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Rating: When the record player's needle finished its journey after the last note of Pre-Road Downs, sometimes it would continue spinning endlessly with a continuous hiss. You would quickly rush to manually return the lever, flip the record, and Wooden Ships would start again. You would take the double, fold-out album cover in your hands and look at that enormous interior photo with three heads popping out of fur coats buttoned up to the neck. It must have been quite cold the day they took that shot.
Those three heads are, tonight, July 16, 2010, projected on the stage of the civic arena in Milan, it's not cold, the temperature exceeds thirty degrees, mosquitoes are lurking like killers, and above those heads, the dominant color is white. It's been 40 years since that sparkling debut, but one thing remains intact, the vocal harmonies and the qualities that made Crosby, Stills & Nash a legend in music.
Crosby is clearly the least fit of the three, physically, he will stand still throughout the concert, and who can blame him after everything he has gone through in life? He remains a rock'n'roll survivor, still embodying that guru aura attributed to him at the time, so much so that many saw his likeness in Dennis Hopper's character in Easy Rider. But his charisma and voice remain as they were.
Stephen Stills remains the rocker of the group, he too seems well-recovered, always ready to color the sounds with his guitar and enrich everything with his solos.
Graham Nash is the master of ceremonies, the most physically active, barefoot, moving from one side of the stage to the other, interacting with the audience and delighting with his romantically delicate singing, often appearing on stage with a glass of good red wine.
The setlist is the one they are taking around Europe and includes those covers that will soon be released on a record produced by Mr. Rubin, which seem to have given the group new motivation.
The start is blazing, with the sun setting, Woodstock bursts in. Mitchell’s song has become a symbol of a generation that deluded itself into thinking it could change the world’s ugliness with music but is now resigned to trying to stop the oil gushing from a platform, knowing that the less it spills, the more years of life we will give to this poor world.
The first hour of music will also feature a stunning Wooden Ships with a great final flourish and Stills taking the lead, Long Time Gone, Southern Cross from the always underrated "Daylight Again" of 1982, Military Madness and In Your Name from Nash’s solo repertoire, Bluebird by Buffalo Springfield, Marrakesh Express, and a surprise like Long May You Run from the eponymous Young-Stills duo album.
Supporting them are trusted Joe Vitale on drums and Bob Glaub on bass, plus two keyboardists.
After a break of about 20 minutes, the concert resumes acoustically, and here, everything takes color. The marvelous vocal harmonies of the three float in the absorbed silence of the arena, creating that magic that only their three voices together can emanate. We can thus listen to a tasty preview of the next album to be released at the end of the year. Girl from the North Country(Bob Dylan), Ruby Tuesday(Rolling Stones), Norwegian Wood(Beatles) among others, and then a stunning Guinnevere sung as a duet by Crosby-Nash, worth the entire concert alone. Crosby’s vocal power, with his graying hair blowing from a fan, bursts into Delta, while Nash delights us with Our House, enthusiastically sung by the fans, and an epic Cathedral revisited from the eponymous 1977 album. Gorgeous.
There is still time for the electricity of Behind Blue Eyes from The Who’s repertoire, which has nothing to envy from the original, the much-requested Almost Cut My Hair, and the finale with, finally, the whole audience leaving their seats, at Nash’s request, and moving to the barriers in front of the stage.
Standing ovation and message received, the trio wants to feel the warmth, and now I wonder why couldn’t the whole concert be like this? It is always rock, after all, and the chairs are ill-suited to the occasion.
Love the One You’re With and Teach Your Children, sung by the entire audience, conclude more than two hours of great music dedicated to remaining such through the ages. Period.
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