Déjà Vu (1970)

Déjà Vu is the second studio album by American folk rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash, and their first as a quartet with Neil Young. Released on March 11, 1970, by Atlantic Records, it topped the Billboard 200 chart for one week and generated three US Top 40 singles: "Woodstock", "Teach Your Children", and "Our House". It was re-released in 1977 and an expanded edition was released in 2021 to mark its 50th anniversary.

In 2003, the album was ranked No. 148 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and later was ranked No. 220 on the 2020 edition of the list. Certified 7× platinum by RIAA, the album's sales currently sit at over 8 million copies. It remains the highest-selling album of each member's career to date.

Recording

The album was recorded between July 1969 and January 1970 at Wally Heider's Studio C in San Francisco, and Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. It was produced by all four members of the band. Stephen Stills estimates that the album took around 800 hours of studio time to record; this figure may be exaggerated, even though the individual tracks display meticulous attention to detail. The songs, except for "Woodstock," "Almost Cut my Hair," and "Helpless," were recorded as individual sessions by each member, with each contributing whatever was needed that could be agreed upon. Young appears on only half of the tracks, with Nash stating he "generally recorded his tracks alone in Los Angeles then brought them back to the recording studio to put our voices on, then took it away to mix it".

Young's "Helpless" was released on his Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972) in 2009 in a different mix with a harmonica introduction. His other contribution, "Country Girl", combined two Buffalo Springfield songs, "Down, Down, Down" and "Whiskey Boot Hill" (also released on his Archives), with a recently written title chorus.

Commenting on the album to Hit Parader in 1971, Stills stated "getting that second album out of us was like pulling teeth, there was song after song that didn't make it. The track 'Déjà Vu' must have meant 100 takes in the studio. But 'Carry On' happened in a grand total of eight hours from conception to finished master. So you never know."

During the sessions, Crosby repeatedly started crying over the recent death of his girlfriend Christine Hinton. He told Crawdaddy in 1974, "I was not at my best as a functioning person, ... completely unable to deal with it all."

Nash stated to Music Radar, "the mood was different from the first album, which was recorded while the band members were in relationships, and by the second Joni and I had split up, Stephen and Judy had split up, and Christine had just been killed. It was all dark."

During this time members were not getting along, as they would critique each other's contributions, causing friction, with Crosby stating to Rolling Stone, "I kept 'Almost Cut My Hair' in there over the protestations of Stephen, who didn't want me to leave it in 'cause he thought that it was a bad vocal."

Stills brought "Woodstock" into the band, having already worked out the arrangement for it while playing with Jimi Hendrix in September 1969; this was released on the 2018 Hendrix album Both Sides of the Sky. The final version had Stills singing a slightly rearranged version of Mitchell's lyrics. "Woodstock" was one of the few Déjà Vu tracks where Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young all performed their parts in the same session. Later the original lead vocal by Stills was partly replaced with a later vocal also recorded by Stills, who recalled: "I replaced one and a half verses that were excruciatingly out of tune." Young disagreed, saying that "the track was magic. Then later on [Crosby, Stills & Nash] were in the studio nitpicking [with the result that] Stephen erased the vocal and put another one on that wasn't nearly as good." Stills also made Nash change "Teach Your Children" from an "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" style song to a hit record with a "country swing".

Drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves play on the majority of tracks, and are credited on the cover with their names in slightly smaller typeface. Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia plays pedal steel guitar on "Teach Your Children", and former Lovin' Spoonful leader John Sebastian plays harmonica on the title track.

Release

By January 1970, Atlantic Records had taken in $2 million in preorders; anticipation for the album was high. Déjà Vu was released on March 11, 1970, under Atlantic Records catalogue SD 7200. It was re-released in 1977 as SD-19188 and the cover was changed from black to brown in some foreign releases.

It was certified Gold in the US, 14 days after release on March 25, 1970, spending 88 weeks in the Billboard 200 charts.