Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  Mitchell and Roberts were a real team. “They could finish each other’s sentences,” said Jeff Wald. “Elliot knew every nuance of who Joni was and how to make it work so she could overcome some of her innate shyness.”

  The pair went out to L.A., where Roberts unsuccessfully pitched Mitchell to every record company in town and put the artist through such mishaps as auditioning for The Tonight Show. “Joan managed me for the first year. I didn’t know much about management—I never thought of negotiating, I’d take first offers. I was just very, very lucky. Joni was very gracious—I made a ton of mistakes, but it was fine with her, she didn’t give a shit. In my career, Joni was my big influence. Joni taught me how you build a legend—that singer/songwriters were gonna happen, that you didn’t need singles. Joni taught me everything—not Neil.”

  Roberts finally made a deal for Mitchell with Mo Ostin at Warner Bros. At the same time, Mitchell, out on the road in Florida, encountered David Crosby, who had left the Byrds. Their brief fling would lead to the next catalyst in Elliot’s life. As Roberts recalls, “Joan calls me up and said, ‘Listen, I’m fucking a Byrd.’ I go, ‘Excuse me?’”

  David Crosby. Sooner or later the name elicits an expletive or two from his friends, although they’re usually said with a smile. People love this character—especially Neil Young.

  David Crosby was born in Los Angeles on August 14, 1941. His parents came from New York high society and show business. Father Floyd was a Hollywood cinematographer who shot everything from High Noon to How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. A jazz and folk fan who looked down his nose at most rock and roll outside of the Everly Brothers—“I didn’t dig Elvis at all,” he told Dave Zimmer—the plump teen came to the realization that folksinging increased his opportunities with the opposite sex and started performing in Santa Barbara coffeehouses in 1958.

  In the early sixties, Crosby would wander all over the country, discovering the joys of marijuana in Los Angeles and learning the finer points of acoustic guitar from Fred Neil in Greenwich Village. He did a brief stint in an ultra-square folk outfit called Les Baxter’s Balladeers, and then in early 1964, after a solo gig at the Troubadour in L.A., Crosby found himself in an informal jam with two other disenfranchised folkies, Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark.

  This led to full-blown stardom via the Byrds, and Crosby would prove to be their feistiest, furthest-out member, contributing such truly weird pieces of work as “What’s Happening?!?!” and the infamous “Mind Gardens.” Being a maverick blowhard would eventually alienate him from his bandmates; things finally came to a head when the band refused to record his ménage-à-trois ode “Triad.”

  In the Los Angeles music scene, Elliot Roberts quickly found that all roads led to David Crosby. “No one was cooler than the Byrds, and David was the guy kicked outta the Byrds. It made him the rebel king.” Introduced to Crosby by Mitchell, Roberts found himself mesmerized by the singer. “He was like no one I’d ever seen before. Because he’s wearing this Byrd hat and cape and the Byrd glasses—and he had long, flowing hair, this long mustache. He always dressed like an album cover so you knew who he was. But he was very forceful in town. David was dynamite. Dynamite. And more obnoxious than any seven people you could imagine. So full of himself—and beyond arrogant. I found him to be incredibly funny. I could not stop laughing at him.”

  In the ego-overload triumvirate of Crosby, Stills and Nash, it would be David Crosby who called the shots. “Crosby was bigger than life,” said Roberts. “David ran things—even though Stephen produced the sessions, David was always the motivator. Everything that you were afraid to do, he made you do it. Whether it was mescaline or that girl or this stage, whatever it was, he egged you on—but he would do it first. He was the bravest, he was fearless and he was the leader. Without question.

  “David was very wise about the biz in those days. He was the one who had the concept for CSN, the whole vision of what it could be. When Geffen and I were plotting and planning, Crosby was right in there. He got it.”

  Crosby would inevitably up the ante with the contraband he carried, particularly a potent, seedless brand of pot. “It was devastating weed,” said Roberts. “He’d break it out at meetings and go, ‘Before we say anything, let’s all smoke this so we’re all on the same page.’ Everyone would go, ‘WOOOOOOOOOOH!’ Then David would go, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re doin’.’”

