Keith for planting this earworm!!!
Marrakesh is a city in Morocco famous for leather goods. The “Marrakesh Express” is the train Graham Nash took on a trip there from Casablanca in 1966. The lyrics are filled with the sights, sounds and vibes that he encountered on the trip.

Prior to exiting the Hollies in 1968, Nash offered this to his band mates. However, the tune was ultimately rejected as being not commercial enough. Their refusal to record this and other tunes he wrote was one of the main reasons Nash left the band and moved to Los Angeles to join up with Crosby and Stills.

“After a couple months of that, a man is liable to go insane. Especially being the only one who was smoking grass at the time.”

Fortunately, his new band mates liked the tune and it ended up on their debut album.

This became Crosby Sills And Nash’s first hit in the US, and surprisingly their only Top 40 single in the UK.  According to Nash …

“In 1966 I was visiting Morocco on vacation to Marrakesh and getting on a train and having a first-class ticket and then realizing that the first-class compartment was completely f–king boring, you know, ladies with blue hair in there – it wasn’t my scene at all. So I decide I’m going to go and see what the rest of the train is like. And the rest of the train was fascinating. Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires. It’s literally the song as it is – what happened to me.”

Marrakesh Express
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Looking at the world
Through the sunset in your eyes
Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Ducks and pigs and chickens call
Animal carpet wall to wall
American ladies five foot tall in blue.

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they’ve led
Listen not to what’s been said to you

Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
All on board that train

I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there
I smell the garden in your hair

Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth
Colored cottons hang in air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped Djellebas we can wear at home
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh
All on board that train
All on board that train

Songwriters: Graham Nash
Marrakesh Express lyrics © Spirit Music Group

♫ Southern Cross ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music

When Clive mentioned this song by Crosby, Stills & Nash a few nights ago, the title vaguely rang a bell, but I couldn’t put a tune to it.  So, I listened, I remembered, I liked, and here we are!  It’s not among my top three by the group, but I do like it and hope you guys will too!

Just as if they had been dotted on top of the myriads of glowing suns in the Milky Way, this image depicts some of the brightest stars of the southern sky: on the right, in a rhomboidal shape reminding that of a kite, are the four stars of the constellation Crux, the Southern cross; in the lower left part, instead, shine the two most brilliant stars of the constellation Centaurus, the Centaur.

The “Southern Cross” is a constellation also known as the Crux Constellation that can be viewed from most of the Southern Hemisphere. The four brightest stars within the constellation form a cross pattern. Sailors have relied on the Southern Cross to help in navigating their boats; it appears on the national flags of Australia and New Zealand.

The song was written by Stephen Stills with help from Richard Curtis and Michael Curtis. Stills explained …

“The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song called ‘Seven League Boots,’ but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It’s about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds. Once again, I was given somebody’s gem and cut and polished it.”

They recorded the song in 1981, when, as Nash explained, David Crosby had crossed a rubicon when drugs were more important than music. By the time the album was released in 1982, he had been arrested on drug charges for which he eventually served an eight-month prison sentence. When he got out in 1986, he was sober, and Neil Young honored his pledge to make music with him if he got clean. In 1988, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young released American Dream, their first album with all four members since Déjà Vu in 1970.

The video for this song, with a ship a-sail, got Crosby, Stills & Nash on MTV, providing a soft rock respite from the European pop acts that dominated the network at the time. They never became video stars but found a welcoming home on the adult-oriented VH1 when that network launched in 1985.

Southern Cross
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Oooh …

Got out of town on a boat goin’ to Southern islands
Sailing a reach before a followin’ sea
She was makin’ for the trades on the outside
And the downhill run to Papeete

Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas
We got eighty feet of the waterline nicely making way
In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you
But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin’
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

(Around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin’) Lookin’ for that woman girl
(Who knows she knows) Who knows love can endure
And you know it will

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small
But it’s as big as the promise, the promise of a comin’ day

So I’m sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a dyin’
And my love is an anchor tied to you tied with a silver chain
I have my ship and all her flags are a’ flyin’
She is all that I have left and music is her name

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin’
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

(I’ve been around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin’) Lookin’ for that woman girl
Who knows love can endure
And you know it will, and you know it will
Yes

Oooh …

So we cheated and we lied and we tested
And we never failed to fail, it was the easiest thing to do
You will survive being bested
Somebody fine will come along, make me forget about loving you
In the Southern Cross

Writer(s): Stephen Stills, Richard Curtis, Michael Curtis

♫ Blackbird ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under History, music, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I seem to post this one about once a year, probably because I love the song, and because of the deeper meaning of the song.  But this year, I am adding a video by Paul McCartney that I came across and found fascinating.  He talks about the origins of the song, how it all started with a bit of Bach, believe it or not, and he even includes a short clip by David Crosby telling how Crosby, Stills and Nash came to do a version of Blackbird!  I hope you’ll enjoy seeing Paul McCartney give us extra info about the song and how it came to be!

