Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Live At Fillmore East, 1969
(Atlantic Records, 2024)
Live At Fillmore East, 1969 offers listeners and alternative to and justification of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s commercially released live recording, 4 Way Street (Atlantic, 1971). For all of its charms, 4 Way Street remains a technical and production mess. Could this archival recording provide a more accurate representation?
Yes, and no.
Recorded at the Fillmore East, September 20, 1969, after having appeared at Woodstock (August 18, 1969, only their second appearence together), Live At Fillmore East, 1969 captures the band early in their association and on their first national tour. The engineering and sonics on Live At Fillmore East, 1969, are vastly superior to those on 4 Way Street. The recording technology of the time captured the famous harmonies honestly. They are not perfect, but are so welcoming and mirthful that the listener can scarcely believe things could fall apart so badly interpersonally in the two years between the recordings. The quartet on Live At Fillmore East, 1969, sound as if they like each other, enjoy performing together, and long to share this with the audience.
By 1971, relationships frayed, tempers flared, current events intervened, and a low hum of angst developed, permeating every song on 4 Way Street. Neither good nor bad, the change of mood influenced the performances on 4 Way Street in an urgent and essential way that makes the music crackle like a lightening strike in a thunderstorm (which may be an apt metaphor for the 1971 tour). Any thoughts of Live At Fillmore East, 1969 replacing 4 Way Street as a definitive statement perishes in the flames of the electric performances of the latter.
What Live At Fillmore East, 1969 had that 4 Way Street did not was the gentle camaradery of a new band getting to know one another. The harmonies on “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “Helplessly Hoping” are not perfect but sublime. Graham Nash’s pipe organ on “Our House” is a touch that cannot be bettered and is comparible to Neil Young’s performance with the same instrument on “Like A Hurricane” from Unplugged (Reprise, 1993). Live At Fillmore East, 1969 retains some of the hopefulness of the 1960s before that same hope decayed against the Watergage and the beginning of the end in Vietnam.
Live At Fillmore East, 1969 is a perfect companion to 4 Way Street, in illustrating the compression of time during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when little changes in the cultural enviorment led to big changes in the cultural atmosphere.