Button Sunday and Song Challenge: Day 24

Today’s song challenge is “a song by a band you wish were still together.” It became impossible that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young could reunite after David Crosby died, but even before, it was an unrealistic idea. There were too many fractured relationships among them for it to happen. I chose the button for their album So Far deliberately because it includes what I think are two key songs from a certain time in the band’s evolution. Here’s the full cover from my drowned album.

Graham Nash’s “Teach Your Children,” an admonition for parents and children to love each other despite their differences, was on the March 1970 release of their album Déjà Vu. Nash said he wrote it because of his complicated relationship with his father, and is quoted as saying, “The idea is that you write something so personal that every single person on the planet can relate to it.” Young wasn’t present in the studio when Nash taught the song to the others and they recorded it.

After Déjà Vu’s release, as “Teach Your Children” was moving up the charts, the Kent State shooting took place on May 4, inspiring Neil Young to write “Ohio.” To Nash, this song may have seemed like the consequences when the wisdom of “Teach Your Children” went unheeded. The band rushed “Ohio’s” release as a single, and it, too, climbed the charts.

David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young created an impressive body of work as individuals, as members of CSN&Y, and as members of other bands, and for me, the four together created a voice for any turbulent time and every generation. A Stephen Stills quote from last year sometimes haunts me: “Part of me misses David Crosby dreadfully. Part of me thinks he got out of here just in time.”

ETA: For my own personal reference, I’m linking to an account of Déjà Vu’s cover photo because it shows how research persistence really pays off!