Stephen Stills is not against a reunion with Nash and Young

Stephen Stills is not against a reunion with Nash and Young

Stephen Stills he’s not willing to rule out a reunion with Graham Nash And Neil Young, despite Graham Nash’s recent claims that a reunion of CSNY without David Crosby it would have no sense and “soul”.

“I can’t be that absolute,” Stills told The Globe and Mail. “There might be a reason to sing together. Maybe the next election. But, at this point, it’s not a question of whether we should get together. The important question is whether we should do it.”

Stills’ response comes shortly after Nash dismissed the idea of ​​a three-quarters CSNY reunion in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I don’t think me, Stephen and Neil will ever play together again,” he said. “There’s no heart there. David was the center of everything, as crazy as he was. And my God, he was crazy. But he was the heart of this band. And that’s why I think if Stephen, Neil and I played together , people would miss Crosby. We would miss Crosby. It would be a much colder scene.”

While they disagree on the prospects of a future reunion, Stills echoed Nash’s claims about the significance of Crosby, who died in January 2023 at age 81. “The heart of the band was the collective. The glue that held the harmonies together was David,” he said. “He really had a sense of where the perfect note was that set it apart from standard three-part harmony.”

The inspiration for these recent interviews is the album “Live at Fillmore East, 1969”, just released, recorded in the famous New York theater on September 20, 1969.

Split between the first acoustic half and the second electric half (like the quartet’s sets and also reprized on the “Four Way Street” album), the recording captures the nascent supergroup at the start of their career, and Stills said the camaraderie and enthusiasm are evident throughout the recording.

“Doing the acoustic stuff on our first album was a half-do. “So, what are we going to do for the rest?” we asked ourselves.” Stills said. “My idea was to do an acoustic part first, then the curtain opened and there was the equipment and we started playing some rock ‘n’ roll. We got the reaction and we got all the glorious fun of playing at unbearable volume. And, because of it, I became much better at playing lead guitar.”

Regarding the era’s groundbreaking talents – including folk star Joni Mitchell, who was in the audience at the Fillmore in September 1969 – Stills added: “We were full of ourselves, but, at the same time, we knew it was a new territory.”