Songs Lyrics and YT- Youtube Music Videos

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Marrakesh Express

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Marrakesh Express Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Crosby, Stills & Nash
Released: 1969

Marrakesh Express Lyrics

Looking at the world
Through the sunset in your eyes
Trying to make the train
Through clear Moroccan skies
Ducks and pigs and chickens call
Animal carpet wall to wall
American ladies five foot tall in blue

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to see what we could find
Hope the days that lie ahead
Bring us back to where they've led
Listen not to what's been said to you

Would you know we're riding
On the Marrakesh Express
Would you know we're riding
On the Marrakesh Express, they're taking me to Marrakesh
All on board the train, all on board the train

I've been saving all my money just to take you there
I smell the garden in your hair

Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth
Colored cottons hang in air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped Djellebas we can wear at home, well let me hear you now
Don't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
They're taking me to Marrakesh Express
Don't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
Don't you know we're riding on the Marrakesh Express
They're taking me to Marrakesh
All on board the train
All on board the train, all on board

Writer/s: NASH, GRAHAM
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, SPIRIT MUSIC GROUP
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Marrakesh Express

Marrakesh is a city in Morocco famous for leather goods. The "Marrakesh Express" is the train Graham 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.

Prior to exiting the Hollies in 1968, Nash offered this to his band mates. However, the tune was ultimately rejected as being not commercial enough. Their refusal to record this and other tunes he wrote was one of the main reasons Nash left the band and moved to Los Angeles to join up with Crosby and Stills. "After a couple months of that, a man is liable to go insane," Nash said of having his songs rejected, adding, "especially being the only one who was smoking grass at the time." Fortunately, his new bandmates liked the tune and it ended up on their debut album.

The became Crosby Sills And Nash's first hit in the US, and surprisingly their only Top 40 single in the UK.

Graham Nash told Rolling Stone magazine the story of this song: "In 1966 I was visiting Morocco on vacation to Marrakesh and getting on a train and having a first-class ticket and then realizing that the first-class compartment was completely f--king boring, you know, ladies with blue hair in there - it wasn't my scene at all. So I decide I'm going to go and see what the rest of the train is like. And the rest of the train was fascinating. Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires. It's literally the song as it is - what happened to me."

Crosby babbles some strange-sounding words like "Whoopa, hey mesa, hooba huffa, hey meshy goosh goosh" at the beginning of the song. Graham Nash remembered: "It's some Crosby gibberish that we moved from the beginning of 'Guinnevere' to the front of 'Marrakesh Express.'"

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Shadow Captain

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Shadow Captain Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: CSN
Released: 1977

Shadow Captain Lyrics

Oh, captain, what are we hiding from?
You've been hiding from the start.
Did some lover steal your heart,
Or did the full moon make you mad?

Oh, captain, why these speechless seas
That never seem to land?
Oh I need to understand.
Could a little light be that bad?

I can see your hands are roughened
By the wheel and the rope.
I'd like to look to you for hope,
I think it's hiding there.
This boat is blacked out like a city
Awaiting bombers in the night.
Oh you hold your helm so tight,
And yet the sky seems so fair.

Who guides this ship
Dreaming through the seas
Turning and searching,
Whichever way you please?
Speak to me, I need to see your face,
Shadowy captain, in a darkened space.

If I were to spy a city
Floating just above the sea,
Could we stop
And look for me
Among those playing on the pier?

Or would you turn away knowing,
It was still a ways away,
And if I was there today
you could not see me all that clear.

Shadowy captain of a charcoal ship,
Trying to give the light the slip

Writer/s: CROSBY, DAVID / DOERGE, CRAIG
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Shadow Captain

David Crosby wrote this song with session musician Craig Doerge, who also plays piano on the track. It's one of several songs that Crosby has written after waking up in the middle of the night. He told Uncut magazine February 2014: "It's that moment of half awake, half asleep, and it's happened over and over again."

