While many demos feature members performing solo, the opening cut on this album includes all three harmonizing on the Nash-penned hit "Marrakesh Express," recorded four months before the release of the trio's eponymous debut in 1969.Crosby and Stills can be heard on another song from that blockbuster album, "Long Time Gone." The two recorded the demo in June 1968, just a few weeks before Nash joined the group.

Neil Young, whose arrival in 1969 launched CSN&Y, performs with Crosby and Nash on "Music Is Love," a song the three cowrote that appeared on Crosby's 1971 solo debut, If I Could Only Remember My Name. Crosby flies his "freak flag" alone on the anthemic "Almost Cut My Hair," a track featured on the group's 1970 #1 album Déjà Vu. Stills performs unaccompanied on a 1968 demo of "My Love Is A Gentle Thing." Recorded in 1968, the song was never released on a studio album, although a 1975 recording of the track did surface in 1991 on the boxed set CSN.

More than half of Crosby, Stills & Nash Demos comprises early versions of songs destined for solo projects that each member focused on following the success of Déjà Vu. Stills released his self-titled debut in 1970, which introduced "Love The One You're With," his biggest solo hit to-date and a live favorite. Stills recorded this version in April 1970, more than six months before recording the album version in London. Another Stills demo, "Singing Call," features a song that would appear on his follow-up, Stephen Stills 2.

Nearly all of the tracks on Crosby, Stills & Nash Demos were recorded at Wally Heider studios, a popular recording destination on the West Coast for everyone from Jefferson Airplane to Creedence Clearwater Revival. Nash chose Heider's studio to record his 1971 solo debut, Songs For Beginners, demoing much of the album there as well. This collection includes three of those demos: "Sleep Song," "Be Yourself," and the politically charged "Chicago."