  At Crosby’s behest, Roberts relocated to Los Angeles, living—along with Crosby and Mitchell—at the home of KMET-FM’s B. Mitchell Reid, who would be greatly influential in the careers of CSNY and Joni Mitchell. Crosby’s romance with Joni wouldn’t last, but David would produce her debut album for Warner Bros. “Crosby produced my first record solely not to produce me,” she said. “He said, ‘They’re gonna want a producer in there,’ so Crosby brought me my freedom from the beginning.”

  Since the demise of Buffalo Springfield, Stephen Stills had pinballed from project to project, playing and touring with then girlfriend Judy Collins, chasing after Hendrix and recording the Super Session album with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. In the spring of 1968 he met up with Crosby, who was down in Florida, floating around on a boat with Jefferson Airplane lunatics Paul Kantner and Grace Slick. Crosby, Kantner and Stills would conjure up the hippie anthem that would be one of the centerpieces of the first Crosby, Stills and Nash LP, “Wooden Ships.” By that summer, Stills and Crosby were thick as thieves. A sing-along in the backyard of Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas prompted the pair to start recording demos at Wally Heider’s Hollywood studio.

  “Mama Cass was the Gertrude Stein of rock and roll,” said Gary Burden, who would design many of CSN’s and Neil Young’s album covers. “I met more people in her living room…. I used to be an architect—I was this guy still wearin’ a three-piece suit and bow tie, sneakin’ off to get high. She convinced me I could do artwork.” It was Cass who would also, as they say, turn Graham Nash on, administering the first doses of pot and LSD to the English pop star, who was growing increasingly unhappy with the uptight attitudes in the Hollies.

  Graham Nash would complete Crosby, Stills and Nash, and would perhaps prevent the ensemble from ever being anything really rock and roll. He filled the Paul McCartney slot in the trio, providing such bland but radiofriendly pop fodder as “Marrakesh Express,” “Our House” and “Just a Song Before I Go.” He also held things together when things got nuts. “Graham kind of mother-henned the whole thing,” said Mitchell. “He was the diplomat, the smoother-over, the one who tried to hold the family together. He’s the only one that valued the team.

  “I fell in love with Graham. Not initially, because initially he was not a warm person at all. There was always a thin, icy barrier between him and anybody. Charming, genteel and gentlemanly and all, but very withholding. Withholding of his heart. English reserve, perhaps.”

  “When Neil gives his word, it’s right there—if it suits him.” It’s December 12, 1991, and Graham Nash is sitting in his well-appointed Tudor-style southern California home. Graham Nash and Neil Young: an odd combination in any sense. It was Nash who initially resisted Young’s addition to the group and Nash who sold his CSNY songs for use in TV commercials, against Young’s protests. In the nineties, one could even purchase a car stereo with a curious twist: “You’ll never have to look to see if you’ve hit the right buttom again! JVC’s Voice Support audibly confirms each operation with the voice of Graham Nash!”

  “Neil didn’t agree with that stuff, but fuck him,” said Nash. “I can do with my music whatever the fuck I want. In these days of college educations and all that kinda shit, where somebody offers you a half a million to use three bars of something you wrote twenty years ago and don’t particularly care about anyway, who cares?”

  Today Nash was relating Neil’s noninvolvement in the 1991 Crosby, Stills and Nash four-CD career anthology. “With the box set, it was a chance for me to establish a true history of the band—and whatever you say, Neil was very much a part of this band. S
o I called Neil and he said, ‘You can use anything you want, man.’

  “Then Elliot calls, saying that it’s all changed—we can only use seven or eight things with Neil. It was a very different story, and I could never pin down exactly who was responsible … at first I was pissed at Elliot … I thought Elliot had convinced Neil to only let us use a certain amount and save the best stuff for his box.”

  Months later Nash confronted Elliot. “He said, ‘Wait a second—you, Graham, of all people, should realize that nobody tells Neil what to do with his music.’ And Elliot tells me that the very next day after Neil’s talk with me, he calls Elliot and tells him he’s committed to this stuff—and for Elliot to get him out of it. It’s the same old shit with Elliot and Neil, good cop/bad cop … they play it brilliantly, and it’s devastating.” *

  Nash grew livid recounting the memory. “As easily as Neil called me up and said, ‘I’m into it, I’m gonna do this,’ he could’ve just as easily said, ‘Graham, I’m uncomfortable with this. It’s not what I want.’ And I would’ve said, ‘Fine.’ What I was upset at, it appeared once again that management came in the way of the music.”

