Album Review: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, ‘Live at Fillmore East, 1969’
Although David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash had been together since July 1968 and had released their first album—Crosby, Stills & Nash—in May 1969, they had not toured. The trio’s debut album showcased their incandescent harmonies set against complex rhythmic folk instrumentation. Neil Young joined the trio not long after the album’s release, adding a new and rich vocal dimension as well as a commanding rock power with his fuzz-toned guitar solos. CNSY played their first show in Chicago on August 16, 1969, with Joni Mitchell opening for them. Two days later they declared that they were “scared shitless” when they took the stage on August 18 at Woodstock.
Following Woodstock, CSNY—still very much a work in progress—had embarked on their first-ever tour. One month later, they hit the stage of the legendary Fillmore East in NYC, playing four sets (two each night) on September 19 and 20. Those performances, with all their tentativeness and experimentation, languished for years. Until now. Stills, Young, and John Hanlon compiled and mixed the original eight-track recordings—from second set of their September 20 show—at Sunset Studios in LA, capturing the freshness and intimate quality of that night.
Live at Fillmore East, 1969 is available on both CD and in a 2-LP vinyl version. Each of the four sets over those two nights included an acoustic portion and an electric portion. The acoustic set opens with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and the band sounds a bit rusty, perhaps nervous, as they miss harmonies and reach higher than their vocal range. It doesn’t take the four long, though, to work out the knots on the soaring and simply exquisite “Helplessly Hoping.” On this song, the group’s comic patter between words reflects their joy, and they announce the song with the words—“helplessly hoping by helicopter,” likely a reference to their Woodstock experience of being flown in and out of the festival one month earlier. The set also includes the touchingly rendered “Guinnevere.” In each set, the group’s members take a solo. Stills delivers an ethereal version of “4+20”; Nash accompanies himself on organ on his warm and tender take on “Our House,” and Young offers a delicate take on his “I’ve Loved Her So Long.”
The electric set kicks off with Crosby’s powerhouse anthem “Long Time Gone” and includes Young’s “Sea of Madness” and Stills’ new take “Bluebird,” here titled “Bluebird Revisited.” The highlight of the electric set is CSNY’s long jam on Young’s “Down by the River”—that he had already recorded with Crazy Horse—which includes Stills and Young trading electrifying lead riffs.
Live at the Fillmore East, 1969 showcases a group of enthusiastic artists trying to get better and better at what they are doing. The joy and camaraderie of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young working it out and enjoying doing it oozes palpably from the tracks on this album, which gives us a glimpse of a group that would fly high over the following year and bring new, and now-memorable, sounds to rock and folk.
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More information about Live at the Fillmore East, 1969 is available HERE
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