David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash came together in the late 1960s as idiosyncratic individual talents in flight from famous groups. Their 1969 debut album arguably initiated the dominance of singer-songwriters in popular music until the mid-1970s. After appearing at the Woodstock festival, augmented by Neil Young, they achieved a wider public role as the artistic apotheosis of the hippie ideals of "music, peace, and love." As the 1970s progressed, however, CSN(&Y) became infamous for an inability to show enough peace and love to one another to continue playing and recording music together.

David Crosby had been an integral member of folk-rock pioneers The Byrds until he left the group amidst acrimony in 1967. Crosby had first encountered Stephen Stills when the latter's band, Buffalo Springfield, supported The Byrds in concert in early 1966. In May 1968, just after the demise of Buffalo...