Stephen Stills Has Different Opinions About a CSNY Reunion Than Ex-Bandmate Graham Nash

The death of David Crosby in early 2023 made the question of whether a CSNY reunion would ever happen less likely and more emotionally charged than ever before, especially with former bandmates Stephen Stills and Graham Nash directly contradicting the others’ opinions in the press. While Nash was of a mind that it would never happen, Stills was less pessimistic.

However, Stills has a caveat to his hopefulness: he’s not interested unless there’s a good reason.

Stephen Stills’ Opinion on a CSNY Reunion

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young first broke up in the early 1970s, but it was a loose agreement. The power quartet reconvened many times in the following decades for special performances, album releases, and so on. In October 2024, the band released archival recordings from their performances at the Fillmore East in the fall of 1969, leading many fans and critics to speculate whether a CSNY reunion was in the works.

Of course, the most glaring issue with this idea is that the founding member and first initial, David Crosby, died from complications of COVID-19 in 2023. Still, that didn’t stop the press from asking surviving bandmates Graham Nash and Stephen Stills if they would ever return to the stage as “SNY.”

In a late October 2024 interview with The Globe and Mail, Stills sounded cautiously optimistic. “There might be a reason for us to sing together. Maybe the upcoming election. But at this point, it’s not about, ‘Would we get together?’ ‘Should we’ is the more important question,” he said. While this isn’t nearly as definitive as Graham Nash’s refusal to entertain the idea of a trio reunion, Stills shared Nash’s beliefs about what made CSNY so special.

“The heart of the band was the collective,” Stills said. “The glue that held the harmonies together was David. He really had a sense of where that perfect note was that set it apart from the standard three-part harmony.”

Graham Nash Was Less Enthusiastic, To Say The Least

When Graham Nash sat down with Rolling Stone to discuss the likelihood of an “SNY” reunion, he didn’t give the idea much breathing room. He, too, called his late bandmate David Crosby the “heartbeat” of the band, adding that he didn’t expect he, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young would ever play together again following their former colleague’s passing.

“There’s no heart there,” Nash insisted. “David was the center of it all, as crazy as he was. My God, he was crazy. But he was the heart of this band. That’s why I think that if Stephen and Neil and I ever played together, people would be missing Crosby. We would be missing Crosby. It would be a much colder scene.”

Years earlier, before Crosby’s death, Young spoke to AARP about his thoughts on the band returning to the stage. “If a reunion happens, it would be a surprise,” he admitted. “I won’t close the door on anything. I can hold a grudge with the best of them, but only if there’s a reason for it.”

It’s unclear where Young stands on a band reunion now that Crosby is gone. However, with Young and Stills performing together regularly and Nash keeping up with a rigorous touring schedule of his own, it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that the three musical giants would join forces once again. Of course, they just need to find an appropriately good reason for it.

Photo by Steve Morley/Redferns