40 Year Itch : CSNY Begins Doom Tour in Seattle

“It was insane.We were completely high every moment. Cocaine, marijuana – oh, and sleeping pills, too, because you have to come down."
       Graham Nash

     On July 9, 1974, in Seattle, Crosby Stills Nash and Young began a notorious  two month 31-concert, 24 city stadium tour that has just been documented in a new box set called CSNY 1974. ( You can stream four tracks here. )

  Rehearsals lasted for three weeks at Neil Young's Broken Arrow ranch in La Honda. Stills told Crawdaddy's Cameron Crowe:

“Neil built a beautiful stage right across the road from his studio. We get out there in the sun and play for about four or five hours a day. We haven’t done the old tunes in years, man, it’s almost like playing them for the first time. Everybody’s a better musician. And there’s plenty of new songs too. We’ve all been writing a lot, especially Neil. It’s been tons of fun and no hassles. 
    

The concerts were epic affairs, especially the first one which began at 9 and ended well after one in the morning and consisting of up to 40 songs ranging from the expected "Ohio" and "Our House" to solo cuts like Neil Young's "Revolution Blues" and Stills' "Change Partners".

      There are also rare cuts on the new box set like "Goodbye Dick", performed five days after Nixon 's resignation. 

  It had been four years since all four had worked together ( which led to the Four Way Street recording) But the promise of a big pay day and the success of the Dylan and Band tour had helped convince the guys to get together. Young--barely recognizable after getting a haircut-- had released a few commercial clunkers (Journey Through the Past and Time Fades Away) and agreed to the tour as long as he had his own bus.

The Seattle concert opened with a six minute version of "Love the One You're With" and ran for three and a half hours.

After Seattle, we realized we could hold on to tens of thousands of fans through a diversity of electric and acoustic sets.
-Graham Nash to Wall Street Journal

The rest of the set list looked like this:

wooden ships
immigration man
cowgirl in the sand
change partners
traces
grave concern
black queen
almost cut my hair
ohio
suite: Judy blue eyes
helplessly hoping




blackbird
human highway
prison song
as I come of age
carry me
for free
Guinnevere
southbound train
another sleep song
our house
4 and 20
know you got to run
word game
love art blues
long may you run
a man needs a maid
don't be denied
first things first
deja vu
my angel
pre road downs
my favorite changes
long time gone
revolution blues
pushed it over the end
carry on
what are their names/Chicago

Of the camaraderie Crowe wrote:


The hostility between Stills and Young that at one time often stopped just short of onstage fisticuffs no longer hangs threateningly in the air. The same lessening of tensions since the last tour has infused the backstage atmosphere with a good deal of genuine warmth, back-slapping, hugging and verbal repartee.

It was David Crosby that called it "The Doom Tour". Why? You can read this Rolling Stone article for stories of drugs, groupies and inter-band squabbling. The tour was supposed to end in a recording session for a new album tentatively titled Human Highway ( the title cut, "Tonight's The Night" and "New Mama" were all going to Neil's contributions to the album). Obviously that never happened.

  

For a single soundbite try road manger Chris O'Dell's memory might explain why:

"One time they spilled cocaine on the carpet. They just got down on the floor and sniffed it off the carpet. I just went, 'Oh my God, this is so weird.' I'd never seen anything like it. They probably don't remember that." 

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40 Year Itch: That Latin Thing

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If Latin music was ever going to crack the mainstream, 1974 was the year it would happen. And Fania, the most important label in New York, was probably going to release it. That fact it never happened is our loss. We settled for whitewashed disco from the likes of KC and the Sunshine Band and the Miami-based Bee Gees instead.

     Among the albums we--as a Nation-- missed out on are Fania All Stars's Latin-Soul-Rock, released a year after 45-thousand fans packed Yankee Stadium. The album features some of the tunes played that night including the precursor to a myriad of 70's disco tunes : "Smoke".

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   Fania co-founder Johnny Pacheco provides the grooves for  the legendary "La Guarachera de Cuba" Celia Cruz for a straightforward set featuring the brassy Afro-rumba hit, "Quimbara". This is where your Celia Cruz infatuation should start.

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     A tribute to the hard driving tipica sounds of 1950's Cuba, Larry Harlow's Salsa was a big hit on Latin dance floors thanks to high energy horn charts played by some of Fania's best musicians. Harlow studied old 78's to get the 'authentico' sound.  "No Quiero" is sung by Junior Gonzalez. who gave Harlow the nickname "The Jewish Marvel". Harlow--no longer an outsider on the Salsa scene-- would soon put a kid he met in the mailroom a chance to sing with his band. The kid's name is Rueben Blades.

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      Recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios, The Sun of Latin Music fuses Latin dance music with acid rock. The standout cut is the 14 minute "Un Dia Bonito" which begins with a dramatic 5 minute free-jazz piano solo, transitions into a horror film soundtrack, and then launches into a swinging dance number featuring a 16 year old vocalist named Lalo Rodriguez . The Sun of Latin Music is the first salsa album to win a Grammy.

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   From Puerto Rico, timbale master Rafael Cortijo along with some young musicians from the University of Puerto Rico play traditional bomba and plena rhythms in support of experimental jazz fusion . According to 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die author Tom Moon, "the result is one of the most imaginative cross-genre eruptions in Latin music history".

