Crosby, Stills & Nash is the debut studio album by the folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN), released on May 29, 1969 by Atlantic Records. It is the only release by the band prior to adding Neil Young to their lineup. The album has been certified four times platinum by the RIAA for sales of 4 million.
On the album cover the members are shown, from left to right, as Nash, Stills, and Crosby, the inverse of the role call in the album’s title. The photo was taken by their friend and photographer Henry Diltz before they came up with a name for the group. They found an abandoned house with an old, battered sofa outside, located at 815 Palm Avenue, West Hollywood, across from the Santa Palm car wash, that they thought would be a perfect fit for their image. A few days later they decided on the name “Crosby, Stills, and Nash”. To prevent confusion, they went back to the house a day or so later to re-shoot the cover in the correct order, but when they got there they found the house had been demolished.
Dallas Taylor can be seen looking through the window of the door on the rear of the sleeve. In the expanded edition, however, he is absent. The original vinyl LP was released in a gatefold sleeve that depicted the band members in large fur parkas with a sunset in the background on the gatefold (shot in Big Bear, California), as well as the iconic cover art. A long folded page inside displayed the album credits, lyrics, track listing, and a quasi-psychedelic pencil drawing.
“I knew these guys,” Henry Diltz said. “I’d see them at the Troubadour [in West Hollywood]. Or I’d see them at Mama Cass’ house. And then when they were recording the album, I went to Wally Heider Studios and photographed them through the window while they were singing.”
On a February day, Diltz arrived at his creative partner Gary Burden’s house. “They were sitting on the back stoop singing. What a sound they had! They would go to someone’s house and stand in the corner and sing a song and everybody would just faint, it was so ethereally beautiful, with Graham’s high voice. All three of them had amazing voices and David is one of the best descant singers, the low harmony parts.”
On Burden’s stoop, he said, “it was mind-blowing to hear them sing. They had one guitar and they were just harmonizing. They were in love with the sounds.” To help set the mood, the five of them smoked a couple of joints. “God’s herb kind of sets the mood. When I talk about Laurel Canyon, I say, ‘How do you think all those songs got written?'”
Soon, they piled into Burden’s car. “Gary was like the scout leader,” said Diltz. “He was such a cool guy. He was the guy that you would want to follow anywhere. He was a year or two older than us and had such great taste. He was a natural born leader.
“And we drove around. Graham had seen this little house at some point and we found it, on a little street… Palm Avenue, between Sunset Blvd. and Santa Monica Blvd. And there was this little funky wooden house, with an old couch sitting outside.
“We jumped out of the car, they piled onto the couch, and I started shooting photos. Framing was the big thing… I had a framing jones. It made me feel balanced to frame things. They’re horizontal, rectangles, and they fit the couch perfectly. There’s the three guys and the couch and, boy, that just framed up perfectly.
“I was snapping away and then Gary said one of the things he always said to me. This one was, ‘Back up! Back up! Get the whole house.’ So I backed up and backed up and backed up, and I was across the street. There were no cars and I got the whole house. I guess in Gary’s mind, he was thinking of an album cover.
“So I did all these shots and then we had to get it developed at Kodak because they were transparencies and you had to send them there. Got them back a day later, two days later and had a slide show. When you project these things, you’d get a 12-inch white cardboard square, which would be like an album cover, and you could hold it in the stream of light coming from the projector and you could move it around and see exactly what an album cover would look like. And we did that and said, ‘Wow, that would make a great album cover!’”
There was a hitch. “In the time between taking the picture and looking at the picture, which was a couple of days, three days, maybe, they had decided what to call themselves. It was almost gonna be Stills, Nash and Crosby. Because Stephen, famously, played [most of] the instruments on that record. He was really the key musician. The other guys were singers, you know?
“But somehow the idea prevailed that Crosby, Stills and Nash flowed like a nice poetic name. And unfortunately they were in the wrong order. And I do remember some discussion… ‘well, look, you could flop the picture over’. But then Stephen would be holding the guitar as a left-handed player, which he isn’t, which would have caused all sorts of problems.
“I remember in the middle of that discussion, saying, ‘Holy shit… let’s just go back. You guys jump on the couch… what will it take? Five minutes? Just jump up there… bang bang bang.’ So we got in the car, drove down there, and immediately saw there was no house anymore. The house was gone. As Graham has said, ‘It was a pile of timbers pushed to the back of the lot!'”
When they first saw the album, plenty of new fans assumed Nash was Crosby and vice versa.
So, who’s the guy on the back cover peering out of the doorway?
“It’s Dallas Taylor, the drummer,” said Diltz. “Most people think it’s Neil Young. When they were making the album, I guess they said Dallas was part of the group, and wanted to give him some presence in this somehow. He wasn’t even in the doorway because the house was boarded up. so Gary just stripped him in there.”
(All photos by © Henry Diltz, via Best Classic Bands)
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