Paul McCartney wrote this about the civil rights struggle for African-Americans after reading about race riots in the US. He penned it in his kitchen in Scotland not long after Little Rock Nine, when the federal courts forced the racial desegregation of the Arkansas capital’s school system.Little Rock Nine“I was sitting around with my acoustic guitar and I’d heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the ’60s in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular,” he told GQ. “I just thought it would be really good if I could write something that if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might give them a little bit of hope. So, I wrote ‘Blackbird.'”

McCartney-meets-little-rock-nine-2

McCartney with two of the Little Rock Nine

Blackbird
Paul McCartney

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Black-bird fly
Black-bird fly, into the light of a dark black night

Black-bird fly
Black-bird fly, into the light of a dark black night

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise
you were only waiting for this moment to arise
you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney
Blackbird lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

♫ Marrakesh Express ♫

Posted on by under music

I played this one a couple of years ago, but it was well-received and so tonight I shall … “Play it again, Sam” (Keith’s recent post has me spouting quotes from Casablanca!) 

Marrakesh is a city in Morocco famous for leather goods. The “Marrakesh Express” is the train Graham Nash took on a trip there from Casablanca in 1966. The lyrics are filled with the sights, sounds and vibes that he encountered on the trip.

Prior to exiting the Hollies in 1968, Nash offered this to his band mates. However, the tune was ultimately rejected as being not commercial enough. Their refusal to record this and other tunes he wrote was one of the main reasons Nash left the band and moved to Los Angeles to join up with Crosby and Stills.

“After a couple months of that, a man is liable to go insane. Especially being the only one who was smoking grass at the time.”

Fortunately, his new band mates liked the tune and it ended up on their debut album.

This became Crosby Sills And Nash’s first hit in the US, and surprisingly their only Top 40 single in the UK.  According to Nash …

“In 1966 I was visiting Morocco on vacation to Marrakesh and getting on a train and having a first-class ticket and then realizing that the first-class compartment was completely f–king boring, you know, ladies with blue hair in there – it wasn’t my scene at all. So I decide I’m going to go and see what the rest of the train is like. And the rest of the train was fascinating. Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires. It’s literally the song as it is – what happened to me.”

Marrakesh Express
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Looking at the world
Through the sunset in your eyes
Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Ducks and pigs and chickens call
Animal carpet wall to wall
American ladies five foot tall in blue.

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they’ve led
Listen not to what’s been said to you

Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
All on board that train

I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there
I smell the garden in your hair

Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth
Colored cottons hang in air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped Djellebas we can wear at home
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh
All on board that train
All on board that train

Songwriters: Graham Nash
Marrakesh Express lyrics © Spirit Music Group

♫ Marrakesh Express ♫

Posted on by under music

Last month when I played Our House by Crosby, Stills and Nash, I made a note that David had mentioned liking Marrakesh Express, and I promised I would play it soon.  That’s been over a month ago, and as often happens with me, I got distracted and forgot.  Luckily, however, I had made myself a note!

Marrakesh is a city in Morocco famous for leather goods. The “Marrakesh Express” is the train Graham Nash took on a trip there from Casablanca in 1966. The lyrics are filled with the sights, sounds and vibes that he encountered on the trip.

Prior to exiting the Hollies in 1968, Nash offered this to his band mates. However, the tune was ultimately rejected as being not commercial enough. Their refusal to record this and other tunes he wrote was one of the main reasons Nash left the band and moved to Los Angeles to join up with Crosby and Stills.

“After a couple months of that, a man is liable to go insane. Especially being the only one who was smoking grass at the time.”

Fortunately, his new band mates liked the tune and it ended up on their debut album.

This became Crosby Sills And Nash’s first hit in the US, and surprisingly their only Top 40 single in the UK.  According to Nash …

“In 1966 I was visiting Morocco on vacation to Marrakesh and getting on a train and having a first-class ticket and then realizing that the first-class compartment was completely f–king boring, you know, ladies with blue hair in there – it wasn’t my scene at all. So I decide I’m going to go and see what the rest of the train is like. And the rest of the train was fascinating. Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires. It’s literally the song as it is – what happened to me.”

Marrakesh Express
Crosby, Stills & Nash

Looking at the world
Through the sunset in your eyes
Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Ducks and pigs and chickens call
Animal carpet wall to wall
American ladies five foot tall in blue.

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they’ve led
Listen not to what’s been said to you

Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
Would you know we’re riding
On the Marrakesh Express
All on board that train

I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there
I smell the garden in your hair

Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth
Colored cottons hang in air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped Djellebas we can wear at home
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh
All on board that train
All on board that train

Songwriters: Graham Nash
Marrakesh Express lyrics © Spirit Music Group