Wild Tales (22 page)

We wanted total control over everything we did, and we made sure of it. We told Ahmet, “Leave us the hell alone!” and for some inexplicable reason he did exactly that. Originally, he’d wanted
Tom Dowd to produce us, and both of them wanted
Jerry Wexler involved. Those were his guys. But they were New York guys, and we were LA guys. It wouldn’t have worked. The environment in the studio had to be exactly right, or we couldn’t do what we set out to do. We knew what we were doing. And somehow we convinced Ahmet that our vision would work. He trusted us. It was like turning the asylum over to the inmates, but we were brilliant inmates. The place was ours. This was a strictly creative affair. Friends stopped by—Joni, photographer
Henry Diltz, Cass, Peter Fonda, Garth Hudson,
John Sebastian—people we loved and trusted who would not interfere with the vibe. But that was it. Enter at your own risk.

The engineer was a guy named
Bill Halverson, the studio manager, big blond dude, a very complicated character. He drank a lot, his marriage was on rocky ground—excellent credentials, he’d fit right in. Word was that he would listen but basically stay out of our way. And he knew how to get vocals and stack them. That was all I needed to hear. Apparently, at some previous session, Halverson had gotten a great sound on Stephen’s acoustic guitar—by accident. He’d left some compressors in the loop that shouldn’t have been there, and Stephen considered it an act of technological genius. Go figure. I didn’t know Bill Halverson from a hole in the ground, but I trusted Stephen to make the right choice.

There was no great preamble to making our first album. We just turned up at the studio, got our guitars out of David’s Volkswagen van, tuned up, and launched right in. There was no great mystery to our recording process. We put Stephen in a chair, miked his D-45, and angled a Neumann microphone to his mouth. David and I stood to the side, each with our own Neumann mike. We sang through each song to get the essence of it down, then overdubbed
more vocals as the situation demanded. But it felt like a live performance, right through the
album.

From the get-go, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. We only had ten or eleven songs between us that we all felt would work for the album. Not too much weeding out of material. I think Stephen already had “Change Partners.” There was a song he’d written at our Moscow Road flat in London called “The Doctor Will See You Now, Mr. L”—Mr. L being John Lennon—but we’d been so wasted at the time that none of us could remember it. Years later, John Colasuardo, a musician from New York City, gave me a tape of a demo session that Stephen had recorded in August 1968 that featured this and twenty-one other songs (twelve of them appeared on Stephen’s
Just Roll Tape
in 2007). John had found the tape in a trash bin behind a defunct studio he’d been rehearsing in and kept it all those years.

We tried
John Sebastian’s “Darling Children” and considered cutting a version of the
Beatles’ “Blackbird,” which we loved to sing, but we were very careful about shaping the overall record, crafting the musical journey from start to finish. In my Hollies days, an album consisted of your twelve hits lumped together to sell mass quantities of consumable music. But
Revolver
,
Sgt. Pepper’s
, and
Pet Sounds
had changed all that. The new approach was to view an album as a tabula rasa. “Let’s draw this beautiful picture on it.” It no longer had to be twelve familiar but unrelated pieces of music. And in that sense, we could develop a flow, make sure the feel was right, get our chemistry across.

We realized the most important track would be the opening number, because it would set the tone for the rest of the album. It’s the track where you can’t take the needle off the record after you’ve heard it. And we had one. Man, did we have one.

The first time Stephen ever played me the “Suite,” I knew exactly what our record would sound like. It was back in December ’68, right after we’d been at the Record Plant with
Paul Rothchild. We went over to
David Geffen’s apartment, where Stephen explained
how he’d been working on four different songs that were unfinished, but connected by their subject matter. All of the fragments focused on his relationship with
Judy Collins, whom he loved even though she often exasperated him. He was trying to say something to her through these songs about their relationship and her career—as a folk troubadour, a cabaret chanteuse, an interpretive singer. The various identities were perplexing her, Stephen claimed, and his lyric intended to reassure her that, no matter what, he’d be there for her.

