Their performance at Woodstock - then the largest gathering at a rock festival to that date - helped place them among the leading troubadours of the counterculture era. The boys also added to their rising standing by performing at the enormous Woodstock music festival in August 1969, where Neil Young joined the group (later becoming “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young”).
And with the help of progressive FM radio in those days, which served up generous portions of new albums over the air, Crosby, Stills & Nash became a wildly popular album. Before long, excepting a rejection at Apple Records, they were signed by Ahmet Ertegün at Atlantic Records, hiring David Geffen and Elliot Roberts as their management team. Legend has it, that at a July 1968 party in Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles (at either Joni Mitchell or Cass Elliot’s house) Crosby, Stills and Nash tried out a new song written by Stills, “You Don’t Have To Cry,” revealing to themselves and others they had very good vocal chemistry and exceptional harmonies. David Crosby, Graham Nash & Stephen Stills at Big Sur Folk Festival, CA, Sept 1969.