As I previously mentioned, CSNY had a big falling out in 1970 that kept them from working together with only a few exceptions for the next couple of years. Then, on October 4, 1973, Stills' band Manassas played a show at the Winterland in San Francisco, near where the other members of CSNY lived at the time. During the intermission of the show, Crosby and Nash came out to join Stills for an acoustic set. Then, halfway through the set, Young joined them as well. This would mark a new era of cooperation between the four of them that would culminate in a big 1974 concert tour (though, sadly, no studio album).
After the CSNY set ended, Manassas came back on stage for a second set. This has a bittersweet edge, because Manassas bassist Chris Hillman later said that when he saw CSNY get together that night, he knew that Manassas was finished, since CSNY would take priority for Stills. And sure enough, that's what happened. However, Manassas did perform some more shows before going their own way, including another Winterland show three days later when CSN again performed an acoustic set in the middle of the show (though this time without Young).
I don't like repeating the same song on an album. So what I've done here is present the entire October 7 CSN(Y) set. But then, at the start, I'd added in the different songs CSN performed during their October 4 set. I did make an exception in duplicating the song "Human Highway" though, because on October 4 CSN performed it with Stills singing lead, while on October 7 CSNY performed it with Young singing lead, so I figured that was different and interesting.
The first song I've put on this album, "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom" (an early version with different lyrics) is actually the last song of the second Manassas set. Stills played most of it alone, then Crosby, Nash, and the rest of Manassas joined in at the end.
So the order of this doesn't make much sense chronologically, but I think it makes sense from a listening point of view, with Manassas giving way to CSN(Y) and then the highlight being the conclusion of CSNY playing together.
Between the two shows, there's almost two hours of CSN and then CSNY playing acoustically. To me, this is the sort of dream concert CSNY would have done regularly in the alternate universe where they were much more active with each other than they actually were. What's remarkable is that despite not having played together since 1971, CSN(Y) played six songs in a row in their short set that were unreleased at that time, with little to no rehearsal, yet they still sounded great (tracks 12 to 19).
This album is one hour and 16 minutes long.
01 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Southbound Train (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 As I Come of Age (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk [Neil Young joins in] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Roll Another Number [For the Road] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
15 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 New Mama (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 And So It Goes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 Prison Song (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 Change Partners (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
alternate:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/YcdMCSr9
Originally, I made the album cover from a still image of the video footage from this show. (It's available on YouTube, as well as the CSN and Manassas sets from October 4.) But the video quality was low. I later found a better photo that is from the concert. The only downside is that most of Graham Nash's face is obscured behind Neil Young's.
Hey, I was at that 10/41073 concert. Manassas played a set, then Chris Hillman and Al Perkins came out and played a short set. At the beginning of that set Hillman said something ling "we're going to do a few songs together then the stars are going to come out". It my opinion that was the best part of the show, but I've always leaned towards country rock. After their set Crosby, Still and Nash came out and started a set, and in the middle of one of their songs Neil Young came out, sat down at the paint, and completed the set. Then Manassas and CS&N did a final set without Neil. I think Manassas played four nights in a row, but as you mentioned it was the only night Neil showed up. The place was only half full. People applauded, yelled, stamped their feet, etc. but they never came out for ann encode.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info on that. Wish I'd been there too!
Deletethanks so much for this one!
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