In his introduction to this latest Ultimate Music Guide, Graham Nash lets fly a rather surprising opinion.
“I’m not so sure that the story of CSNY could ever really be told,” he tells us. “There have been a couple of new books about us recently, but it feels like both of them are just lists of how we fucked up. I didn’t sense the incredible joy that we felt, being in love with each other and in each other’s music, creating this body of work that travelled around the world.”
Like Neil Young and David Crosby, Nash has written an autobiography with what must at least partly have been the intention of telling that story – and it’s also a challenge that we hope we’ve risen to in this latest Deluxe Edition Ultimate Music Guide. Of course, like anyone would, we’ve enjoyed some of the spicier tales that have emerged from the archive interviews and encounters which we’ve included here to help account for the rise to pre-eminence of four exceptionally strong personalities. We’re only human.
What we’ve really tried to zoom in on in this latest 148-page updated edition, though, is that exceptional and generational music. We’ve gone in-depth on every CSNY album, and the solo careers of the individual players in their various combinations in order to explore the many shades of their harmony. Neil? As you may know, he gets his own magazine , although we’ve only got a few copies of that left.
What’s changed since the initial publication of our CSNY guide is the passing of David Crosby. Croz was a frequent visitor to the pages of Uncut and his many interviews form the excellent career history – from The Byrds through his delightful first solo album and last flurry of inspired work – which is a new addition here. His words on his first solo flight help explain the spirit in which CSN and Y came together – and why that spirit will endure even beyond the life of its players.
“I wanted to be free, breaking down the barriers, stretching the envelope, pushing the walls back,” he tells Graeme Thomson. “Politically, I learned to stick up for what I believe in from people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. I have a picture of Pete Seeger reading Gandhi, and it goes back to there. There is a lineage. I learned it from Pete and Woody and Joan Baez and Josh White and Odetta, and I think other people are learning it from us. It gets passed down…”
Enjoy the magazine. You can get yours here