A Loose Federation

The way rock groups break up and reassemble these days, it sometimes seems that the entire rock world is an endless long-chain molecule. And a highly unstable one at that. Most of the talk in the pop world last year sounded as uncertain as dialogue for the comics: Look, up there on the stage, it's a duo, it's a trio --no, it's supergroup.

The premise behind the supergroup was heroic: big stars shedding their sidemen to jam together in Olympian bliss. Trouble occurred when the heat from all that bliss grew unbearably intense. The promising English quartet Blind Faith (TIME, Aug. 29), made one LP, one U.S. tour, gave one concert in England, and is now all but defunct. One of its members, Stevie Winwood, is now redirecting Traffic. Another, Drummer Ginger Baker, is presently rolling a new rock band called Air Force onto the runway. Most of the time, such instability is related to rampant individuality. Rock-group togetherness requires suppression of ego. These days, everybody wants a solo to sing.

Literate Country. Take, for example, the most artful supergroup of all, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. (It has an even more corporate sound with the junior partners, Drummer Dallas Taylor and Bassist Greg Reeves.) CSN&Y (T&R) is about as loose a federation as a working partnership can be. The original four split off from previous allegiances --Crosby from the Byrds, Nash from the Hollies, Stills and Young from the Buffalo Springfield--because those amalgams got in the way of personal experimentation and creative drive. Now they keep their CSN&Y schedule undemanding, in order to work on pet projects of their own. All but Nash have voiced the desire to make records of their own; and Young, who has true potential for solo stardom, has already made two excellent Reprise LPs. Even on the new CSN&Y LP Dej`a Vu (Atlantic) this individuality shines through. It is not so much that each man contributes splendid songs to the LP, but that each song is readily marked by the composer's individual style--from the literate country-rock dash of Young to the sociopolitical eloquence of Crosby.

This does not mean that when the group comes together it is not truly together. David, Stephen, Graham, Neil (Dallas and Greg) have one of the most distinctive blends in the business, a light, spidery mixture of grace and wallop. Their harmony is sometimes repetitiously modal, but flawless--tight as the Everly Brothers, soft as Simon and Garfunkel and twice as sweet. When they have something to say, they say it clearly, as with Long Time Gone, which Crosby wrote the day after Robert F. Kennedy was shot:

Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness, you got to speak your mind, if you dare . . . The darkest hour is always just before the dawn . . .

Hanging loose apparently pays off; CSN&Y is about as popular as a U.S. rock group can be. Prior to its release two weeks ago, Dej`a Vu had already earned $2,000,000 in advance orders --an unprecedented feat at Atlantic Records, which has also produced such bestselling artists as Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin and Cream. Not only that, the group's first LP won the "best new artists of 1969" award at the recent Grammy Awards, the record industry's version of the Oscars. Where were the boys while all the other new groups were hopefully eying the Grammy gala? Crosby was sailing off the coast of Mexico. So was Nash. Young was touring with his own group, Crazy Horse. And Stills was in Paris making that record of his own.

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