Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Biography - Hardcover

Doggett, Peter

3.6

332 ratings by Goodreads

9781847925053: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Biography

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847925057 ISBN 13: 9781847925053

Publisher: Bodley Head, 2019

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'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

At 3 a.m. on Monday, 18 August 1969, the final night of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, four men armed only with acoustic guitars faced the gaping darkness of a vast open-air audience. An hour later, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had confounded and convinced their peers, and cemented their place in rock history. They had also made themselves, for better or worse, synonymous with Woodstock, and with the nebulous Woodstock generation which it inspired.

Between 1969 and 1974, CSNY 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. Their trademark may have been vocal harmony, but few if any of their contemporaries could match the recklessness of their hedonistic and often warring lifestyles, as four stubborn, driven songwriters pursued chemical and sexual pleasure to life-threatening extremes.

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.

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Review:

"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"

"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" (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" (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" (Mail on Sunday)

About the Author:

Peter Doggett has been writing about popular music and social and cultural history for more than thirty years. His books include the acclaimed There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of '60's Counter-culture, The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s and Electric Shock:From the Gramophone to the iPhone - 125 years of Pop Music.

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