Stephen Stills at his finest. 4+20 was written in 1969 and first released on Déjà vu with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Stills asked David Crosby and Graham Nash to back him on the recording but both said ‘they wouldn’t touch it’ recalled Stills in a later interview. That it was too good and stood on its own. He first sang it on the Dick Cavett show right after Woodstock when he was in fact ‘4+20’. According to Stills it tells the story of an 84-year-old man born into poverty and finds himself alone in old age.
Its played in open tuning (EEEEBE), the same tuning Stills wrote his magnus opus…Suite Judy Blue Eyes. I can’t remember when I first learned it but I was learning a lot of open tuning songs in the late 80’s so it might have been then. It was yet another of the great albums my father had in his record collection so I most certainly heard it much earlier. I often break the third string retuning because it is so far down. (When I was looking for background on this song I stumbled upon this quote from Stills about Jimi Hendrix which I thought was fascinating (nothing to do with 4+20)... He (Jimi Hendrix) was a very dear friend of mine, we were lonely in London together and hung out a lot. I left England suddenly, and years later I learned from Mitch Mitchell that Jimi had been looking for me everywhere – wanted me to join the Experience as the bass player, which would have been my greatest dream in life! It had something to do with a manager deciding it was a wrong career move and said, 'we don't know where he is.' I learned to play lead guitar from Jimi he showed me the scales and said things like, 'You begin by thinking about the chord position and base your improvisations on that.' Or he'd make some little remark like, 'F sharp is really cool,' and we'd develop a jam around that. We'd make up songs, play the blues. He'd improvise until the inspiration began to ebb, then he'd look at me and say, 'You drive.' You had to hear that cat play acoustic guitar! We once jammed for about five days, one long marathon session in my beach house in Malibu. The sheriff's deputy overheard our guitar playing. When he found out it was us he asked permission to park his police car directly outside the house so he could listen in while he fielded radio calls. Told us not to worry about a thing, he'd be looking out for us.
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SONG STORIESThis is a collection of stories about songs I play and artists who have inspired me. It's a place I can honor them. From time to time I'll add new music I come across and various other ramblings...
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