Rhino have announced the reissue of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 1970 album ‘Déjà Vu’ as a five-disc deluxe set, which lands in May and looks from the press images to be very nice indeed. The original album featured some of the band’s best-known songs including ‘Carry On’, ‘Teach Your Children’, ‘Helpless’ and ‘Our House’.
Rhino’s deluxe set will be released as a 4CD+LP package which includes a “pristine version” of the original album on 180g vinyl and CD along with three further CDs which feature hours of rare and unreleased studio recordings “that provide incredible insight into the making of the record.”
The set which includes 38 bonus tracks, totals nearly two-and-a-half hours of music that includes demos, outtakes, and alternate takes – 29 of which are previously unreleased.
Though the official anniversary of the album was last year, the Covid pandemic and some discord among band members delayed production of the boxset.
“I know it’s just me and Neil doing it with his acoustic guitar, but that’s a beautiful piece of music,” Nash told Rolling Stone. “It’s me trying to be the best harmony singer I can be with somebody of the stature of Neil Young. I don’t want to stick out singing extra words that he’s not singing. I have to be on my game. And ‘Birds’ is a perfect example of that.”
“Eh, I’m happy about it,” David Crosby told Rolling Stone. “But I don’t have a dog in that fight, really. I sold my piece. I am very proud of the record, [but] this is like a repackaging. It’s probably a good thing, but it’s not that big a deal to me. The guy who looks backwards and does this kind of stuff is Nash. He always has been. I don’t really give much of a shit about that.”
Young had originally agreed to contribute more songs to the project but then changed his mind. “To this day, Neil does what he wants to do,” Nash said. “We have to respect each member’s desires, and his desire was to not put on two or three of his songs.”
Still, it’s a demo of Neil Young’s ‘Birds’ which has been released first to preview the boxset. The new version of the song originally from his ‘After the Gold Rush’ album includes Graham Nash singing upper harmony. Have a listen.
Neil still playing his Mind Games.