SONG OF THE DAY

“Marrakesh Express” by Crosby, Stills & Nash (Crosby, Stills & Nash, Atlantic Records, 1969). Written by Graham Nash.

WHERE I HEARD IT

As heard on Radio Woodstock, of course.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

– “Marrakesh Express” was a song released on their 1969 self-titled debut album.

– The author of its lyrics and composer of its music, Graham Nash, a former member of The Hollies, had originally intended to record the song with them. Indeed, the Hollies made an attempt at recording the song, but it did not bear fruit. A basic backing track still exists in the band’s vault.

– Marrakesh is a city in Morocco famous for leather goods. The Marrakesh Express is a train Nash took on a trip there from Casablanca in 1966. The lyrics are filled with the sights, sounds and “vibes” that he encountered on the trip. In an interview, Nash told Rolling Stone magazine that at first he traveled in the first-class compartment. But he found it “fucking boring.” Thus he went to sit with hoi polloi and the “ducks and pigs and chickens.”

– The album spawned two Top 40 hits, “Marrakesh Express” and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” which peaked respectively at #28 the week of August 23, 1969, and at #21 the week of October 25, 1969, on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The album itself peaked at #6 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.

– The album was a very strong debut for the band, instantly lifting them to stardom. Along with the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo and The Band’s Music From Big Pink of the previous year, it helped initiate a sea change in popular music away from the ruling late sixties aesthetic of bands playing blues-based rock music on loud guitars.

– Crosby, Stills & Nash presented a new wrinkle in building upon rock’s roots, utilizing folk, blues, and even jazz without specifically sounding like mere duplication. Not only blending voices, the three meshed their differing strengths, Crosby for social commentary and atmospheric mood pieces, Stills for his diverse musical skills and for folding folk and country elements subtly into complex rock structures, and Nash for his radio-friendly pop melodies, to create an amalgam of broad appeal.

– Strong sales, combined with the group’s emphasis on personal confession in its writing, paved the way for the success of the singer-songwriter movement of the early seventies.

– Their utilization of personal events in their material without resorting to subterfuge, their talents in vocal harmony, their cultivation of painstaking studio craft, as well as the Laurel Canyon ethos that surrounded the group and their associates, established an aesthetic for a number of acts that came to define the “California” sound of the ensuing decade, including The Eagles, Jackson Browne, post-1974 Fleetwood Mac, and others.

– In 2003, the album was ranked number 259 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

– The album has been issued on compact disc three times: mastered by Barry Diament at Atlantic Studios in the mid-1980s[1]; remastered by Joe Gastwirt at Ocean View Digital and reissued on August 16, 1994; reissued again by Rhino Records as an expanded edition using the HDCD process on January 24, 2006.

– The original vinyl LP was released in a gatefold sleeve that depicted the band members in large fur parkas with a sunset in the background on the gatefold.

– On the album cover the members are, left to right, Nash, Stills, and Crosby, a different order than the title of the album and band. The photo was taken by their friend and photographer Henry Diltz before they came up with a name for the group. They found a house across from a Santa Monica car wash that they thought would be a perfect fit for their “image”. They posed for the photo in the order of Nash, Stills, and Crosby (for no particular reason). A few days later they decided on the name “Crosby, Stills, and Nash”. To prevent confusion, they went back to the house a day or so later to re-shoot the cover in the correct order, but when they got there they found the house was reduced to a pile of timber.

– On the song, Stephen Stills performs vocals, guitar, organ, piano, and bass, David Crosby performs vocals, and Graham Nash performs vocals and acoustic guitar.

VIDEO OF THE DAY