Crosby added: "I woke up at 3 AM, I was off watch, hundred miles off the coast of California, I got up from my bunk and wrote the whole song down, as it is now without changing the word. I get to the end, 'Shadow Captain of a charcoal ship, trying to give the light the slip,' and I think, 'Croz, you are so f---ing cool!' I'm thrilled by it, but I feel as though it's been trapped in my head, as though I've been gifted it."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Teach Your Children

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Teach Your Children Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Déjà Vu
Released: 1970

Teach Your Children Lyrics

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach Your Children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.
Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Writer/s: NASH, GRAHAM
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, SPIRIT MUSIC GROUP
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Teach Your Children

Graham Nash wrote this. The lyrics deal with the often difficult relationship he had with his father, who spent time in prison.

Jerry Garcia performs the pedal steel guitar part of this track. He had been playing steel guitar for only a short period of time. Garcia played on this album in exchange for harmony lessons for the Grateful Dead, who were at the time recording their acoustic albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. (thanks, Scott - Richmond, VA)

Graham Nash (from the liner notes of their 1991 boxed set): "The idea is that you write something so personal that every single person on the planet can relate to it. Once it's there on vinyl it unfolds, outwards, so that it applies to almost any situation. 'Teach' started out as a slightly funky English folk song but Stephen (Stills) put a country beat to it and turned it into a hit record."

Deja Vu was the first album the band recorded with Neil Young, but Young did not play on this.

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Pre-Road Downs

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Pre-Road Downs Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Crosby, Stills & Nash
Released: 1969

Pre-Road Downs Lyrics

I have kissed you
So I'll miss you
On the road I'll be wantin' you

But I have you
'Cause I love you
And you have me 'cause you love me too, yeah

Felt forsaken
You'll awaken
To the joys of livin' hand in glove

And then I will
Lend you my will
And your days will be filled with love

Don't run the time approaches
Hotels and midnight coaches
Be sure to hide the roaches

Felt rejected
As expected
You rejected all the thoughts of words

So I'll pray with
You to stay with
Me forever and we'll make it work

Elevated
You're elated
'Cause I've waited a year for you

If you're thinkin'
What I'm thinkin'
Then I'm gonna make my love to you

Don't run the time approaches
Hotels and midnight coaches
Be sure to hide the roaches

Writer/s: NASH, GRAHAM
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, SPIRIT MUSIC GROUP
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Pre-Road Downs

Crosby, Stills & Nash first sung together during an informal jam at the house of Cass Elliot. The trio were so fond of the Mamas And The Papas' singer that she sung backing vocals on this song during the part that goes "Hotels and midnight coaches. Be sure to hide the roaches."

"She insisted, and with good reason," Nash recalled to Uncut magazine in 2014. "Nobody else would have the balls to do that, that we loved her dearly. So we agreed."

"I've always thought that Cass understood intuitively what the sound of me, David and Stephen singing together would sound like, and when she introduced me to them, she knew they were trying to put something together," Nash added.

Cass Elliot was the only person outside of the trio who sang on the Crosby, Stills & Nash album.

David Crosby commented to MusicRadar.com of this Graham Nash penned tune: "A Nash song after he realized that he could write rock 'n' roll – fierce rock 'n' roll."

The backwards guitar was played by Stephen Stills. Said an admiring Crosby: "This is real backwards guitar, and how he got it match up to the forwards stuff, I have no idea. He did it, and we looked him and thought, This guy is from f---ing Mars! I'm still freaked out by it."