I was gobsmacked as he segued from one song fragment to the next, knitting each of them together seamlessly with ingenious instrumental bridges. Each one entirely different in structure, each one beautiful in its own right.

When he came to the end of it, I kept shaking my head. The brilliance of it was overwhelming. I’d never heard anything like it before. The suite: indeed. Stitched together, it was seven and a half minutes long and intensely different. The lyrics were beautiful, the melodies unforgettable. Layer upon layer of rhythmic textures. It was
stunning
, just a stunning piece of music. I knew we could sing that and slay people with it. It was all there, the opening track of our first album, and from that moment on, I knew
we were making a smash hit record. What are you going to do, take the needle off the record after you’ve heard “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”?
I don’t think so!

It took us something like eleven hours to get the song down on tape. With all the different parts, it was a ballbuster to sing and play through. The length alone was a challenge. But listening to the playback, I knew we’d pulled it off, especially the end, which erupted into liberated mayhem. The string of ad-libbed hollers, birdcalls, and fractured Spanish put the finishing touch on a balls-out masterpiece.

Stephen sat there stone-faced through the playback. When it was over, he said, “I’m not sure we got it.”

I practically leapt off the chair. “Are you fucking kidding me? It’s fantastic. We killed it.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I want to do it again.”

Goddamn perfectionist.

So we did the entire “Suite” again. Painstakingly. Diligently. Tirelessly. Endlessly—for another ten hours. Afterward, when we listened to the playback, Stephen said, “Nah, the original’s still the better one.”

Goddamn perfectionist.

Almost everything we did went down with ease. Those sessions were an absolute joy. For one thing, we were properly wired. We smoked a joint and snorted a line before every session—a CSN ritual. It put us in a rapturous mood. And the rapport we had together was unbelievable; we were emotionally and psychically connected. You could see it in all of our eyes. We knew what we had and how we were relating. It gave us room to experiment and create, to get really out there and let ourselves go. No one’s ego got in the way. We were in love with each other because we were like-minded, we were funny, we were hippies, we smoked dope together, and we shared a commonality of music. We were as tight as our harmonies. And we were loose—man, were we loose.

There was a lot of horseplay in the studio at Heider’s. We threw
“air pies” at anyone who hit a vocal clam. And when any of us lost it, we turned to our alter egos, the Reliability Brothers, who bailed us out of crazy situations. No matter how joyous those sessions were, at times we tended to hit a wall. Then one of us would yell, “Hey, we’re the Reliability Brothers, man. We can do anything!” And the next take would be right on the mark.

Our normal routine: We would go into the studio at two in the afternoon and not come out until around four the next morning. Then we’d head to Norm’s restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, have breakfast, and head back into the studio for another few hours. We were
maniacs.
It was intense, but exhilarating. I’m not sure how Joni put up with me. But she understood what the process was because she was involved in her own similar process. We were both in the midst of making albums: me, up to no good at Heider’s with Croz and Stills; Joni, working with Henry Lewy at A&M, the old Charlie Chaplin studios on La Brea, finishing up
Clouds
and writing new songs for what would become
Ladies of the Canyon.
I started hearing snippets of “The Circle Game” and “For Free” during the hours when she concentrated on new work. We both wrote whenever the spirit moved us. It didn’t matter to Joan when she worked, morning or night. Same with me. But in that tiny house, with dueling creative artists, the dynamic was interesting when the muse hit us at the same time. In Joni’s house, when it came to the piano, I always gave way, allowing her to have first dibs. If she was working at the piano or playing guitar in the living room, I’d head into the bedroom with my guitar or often take a walk. Occasionally, I lingered in the kitchen, just listening to her play.

