Photo by Joel Bernstein
 
After the success of their monstrously popular Déjà Vu album, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “the American Beatles” as they were often called (never mind that one was a Brit and another Canadian) broke up in the summer of 1970, with all four members of CSNY recording solo albums. Soon afterwards Stills released his eponymous solo album which featured guests like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, “Mama” Cass Elliot, Booker T Jones, Ringo Starr, as well as Crosby and Nash, Rita Coolidge and CSNY drummers Dallas Taylor and Johnny Barbata. Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name and Nash’s Songs for Beginners appeared the following year. In late 1971, Stills teamed up with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman to form Manassas and Neil Young was up to all sorts of things at the time, being the prolific chap he’s always been known to be and producing some of his very best work.

In 1973, a black and white video recording was made of an impromptu CSNY set taped live at Bill Graham’s Winterland in San Francisco. It was originally a Stephen Stills and Manassas concert, but then some “very special guests” decided to show up. At the time Neil Young was on what could be called his Tonight’s the Night tour with the Santa Monica Flyers and Crosby & Nash were touring as a duo.

It’s sloppy, sure—and clearly none of them could be bothered to actually tune their fucking guitars—but the four hadn’t played together in well over two years at this point, although Young had jammed with Crosby and Nash at Winterland on March 26th, 1972 at an event called The Sheriff’s Benefit Concert, an attempt to raise funds for the problems faced by prisoners.

Neil Young, perhaps emphasizing his independence from the other three, doesn’t come onstage until the fifth number:

Setlist:
0:00:00 - Helplessly Hoping
0:04:31 - Wooden Ships
0:10:16 - Blackbird
0:13:36 - As I Come Of Age
0:16:42 - Neil joins in…
0:19:03 - Roll Another Number (For the Road)
0:23:39 - Human Highway
0:27:32 - New Mama
0:33:13 - And So It Goes
0:38:01 - Prison Song
0:42:48 - Long Time Gone
0:51:02 - Change Partners

 
For your weekend viewing pleasure: The complete final Sex Pistols show at Bill Graham’s Winterland, in San Francisco, 1978. For years all I’d ever seen was the B&W Target Video-shot version of this show, then this improved color version popped up on a quasi-legit Chinese DVD about ten or so years ago. Everyone always rags on their supposed shitty last performance… au contraire, folks, they’re incendiary here.

After this show, the supernova that was the Pistols was no more. Say what you will about John Lydon’s later career, in his youth, the man changed the face of music twice, first with the Sex Pistols and later with Public Image, Ltd. Who else can something like that be said about? Miles Davis is the only person who comes to mind.