Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The definitive biography

Description

The first biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, whose performance at the Woodstock festival turned them into superstars and whose music and career illuminate the journey and legacy of 1960s counterculture. Read the first biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, whose music and career illuminate the journey and legacy of 1960s counterculture. Between 1969 and 1974, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the most successful, influential and politically potent rock band in America. More than any of their peers, they channelled and broadcast all the radical anger, romantic idealism and generational angst of their era. The vast emotional range of their music, from delicate acoustic confessionals to raucous counter-culture anthems, was mirrored in the turbulence of their personal lives. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is the first major biography of a band whose first two albums are undisputed rock classics, and which continues to attract a large and loyal following to their sporadic reunions. At the same time, Peter Doggett illuminates the pivotal years of 1960s counterculture through the story of four of its key protagonists, whose music, beliefs and relationships with each other chronicle both its trajectory and its legacy.

Peter Doggett first wrote about feminism and gay liberation in There's a Riot Going On, his 2005 history of the collision between rock music and revolutionary politics. Since then, he has published a series of books about the death of 1960s idealism, and its aftermath, as viewed through the life and work of the Beatles in You Never Give Me Your Money, David Bowie in The Man Who Sold the World and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in his 2019 biography of the same name. His other books include a panoramic cultural history of popular music, Electric Shock. He lives in Sussex with the feminist artist and film-maker Rachel Baylis.

Peter Dogett's book is a fascinating, rip-roaring and timely re-telling of a corner of music history that was hugely important but is all too often forgotten. The rehabilitation of Crosby, Stills and Nash's reputation (and of Young's contributions here) is long overdue -- Frank Turner Engaging... [Doggett] use[s] the saga of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as a metaphor for the Woodstock generation and their doomed mission to return to the garden -- Will Hodgkinson * The Times, *Book of the Week* * [A] meticulous chronicle of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young... Doggett carefully charts the stalled sessions and schemes caused by this alpha-male jostling... For fans who want detailed chronology, it will be a joy, but Doggett's book is also a deft portrait of a golden age tarnishing even as the band sang -- Victoria Segal * Sunday Times * Especially good on the musicians early lives and early Seventies peak * Choice * Doggett... presents a solid, steady, evenhanded portrait. He loves the music without being slavish, and pays each of the musicians their due -- Anthony Quinn * Mail on Sunday * Exhaustively researched... If you think you know the history of CSN&Y then read this and, like me, you will be surprised at what you learn -- Tom Povey * RNR * Doggett...treasure[s] the band's early oeuvre and writes with empathy about the group -- Holly George-Warren * Times Literary Supplement *