Additions to the trio were floated: The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian (declined thanks to solo aspirations) Stevie Winwood (busy with Blind Faith) Mark Natafalin of The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (apparently hard to track down). Stills had taken on most of the instrumental duties during the first album’s sessions – earning the guitarist the nickname “Captain Manyhands” from his bandmates – and he realised that, for CSN to work as a live proposition, they’d need more in the way of edge than the guitars-around-the-campfire vibe of much of the debut. The album’s huge success led to talk of taking the show on the road. And not only that, but they’d captured a moment: that lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry and those harmonies stunned the masses that bought that first album the songs felt like an awakening and outpouring of previously held-back talent and the material itself spoke of hippie ideals, of hookah-fuelled trips through Morocco (Marrakesh Express), nuclear fallout (Wooden Ships) and a laidback life filled with willowy women and jazz cigarettes While Crosby and Nash had been part of pop sensations (The Byrds and The Hollies, respectively) and Stills had been the driving force behind Buffalo Springfield during their brief and tempestuous career, now the three men were front and centre. While David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash all had their fair share of success in their previous musical lives, nothing prepared them for the change in status that their first album as a trio, 1969’s Crosby, Stills & Nash, thrust upon them.

Crosby stills nash and young deja vu