Teach Your Geezers Well
CS&N’s hippie hoedown at the Greek
By Ron Garmon
Late, overdressed and spritzing, I handed my ticket to a bland youngster who gestured to an empty seat way up front with the bourgeoisie. Twilight was already pinking over the moneyed hills of Los Feliz as I plonked down amid a throng of merry, hooting Children of the ’60s and began fussing with notebook and pen. Three iconic elderly gentlemen were beaming from the stage, their famous and florid heads inflated gigantically by the dubious magic of twin Jumbotrons flanking the stage. Together in various configurations for 40 years, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash were just then easing into “Immigration Man,” and the well-heeled Boomers around me at the Greek were cramming headlong into the Wayback Machine.
Fashioned from tearaway fragments of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Hollies, CSN brought courtly countrified pop-rock to its zenith, trading on honied three-part harmonies, cowboy-poet lyrics and Stills’s ferocious musicianship. As the final months of the Dubya imposture tick away, CSN’s gentle, relentless Leftism begins to sound less like a quaint ideological curio and more like sturdy common sense. Coming from a later, snottier era that always associated the trio with dated dreaminess and the pervasive orthodoxy of Mellow, I came expecting to carouse with a considerably less-lively remnant of Woodstock Nation.
Instead of somnolence and settled crust, I found myself in the middle of a first-wave hippie hoedown. Nostalgia, opportunity and need are sending older rock acts back into live performance in increasing numbers, giving the jaded a chance to match experience against valorized recording. If Lou Reed disappoints, Television dismays and poor KC looks barely able to boogie while fronting the Sunshine Band, CSN did not flout heritage, wreck memories or disappoint fans. Stills, in particular, is a ball-of-fire guitarist, his extended reverb-heavy solos bringing lusty cheers from the crowd and a heartfelt cry of “Sick!” from one blown-away Millennial.
The set rolled through the hits, near-hits and assorted Boomer anthems, with the covert dope-sucking welling openly into great blue gusts of smoke at “Marrakesh Express.” Event staff, looking like cranky toddlers in their pink shirts, scurried this way and that, hissing at their elders to extinguish the skunky stuff to little avail. The crusty burghers all around me were throwing down like it was 1970 and the elder half of a father-and-son team elbowed me with a sly “It’s great when you can get high with your kid before Father’s Day.” I concurred while fishing my own weed pipe from my pocket surrendering to the general mood. “The older generation,” as John Lennon quipped in A Hard Day’s Night, “are leading this country to galloping ruin.”
The crowd up front was even rowdier, yelling out favorites. “Usually,” Crosby drawled puckishly, “when someone calls out a song, they wanna know if we know ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’” Someone hollered indistinct gibberish which the ex-Byrd translated as “Sorry, we don’t have the skinny Canadian guy with us tonight,” referring to absent occasional member Neil Young. “A University of California study,” the old bullshitter further allowed, “shows that from 1969-73, 35% of the girls in California lost their virginity to this song,” before spry Graham Nash began crooning the cozily sexy “Our House.” “Almost Cut My Hair” came next, another period artifact which, in a better world, wouldn’t still retain considerable relevance as a cocked snook at conformity. The trio stepped off to vociferous ovation and wasted no time in beating it back onstage of their one encore – a flawless rendition of “Teach Your Children.” This loveliest song in American rock ’n’ roll
was dutifully, boozily sung by those around me and I joined in, our voices cheering our father’s Hell of this benighted era as it slowly goes by.
Published: 06/18/2008
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I LOVED this. Beautifully written...and felt.