Songfacts®:

• Crosby, Stills & Nash got off to a very strong start, releasing their acclaimed debut album in 1969 and making a memorable appearance at Woodstock. The next year, they added Neil Young and released an even more successful album, Déjà Vu. The band was never supposed to be all-consuming, so each member took time off to work on solo albums and other projects. But once they drifted apart, they couldn't find the gravity to draw them back together.
  
  Fans made deep emotional connections to their songs and clamored for more. In 1974, they finally returned to action, releasing a compilation album called So Far that sold over 6 million copies and setting out on the first-ever rock stadium tour. The tour tested their bonds, and a planned album of new material was abandoned after just a few recording sessions. It wasn't until 1977 that they released another album (CSN), this time without Young.
  
  They clearly had something special when they made music together, but the forces of pride, ego, and addiction intervened. Graham Nash reflected on this when he wrote "Wasted On The Way." In a Songfacts interview, he explained: "We had wasted a lot of time arguing with each other and debating how we should do this or do that, and that's what I wanted to say: We wasted a lot of time. CSN&Y only did what, three albums? We had wasted a lot time, and I just wanted to make my partners realize that."
• "Wasted On The Way" was the lead single from Daylight Again, the group's first album since CSN in 1977. Neil Young wasn't part of it - after their 1970 album Déjà Vu, he didn't make another with the band until American Dream in 1988.
  
  The song was a solid hit, earning airplay on Pop, Rock, and Adult Contemporary radio. The next single, the Stephen Stills composition "Southern Cross," also did well and the album sold over a million copies - not bad for a band that formed 20 years earlier and only worked together sporadically.
• David Crosby was, in fact, wasted around this time, a point disc jockeys often made when playing the song. His drug abuse got really bad in the late '70s and was an issue when they recorded this song in late 1980 and early 1981. He was arrested for freebasing cocaine in 1982 just a few months before the song was released. Crosby only sobered up after spending much of 1986 in jail, which he says probably saved his life.
• Timothy B. Schmit, whose band the Eagles had recently broken up, sang on this song along with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.