All-star folk rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash became a band when its three members — David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash — all found themselves free agents after parting ways with their respective bands. Crosby had been asked to leave the Byrds, Stills was a solo act after Buffalo Springfield broke up, and Nash had left the Hollies — which made the timing perfect for the three artists to come together and form something new.

The three bandmates might remember three different stories, but if you ask Nash, it all began in 1968 with a party at Joni Mitchell's house. He shares the full story in this episode of Sound Bites, remembering that fateful night in a video interview pulled from the GRAMMY archives.

"I took a cab from the airport to 8217 Lookout Mountain, which is where Joni's house was," Nash begins. "And I heard people talking."

He was disappointed, as he'd been hoping to be alone with Mitchell, but walked in to find the aftermath of a dinner party she was having with Stills and Crosby. As he remembers, the four of them "smoked a big one" before Crosby suggested that he and Stills play a song they'd been working on for the room. That song, which Stills had recently written, was "You Don't Have to Cry."

"They got to the end of it, and I said, 'Wow. Well, first of all, it's an incredible song,'" Nash recalls. "...I said, 'Sing it again for me.' They looked at each other, and they shrugged, and they sang it again. And they got to the end of that, the second time, and I said, 'Okay, I think I got it.'"

When they sang it a third time, Nash came in with vocal harmonies. "We got about a minute into it and we had to stop and start laughing, because it was silly. I mean, we were all pretty big fans of harmony, and we've played a lot in our lives, but this was something different. When David and Stephen and I sing well together, it's something else."

That song, and that special vocal harmony, laid the foundation for Crosby, Stills & Nash's career. "You Don't Have to Cry" appeared on their first, self-titled album in 1969, and the following year, it helped them win a GRAMMY Award for Best New Artist. 

Press play on the video above to hear Nash's version of how the band's formation all went down — though "Stephen has a different story," he quips — and keep checking GRAMMY.com for more episodes of Sound Bites. 

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