“Marrakesh Express” (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

Today’s classic song of the day is “Marrakesh Express” by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Released in July of 1969, it peaked at #28 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts, and #19 on the Cash Box Top 100.

“Marrakesh” Express” was written by Graham Nash when he was still with the Hollies. (He left that group in 1968.) His fellow Hollies rejected the song as not commercial enough, so it found its way onto CS&N’s self-titled debut album and was released as that album’s first single. (The album’s second single was “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” a previous classic song of the day.)

Nash wrote “Marrakesh Express” about a train ride he took from Casablanca to Marrakesh in 1966. He said he started out in first class but found the people there uninteresting; he then explored the other cars and documented what he saw—the “ducks and pigs and chickens” and other exotic sights. “It’s literally the song as it is—what happened to me,” he later commented.

The backing instrumentals on this track were provided almost exclusively by Stephen Stills. He played electric guitar (two of them), piano, Hammond B3 organ, and bass. Session drummer Jim Gordon did the driving train beat with brushes on his snare drum and all three bandmates contributed the backing vocals on the song’s choruses.

I remember listening to this song on Indianapolis’ WNAP-FM on my little AM/FM transistor radio while I cut my grandfather’s lawn in the late summer of 1969. It had an exotic sound that appealed to me, and now I know why. I was just 11 years old then and my grandfather was exactly 50 years older—five years younger than I am today. I treasure the times I spent with him, even if it was just steering his riding lawn mower around his little yard on Tibbs Avenue, listening to “Marrakesh Express” through a single ill-fitting beige earbud.