A track from the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album, "Helplessly Hoping" was written by Stephen Stills. It's a great example of alliteration, something he learned about in high school English class: Helplessly hoping Her harlequin hovers nearby Stills explained in the liner notes to their 1991 boxed set: "This song was inspired a long time ago by my 10th grade English teacher in Tampa, Florida. She was a real knockout, so much so that she got all the football players to stand up and read poetry, trying to impress her with how sensitive we were and how much we loved this awful stuff. Some of it must've rubbed off on me."
Neil Young, who was Stephen Stills' bandmate in Buffalo Springfield, contributed guitar to this track. Young joined the band for their next album, making them Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
This is one of the songs Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played at Woodstock, which was just their second gig. They didn't go on until 3 a.m. on the last day, hours before Jimi Hendrix closed out the festival in the morning.
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.