Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – ‘Our House’
- Writer: Graham Nash
- Producers: David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young
- Recorded: November 5th, 1969, at Wally Heider’s Studio III in Los Angeles
- Released: March 11th, 1970
- Players:
Graham Nash — vocals, piano
David Crosby — vocals
Stephen Stills — vocals
Greg Reeves — bass
Dallas Taylor — drums - Album: Deja Vu (Atlantic, 1970)
- Also On:
So Far (Atlantic, 1974)
Replay (Atlantic, 1981)
CSN (Atlantic, 1992) - The second single from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young‘s (CSNY) first album, “Our House” peaked at Number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
- Graham Nash‘s ode to domestic bliss was written for his girlfriend at the time, Joni Mitchell. The song, Nash said, is “about her house that we shared in Laurel Canyon, on Lookout Mountain. It was written on her piano. Such a charming house. She had a collection of multicolored glass in the window that would cut the light — the ‘fiery gems.’ There was a fireplace, and two cats in the yard. It was like a family snapshot, a portrait of our life together.”
- The Mitchell song “Woodstock” also appeared on the Deja Vu album.
- Though it appeared on a CSNY album, “Our House” is really a Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) song, as Neil Young, who had joined the trio in the summer of 1969, did not appear on the studio recording.
- Deja Vu hit Number One on the Billboard 200 chart and was certified gold after its first week of release.
- After Deja Vu was recorded, Calvin “Fuzzy“ Samuels and ex-Turtles/future Jefferson Starship drummer John Barbata replaced sidemen Greg Reeves and Dallas Taylor.
FAST FORWARD:
- CSNY split up in 1970, and Crosby, Stills & Nash — with and without Young — have recorded and toured off-and-on since then.
- David Crosby has survived debilitating drug addictions that resulted in a short imprisonment in 1986. He underwent a liver transplant in 1994.
- All four members are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1997, Stephen Stills became the first musician inducted into the Rock Hall twice on the same night — as part of Buffalo Springfield and as part of CSN. Crosby is in as part of the Byrds and CSN. Nash is in with CSN, and Young is in as part of Buffalo Springfield and on his own.
- Young’s frustrations with the Bush administration and the war in Iraq led him to write and record an album called Living With War in 2006. The songs on Living With War were central to a CSNY tour that year.
Crosby recently released a box set titled Voyage and a book called Since Then: How I Survived Everything And Lived To Tell About It, which is the follow-up to his 1988 autobiography Long Time Gone.