Album covers don’t have to be complicated to be iconic. Take Crosby, Stills & Nash‘s namesake album for example. The featured image is simple. The band sitting on a coach in front of a weathered house. Despite the simplicity, the cover is deeply memorable, epitomizing the supergroup. But, as the story goes, this iconic image almost didn’t happen. Moreover, the image they were able to get almost changed the group as we know it today. Learn more about the album cover for Crosby, Stills & Nash, below.
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The Iconic Crosby, Stills & Nash Album Cover That Almost Didn’t Happen–And How The Photo Almost Changed the Band As We Know It
Helplessly hoping
Her harlequin hovers nearby
Awaiting a word
Gasping at glimpses
Of gentle true spirit
He runs, wishing he could fly
Only to trip at the sound of good-bye
The album cover shoot happened organically. Unlike today, when a musician will orchestrate a production to snap the image for their album cover, Crosby, Stills & Nash opted for something far less glamorous.
Nash led the group to a house in West Hollywood. Outside of this time-worn house was an equally as beat up couch. The threesome piled onto it and snapped what has become an iconic image in the world of folk. The only snag came as the band was trying to figure out a name.
“There was a hitch,” the photographer Henry Diltz once said. “In the time between taking the picture and looking at the picture, which was a couple of days, three days, maybe, they had decided what to call themselves. It was almost gonna be Stills, Nash and Crosby. Because Stephen, famously, played [most of] the instruments on that record. He was really the key musician. The other guys were singers, you know?”
The band wasn’t in the correct order in the image they shot. While this may not have been a big deal to many musicians, it became the topic of much discussion for Crosby, Stills & Nash.
Problem Solving
“Unfortunately they were in the wrong order,” Diltz continued. “And I do remember some discussion… ‘well, look, you could flop the picture over.’ But then Stephen would be holding the guitar as a left-handed player, which he isn’t, which would have caused all sorts of problems.”
They decided to head back out to the old house a few days later to retake the image, but when they got there, the entire thing had been bulldozed. “It was a pile of timbers pushed to the back of the lot,” Graham Nash reportedly said.
Luckily for all of us, the band decided to keep the original image and deal with it not quite lining up. It’s hard to imagine this supergroup introducing themselves any other way than with this photo. Revisit the album cover, below.
Wordlessly watching
He waits by the window
And wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams
He worries
Did he hear a good-bye? Or even hello?
(Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images)
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