I loved hearing Joan developing those songs. From the moment I first heard her play, I thought she was a genius. I happen to be good at what I do, but genius? Not by a long shot. She was on another planet in terms of her songwriting ability. Her acoustic guitar was the entire orchestra. The bass strings became the cellos and double basses, the middle strings the violas, and the high strings, violins. And everything she played was in strange tunings and picking
patterns. The way she’d gotten to them was through a childhood brush with polio. As a result, her left arm was a little weaker than the rest of her body, so forming an F chord, which required some strength, presented real problems. To get around it, she learned to play in the open tunings that blues players had used for years so she wouldn’t have to play that damned F chord. Later, she began to write using unique tunings that she composed herself.

Those tunings mesmerized me. I was merely a rhythm strummer, but Joni played with what is called an indicated arrangement, with hints of bass lines and counterpoints that balanced the vocal with the instrument. Over time, I convinced her to show me some of those tunings and used them liberally to work out new tunes. Once, I heard her playing in a gorgeous new configuration. After she was finished and had gone into the kitchen, I picked up her guitar and the notes that cascaded out were like shooting stars; they astounded me. I figured out a couple of ways to play interesting sounds with it, and then I finished “Lady of the Island” using Joni’s special tuning.

Music aside, I was deeply in love with Joan, and I believe, even now, that she felt the same way. For me, our relationship was a dream. She opened me up to so many experiences—musical, intellectual, romantic, and artistic. My marriage had been such a scattered affair; I was always on the road, preoccupied with my career. I’d clearly been too young to deal with commitment. Recording the first CSN album offered a period of satisfying creative ferment, but it also let me stay in one place. Living with Joni allowed me to put down roots—and those roots went deep. I loved the routine, but also the exquisite freedom. We respected each other’s work, but didn’t intrude. We were careful never to step over respective boundaries. Give her credit: Despite her being in another league completely, she was gracious enough not to criticize my songwriting. She never gave me advice, never said, “If you went to an A minor there … ” or “That line isn’t so great”—she never said any of that.

Joan’s feminine side—and what a side!—brought me back in touch with my own emotions. I’d forgotten how to trust after my
marriage to Rose and after my breakup with the Hollies. Joni and I shared everything: all the baggage, all the fantasies, as well as our strengths and insecurities. We held nothing back. She was a free spirit, a complicated woman, but it was an attractive complication. She was like an Escher drawing, with all its sharp angles, unexpected turns, and mysterious depths.

The other side of Joni was the girl-next-door persona, a relaxed, playful side that was so easy to fall in love with. In many ways, Joan was one of the boys. She was at her most comfortable around men. She
really
liked men. She liked to repair cars, play guitar, and hang out with the guys. We could always count on her arriving at Heider’s, mixing easily with Stephen and Croz. And during playback, she’d grab me and we’d jive in the studio. It was that exuberance, that joie de vivre, that lit her like a bouquet of sunflowers.

I started painting when I was with Joan. She was an accomplished painter with a ravishing style. Mostly figurative images, influenced by Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Picasso, lots of fiery colors and blunt textures. She considered herself a painter first and a musician second, and you can see that emphasis reflected in the album covers she designed: the self-portraits on
Clouds,
Ladies of the Canyon, Turbulent Indigo
, and
Dreamland
, and the line drawings on the covers of
Song to a Seagull, Court & Spark
, and
The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
I used to watch her paint in the backyard, where she’d put up an easel and go right to work. She had such fun, enjoying the expression and the solitude when she painted, so she got me into it, just by example. I would use some of her paint, experiment with texture. Having paintbrushes in my hand, I discovered, was the same energy as having a guitar in my hands. Just a different tool. And I could express myself in a different way with those brushes.

My first painting was from a childhood memory. Our two- up-two-down in Salford was overrun by cockroaches. My sister and I used to tap the wallpaper and hear them scurrying, and when we came home at night and turned on the light, you’d see them
scatter like politicians. So I have an inherent dread of those guys—cockroaches and politicians. As a result, I painted a self-portrait, me sleeping in a bed in a room with no ceiling, with two giant cockroaches coming over the walls. Over the years my subject matter improved, and I’ve had gallery shows all over the world. But at the time, I was still trying to find my artistic footing.