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40 Year Itch: Let Your Hair Hang Down

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Former Easybeats singer Stevie Wright topped the Australian charts in the Summer of '74 with an 11-minute, three part single called "Evie". Written by his former bandmates, "Evie" stayed #1 for six weeks and spent half a year on the charts. 

      Radio stations usually just played the first part "Let Your Hair Hang Down", which  chugs along like a bouncy glam rock tune. (It actually sounds like something the White Stripes might have recorded). 21 year old AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young ( brother of songwriter George) plays the solo.  Flip the 45 over and you get the other two parts. Part two ("Oh Evie...I'm Nothing Without You") is a quiet piano ballad in the manner of Bread. Stevie was worried he sounded to much like Engelbert Humperdinck.  Part three ("I'm Losing You"), a disco rave,  may be the biggest surprise. 

Stevie Wright is one of rock's survivors. He lost all of his money thanks to his addiction to heroin. He told Off the Record author Shar Adams:

   "I have undergone shock treatment, sedation, two years of rehabilitation treatment with Salvation Army, and two lots of six month treatments at a rehabilitation centre called Westmount. I was dying really."

The sedation treatment probably didn't help. Wright underwent Deep Sleep Treatment, a controversial method that had killed at least 24 people by using drugs to put them in comas for days or weeks at a time.

Wright is still alive and can still be persuaded to get on stage and sing "Evie".

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40 Year Itch : Dressing Fine, Making Time

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     By the time American critics began reviewing Bryan Ferry's first solo album, These Foolish Things, Ferry had come out with his follow-up, Another Time, Another Place, released on July 5, 1974. Like Foolish, the album is a collection of covers. The only exception being the title cut. Unlike Foolish, the album gets bogged down by too many country covers, including a wretched 7-minute version of "You Are My Sunshine"... and Vegas-style arrangements. Aside from "The 'In' Crowd" ( a UK Top 20 hit), the best thing about the album is the cover. One imagines Ferry dressed like this for all occasions, from lonely poolside cocktail parties to running down to the corner grocer for smokes. The album reached #4 in the UK charts. Its songs are still part of Ferry's solo sets.

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40 Year Itch : Dr and Mrs Love

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   On July 4, 1974 Barry White married Love Unlimited singer Glodean Jones in a private ceremony. The pair invited Jet Magazine to their sprawling "28-bedroom house" ( is that even possible?)  near Los Angeles where White pointed out a baby blue piano parked outside the master bedroom. Because, you never know when inspiration might strike...but if you're Barry White, it probably strikes in the boudoir. That's what happened with "Can't Get Enough of Your Love", a #1 hit released in the days following the honeymoon.

"In fact, I remember that night, " he said. "It was about a quarter to one. We called ourselves going to bed at ten o'clock and I got up at a quarter to one and wrote Can't Get Enough of Your Love."

   "Those are my two ladies...Glodean and music, " he allows. "When I'm making love to one, I can turn right around and make love to the other and there is never no conflict of interest because they both understand what's happening."

  Glodean blushed at her husband's candor and said shyly, "I think he's getting a little personal."

  She didn't want to leave him dangling like he was flaunting his amorous accomplishments so she confirmed that he was right on "all the way".

   "Thank you, baby" he smiled. 

Barry White only owned the charts for two years or so but in that time he earned $16 million in sales. He died on the 4th of July, 2003.

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40 Year Itch : Happy as a Monkey with a Peanut Machine

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    July 1974 is one of the funkiest months on record. Exhibit #1 is the second album from Parliament, Up For the Down Stroke, released on July 3. Signed to Casablanca Records and joined by members of James Brown's band ( including bassist Bootsy Collins and the Horny Horns), George Clinton got a chance to wipe the slate clean from the psychedelic funk rock directions of Funkadelic and set his sights on Pure OUTrageous Cosmic Funk with heaping sides of sexual innuendo. The result is Parliament's first Top 10 R and B hit : the anthemic " Up For the Down Stroke". There are plenty of deep cut nuggets as well. Check out "The Goose".

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40 Year Itch : Bang a Gong

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   The James Brown double album Hell, released June 28. 1974,  is a bit of a mixed bag. Two sides of glorious soul-powered  funk and two sides of curiosities. The funk sides include the big hit single "My Thang", lead off track "Coldblooded" and a 14-minute autobiographical tune called "Papa Don't Take No Mess". 

   

   

  Among the oddities are chestnuts like "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "Stormy Monday" and a Latin remake of "Please Please Please" that must be heard to be believed. Was The Godfather trying to out-do Stevie Wonder's Spanish quips in "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing"? "Don't Tell a Like About Me And I Won't Tell the Truth About You" is a believed to be a response to the people who accused Brown of cozying up with Richard Nixon.

For some God awful reason Brown starts most tracks off with a gong. That might have worked for Kool and the Gang. Once. But once is enough.

As Brown toured Hell, he brought along his daughter Deanna who danced with him on Soul Train. She shared her memories with Soul Train's website:

   (That day on Soul Train)  I remember being on the set all day. I wasn’t nervous or anything. I just got on stage and danced. It was just a part of my life. My dad had matching outfits especially designed for us to wear during our performance.

    He was just daddy to me. Daddy was just going to work. It did not dawn on me until I was a college student; one time I was in the library and I went through some encyclopedias and read write-ups on my dad. What got me was that they had all of our names listed, me and all of my siblings, not just dad. It really hit me how deep he was.  

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