Déjà Vu (album)

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Déjà-vu
Studio album by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Publication
(s)

March 11, 1970

Label (s) Atlantic Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

Folk rock , rock

Title (number)

10

running time

36m 24s

occupation
  • Greg Reeves - bass

Studio (s)

July – December 1969 in Wally Heider's Studio C ( San Francisco ) and Wally Heider's Studio III ( Los Angeles )

chronology
Crosby, Stills & Nash
(1969) 		Déjà-vu 4 Way Street
(1971)

Déjà Vu is the first music album by the US rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the second by the formation Crosby, Stills and Nash . It made a significant contribution to establishing CSNY as one of the leading rock bands of their time and reached number 1 on the Billboard charts. The music magazine Rolling Stone selected Déjà Vu among the "500 best albums of all time" (147th place).

To the album

After the great success of the debut album Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969), David Crosby , Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were looking for musicians with whom they could go on tour, as the multi-instrumentalist Stills had recorded almost all instruments in the studio on his own. Drummer Dallas Taylor , who had already been there in the debut and was now the Motown - session player supports Greg Reeves on bass. Finally, with Neil Young , Stills' bandmate from Buffalo Springfield days also joined. The band name has been expanded to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young , but Reeves and Taylor are also mentioned on the cover and can be seen on the album cover.

Due to the newcomers, the album sounded much more rock-oriented than its predecessor, which was mainly due to the now two lead guitarists Stills and Young. However, this did not change the stylistic diversity of the band, whose (now four) songwriters set individual accents: With the title song Déjà Vu and the piece Almost Cut My Hair , Crosby contributed two songs that were very much influenced by the hippie movement and which soon followed suit Classics. With Carry On / Questions and 4 + 20, Stills wrote two very different songs, of which only the first is actually a “real” CSNY piece, whose four-part vocals brought out one of the band's essential qualities. On 4 + 20, however, Stills accompanied himself on the acoustic guitar. Graham Nash was responsible for two of the three successful singles on the album, Teach Your Children and Our House : Teach Your Children reached number 16 and Our House number 30. The most successful single was Woodstock, written by Joni Mitchell and arranged as rock by Stephen Stills , which came to 11th place. Neil Young contributed his classic piece Helpless and the three-part song Country Girl . The end of the album is the piece Everybody I Love You , written jointly by Young and Stills , which is the only song on the album that cannot be counted among the “CSNY classics”.

The musical density of the album, however, belies the fact that the individual musicians did not get along very well and mostly recorded the recordings individually, which is why not all four musicians can be heard on all pieces. Stephen Stills estimated that it would have taken about 800 hours of labor to get the recording done.

The effect of the album was enormous: Not only did Déjà Vu reach the top of the charts and lead to successful solo albums by all four members, the magazine Der Spiegel even called it the “soundtrack of the so-called Woodstock generation”. The Allmusic Guide also rates the album as a milestone in popular music.

Shortly after the appearance of Déjà Vu , Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded the single Ohio ( B-side : Find the Cost of Freedom ) in May 1970 : Neil Young had written the song in response to the Kent State massacre , in which four students were shot dead during a peaceful protest. The B-side Find the Cost of Freedom , written by Stephen Stills, also became a popular protest song ; the single reached number 14 on the charts.

The success of Déjà Vu was followed by another very successful tour, which is documented on the live album 4 Way Street .

Track list

  1. Carry On (Stills) - 4:26
  2. Teach Your Children (Nash) - 2:53
  3. Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby) - 4:31
  4. Helpless (Young) - 3:33
  5. Woodstock (Joni Mitchell) - 3:54
  6. Déjà Vu (Crosby) - 4:12
  7. Our House (Nash) - 2:59
  8. 4 + 20 (stills) - 2:04
  9. Country Girl ( Whiskey Boot Hill , Down, Down, Down , Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty) ) (Young) - 5:11
  10. Everybody I Love You (Stills / Young) - 2:21

Guest musician

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Déjà Vu in Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums
  2. ↑ See Dave Zimmer / Henry Diltz: Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Authorized Biography. 1. A., 1984.
  3. ↑ See ibid., P. 115.
  4. ↑ What does modern mean here? , Interview with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young, Der SPIEGEL, 44/1999 [1]
  5. ↑ See the review on www.allmusic.com [2]

literature

Web links