  Ah yes, The Music: That’s the strange part of the story. In the history of Crosby, Stills and Nash as joined by Young, there’s not a whole lotta music: three studio albums, a live two-record set and a handful of other tracks.

  After a few years of gargantuan commercial success, Crosby, Stills and Nash unraveled in clichéd rock-star excess. As Crosby and Stills wigged out on substance abuse—with Neil Young occasionally popping in to confuse and terrorize everybody—Nash carved out a niche as Mr. Sensible, the one who took care of business and didn’t go crazy.

  “It’s very strange,” he said. “In many ways I don’t think I fit in this band … in that they all don’t like themselves. I once met a friend of David’s in Santa Barbara and I said, ‘Tell me something about David when he was a kid.’ He said, ‘I’ll tell ya one thing. David came home one day from school and there’s a note on the refrigerator. The note said, “Chip”—Chip is David’s brother—“your supper’s in the fridge. And David—stay out of here, fatty.”’

  “I spent a lot of time not liking myself, but it was basically a product of too much cocaine. I’ve come to grips with my frailties and weaknesses—I know I’m not perfect, but I’m trying to be the best person I can be…. I don’t have the self-hatred that I see in David during his drug days or that I see in Stephen—or that I feel looms large in Neil’s life.

  “Neil scares me a lot. I don’t understand him. I don’t understand his ability to change his mind ruthlessly … it still scares me that he can do some of the stuff he does.

  “A happy guy? I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s ever been happy with himself … it might be too painful to look at. God knows Neil’s wanting for nothing—he’s got all the music he wants, all the wealth and fame, all the material trappings—but I don’t think he’s fuckin’ happy. He’s a very strange human being … very strange.”

  I certainly don’t hate myself. Most of all I don’t hate myself for anything that I did with CROSBY, STILLS and NASH, heh heh heh.

  I don’t agree with that—but I don’t have another opinion to offer, either. I just don’t agree with it.

  What happened with the boxed set was Elliot was makin’ the deal for my archival project and talking to Warner Bros. about it at that time. When I talked to Graham, I thought just purely on a CSNY level, certain things would have to happen—that it would have to be realistic to work. So we agreed. But then Elliot said to me, “Well, listen, you’re makin’ the deal for the Archives and all the shit. That’s yours, you shouldn’t give it to them. You should keep it for the Archives. That’s worth a lot.”

  But that happens sometimes. I say one thing and then Elliot said somethin’ else—and he had a good reason for it. It’s business.

  —Nash was pissed. He wanted to know why you didn’t call him and tell him you changed your mind.

  He’s right. That’s my fault. I probably shoulda done that. However, the conversation that Elliot had with Graham was not something I knew about, okay? Until way after. That wasn’t me—that was Elliot. A lotta time goes by and I don’t even know the fuckin’ discussion has happened. I don’t even know if they’re working on the CSN box set yet. To me it was just a hypothetical idea we were talkin’ about. I hadn’t seen the final song list or anything, y’know.

  A lotta people think that I talk to Elliot and then he calls, but that’s not the way it is. Elliot acts on his own.

  —That can be problematic for some of the people involved with you, Neil.

  It’s been the cause of a lotta fuckups over the years—but I still wouldn’t trade Elliot in on a different manager because of that. It’s like you got a car, and there’s a knock. But that fuckin’ motor goes like hell. It uses a little bit of oil every once in awhile, more oil than it should—but the fuckin’ thing goes like hell. What are you gonna do—get a new motor? No—I use this fuckin’ motor. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine. That’s how I feel about it. I back up Elliot. He’s made more good decisions than bad ones by a lot.

  Crosby was the catalyst in CSNY—he was the guy who made it happen, the spiritual leader of the band. Stills was musical director. Graham was kinda like the CEO. We all thought we were doin’ great. Everybody was lovin’ us.

  Turns out I was just passing through.

