Though the superstar quartet of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is a volatile and unreliable combination, the original trio without Neil Young have stuck together pretty consistently since the late 1960s. But the internal balance has shifted over the decades. Where Stills was originally the group's dynamo, dominating the songwriting and playing as many instruments as possible (his militaristic organising earned him the nickname the Sarge), these days the centre of gravity has swung towards Crosby and Nash.
Crosby, having survived gargantuan drug abuse, road accidents and a liver transplant, is on buoyant form as musician and raconteur, ranting about nuclear waste and the villainous George Bush. Nash, the slim, sensible one, plays master of ceremonies with cheerful matiness.
Meanwhile Stills, now almost as bulky a figure as Crosby, plays lead guitar and sings, but often retreats to the side of the stage to let the other two get on with it.
Between them they have amassed enough songs to keep them singing continuously until Christmas, but the old ones exuded a particular aura. The alliteration and three-part harmonies of Stills' Helplessly Hoping distilled the original CSN sound, while Crosby's Almost Cut My Hair has evolved into a maelstrom of interlocking guitars and clashing chords. Crosby and Nash harmonised with practiced expertise on a spellbinding Guinnevere, and it was Crosby's crisp rhythm guitar that underpinned a tumultuous reading of Wooden Ships.
Newer material was of less reliable quality. Don't Dig Here, by Crosby's son and keyboard player James Raymond, was sluggish agit-rock, and Southern Cross was a lumbering mess. But the trio's traditional protest-singer leanings are suddenly enjoying renewed relevance. Stills' Afro-Latin flavoured Feed the People makes as good a stab as any at reducing a complex global crisis to a singalong slogan, and sat comfortably alongside Nash's Chicago ("We can change the world") and Military Madness ("Military madness is killing my country"). Prior commitments will keep them away from Live8, but they'll be there in spirit.
