Website up with trailer and a few clips:

[www.csny-dejavu.com]

NY Times:

July 19, 2008
Neil Young, Where Politics and Technology Meet
By BEN SISARIO

When Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young booked a concert tour for the summer of 2006, it was supposed to be an easygoing, no-surprises reunion ticket for the Chardonnay set.

But Neil Young being Neil Young, it ended up a much more confrontational affair. Prodded by Mr. Young, the band reshaped the program around his album “Living With War,” a grungy jeremiad written, recorded and released in a few weeks that spring.

“I played them the record and said, ‘This is all I want to do,’ ” he recalled in an interview this week.

As recorded in Mr. Young’s new documentary of the tour, “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” which opens July 25 in New York, Los Angeles and 17 other cities, his band mates took to the antiwar theme eagerly. (In one scene, David Crosby calls the band “a benevolent dictatorship” and adds, “Neil is in charge.”) But the audiences were not exactly unanimous in agreement. In Atlanta, the first verse of Mr. Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President” brought boos, middle fingers and worse.

“The ‘Living With War’ album got such a varied reaction,” Mr. Young said. “Extreme negative and personal attacks, all kinds of things I had never had before from any kind of record. But that’s what made it so interesting, and such a great subject for a film. We didn’t know what was going happen, but we knew something was going to happen.”

To establish a journalistic tone for the film, Mr. Young hired Mike Cerre, a former ABC war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be “embedded” on the tour, interviewing fans and capturing the mood of the shows.

“I called my wife and cameraman and told them I was going to be embedded in a rock tour,” Mr. Cerre said in a telephone interview. “They thought I said Iraq. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.”

Mr. Cerre said he was given complete freedom to produce 12 newsy segments. Larry Johnson, the film’s producer, said most of them were used, and with only minor editing for length. Mr. Cerre found some support among concertgoers for the band’s politics, but what stands out are unflattering shots of the aging group onstage — like Stephen Stills, then 61, struggling to get up after a fall during “Rockin’ in the Free World” — and complaints from fans, not always civil, who disapproved of the political message.

When asked why he included such harsh reactions and images, Mr. Young said simply: “Because it was harsh. It’s content. This is a documentary.”

Mr. Young’s career as a musical provocateur is well known, but his interests as a multimedia mogul aren’t. “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” made under his pseudonym, Bernard Shakey, is the fifth release in his sporadic career as a director, following the surrealistic comedy “Human Highway” (1982) and “Greendale,” based on his concept album of the same title from 2003.

He also has a company developing high-quality audio downloads and a project to convert a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV — all 2 1/2 tons and 19 1/2 feet of it — to ultra-efficient electric power, with the help of an international network of scientists and businessmen. Even more ambitious is his archives project, using technology for Blu-ray discs (the prevailing high-definition format of DVD) that he developed with Sun Microsystems. The first of five volumes, a 10-disc package covering 1963 to 1972, is scheduled for release in October.

At 62, Mr. Young still wants to change the world, and he seems to embrace the contradictions of his persona. Staying at the swank Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he was interviewed with two signed Picasso prints over his shoulder, but his plain shirt and rumpled khaki pants were spattered with paint. Giving a photographer less than 60 seconds to shoot his portrait, he seemed very much the impatient superstar, but in an hourlong interview he was casual and energetically talkative.

He said he has no great box office expectations for “CSNY: Déjà Vu,” which might be wise, given the poor ticket sales of recent war documentaries. This year’s Oscar winner, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” from Alex Gibney, has brought in about $275,000.

“My films are pretty wacky,” he said. “They definitely don’t have much of a commercial appeal. This is probably the most serious film I’ve ever made. It’s more like journalism.”

In conversation Mr. Young went back and forth between politics and technology, and in discussing his Lincoln Continental project — called “Linc-Volt” — he linked the two. Its goal, he said, is to eliminate the need for oil and therefore the cause for war. “Why are we having a war?” he said. “It’s all about energy. Trying to get rid of the reason for the war, that’s something that’s doable.”