  Graham Nash was born on February 2, 1942, in Manchester, England. His father worked in a foundry, and his mother was an office administrator for a local dairy. Nash, like David Crosby, was an Everly Brothers fan, and with grade-school chum Allan Clarke, he started playing in a variety of outfits, which led to the formation of the Hollies in 1962. Known for tight three-part harmonies, the Hollies first gained success with pop covers of American & hits. The motive for writing original material came about, as Nash told Dave Zimmer, “not to reach people’s souls. The reason was there was money in it.”

  It was on the Hollies’ first trip to Los Angeles that Nash met Mama Cass. “She opened my mind to opening my life,” Nash told Zimmer. Elliot also introduced him to David Crosby, whose off-the-wall behavior fascinated Nash. With repeated exposure to the American scene, Nash’s songwriting became more experimental, and his increasingly psychedelic outlook didn’t sit well with his more conservative bandmates, who were “still the five-pints-every-night lads.”

  Fleeing band frustrations and a bad marriage, Nash found solace in Cass Elliot, and it was during a July 1968 trip to Laurel Canyon—at either Elliot’s or Joni Mitchell’s house—that an informal jam took place, and Crosby, Stills and Nash sang together for the very first time.

  While Nash extricated himself from the Hollies, CSN moved to England for a few months to work on material and figure out whom to approach for management. Underwriting their expenses at the time was Larry Kurzon, a William Morris representative who had grown close to Nash. When Kurzon heard a two-song demo the band had cut in New York with Paul Rothchild, he flipped. Nash wanted Kurzon to manage them. “When the group was forming in London, Crosby was holding out for Elliot Roberts,” said Kurzon. “Nash wanted me, and Stephen would go along with whoever.”

  A meeting was arranged in New York City at the apartment of William Morris executive Hal Ray, where the trio would “audition me and Elliot Roberts simultaneously,” said Kurzon, who considered the up-and-coming Roberts no threat. “I kept sayin’ to these guys, ‘You’re gonna cost me a friend, you’re gonna make me go against him because he can’t compete with me, he’s got a lot to learn.’ Elliot was not ready.”

  Kurzon had underestimated Roberts. On the second day of the meeting, Elliot showed up with David Geffen. “I didn’t know what Geffen was doing at the house, ’cause he was as close a friend to me as anybody. I didn’t realize that Elliot brought him as a one-two punch.” Kurzon would quickly find out what a lethal combination Geffen and Roberts were. “Geffen got right in the middle of it and blew me out of the water. I sai
d something to him on the q.t., and he repeated it to Graham Nash.”

  What Kurzon let slip was that the trio had also been considering Dylan’s all-powerful manager, Albert Grossman, and had been to see him that week. “Graham flipped. He came to me and said, ‘Why are you putting our business in the street?’ I was standing there with egg on my face. There’s nothing like making a mistake around David Geffen—he’ll make you pay for it.” *

  Kurzon’s weakness was Roberts’s strength. Elliot could simultaneously handle Crosby’s titanic ego, Mitchell’s emotional hurts and Young’s weird, reclusive ways. The artist was always right and no demand was too great—he’d take the four A.M. phone calls, come to the studio and smoke a joint, even get busted with you if need be. Elliot was “our pal, our buddy,” said Crosby. “Back then he was like part of the group.” He would be the only outsider invited into CSNY’s preshow-huddle ritual. He also had a power over the foursome that some found unearthly. “Elliot was a Svengali,” said Nash associate Mac Holberg. “I saw it again and again. He would mesmerize them into doing what he wanted them to do.”

  Roberts was feared but loved, Geffen feared. He was unrelenting. As Ron Stone put it, “Elliot had a life—he had wives and kids. David had business.” Said Roberts, “Even when we were partners, I never thought for one second that we were equal. I always relied on David’s business acumen. I would say, ‘Let’s ask for a million,’ and he would go, ‘You are a fuckin’ moron—ask for five, we’ll get three.’ I went, ‘No way—there’s no more than a million there.’ He’d say, ‘Elliot! SCHMUCK! Ask for five! You’ll get three.’ And every single time, without exception—without exception—he was right. In all the years that we were together, David was never wrong once. When he told me how somebody would react, that’s how they reacted. Every time. His sense of people, his sense of what motivated them—past what they projected—was just uncanny. He’s an alien.”