If you had lasted until three in the morning at the fabled Woodstock festival of August 1969, you’d have witnessed the performance that caught the peace and love era in a bottle. The newly formed folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young took the stage cautiously, with Stephen Stills memorably informing the crowd: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man… We’re scared shitless!”
But for Graham Nash, looking out on that sea of humanity, there was a sudden sense that anything was possible. “Woodstock was a coming of age, a flowering of a generation of kids who decided they could take responsibility for their own lives and affect their destiny,” the songwriter later told Rolling Stone. “There was a certain glow about the 60s, a certain naiveté and exploration, an excitement for the future…”