His archive project is not political but is challenging nonetheless. Conceived more than a decade ago but stalled for technological reasons, it uses the high-quality multimedia capabilities of Blu-ray to display music, video and other digital documentation through a file-cabinet structure — pull out the cabinet with a click and choose the rarity. A demonstration revealed some astonishing footage, like two moments from the 1971 sessions for the album “Harvest” and a spontaneous performance at a Greenwich Village folk club in 1970.

Like the archives, “CSNY: Déjà Vu” involves no small amount of nostalgia. The first words in the film are, “In the 1960s the Vietnam War was raging,” and the antiwar activism of the Vietnam era is frequently invoked, both as bona fides for the band’s history of political protest and as a foil for the more conservative climate that the four men encounter nearly 40 years after their first performances together.

But Mr. Young rejected a suggestion that the film might be more about Vietnam than about Iraq.

“It’s about war; it’s not about either one of them,” he said. “In our sound-bite society, ‘Let’s Impeach the President’ and the political side of it seems to be the side that the press focused on the most. But that’s an offshoot of the real story, which is the tragedy of war, and the families, and how it affects people.”

I wouldn't mind seeing the movie.

Obscenely rich rock stars telling us war is bad. I'll give it a miss, thanks.

CSNY must be the most over-rated group of all time.
A handful of albums in 30+ years and (with the exception of Young) some very average solo material.
Beggars belief that they are still a concert draw.

I loved these guys when I was 14. I'm 51 now. I saw their '74 tour which really was their last gasp of greatness. I saw the reunion tours in 2000 and 2002, or whatever, and it was lame. CSNY is now just another of Neil's back-up bands (note he produced this new movie and s/t).

The tiresome political harangue is why it was easy to pass on this tour as well as this movie and soundtrack. None of it is enjoyable except for Stills who's so far gone he thinks he's still railing against Nixon. Not a pretty sight.

AND Rick Rubins to produce new Crosby Stills and Nash album....



ROCKMAN

A straight ahead live disc would have been better. However, before the 2006 tour, they did two get back together tours in the 2000 and 2002. Nothing was released from the shows. Kind of says something about Neil's opinions of the performances.

From CSNY DEJA VU, where is "Carry On" which was a high point of the show?

i'll check it out

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R
I loved these guys when I was 14. I'm 51 now. I saw their '74 tour which really was their last gasp of greatness. I saw the reunion tours in 2000 and 2002, or whatever, and it was lame. CSNY is now just another of Neil's back-up bands (note he produced this new movie and s/t).

The tiresome political harangue is why it was easy to pass on this tour as well as this movie and soundtrack. None of it is enjoyable except for Stills who's so far gone he thinks he's still railing against Nixon. Not a pretty sight.

What happened to Stills?
Another victim of the drug culture??

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jlowe

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R
I loved these guys when I was 14. I'm 51 now. I saw their '74 tour which really was their last gasp of greatness. I saw the reunion tours in 2000 and 2002, or whatever, and it was lame. CSNY is now just another of Neil's back-up bands (note he produced this new movie and s/t).

The tiresome political harangue is why it was easy to pass on this tour as well as this movie and soundtrack. None of it is enjoyable except for Stills who's so far gone he thinks he's still railing against Nixon. Not a pretty sight.

What happened to Stills?
Another victim of the drug culture??

i believe stills has cancer

gotta be worth a look if there's some anti Bush stuff in it

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keefriffhard4life

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jlowe

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R
I loved these guys when I was 14. I'm 51 now. I saw their '74 tour which really was their last gasp of greatness. I saw the reunion tours in 2000 and 2002, or whatever, and it was lame. CSNY is now just another of Neil's back-up bands (note he produced this new movie and s/t).

The tiresome political harangue is why it was easy to pass on this tour as well as this movie and soundtrack. None of it is enjoyable except for Stills who's so far gone he thinks he's still railing against Nixon. Not a pretty sight.