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Southern Cross

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Southern Cross Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Daylight Again
Released: 1982

Southern Cross Lyrics

Got out of town on a boat goin' to Southern islands
Sailing a reach before a followin' sea
She was makin' for the trades on the outside
And the downhill run to Papeete

Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas
We got eighty feet of the waterline nicely making way
In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you
But on a midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin'
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

(Around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl
(Who knows she knows) Who knows love can endure
And you know it will

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day

So I'm sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a dyin'
And my love is an anchor tied to you tied with a silver chain
I have my ship and all her flags are a' flyin'
She is all that I have left and music is her name

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin'
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

(I've been around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl
Who knows love can endure
And you know it will, and you know it will yes

So we cheated and we lied and we tested
And we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do
You will survive being bested
Somebody fine will come along make me forget about loving you
And the southern cross

Writer/s: CURTIS, MICHAEL / CURTIS, RICHARD / STILLS, STEPHEN
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Southern Cross

The "Southern Cross" is a constellation also known as the Crux Constellation that can be viewed from most of the Southern hemisphere. The 4 brightest stars within the constellation form a cross pattern. Sailors have relied on the "Southern Cross" to help in navigating their boats. The national flags of Australia and New Zealand have versions of the Southern Cross on them.

This was written by Stephen Stills with help from Richard Curtis and Michael Curtis. In the CSN Boxed Set, Stills explained: "The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song called 'Seven League Boots,' but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It's about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds. Once again, I was given somebody's gem and cut and polished it."

Jimmy Buffett covered this on his 1999 album Buffett Live: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays. (thanks, Amy - Chicago, IL, for all above)

There is a vocal mistake in the line "But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day." One of the vocalists says "coming" on the first "promise." (thanks, Dave - Leesburg, VA)

Since this song is based on a song called "Seven League Boots," it bears mentioning that seven-league boots are a common magical artifact which crops up repeatedly in many European folk and fairy tales. They're a pair of boots which allow the wearer to take strides that are seven leagues (21 miles, 33.8 kilometers) long. The same concept of footwear that greatly increases one's traveling speed or stride is adapted into many role-playing and video games.

This same year that "Southern Cross" came out also saw David Crosby arrested on drug-related charges. He would be in and out of court on them numerous times until he finally turned himself in for an 8-month sentence.

The video for this song, with a ship a-sail, saw heavy rotation in the early MTV years, providing a soft rock respite from the European pop acts that dominated the network at the time.

The cover art for the Daylight Again album features an enigmatic domed structure on a rocky hilltop, flanked by three glowing blue flying saucers. The US was in the midst of a resurgence in UFO popularity in the late-'70s and early-'80s, bolstered by the writings of Chariots of the Gods author Erich von Daniken and renewed interest in Area 51.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Woodstock

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Woodstock Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Déjà Vu
Released: 1970

Woodstock Lyrics

Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going
This he told me

Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning
And maybe it's the time of year
Yes and maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the devils bargain
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

Writer/s: MITCHELL, JONI
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Crazy Crow Music / Siquomb Music Publishing
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Woodstock Song Chart

This song is about the famous music festival in 1969. Mitchell was scheduled to perform at the festival, but backed out on the advice of her manager David Geffen, who was concerned that she would miss a scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young did appear, playing an acoustic set followed by an electric set. They took the stage around 3 a.m. Monday morning - the festival was scheduled to end at midnight, but it ran long, culminating with a legendary Jimi Hendrix set that most people didn't stay to see.

That Tuesday, Mitchell, David Crosby and Stephen Stills all appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. Crosby has said that he and Stills were talking about the festival, and Mitchell wrote the song based on their experience there. Mitchell, however, claimed that she wrote the song before the band returned.

Joni Mitchell's no-show at Woodstock was sometimes reported as being caused by "transportation problems." A persistent rumor was that James Taylor was supposed to give her a lift up the New York Thruway from her hotel in New York City, but Taylor was in a bad motorcycle accident on Martha's Vineyard, breaking both arms and keeping him out from behind the wheel and away from the guitar for months. That was it for Joni's trip to Woodstock. (thanks, Joel - Toms River, NJ)

Joni Mitchell released this the same year on Ladies of the Canyon. It was also the B-side to her song "Big Yellow Taxi." Her version is much more basic than the CSN&Y release.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's performance at Woodstock was only their second show together. Before forming the band, Crosby had been a member of The Byrds, Nash was with The Hollies, Stills and Young were members of Buffalo Springfield. Neil Young played with the group for only part of the set.

