With a new album on top of the charts and a major tour on the horizon, the spring of 1970 should have been a terrific time for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Behind the scenes, however, the foursome’s infamously combustible chemistry was already boiling over.
Though their issues with each other would tear CSNY apart soon enough, there were also outside factors darkening what should have been a jubilant time for some of the group’s members. David Crosby, for one, was tormented by the recent death of his longtime girlfriend Christine Hinton in a freak car accident, and decided to set sail on a seven-week ocean odyssey with Graham Nash by his side — and plenty of drugs on board.
As Nash later detailed in his memoir Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, he and Crosby were far from alone in their indulgence of illegal substances. On April 14, 1970, Stephen Stills‘ own habits threatened to impact CSNY’s tour plans. “Stephen in particular was pushing the limits of cocaine madness,” wrote Nash. “Driving to rehearsal one afternoon, he was distracted by a cop in his rear-view mirror and veered into a parked car, fracturing his wrist.”
Stills, in Los Angeles to track some parts for Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush solo LP, quickly decamped to Hawaii with photographer and band associate Henry Diltz to heal — but the time off didn’t necessarily tone down the growing tensions between the members of CSNY. In fact, Nash went on to recall a dispute over singer Rita Coolidge that ended in a physical altercation which may have irrevocably altered his friendship with Stills.
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