CSN

CSN
Studio album by Crosby, Stills & Nash
Released	June 17 1977
Genre	Rock
Length	43:50
Label	Atlantic Records
Producer	David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash with Ron Albert and Howard Albert (see The Albert Brothers)
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Rolling Stone (not rated) link
Crosby, Stills & Nash chronology
So Far (1974) CSN (1977) Replay (1980)

CSN is a Crosby, Stills & Nash album released in 1977, the fifth album by the group, and the first without Neil Young since his entry into the band. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart; two singles taken from the album, Nash's "Just A Song Before I Go" and Stills' "Fair Game" peaked at #7 and #43 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100.

In the interim between their last studio album of original material, Déjà Vu from 1970, and this release, Crosby and Nash had existed as a duo with three albums under their belt, and Stills had pursued various projects, including a short career with an entirely different band and an album and tour with Young. In many ways Young had always been the wild card in the unit, and once the band reconstituted themselves in their original configuration with this record, they returned to their semi-regular partnership as initially imagined in 1969, Young joining in on a sporadic basis.

CSN featured strong writing from all three members, the last time for seventeen years that the band would compose songs and handle vocals without major assistance from outside sources. The production of the album fit in well with the ruling aesthetic of the time as featured in other blockbusters such as the Eagles' Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, or Steely Dan's Aja: well-crafted, melodic songs played with precision and balance, in the case of all but Becker and Fagen's work essaying the personal travails of the authors. The last stand of the California "Mellow Mafia", within a few years the commercial ascendancy of these groups, and those like them, would be undermined by the repercussions from punk rock and its influence.

Many of Stills' songs on the album echo his marital problems, with "Dark Star" returning to the Latin rhythms he had favored all the way back to his Buffalo Springfield days. Crosby continued the existential probings consistent with much of his past work, and Nash offered a very stringent critique of Christianity with "Cathedral". Many tracks were sweetened with a string section, a first on a CSNY project.

The album was released for compact disc on October 25, 1990, and then remastered at Ocean View Digital from the original tapes and reissued on September 20, 1994.

Track listing

1. "Shadow Captain" (Crosby, Craig Doerge) – 4:32
2. "See the Changes" (Stills) – 2:56
3. "Carried Away" (Nash) – 2:29
4. "Fair Game" (Stills) – 3:30
5. "Anything at All" (Crosby) – 3:01
6. "Cathedral" (Nash) – 5:15
7. "Dark Star" (Stills) – 4:43
8. "Just a Song Before I Go" (Nash) – 2:12
9. "Run from Tears" (Stills) – 4:09
10. "Cold Rain" (Nash) – 2:32
11. "In My Dreams" (Crosby) – 5:10
12. "I Give You Give Blind" (Stills) – 3:21

Personnel

• David Crosby - vocals, guitars, string arrangements
• Stephen Stills - vocals, guitars, bass, piano, keyboards, timbales, slide guitar, string arrangements
• Graham Nash - vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, string arrangements

Additional personnel

• Ray Barretto - percussion, congas
• Mike Finnigan - organ, keyboards
• Joe Vitale - synthesizer, flute, percussion, drums, keyboards, tympani, vibraphone
• Jimmy Haslip - bass
• Craig Doerge - piano, keyboards, electric piano, vocals
• Tim Drummond - bass
• Gerald Johnson - bass
• George Perry - bass
• Russ Kunkel - percussion, conga, drums
• Mike Lewis - arranger, string arrangements
• Howard Albert - producer, engineer
• Ron Albert - producer, engineer
• Steve Gursky - assistant engineer
• Joel Bernstein - string arrangements, photography
• Gary Burden - art direction, design
• Joe Gastwirt - digital remastering

Cover art

Joel Bernstein photographed the trio in serious poses aboard a boat, and initial copies of CSN bore that picture on the cover. The next picture Bernstein took of Crosby, Stills and Nash was a shot of them breaking into laughter at the thought of just having posed as "serious artists." The trio later decided that they liked the second photo better, and it was decided that all future pressings of CSN should bear the "laughter" photo.^{[citation needed]}

Critical reception

Rock critic Robert Christgau, an admirer of Neil Young but something of a detractor of Young's occasional groupmates, dismissed this album with a review in the form of a rhetorical question: "Wait a second - wasn't this supposed to be a quartet?"