But Crosby was also in the middle of something else. Stephen Stills had been down in the Grove, stinging from the conflicts within his own band, Buffalo Springfield, which he'd leave behind within a year. Late nights on the boat, they'd write together. Crosby also knew that Graham Nash, the hippie-est of the post-Beatles bunch he'd met when the Byrds toured England, was leaning away from his pop group the Hollies and toward something new. Later, when Graham met Joni at Crosby's suggestion while both were on tour in Ottawa in 1968, Mitchell became another reason Nash needed to relocate to L.A. And Neil Young, Joni's old friend from the Canadian hootenanny scene, was hanging around, too. Though he and Stills had clashed in Springfield, Joni's familiar face might eventually have helped bring him back into the circle and expand the CS&N trio to a foursome--acronymically, CSNY, one of the most successful supergroups in rock.
Traveling on the Path of Joni Mitchell, Ann Powers (2024)
