The “Teach Your Children” B-Side Graham Nash Asked Stephen Stills to Write for CSNY’s ‘Déjà Vu’

After Stephen Stills delivered his opening ode to then-girlfriend Judy Collins and their impending breakup, on CSN’s 1969 debut Crosby, Stills and Nash, Graham Nash suggested he try to write them another “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” for the band’s second album, Déjà Vu.

“I said to Stephen one day, ‘You know, we don’t have ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,’” recalled Nash in 2021. “He goes, ‘Yeah, I know. We did it on the first record.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have the song that guarantees that people won’t get up and take the needle off the record. And when you hear ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,’ and we come to the end of it, I defy you to get up and turn the record off. You wouldn’t do that. We need that kind of song.’”

Nash continued, “The next day, he comes to me, and he goes, ‘What do you think about this, Willy?’ and he played me ‘Carry On.’ It shows you the genius of Stephen Stills.”

Opening Déjà Vu, CSN’s first release with Neil Young, “Carry On” carried on more of Stills’ captivating lyrics and was released as the B-side of “Teach Your Children,” but took on a life of its own on the radio.

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“Carry On” was the final track recorded for Déjà Vu and was written, recorded, and mastered within eight hours, faster than any other track on the album. The second part of the song was also pulled from “Questions,” a song Stills originally wrote for Buffalo Springfield’s 1968 album Last Time Around.

Still’s lyrics also conveyed a subtle message to keep the band, which started to unravel by this time, together.

One morning, I woke up and I knew
You were really gone
A new day, a new way
And new eyes to see the dawn
Go your way, I’ll go mine
And carry on

The sky is clearing, and the night
Has gone out
The sun, he comes, the world
Is all full of love
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice
But to carry on

“Getting that second album out of us was like pulling teeth; there was song after song that didn’t make it,” recalled Stills in a 1971 interview with Hit Parader. “The track ‘Déjà Vu’ must have meant 100 takes in the studio. But “Carry On” happened in a grand total of eight hours from conception to finished master.” So you never know.”

In July of 1970, Stills was fired from the band during a two-night run of shows in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre. Stills rejoined the band that summer, but Crosby, Stills & Nash broke up soon after. Déjà Vu was their final album together before reconfiguring the trio again for their third album, CSN, in 1977.

“Carry On” ended up on three CSN albums, first on  Déjà Vu, then on the 1971 CSN&Y live album 4 Way Street, and again on their compilation So Far in 1974. The song later resurfaced when Stills released his career retrospective Carry On in 2013, featuring 82 of his written songs, compiled by Nash, who co-produced the album with Joel Bernstein.

Photo: Robert Knight Archive/Redferns