CSNY: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

As Doggett (You Never Give Me Your Money) notes in this appreciative, attentive history of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the 1960s group spent roughly “two of the past fifty years as a functioning band” and the other 48 years “fending off questions about why they are no longer together.” Doggett zeroes in on that brief, musically fruitful period when David Crosby (who came from The Byrds), Graham Nash (of The Hollies), Stephen Stills and Neil Young (both of Buffalo Springfield) united to create chart-topping mellow folk-rock fronted with an “unearthly vocal blend.” In between tracking the ups and downs of the band’s relationships, particularly Young’s peripatetic unpredictability and Crosby’s weaknesses (“instinct, ego, vulnerability, and cocaine”), Doggett delivers a solid rundown of its artistic highs (the release of the 1970 Déjà Vu album) and more frequent lows (constant infighting and Stills’s arrest for narcotics possession). The group disbanded in 1970 but came together for a 1974 reunion tour, when they realized that performing to “Woodstock Nation” fans at least “guaranteed them a healthy income” on the nostalgia circuit. (Young recalls “the four of us and our handlers dividing up the loot and finding out exactly how much we made” after a Filmore show.) This honest, occasionally laudatory history will delight its baby boomer audience. (May)