Ever since the early ’70s, when Young’s star ascended rapidly past those of Crosby, Stills and Nash, he’s called the shots.

Whenever there’s been a “reunion” album, tour or one-off benefit performance, it’s been because Neil wanted it, and wanted it on his terms only. When he says jump, they ask how high.

That’s got to suck.

Nash: Yeah, but you either walk away from it and never play that music again, or you just deal with it. Neil is, by far, the most selfish person — in certain aspects — that I’ve ever known. He is a complete slave to the muse of music, and I have great admiration for him for doing that.

However… He can be seen by some people as being so selfish that he doesn’t give a f**k about anybody else’s feelings. For example, he’ll say to Crazy Horse, “Yeah, we’re going to England in six weeks.” Then the week before he’ll say, “No man, I just don’t feel like it. The music’s not talking to me.”

When you’re a musician, and you have finances and kids to send to school and bills to pay, and you make a certain amount of money because you’re in Neil Young’s band, and then it gets canceled the week before, with no compensation, that sucks. And that has happened a lot in Neil’s life.
And he only calls us when he needs us for something. He has very rarely called me as a friend.

It’s not a friendship. I have great, unending admiration and respect for Neil Young, and I think he respects the hell out of me, too.
   
After Crosby got out of prison, clean and sober, the four of you made the album American Dream. As the saying goes, the world waited with bated breath.

It’s just an awful record, Graham. Nobody I know likes it.

Nash: Neither do we. I think it didn’t work for a couple of reasons. We actually had a great time making it. They were some good songs on it. We may have over-harmonized some of them. We kind of over-compensated.

My feeling — and I think David agrees with me — is that Neil over-indulged Stephen on that record. He put a couple of Stephen tracks on there that should not have been on there at all. And left out a version of CSN doing “Climber,” that was written by David, that was just stunningly beautiful.

It was decided to take that off and put on “Driving Thunder,” which, to me, is a piece of shit. In an effort to please Stephen, I think Neil made some wrong choices.

There’s a small story you should know about this. The shot on the album cover was actually a shot of me, David and Stephen, with Neil Photoshop-ed in. There were two versions — in one, Neil’s wearing a white hat, and in the other he’s wearing a black hat.

And that is exactly why American Dream didn’t work.

Young did another “Come to Jesus” in 2006. He’d done his anti-George W. Bush Living With War album, and, realizing that the songs would play to more people if Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were singing them, he organized another “reunion” tour. It’s chronicled in the 2008 film “CSNY: Déjà vu,” which Young himself directed.

Nash: It was a great idea. Neil did a brilliant job of staying on message. He realized that some of the songs we’d written in the past — “Military Madness” “Déjà vu,” “For What It’s Worth” — were hits but were relevant to what he wanted to say right then.

We are slaves to our hits. We’ve tried to do the dance of balancing brand new songs with “Teach Your Children” that we’ve been playing for 40 years. It’s always been a prison, and we try and escape our shackles as much as possible.

But here was an opportunity to only play a couple of those hits.

What about Stills? You two seem to have weathered a lot of storms, yet you’re still working together.

Nash: There’s always been a part of me that really loves Stephen. I recognize his genius, and I recognize his difficulties. And in my relationship with Stephen, I’ve always tried to amplify and concentrate on the good parts rather than the f**ked parts.

This last tour (summer 2008) was one of the most fun tours I’ve had with Crosby, Stills & Nash in probably 20 years. A couple of things: He is clean, and he has a hearing aid. And it makes an incredible difference, because now he’s part of the conversation. He isn’t paranoid that me and David are talking about him.

He’s singing better in tune. He’s singing on his guitar instead of just playing the stock solo that Stills would normally play. He was much better this tour than in the last 20 years, and I think if you talked to David, David would agree.
I’ve always known that Stephen showed glimpses of genius. I think he’s always been in Neil’s shadow.

He suffered from an upbringing that from all accounts was f**king horrific — his father leaving home, Stephen being tormented by the women in his family — his mother and his sister — because their father left. Military upbringing. The poor kid never stood a chance. And I completely understand that once he got a sense of his musical power, he would run like f**k to escape all that.

At the end of the day, always, there’s Crosby; he and Nash have been virtually joined at the hip for more than four decades.

Why has this relationship succeeded so consistently?

Nash: The combination of our voices and our songwriting is insane to me. I love it dearly.

You must understand something: I know everywhere David’s going to go, musically. When I stand next to him onstage, the entire side of my body that’s facing him is open. Every pore is open. I know him so well that many times I know that he’s going to make a mistake on the next line, and I make the same mistake with him so the audience doesn’t think there was a mistake made. That’s how intimate I am with David. Working with Crosby, what a thrill.

I’m a musician, for God’s sake, and I get to make music with him? This is fantastic.