Déjà Vu is one of those albums that has always been there without me listening to it properly. Revisiting it has been a bit like meeting people whose company you enjoyed at an event long ago but didn’t develop into friendship. Every song seems familiar even as I rediscover it as a stranger.

And there is a challenge in listening again to an album that is so pivotal and influential that it almost doesn’t matter anymore if it’s actually any good. It is good, but it isn’t the vaunted CSNY harmonising that sticks with me so much as the songs themselves, or most of them anyway.

Roger Daltrey opines…

For me, the only weak song on the album is Neil Young’s Country Girl, but it’s a relative thing. When you have an album containing Helpless, Almost Cut My Hair, Teach Your Children, Our House, Déjà Vu, 4+20 and their take on Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock it’s silly to be critical. The harmonising would be for nothing if the songs weren’t strong enough.

Talent attracts talent; as well as Dallas Taylor on drums and Greg Reeves on bass throughout, Jerry Garcia and John Sebastian sit in on Teach Your Children. CSNY were recording this while the Grateful Dead were recording what would be Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty in an adjoining studio. Bob Weir has always said that, although members of the Dead could sing harmonies, CSN gave them confidence to do it properly. Croz is still doing it, when he isn’t judging reader-submitted photos of joints on Twitter 🙂

Rightly regarded as a classic.

All on Spotify and also a YouTube playlist (below)