Just a Song Before I Go

Graham Nash wrote this song on a bet. David Crosby explained in the liner notes to their 1991 boxed set: "Graham was a home in Hawaii, about to go off on tour. The guy who was going to take him to the airport said, 'We've got 15 minutes, I'll bet you can't write a song in that amount of time.' Well you don't smart off to Nash like that, he'll do it. This is the result." Going to the airport and his day of travel were on Nash's mind, so that's what he wrote about: "driving me to the airport and to the friendly skies." The "song before I go" was for his friend who made him the bet.

As Nash tells it in his memoir Wild Life, the guy taking him to the airport was his drug dealer, who said, "I'll bet you can't write a song before you go." Nash then thought, "Hmm... just a song before I go," and composed it on the spot.

This was the first single released from the re-formed Crosby, Stills & Nash, and in the US it was the highest-charting song of any iteration of the group. The group's first album came in 1969, and they won the Best New Artist Grammy Award for that year. In 1970, they added Neil Young and released two albums before taking some time off - they didn't see the Top 40 from 1971-1976. In this period, the members recorded solo, with Graham Nash and David Crosby teaming up for a 1972 album, and Stephen Stills forming the band Manassas. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young got back together for touring in 1974 and released the 1976 album Wind On The Water. The next year, minus Young, they were Crosby, Stills & Nash again for the first time since 1969, and the CSN album was the result. Following more solo efforts from Stills and Nash, they hit the studio again in 1982 for the Daylight Again album, and reunited with Young for the 1988 effort American Dream. They continued to go back and forth with and without Young in the '90s. Their law firm-style name made for an unwieldy discography, but we always knew who was in the group.