What happened to Stills?
Another victim of the drug culture??

i believe stills has cancer

I don't know about cancer but he's got that mush-mouthed droopy left chin thing going on that stroke victims sport. He can't write a song to save his life anymore ("Feed The World And Watch The Peace Breakout" anyone?) and his ability to harmonize has left him. Oddly, he can still sing the blues and tear it up on guitar.

For the fellow who asked about "Carry On,"? They opened the 2000 and 2002 shows with it and it was a ragged mess, everyone desperately trying to sing higher than everyone else.

On December 17, 2007, Graham Nash revealed on Larry King Live that Stills has been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer and that he will have an operation on January 3, 2008, his birthday.

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HEILOOBAAS
Obscenely rich rock stars telling us war is bad. I'll give it a miss, thanks.

so you have to be poor to protest against war? A Rock star can't be against war? "Telling us"? You've got a mind of your own, haven't you?

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gimme_shelter

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HEILOOBAAS
Obscenely rich rock stars telling us war is bad. I'll give it a miss, thanks.

so you have to be poor to protest against war? A Rock star can't be against war? "Telling us"? You've got a mind of your own, haven't you?

Obsenely rich rock stars are free to say whatever the hell they want, however tiresome or hypocritical. By the same token we are all free to disagree with their self-serving blather and need no longer buy their records, DVDs and concert tickets. If you'd like to see this bloated (figuratively and literally) leftist propaganda piece then by all means do so. You and the choir there will no doubt enjoy yourselves and you'll be helping Mr. Young recoup his investment.

.....sounds good to me

Artists like these will always push their agendas and complain no matter who is in office dem's or repub's simply because they've been trained it's the "hip" thing to do. I saw them back in 96 when slick willy was the prez and they were bitchin' about him then. Not that I like him either but I said right then I was wasting my money and haven't spent a penny on them since!

If you want to see a rock concert go see the Stones. If you'd rather see a political rally go see Springsteen or CSN&Y!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-24 19:45 by shadooby.

Yes, "Carry On" was a bit of a mess. On the 2006 Tour it was the second song, at least when I saw them. It was sloppy, but fun and sloppy and energized the crowd.

I just heard the soundtrack album and I just couldn't get into it. It was great hearing the voices but most of the album is songs from Neil's over the top anti war album with CSN in backing-band roles. The best moments are the few classics (Deja Vu, Wooden Ships, Cost of Freedom, Teach Your Children, etc).

I am a huge Neil fan, but he lost all sense of subtlety on his Living With War album. The songs were obviously thrown together re-writes of other songs ("Shock & Awe"="Hey Hey, My My", "Flags Of Freedom"="Chimes of Freedom", etc) with Neil reduced to sloganeering. It kinda came across to me as a desperate attempt to become relevant again by jumping on an easy bandwagon late in the game. I don't think the album did much to promote the cause. Major disappointment from one of my faves.

I hear the movie comes across much better. I'll buy the DVD!

Is it true that Rick Rubin is producing a CSN album? That sounds like it has potential!

Ross



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-25 01:16 by Ross.

All 3 of CSN (not mentionening Neil, he's in a league of his own) produced great solo-albums in the 70s... For Nash, I recommend Songs For Beginners. Stills did Mannassas (his first and second solo-album before that one are great too) and Crosby did If I Could Only Remember My Name... All of those are more than average...

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C R K
All 3 of CSN (not mentionening Neil, he's in a league of his own) produced great solo-albums in the 70s... For Nash, I recommend Songs For Beginners. Stills did Mannassas (his first and second solo-album before that one are great too) and Crosby did If I Could Only Remember My Name... All of those are more than average...

I agree, with the exception of Neil for the most part, on their own they all seem to focus more on just writing good songs than making political or social statements. Check out Stills' solo album "Stills Alone".

The first Crosby-Nash album is excellent as well!

Ross

Check out a documentary on Neil...very insightfull and I have to credit the guy. A quiet Canadian makes it big too fast in the US (Buffalo Springfield), walks away from the BS of the Sullivan Show, walks away from the band on a cigarette break and swears not to return unless every project is done his way....and all the power to him. It was YCSN.

