CSN&Y;: More Than Deja Vu

There are lots of surprises in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunion tour. Most of them are even pleasant, which may be the biggest surprise of them all.

Rock fans have reason to be suspicious of reunion tours, especially this one. David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash have been touring as a trio for years, but the enticing harmonies and inventive musical interaction that got them elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had become all too predictable and stale over the years.

This tour, however, isn’t just Crosby, Still & Nash. It’s Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Can one man make a difference?

Absolutely . . . when it’s Neil Young.

The quartet made the landmark studio album “Deja Vu” in the early ‘70s before Young went his own way. In this reunion, he not only contributed several songs from his solo albums to the group’s three-hour concert last weekend at the San Jose Arena, but he also played with an energy and enthusiasm that reinvigorated the entire band.

There are two kinds of reunion tours: those that tarnish a band’s legacy and those that enrich it. The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reunion is one of the latter, a tour whose strengths reside in the sense of brotherhood and passion of the musicians.

Crosby, Stills and Nash are the first to acknowledge Young’s importance to the tour, which continues tonight at Staples Center after stops here, and in Oakland and Sacramento.

“When you play together for 30-odd years the way David, Stephen and I have, it’s easy to get into bad habits and let the audience reaction be your standard,” Nash said backstage before the San Jose concert. “As long as the audience is applauding, it’s easy to think everything is OK.

“But Neil doesn’t have any interest in that. He has refocused us on the music. That’s his only standard . . . how good the music is.”

In some ways, this is the most unlikely of all the reunion tours of the last decade. The band’s chemistry was so volatile the first time around that they made the Eagles seem like a study in group cooperation. Crosby once said: “The four of us together is like juggling four bottles of nitroglycerin.”

There’s always a chance that something could tear them apart again, but they speak about one another with warmth and affection, and even suggest they are having the time of their life.

This spirit of fun is equally apparent to fans in the arenas and visitors backstage.

“Watch out, he may get you pregnant,” Stills joked backstage when he saw someone standing near Crosby, referring to the recent revelation that Crosby’s sperm was used to father the two children of Melissa Etheridge and filmmaker Julie Cypher.

And as a “seventh inning break” between set changes during the show, the band entertained the audience by playing a tape of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” sung in rollicking fashion by Harry Carey, the late Chicago Cubs announcer.

“In the early days together, we would issue ultimatums and we’d stomp out of the room,” Crosby said backstage. “We would get high as kites and go off on each other. We’ve got a book of mistakes thicker than the L.A. phone book. . . . But we’re different guys now. We are grown-ups and we’ve earned each other’s respect.”

Unlike so many reunions, this one didn’t start in a lawyer’s office or a record company suite. It started last year when Stills visited Young’s ranch near here to go over the tapes for a boxed set of music by the Buffalo Springfield, the late-’60s rock band that included both musicians.

“It was kind of like a therapy session,” Stills recalled of the meeting with Young. “It was like completely revisiting your childhood. We listened to each other grow together and then grow apart and fall apart. . . . A really beautiful, moving experience. Neil and I laughed and cried all afternoon.”

During the visit, Stills played Young a song that he had written for a planned CSN album. Young liked it and volunteered to play on the track. He ended up playing on the whole album and agreeing to a U.S. tour that also includes a stop Tuesday at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.

For the tour, CSN&Y; recruited two Hall of Fame level musicians to support them: bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, who as a member of Booker T. & the MG’s is actually in the Hall of Fame, and drummer Jim Keltner, who will most certainly someday be inducted in the new “sidemen” category. Keltner has appeared on albums by everyone from Phil Spector to Bob Dylan.

Still, the San Jose concert got off to a sluggish start as the band went through a somewhat random group of tunes, four of which were from the group’s largely lackluster new album, “Looking Forward.” But things came suddenly alive near the end of the opening segment when Young went into an extended guitar solo on one of Crosby’s signature tunes, “Almost Cut My Hair.”’

By doing so, Young not only lifted the band to a higher level, but also raised the audience’s expectations. The music went from the past tense to the present.

After intermission, the group explored its gentler side in an acoustic set that mixed five more new songs amid such old favorites as “Hopelessly Helping,” “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “After the Gold Rush” and “Teach Your Children.”

In the final hour, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young showcased their rock ‘n’ roll side with a super-charged series of tunes that included “Woodstock,” “Ohio,” “For What It’s Worth,” “Rockin’ in the Free World” and, in closing, the anthem-like “Long May You Run.”

It was a long show--30 songs in all--and a demanding one. If CSN&Y; was one of the most unlikely reunions, it was also one of the most challenging because so much of the group’s original appeal was based on its sense of boundless experimentation.

It’s hard for anyone new to the band to realize just how radical CSN&Y;’s approach was initially--the way it seemed to combine unruly forces, from stinging rock commentary to soothing acoustic musings, in ways that both asserted counterculture attitudes and traditional values.

Like rock music itself, CSN&Y; no longer has that sense of discovery going for it. The harmonies weren’t as striking as in the early days, partly because they are so familiar now, and there’s no way you can get the sound in an arena to match the crispness and control of the recordings.

But the musicians compensated for the changes by applying themselves to the music with such dedication--including rethinking some of the arrangements rather than simply replaying them--that it won your admiration.

They could have made it easier on themselves by substituting some early hits for the nine songs from the new album. The audience would certainly have loved to hear such trademark numbers as “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “Deja Vu.” But the band believes in the new songs and it wants to share them on the tour.

“It is fun,” Young said after the show. “It’s fun because we are rediscovering things. That’s what I love about it. We are finding what made us who we are in each other. I don’t know why I felt this was the time, but I knew it was going to work. I just went with my instincts. The key is that we aren’t trying to recapture the past, but to reach for something new.”

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* Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young play tonight at Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, 8 p.m. (213) 742-7340. Also Tuesday at the Arrowhead Pond, 2695 E. Katella Ave., Anaheim, 8 p.m. (714) 704-2500. $30.50 to $201 for both shows.