Songfacts®:

• Graham Nash wrote this love song, which he says is "for two ladies." We can assume one of them is Joni Mitchell.
  
  Before Crosby, Stills & Nash formed, Mitchell and David Crosby were an item, then she fell in love with Nash and moved in with him (see: "Our House"). The Crosby, Stills & Nash album - the debut for the trio - contains another love song to Mitchell, "Guinnevere," which was penned by David Crosby. Nash told Mojo magazine April 2009 that this potentially tricky situation did not create any problems. He explained: "The way that we went about our lives did not entail jealousy and it didn't entail raging about somebody being with somebody else's woman. Me and David and Joan didn't think anything of it, that's for sure."
• The islands in this song, according to Nash, are Ibiza and Long Island, New York.
• Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills & Nash doesn't appear on this song. Crosby and Nash sang it together in one take, with Nash on acoustic guitar. They improvised the section in the middle.