And so it was as one half of everybody’s favourite hippy super-group walked nonchanantly onstage, picked up guitars and ripped through a cacophonous full rock-out of that dreamy Byrds flower-power anthem ‘8 Miles High’. More Grand Canyon than Laurel Canyon, it set the tone for the night.
Clocking in at just under three hours, a sweaty venue was treated to a performance of consummate grace, feeling and power. Jettisoning notions of a heritage act cruising comatose on the nostalgia highway, new material, such as Crosby’s spellbinding closing-time lament and lift ‘A Slice Of Time’ or the rock-rebellion-funk-fury of ‘They Want It All’, sits well with the rapturously received ye olde classics ‘Almost Cut My Hair’ and ‘Chicago’.
Like an old married couple the pair bat banter back and forth, drop anecdotes, and rib one another remorselessly. This routine extends to the musical dialogue as well. Nash’s smooth country-infused pop sensibilities (‘I Used To Be A King’, ‘Just A Song’) providing colour and contrast to Crosby’s esoteric excursions (‘What Are Their Names’ or the extending jazz jam of ‘Déjà Vu’).
And when these two poles are fused we get the dreamy crepuscular lilt of ‘Lee Shore’ and the honest, heartfelt, plaintive plea of ‘To The Last Whale: Critical Mass / Wind On The Water’. Nash is compere, straightman and unreconstructed folky to Crosby’s Buddha scene stealer. The latter’s psychedlic-western-wander, ‘Cowboy Movie’, is a standout moment among many. Their voices still blend and bind wonderfully. The gossamer ‘Orleans’ segues into the delicate spine-tingling deceptive trippy float of ‘Cathedral’. ‘Long Time Gone’ is delivered with such conviction that you still believe in Crosby speaking out against the man. The love of what they do and the unbridled joy emanating from the stage leads Nash to exclaim that he wouldn’t know what he’d do if he couldn’t write songs. Neither would we. Long May You Run.