Without Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash returned to play Woodstock '94. Other acts that played both festivals include Joe Cocker, The Band, and Santana.

Neil Young is not seen in the Woodstock movie even though he was there for part of the set. He strongly disagreed with the idea of the movie, so he declined to appear in it. If he were to play any songs in the movie, he'd have to be cropped out of frame. (thanks, Jeff - Kendall Park, NJ)

The opening lyrics are a reference to the book of Matthew in which it says, "Blessed are those who try to make peace for they will be called children of God." (thanks, Mike - New London, NH)

In the UK the best known version is the more country-rock flavored recording by Matthews' Southern Comfort, which topped the British singles and peaked at #23 in the US. Ian Matthews had been the lead singer with Fairport Convention, leaving in 1969 to form Matthews' Southern Comfort. He recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner & Spencer Leigh: "I had bought Joni Mitchell's album and we had to do four songs on a BBC lunchtime show. We worked up an arrangement for 'Woodstock' and the response was so good that we put it out as a single. Crosby, Stills & Nash's record had just come out and so we waited to see what happened to that first." In 1978 Matthews had a #13 hit in the US as a solo artist with "Shake It."

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Four Way Street
Released: 1970

Ohio Lyrics

Ohio Song Chart

This song is about the events of May 4, 1970, when the US National Guard shot four unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. Neil Young wrote it shortly after seeing a news report on the tragedy. It was released 10 days after the shootings.

The Kent State shootings had a profound effect on some of the students who later became prominent musicians. Chrissie Hynde was a student at the time, and eventually formed The Pretenders. Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale were also on campus, and after the shootings, they developed the band Devo based on the concept of "De-Evolution," meaning the human race was regressing. Said Casale, "It refocused me entirely. I don't think I would have done Devo without it. It was the deciding factor that made me live and breathe this idea and make it happen. In Chrissie Hynde's case, I'm sure it was a very powerful single event that was traumatic enough to form her sensibility and account for a lot of her anger." Mothersbaugh added, "It was the first time I'd heard a song about something I'd been a participant in. It effected us. It was part of our life." (thanks to Jerry and Mark for their help with this)

