Pete Townshend’s opinion on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

The guitarist, occasional singer, and main songwriter of The Who, Pete Townshend, is one of the most important figures in Rock and Roll music. He has been a true inspiration for countless musicians since the 1960s and played a fundamental role in the revolution brought about by the British Invasion.

Townshend has always had a broad musical taste, which was evident in his songwriting for The Who, but especially in his solo albums. Over the decades, he has spoken about many bands, and one of them was the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

What is Pete Townshend’s opinion on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Pete is actually a huge fan of the band and loves Stephen Stills as a guitar player. He explained his admiration for them in an interview back in 1995 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

“Stephen Stills is one of the great, great geniuses of guitar, of every style of guitar. The problem is that he’s never really had much of an idea on how to deal with that. (Also) with the fact that not everybody in the world has recognized that. Probably somebody else that suffered from the presence of someone like Jimi Hendrix. Maybe took some of his thunder because he was not just a great guitar player but also a great performer.”

“But their (CSNY) vocal style was groundbreaking in a way because it was arranged. Stephen could write charts and I’m not sure that everybody in the band could read charts but he could write them, so he could organize in a traditional way. The harmonic structure of Crosby, Stills & Nash was new and unique, very personal. I think he controlled, one tends to think that it’s about Crosby and Graham’s voice.”

Pete Townshend continued:

“But for me the halcyon years of Crosby, Stills & Nash was when they imported a real human being called Neil Young. Once Neil Young was in the band, wow, that was some band. Great couple of records they made. Neil Young is still out there, (he) is the only one still doing it, the only one left, the only man who is still out there, his beard growing, doing MTV Unplugged and he believes, you know. I got passion while I’m on stage but I don’t know if I really believe the way he believes. But yeah, they were a good band,” Pete Townshend said.

The Who was formed in 1964, four years before the supergroup CSNY but obviously, the members of the group were active in other bands since the early 60s. David Crosby was a previous member of The Byrds, Graham Nash from The Hollies and Stephen Stills/Neil Young were members of Buffalo Springfield.

How CSN inspired Pete Townshend to “create” the guitar tech job

Townshend had the chance to see the band playing live and also be a good friend of them. He even told Guitar.com that he invented the “guitar tech” job after being inspired by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

“(…) I guess you can say I invented the guitar tech! Because I can remember going to see Crosby, Stills, and Nash in a session. They were restringing their own guitars. Or, in Stephen Stills’ case, he would only string some guitars. Because there was this one Martin there that he said to me, ‘I’ve never changed the strings on this guitar, and I never will unless one breaks’ That was part of the sound of them,” he said.

In 1969, both groups were already quite famous and were part of the historical Woodstock festival. The British band played on saturday and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on sunday. At the time the American band had just released their self-titled debut album “Crosby, Stills & Nash” (1969). During that live performance they were also accompanied by the bassist Greg Reeves and the drummer Dallas Taylor.

CSNY, considering all the eras of the band, as quartet, trio and duo, sold an estimated amount of more than 70 million copies worldwide. With all the four or three members, they released 8 studio albums. The most recent one is “Looking Forward” in 1999.