As I said in my last post, of the imagined 1980 CSN album "Melody," most of the 1980s were a dark time for CSN. I remember being shocked when I saw CSNY reunite for Live Aid in 1985. Nash and Young looked fine, but Crosby and Stills both looked like they weighed close to 300 pounds each, and seemed barely there. It turns out both of them had severe drug problems for most of the decade. On top of that, the group's style of music was out of step with popular tastes at the time.
CSN almost put out an album in 1985 or 1986. I have a 1985 bootleg where Nash mentions the month the album would be coming out in his between song chatter. But for whatever reason, it didn't come out. Maybe the record company thought it wouldn't sell enough, or maybe Crosby's second major drug bust and year in prison starting in 1985 put things on hold. When Crosby got out in 1986, he'd finally gotten over his drug habit, and Neil Young promised he'd reunite if and when that happened, so perhaps they ditched a CSN album in favor of a CSNY one (which would eventually come out in 1988).
Be that as it may, there's not much interest today in what CSN was doing in the mid-1980s, so very little of this lost album has come out on later archival releases or on bootlegs. But still, I think I've put together a solid album by basically gathering the best of what CSN was doing in the mid-1980s.
As with the last album in this series, "Melody," I've allowed myself to use songs from their solo albums, since so few people own those albums. Unfortunately, the albums Stills and Nash put out in the mid-1980s were low points for both of their careers, so there's no much to salvage from those. (I ended up using one song from each.) I also used the two studio tracks on the 1983 CSN album "Allies," which also later wound up as bonus tracks on the 1982 album "Daylight Again."
For about half the album, I used live tracks with the crowd noise edited out. Luckily, there are some high quality soundboard concert recordings from this time. Crosby was in really bad shape in 1984, deep in the throes of a series crack cocaine addiction, but somehow he pulled himself together to sing a really great version of "(He Played Real Good) For Free."
To be honest, chances are the lost 1985 or 1986 CSN album probably wouldn't have been very good. They almost certainly would have given in to the temptation to use current production techniques that didn't suit their music at all, such as extra loud drumming and lots of synthesizers. But with 20/20 hindsight, I'm able to avoid those pitfalls and select songs and performances that have stood the test of time. They may have been going through a dark time, but they still were coming up with enough quality new songs to make what could have been a solid album.
01 50-50 (Stephen Stills with Graham Nash)
02 Lonely Man (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
03 Distances (Crosby & Nash)
04 War Games (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Love Is the Reason (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 Tomorrow Is Another Day (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 Vote (Crosby Stills & Nash)
08 Flying Man (David Crosby)
09 Raise a Voice (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Sad Eyes (Graham Nash)
11 Right by You (Stephen Stills)
12 Try to Find Me (Graham Nash)
13 [He Played Real Good] For Free (David Crosby)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16408051/CROSBSTLLSNSH1986TrytFndMe_atse.zip.html
As I mentioned above, Crosby and Stills looked like hell around this time. Crosby looked particularly bad because he came out of a prison with nearly all of his hair shaved off. So I figure if there ever was a time when a group wouldn't have wanted a photo of themselves on the cover, this was it. I found a CSN concert poster from the 1990s and made some changes to it, especially by adding the album cover title.
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