TORONTO - So why has 70s supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young decided now is the time for a reunion? They simply had to wait for the political scene to echo the Nixon-Vietnam era of the group's heyday, they claim.

"We had to wait for another presidential impeachment and another unpopular war," Stephen Stills said via satellite Tuesday at a press conference in New York City.

"It is sort of a formula for us," joked David Crosby. "Unpopular war. Presidential impeachment. We work."

Actually, Neil Young said the reunion tour and album is all about "unfinished business," but there was some behind-the-scenes business going on that helped make it all happen.

"There is a lot of unfinished business. I don't think we ever really reached our potential," Young said yesterday via satellite from a press conference announcing the 34-date tour, which kicks off Jan. 24 in Detroit and hits Canada for one show at Toronto's Air Canada Centre on March 30.

"We have a lot of things to show and a lot of things to do. Hopefully we can get the audience turned on and it will be just a music thing: It should be enough for us."

Young and Stephen Stills first hooked up while the twosome were working on the upcoming Buffalo Springfield box set. During that time, Stills played Young a new song and asked him if he'd like to pitch in on the recording session for the song already planned with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

The threesome didn't have a record deal and were paying for the sessions themselves, something that helped, says Graham Nash.

"When Neil came down to see CSN in the studio, he knew we were there because we had music we wanted to make," Nash said.

"No record company was telling us: 'Look, it's now January, you need an album.' There was none of that thinking. And it is very freeing not to be under that pressure to deliver something by a certain date. Once Neil saw that was the situation, and the three of us were paying for it out of our pocket because we didn't have a record company, once he heard that music, it made it much more enticing to get involved."

Added Crosby: "What we did this time was smarter than how we have done it in the past. We didn't discuss business. We didn't discuss touring. We didn't discuss record companies. We didn't discuss money. We didn't discuss anything except the particular song that we were working on at the time. After a while, we saw that that was working and all of us gave creedence to it and we are all going to try to stay with it as much as we can."

At the same time, Young had been finishing an album of his own, entitled "Silver And Gold." But when he saw and heard how well things were going on the CSN sessions, he decided to jump aboard and offered to cannibalize his own project for the sake of the group effort.

"I basically said: 'Here they are. Which ones do you want? Take the best ones, whatever you think is the best'," Young said, a move that signalled the permanence of the project.

"It did get to the point where, when Neil brought his songs in, it was very obivous what we were doing, even though it was very unspoken at that point," Nash said.

"There were no preconceptions about making the record until we were almost finished, which made it a lot easier for us to concentrate, rather than answering questions about the record or living up to some release date that somebody thought up for us," Young said.

"Having control ourselves and paying for the record ourselves and being independent about it was a good thing."

That made Howie Klein, president of Young's label, Reprise Records, nervous.

"Every now and then I would go up to Northern California and Neil would play me another song (from the proposed "Silver And Gold" project) and it was wonderful. I was getting more and more excited."

Then, one day, Young's manager called Klein and told him of the plans for a CSNY reunion album. Klein was initially less than thrilled.

"In a big bureaucratic organization, any kind of a change makes people nervous. We got nervous. We were counting on this incredible Neil Young album we had been listening to," Klein explained.

"Neil talked to me about how he had one big cloth, and from that cloth was coming the album I had been getting to know, 'Silver And Gold', and the CSNY project, from his perspective."

Eventually, when the Reprise staff heard the CSNY album, now titled "Looking Forward," they were "floored by it," Klein said.

For Young fans, it sounds like "Silver And Gold" will eventually see the light of day. And Young believes his own album is better without the four songs handed over to the CSNY project.

That still left open the question of a tour. As it happened, promoter Michael Cohl, who has organized major tours for the likes of David

Bowie, Pink Floyd, U2 and the Rolling Stones, produced his first-ever concert in 1974 at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, starring CSNY.

"It was a magical night. It's the concert I always remembered," says Cohl. "In the ensuing 25 years, I was very fortunate to be involved in some of the greatest tours ... There was this one thought, where I remembered that one night with CSNY."

Last January, he had dinner with Nash and talked about old times.

"I couldn't resist asking him: 'How come, 25 years and it had never happened again? Do you guys hate each other, or what is the story?' All

Graham would say is: 'No, we're very good friends. The circumstances just haven't been right, but we love each other.'"

The next day, Cohl said he "cracked off" an offer to the various members' management, which got the reunion tour rolling.

The shows were originally scheduled to begin this fall, but because of delays, the tour coincides with basketball and hockey season, making for some tricky routing to find available venues.

The last time the group toured in 1974, the shows sometimes ran up to four hours in length. This time, expect two sets with a 20 minute break, with a running time of about two-and-a-half hours. Nash said seating will be "270 degrees" around the stage, with projection screens to ensure clear views.

One dollar from the price of every ticket will be reserved for a charity specific to each city, although no beneficiaries have been named yet.

Tickets for the Toronto show, which go on sale Saturday, are $76.75, $51.75 and $41.25, with a limited number of "gold circle" prime seats going for $201.75. A wristband policy is in effect for ticket sales starting Wednesday in Toronto, and there is a limit of eight seats per person.

"The tour was a natural progression. It feels really good and we are going to see what happens and go as far as we can with it," Young said.

"We are happy to be together. Something happens when we are together. Obviously, it is not something we do very often. It has been 25 years or something since we toured. We are touring now because it seems to be the right time. It feels right. We slipped into it easily."