Jerry Casale gave us this account of the shootings:
"I was a student, I was a member of SDS - an antiwar group called Students for a Democratic Society, trying to restore Democracy at a time when LBJ and Nixon were running roughshod over it. There were several antiwar groups. That protest that day where everybody got shot was a protest against the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. It was a secret expansion, Nixon had done it the night before and we found out about it the next day - the whole nation did. They did it without an act of congress, without passing any new law or having any meetings. It was completely unconstitutional, so we're out there at noon, about 3,500 students at Kent State were out there. The governor, who certainly was a pro-war kind of guy, Governor Rhodes, he had placed the National Guard inside the heating plant of the school the night before anticipating what would happen when the students found out about Cambodia. Not only did he do that, but he waited until about 9 am on May 4th to declare Martial Law, which suspends all first amendment rights of The Constitution, meaning that any assembly is automatically illegal, you're automatically committing a crime. These National Guardsmen poured out of the heating plant, surrounded the protesters, and with a bullhorn announced that Martial Law had been declared and that we were all going to jail. Everybody starts chanting and screaming and they start shooting tear gas and some of the more ballsy protesters, while they're coughing and choking and puking are trying to throw it back, but most of the kids were anywhere from 50 to 100 yards away from these lines of National Guardsmen with guns. Nobody believed that the guns were actually loaded with live ammo. They just suddenly formed a row. The first one knelt and the second one stood, and they just shot right into the crowd, shot at all of us, down the hill at all of us. The worst thing about it is that 2 of the 4 students killed weren't part of the demonstration, weren't part of an antiwar group. They'd just come out of class from the journalism building at that time and come out on their way to their next class and were looking at the protest, just seeing what the hell's going on, and they got killed. The bullets just went everywhere, it was like a scatter-gun approach, like shooting geese. A lot of the bullets went over the heads of the protesters and kept going straight down the hill. One of the kids that's paralyzed for life was getting into his car to leave campus after his class, and they shot him in the back. He was at least 200 yards away and wanted nothing to do with what was going on. It was shocking. It pretty much knocked any hippie that I had left in me right out of me that day.
I had been a member of the honors college and the only way I went to school was with a scholarship. My family was poor and I got a scholarship to go to school. What I had to do every year to earn my scholarship was work 3 months in the summer for the university admitting new students to the honors college, the incoming freshman, and helping them arrange their curriculum, taking them through the registration process. The summer before May 4th, I had befriended Jeffery Miller and Allison Krause, 2 honor students, and they turn out to be 2 of the 4 killed on May 4th. So I'd known both of them 9 months before this happened, and so when I realized that this girl on her stomach with a huge exit wound in her back with blood running down the sidewalk was Allison, I nearly passed out. I sat down on the grass and kind of swooned around and lied down. I was in shock, I couldn't move.
The government and the press tried to lie about what happened as well as they could. The fact that anybody knows what happened is amazing because they did such a good job of muddying it up and lying, it was amazing. The final chapter there was that the parents of the students who were shot and killed banded together and went on a class action suit against Governor Rhodes and the state of Ohio and the National Guard, and summarily lost across the board. These kids that were shot were 18 and 19 years old. 2 of them were 18 and 2 of them were 19. They lost because by law, no one was allowed to be having a protest once Martial Law was declared, and they threw it out of the court system. I don't think anyone wants to know the truth. It ruins the myth of freedom in America to find out how easily it can be gone." (check out our Devo interview)

Young considers this the best song he wrote with CSN&Y. He included this on his 1977 Greatest Hits album Decade.

This became a protest anthem as Americans became fed up with the war in Vietnam. Providing a firsthand account of the shootings and the effect of this song, Alan Canfora told us: "On May 4, 1970, I was waving a black protest flag as a symbol of my anger and despair 10 days after I attended the funeral of my 19 year old friend killed in Vietnam. I was about 250 feet away from the kneeling, aiming guardsmen from Troop G - the death squad - minutes before they marched away up a hillside. They fired 67 shots from the hilltop during 13 seconds of deadly gunfire, mostly from powerful M1 rifles. I was shot through my right wrist. I survived because I jumped behind the only tree in the direct line of gunfire. About a week later, I was riding in the Ohio countryside with other Kent State massacre survivors when WMMS radio played the song 'Ohio' for the first time. We were deeply moved and inspired by that great anti-war anthem."

This was released as a single, but the song did not appear on an album until Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young included it on their live album Four Way Street a year later.

Young is Canadian. He was a vocal critic of American foreign policy throughout the Vietnam War and became a voice of dissent during the George W. Bush administration, when songs like "Let's Impeach The President" spoke out against the president and his war in Iraq.

Devo recorded this for the 2002 album When Pigs Fly, Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear. The album was a collection of unlikely covers by various artists. Cevin Soling, who put the album together, met Mark Mothersbaugh's girlfriend at a film festival, who told Mark about the project and got Devo involved. Says Soling:
"I knew about the history, I was nervous about them thinking I was being exploitative of their tie to the tragedy. So I really tried to do that gingerly. That took a little while to get off the ground. They did "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," which I guess they had started working on at one point. And I guess it was just sort of difficult getting everyone together and recording. But then they called me back and they said they listened to it and they didn't think it was good. So at some point in time, they finally all got motivated and got together. I guess Mark was very nervous about putting out something that might not up to Devo quality, and I think he's finally let the seer of his legacy kind of loom over doing new stuff." (Check out our interview with Cevin Soling.)