CSN&Y - Human Highway - 1974

In May of 1973 CSN&Y had some writing sessions at Neil's rented Maui beach house followed soon after by some recording at Neil's ranch. In October they did a surprise performance at Winterland. All of this was leading up to the recording of a new record that was to be titled Human Highway. The album was released shortly after a 1974 summer arena tour. Being a bit heavy on the Young portion of CSN&Y and due to some of the tracks being live performances some critics accused Neil of dragging his bandmates with him into the ditch.

Side One
01 Human Highway (Bootleg)
02 And So It Goes (Nash - Wild Tales)
03 Little Blind Fish (Bootleg)
04 Hawaiian Sunrise (CSN&Y 1974)
05 Myth of Sisyphus (CSN&Y 1974)
06 See The Changes (CSN - Box Set)

Side Two
01 As I Come Of Age (CSN - Box Set)
02 Traces (CSN&Y 1974)
03 Homeward Through The Haze (CSN - Box Set)
04 Love Art Blues (CSN&Y 1974)
05 Prison Song (Nash - Wild Tales)
06 Through My Sails (Young - Zuma)

Reality Notes

Human Highway is among the most debated and reconstructed unreleased albums out there. So why do another one? After a lot of research (mostly from this forum thread) and comparing other reconstructions and being less than thrilled but still intrigued by the results I decided "why not?".

The history of this "lost" CSNY reunion album starts in 1973 and runs through 1974 or 1975 depending on how you view the sessions. Over those two or three years there were several attempts to record an album each failing due to egos and other personality conflicts. Other reconstructions of this album have focused on creating one definitive collection of songs that could have been the official final release at the end of 1975. I have decided to take a different approach.

My first attempt ended up with a four album cycle of three "unreleased" acetates that showed the progression from a very rough sketch of an album through to the fourth finished product where it ceased to be Human Highway and became Long May You Run. Since then I have refined and redone the project several times until I ended up with what we have here.

I decided to set a cut-off date for the Human Highway session at the end of 1974 and focus only on those songs that were actually worked on during those sessions. It is my opinion that anything after that belongs to Long May You Run. (I will address that album sometime soon.) Because none of the recording sessions produced enough material to fill and entire disc and due to the lack of leaked material I have utilized the three CD set of live recordings from the 1974 tour to fill in the gaps.

If we examine the timeline and what was worked on we can come up with a short list of songs. Those sessions and what they produced are as follows.

May 1973 - Writing sessions at Neil's rented beach house on the island of Maui Followed by recording at Neil's Broken Arrow ranch. Six songs produced.

See The Changes
Prison Song
And So It Goes
Human Highway
Through My Sails
Little Blind Fish

October 4 1973 - Crosby, Nash and Young joined Stills at the end of a Manassas show at Winterland playing many new songs.

As I Come Of Age
Human Highway
New Mama
And So It Goes
Prison Song

Reunion Tour Rehearsals - Some recordings were made during the rehearsal sessions for the tour.

Summer 1974 Reunion Tour - Most if not all new songs as well as many even newer songs were played during this tour.

December 1974

Wind On The Water
Carry Me
Homeward Through The Haze
Time After Time
Different Tongues

It appears that Homeward Through The Haze is the only song completed during the '74-'75 sessions.

My intention was to see how CSN&Y would sound if Neil was successful in dragging the rest of the band with him into the ditch. This allows for the rough edges to show through whereas normally the group is known for its polish and perfection. Because Neil is the major instigator here I have bookended the album with his songs. The title track comes first on side one and side two finishes with Through My Sails (as a slight nod to Zuma where it also closes that album). Neil writes and sings five of the twelve songs giving him a big chunk of the album. The other three songs were previously unreleased until the 1974 live album (at least officially).

And So It Goes and Prison Song are taken from Graham's Wild Tales album but both were introduced during the initial writing sessions in Hawaii. David sings backup on both songs and Neil plays piano on And So It Goes. And So It Goes sounds like it could have been recorded with Crazy Horse with Neil at the helm. As I Come of Age actually comes from 1981, a version also appeared on Stills in 1975 as a solo recording but the song was first played at the reunion concert in 1973. Stephen's Myth of Sisyphus is a solo piano and vocal live recording from the '74 summer CSN&Y tour. Homeward Through The Haze was recorded during the last sessions in 1974.

Little Blind Fish was written and recorded during the initial 1973 sessions. If someone can point me to a better version of Little Blind Fish I will do an upgrade. I have two versions. Both are low quality. One seems to shift to mono at the end and the other sounds better but  is sped up. I reluctantly used the first version because I felt the song was needed due to the collaborative nature of the song.

There are two versions of the album in the archive. One where I did my best to eliminate any crowd noise and applause and another where I used the crowd to create transitions between the live and studio tracks. You can decide which you like best.

The cover features a photo taken during the Hawaii sessions.