Example: during 74 tour, second show of tour, Neil stands up from the piano after a song and openly yells I don't want to play the f***k'in piano anymore. The rest of them look at each other with a 'there goes the set list look, what do we do now', Neil just walks away, Graham says Ok I'll play something....Neils way or the highway.

But in war....you can have all the Highwires and Sweat Neo-cons you want, Neil slapped them silly with one line that has stuck in their craw ever since(particularly Lennard Skinnard) - 'Southern man don't forget what your good book says'. Truly one of the great americam anti war slaps going and right to the point.

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But in war....you can have all the Highwires and Sweat Neo-cons you want, Neil slapped them silly with one line that has stuck in their craw ever since(particularly Lennard Skinnard) - 'Southern man don't forget what your good book says'. Truly one of the great americam anti war slaps going and right to the point.

For your information it's "Lynyrd Skynyrd" and it's pronounced "leh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd" and I certainly hope his Canadian a$$ will remember "a southern man don't need him 'round anyhow"! And with all due respect to the man it's "Sweet Neo Con" to you buddy!

And by the way, do your research, that line was referring to the civil rights movement at the time not the war in Southeast Asia, but oh that probably wouldn't fit your agenda now would it?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-25 03:27 by knockyourteethout.

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C R K
All 3 of CSN (not mentionening Neil, he's in a league of his own) produced great solo-albums in the 70s... For Nash, I recommend Songs For Beginners. Stills did Mannassas (his first and second solo-album before that one are great too) and Crosby did If I Could Only Remember My Name... All of those are more than average...

Pretty much everything they all did between '69 (CSN) and '74 (the first "reunion" tour), solo or collectively, is an absolute must have (perhaps forgoing the second Manassas and Nash solo albums). Since then only Neil has produced top-drawer stuff.

I have the boxed set frm the early 90's. Discs 1-3 are incredible. Disc 4, not so much.

I used to be in another tribute band - a CSNY one, believe it or not. I worshipped Neil as a teen. He had credibility, his own style and a back catalougue which rung truer for me than Dylan. Never mind that he was a fellow Canadian.

Then in '94 he did that Cobain tribute album. Then the one with Pearl Jam.
For me the last great Neil Young album was Harvest Moon.

My sister-in-law saw this show, she hated it. I was surprised.
Now watching clips and this trailer...

If I'm paying over $200 bucks, I want to be entertained, not watch another Canadian's rant-show about another country's foreign policies, thanks.

[thepowergoats.com]

That "CSN" 4-disc box set has some great outtakes, including:

"Taken At All" (done in '76 by CSNY) just four voices and four guitars recorded live in one take--is probably the best recorded example of them at the top of their game.

An earlier 1973 CSNY version of "See The Changes"(probably intended for the unreleased "Human Highway album) that's much looser than the one on the 1977 CSN album.

An alternate mix of "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" with a prominent Dallas Taylor drum track.

There is also a re-recorded CSN version of the Stills song "As I Come Of Age." (Sort of a shame, because the original version that appeared on Stills 1975 solo album already had Crosby and Nash on vocals and some great drums by Ringo.)


I want to see this movie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-26 08:12 by loog droog.

washed up pathetic group grasping for"something"

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aslecs
washed up pathetic group grasping for"something"

That would have been a valid comment 30 years ago.

CSNY's era basically ended during their 1974 tour. Nixon resigned, and they lost Their Reason to Exist.

And the CSN cocktail-lounge music era that followed --"Just a Song Before I Go"-- went from really bad to incredibly sad. It finally got to the point where their own record company turned on them. Does anyone recall that album cover with a hot dog on it?? What the hell was that??


But now, I think it's different. You stick around long enough, and suddenly the has-been becomes heroic. Bush is the new Nixon, and once again there's a point to what those guys do.

Complaining that CSNY shows are too "political" is like saying Stones concerts are "too loud." If you want "entertainment," go see the Eagles. Those Big Nothings will take your money. Gladly.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-26 08:27 by loog droog.