In the sleeve notes to the CD, Stephen Stills recalls that he was present at a Judy Collins session in New York in 1968, and when she finished with studio time remaining, Stills paid the engineer privately to let him record song demos.

When the studio was about to close in 1978, musician Joe Colasurdo, who was rehearsing there, was told by the owner that he could take away any tapes he wanted to before they cleared the place out.

After seeing Stills' names on several of the boxes, Colasurdo kept them safe until he could find a reel-to-reel machine to play them on.

Colasurdo began attempting to get the masters safely back into Stills's hands, an undertaking that took 25 years.

In 2003, he was connected to Graham Nash after happening to meet a close friend of his named Dan Curland, who owns the Mystic Disc Record Store.