Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with Joni Mitchell) - Roosevelt Raceway, Westbury, NY, 9-8-1974

If you want just one full-length Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) concert recording, I would suggest this one. Although there was a lot of drug and ego trouble between band members backstage on their 1974 tour, the four of them were peaking in terms of songwriting and performance. And as a bonus, Joni Mitchell sang backing vocals on no less than nine of the songs.

This was the last night in the U.S. of CSNY's ill-fated 1974 concert tour. They only did one concert in 1974 after this, in London, Britain (which was their only appearance in Europe). Due to the troubles mentioned above, the four of them nicknamed this the "Doom Tour" amongst themselves, and they ran wild with 1970s superstar lifestyle excess. But despite all that, they had many good nights on stage, and this clearly was one such night. They played in front of 80,000 people as part of an all-day concert with Jesse Colin Young, the Beach Boys, and Joni Mitchell as opening acts.

The fact that Mitchell was an opening act helps explain why she joined in singing on a bunch of songs. I believe she did the same for the Wembley show, where she also was an opening act, but I don't think she did that on the other dates in the tour. By the way, the day of this concert, American stuntman Evel Knievel attempted to jump across Snake River Canyon in Idaho on a rocket-powered motorcycle. That happened to be broadcast on pay-per-view TV during Mitchell's set, and she actually took a break from her set to watch it for a few minutes, telling the audience that she was going to go watch some idiot commit suicide. (Knievel survived, but landed at the bottom of the canyon short of crossing the river.) Neil Young made a comment about the Knievel jump before one of the songs he played.

Unfortunately, I looked for the opening sets, but could only find this bootleg with worthy sound quality (or, in most cases, any versions at all).

This is a soundboard recording, and the sound quality is excellent. There were only a couple of snags. For one, a tiny section in the middle of "Deja Vu" was missing, but it seems it was only a few seconds long. It was during an instrumental passage, and I edited it so the missing bit won't be noticed. Also, the last part of "Black Queen" was missing, probably a minute or two. This was more difficult. But I used the version on the album "CSNY 1974" to bring it to a conclusion. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Speaking of the album "CSNY 1974," that's an official album released in 2014 that features highlights from this tour. It was a big triple album drawn from ten different concerts, but none of those concerts happen to be this one, so I'm pretty sure everything here is still officially unreleased. Personally, I usually prefer listening to entire concert recordings instead of live albums drawn from lots of different shows. If you feel the same, I'm pretty sure this is the best show from the tour, as the few other soundboards are incomplete or have other flaws. (For instance, there's a soundboard recording of the Wembley show too, but it was considered a disappointing performance.)

As with all the shows on this tour, the concert was broken into three sections. CSNY was backed by a full band for the first part and the last part, while there was a big acoustic section in the middle. The acoustic section is roughly from track 16 to 36. Each member got to do their own solo spot. Weirdly though, Crosby only did one song, while Nash, Stills, and Young each did three songs. But the solo songs weren't always really solo, others often joined vocals, including Mitchell on a few.

By the way, Mitchell's participation is a bit odd in that I didn't hear any banter between songs thanking her or even mentioning her. It's very possible that banter like that got cut out. (This also was the day that it was announced that President Ford pardoned former President Nixon for his Watergate crimes. Crosby told that to the crowd during the concert, and the crowd booed. But that's not on this recording, so at least some banter got cut.) But what also is a bit unusual is that she came and went from the stage at least seven different times. I figure that she only sang on the songs that she knew well and had something to contribute on vocal harmonies, and those were randomly scattered throughout the long concert. I find it particularly interesting that she helped sing "Our House," since that song was written by Nash about her when they had a romance around 1970.

This is quite a long concert. This album is three hours and nine minutes long.

01 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
02 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
03 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
04 Immigration Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
05 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
06 Helpless (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
07 Military Madness (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
08 Johnny's Garden (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
10 Walk On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
11 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
12 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
13 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
14 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
15 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
16 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
17 Time After Time (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
18 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
19 Southbound Train (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
20 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
21 Another Sleep Song (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
22 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
23 Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
24 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
25 Hawaiian Sunrise (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
26 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
27 Long May You Run (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
28 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
29 Ambulance Blues (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
30 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
31 Old Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
32 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
33 Change Partners (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
34 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
35 Myth of Sisyphus (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
36 Word Game (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
37 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
38 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
40 Deja Vu [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
42 First Things First (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
43 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
44 Don't Be Denied (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
45 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
46 Black Queen [Edit] (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
47 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
48 Revolution Blues (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
49 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
50 Pushed It Over the End (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
51 Pre-Road Downs (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Carry On (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 Sugar Mountain (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Joni Mitchell)
56 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kThQT

The photo used on the cover is from the CSNY Wembley concert a few days later (September 14, 1974). I couldn't find any good color ones from this exact one. I used this particular photo because it has Mitchell there with CSNY, and I thought it was particularly neat to see all five of them together. Neil Young's face was blocked by two microphones, but I did some tweaking in Photoshop so one can now see his eyes.

Also note that I found a concert poster for this exact concert. I based some of the cover art on the poster. However, I inverted the bright and dark bits to better match with the black background of the photo. I'm including the poster here, in case you want to see it. Note that the sketch in the middle was drawn by Mitchell, and was also used for the cover of the band's best of collection "So Far."