In the early 1970s, David Crosby and Graham Nash launched a dedicated partnership distinct from their separate solo work and their roles in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The project spotlighted the vocal interplay and songwriting rapport between the two artists. Across the decade they issued three studio albums and multiple live sets while supplying harmonies to landmark recordings by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, and numerous others. Their last joint studio album appeared in 2004, yet growing personal friction eventually ended further work, leaving that release as their final one before Crosby’s death in 2023.
After Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 sophomore album Déja Vu, the quartet split and each member turned to solo projects. Crosby and Nash began testing their duo format with low-key acoustic concerts that led to the 1972 release Graham Nash/David Crosby. The record reached number four on the U.S. Billboard charts and yielded the Nash-penned hit single “Immigration Man.” During those years the members of CSN&Y circled one another in shifting alignments, marked by aborted recording attempts, fleeting full-group reunions, and steady streams of solo and partial-group releases. The duo moved from Atlantic to ABC Records for the 1975 album Wind on the Water. An extensive tour supporting the set featured Greenpeace-sanctioned footage highlighting threats to the whale. The following year they released their third album, Whistling Down the Wire, and documented a concert that included an extended jazz reading of Crosby’s “Déja Vu.”
The 1998 archival live recording Another Stoney Evening, drawn from early-’70s performances, revived the partnership and prompted Crosby and Nash to reunite in 2004 for their first new material in over twenty-five years. The resulting self-titled double album appeared in August 2004; a single-disc edition followed two years later. Although various lineups of CSN&Y toured and recorded through the 1990s, 2000s, and into the 2010s, frayed relationships ultimately ended the band around 2015. Nash and Crosby’s especially contentious dynamic never healed enough to yield another Crosby & Nash album before Crosby died in January 2023.
