Published: October 23, 2024
After famously playing their second show at Woodstock in August 1969, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young spent the rest of the year touring and writing songs for what would become CSNY's 1970 debut, Déjà Vu.
On Sept. 19, 1969, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash walked onstage at the Fillmore East in New York City, took a seat on three stools, and launched into “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” without any introduction. It was just four weeks after they played their first ever show at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago — followed a couple days later at a little festival called Woodstock — and they were already one of the most popular groups in America. New bandmate Neil Young remained backstage, letting the original trio play a few songs on their own before coming out, turning CSN into CSNY.
“The Fillmore was absolutely silent,” read a review in a local paper. “When ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ was over, the audience applauded and cheered wildly, and gave the trio a standing ovation. How could a Byrd, a Buffalo Springfield, and a Holly dare come out on stage at the acid-freak rock Fillmore and play acoustic music and get away with it?”
They got away with it because the “acid-freak rock scene” was coming to an abrupt end, and a new generation of singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and the four members of CSNY were arriving to fill the void. In less than two years, the Fillmore East itself would close, and CSNY would implode due to personality conflicts, drugs, and the demands of their solo careers.
Before all that happened, they were just four friends performing their songs at the Fillmore. They played an early show and a late show on both Sept. 19 and 20, 1969, and all four gigs were professionally recorded. The tapes sat in the vault these past 55 years, but fans will finally get to hear them on Oct. 25 when Live at Fillmore East, 1969 hits shelves.
After famously playing their second show at Woodstock in August 1969, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young spent the rest of the year touring and writing songs for what would become CSNY's 1970 debut, Déjà Vu. Live at Fillmore East, 1969 is a newly discovered multi-track recording of the band's September 20, 1969, concert at the historic Fillmore East in New York City captures an early moment from that first tour. Including both Acoustic and Electric sets, as well as hit tracks such as "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", "Our House", "I've Loved Her So Long", etc. Stephen Stills and Neil Young compiled and mixed the original eight-track concert recordings at Sunset Studios to keep the production entirely analog. Young recently said: "[We] have the tapes, and they sound so real. We mixed at Sunset Sound - the analog echo chamber, no digital echo. We're staying all analog throughout the production... Pure. Analog. No digital."
