Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

When Crosby, Stills, and Nash performed their song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" at Woodstock, it was only the second time they had performed together in front of an audience. Their slot was in the middle of the night, but that audience was a half million people. No wonder they were scared. 

The song was written by Stephen Stills about his girlfriend at the time, Judy Collins. He had been writing down his thoughts about her in snippets of poetry for months, as the relationship deteriorated and he contemplated losing her (spoiler: he did). These inspired different tunes, but none of them had enough to make a complete song, so Stills mashed them all together. That's why "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" indeed sounds like a collision of four songs. Yet they were four really good tunes, and the completed love song became a staple of FM radio. Read how and why the song came about, and how Collins responded to it at Dangerous Minds.