ROCK: Hazel Friedman
A STRANGE sense of dej vu permeated last weekend’s Crosby Stills and Nash concert in Johannesburg. Attended by a small but frenzied crowd of followers, the show served as a nostalgic reminder of an era which, for many South Africans, was like the sexy older woman next door. We were the pimply, repressed adolescents. She was liberated, libertine and hip. Idealised through films like Easy Rider, Hair and Catcher in the Rye, she seemed tantalisingly close, yet frustratingly beyond reach.
Today, all that remains of her are the trace elements of a “lay now, pay later” era of sex, drugs, rock’n’roll and raffia sandals.
But for an audience raised on passable renditions and revivals of Crosby Stills Nash and Young at Hillbrow’s old Club 58, the show was Woodstock revisited. An intergenerational mix of old rockers, Sixties dinosaurs and neo- hippies, they rocked, rolled and grooved to Our House, clouds of spiritual smoke wafting from their swaying heads. They gyrated to Almost Cut My Hair, gave rousing standing ovations to numbers like Everybody I Love You and waved peace signs in unison with each song.
“This is the realisation of a dream I’ve had since I smoked my first reefer,” said one emotional fan as he displayed a ban-the-bomb tattoo on his left bicep. “I’ve had it since I was 18. Along with Crosby Stills Nash and Young, it symbolised the best of everything the Woodstock era stood for.”
And after Woodstock? The peace-love generation discovered that actions do have consequences, and Neil Young — the undisputed fulcrum of the band — left to pursue his solo career. Unlike many other aging rockers, Crosby Stills and Nash didn’t OD, nor did they fade completely. They just kind of flabbed out a bit, with some dignity, perhaps, but not much grace.
Today, their beautiful harmonies and lyrical contrapuntal range remain, particularly in classics such as Dej Vu and Woodstock. But the rhythms sound a bit rickety and, without Young’s input, their once-rich vocal timbres remind one of a sweet-sounding but slightly warped instrument. Gone, too, is the earthy sexuality, the vision of a brave new world. In its place is serenity and an overdose of
But as the band played against a backdrop of flowers and wispy clouds projected on to a screen, like the residue of an acid-trip, the music became almost incidental. The crowd was paying homage to a myth and laying claim to a memory which was never really theirs.
Crosby Stills and Nash perform at Cape Town’s Good Hope Centre on January 26
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