“I knew that I would have to spend years with these guys” — Graham Nash

With the release of Reflections, a triple-CD anthology of music ranging from the ridiculously famous to the never-before-released, Graham Nash is a satisfied man.

“I’ve had an incredible life,” says the 66-year-old singer, songwriter and longtime least-likely-to-implode member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. “I’m probably one of the luckiest people you’ll ever know. And the soundtrack to that life is on this box set.”

At 64 tracks, Reflections spans over 40 years of music — from The Hollies, started in 1963 by Nash and his boyhood chum Allan Clarke, to the big Crosby, Stills & Nash (and occasionally Young) tunes, the duo work with David Crosby, and from Nash’s stop-and-start solo career.

Over the years, Nash has become the official keeper of the key to the vast CSNY archive; he’s currently assembling five other CD projects, including a Stephen Stills box set, a Crosby, Stills & Nash demo collection and — at the specific request of Neil Young — a live album from CSNY’s 1974 “reunion” tour.

Professionally and personally, it’s been quite the tug-of-war, with Nash often the referee in a game of cocaine-fueled cross-purposes and bullying self-interest.

“Money, stardom and ego are a deadly combination if not handled well,” he says, and he should know.
Older and wiser — well, certainly older — Crosby, Stills and Nash have just begun a series of studio sessions for their first album in 15 years. Teaming with ace producer Rick Rubin, they’re working on an album of songs from their favorite songwriters. It’s an all-acoustic project, with the focus back where it was in the beginning — on the amazing harmonic blend of their three voices.

They made a wish list of 20 or 30 songs. “My criteria was this: ‘It has to have a great melody, and it has to say something great’,” Nash explains. “And most importantly, we have to own that song — we have to make it feel like we’d written it, and that’s us singing it.”

 For this interview, we told Nash we wanted to avoid re-hashing stuff everybody knows already — about Woodstock and “Wooden Ships,” pot-smoking and politics — and pull questions from somewhere deeper. Things the serious fan might have always wondered about.

“Go ahead,” he responded. “Ask whatever the f**k you want.”

So we did.

I’ve always wondered about the culture shock that you, a hard-working British pop star, must have experienced when you fell in with those California hippie musicians.

Graham Nash: The Hollies were five kids from the North of England who managed to escape doing what their dad did, and what their grandfather did. Which was expected of us: ‘Go down to the mine, or go to the mill — if it was good enough for your dad, it’s good enough for you, lad.’ Music was the escape mechanism. We were in a certain kind of culture there.

When we moved to London and started making records — hit records — that was another, incredible, culture. By the time I got to the end of my time with The Hollies, when they refused to record some of my songs, and I’d kind of lost my grip on the reins of that horse, I’d met Cass Elliot, and she’d introduced me to Crosby. He’d been in England with the Byrds. The promoter there was touting them as ‘America’s Answer to the Beatles,’ which pissed off a lot of people in England, so it was kind of a funky tour.

But Crosby came and stayed with me for a while during that tour.

Valentine’s Day, 1968: When The Hollies played L.A.’s famous Whisky A Go-Go, Crosby — at Cass’ urging — brought his new best friend, Stills. “We kind of blew a lot of people away; we were f**king great,” Nash remembers.

Crosby had just been sacked from The Byrds, and Stills knew Buffalo Springfield’s time was short — although there were some touring commitments to honor, Neil Young wanted a solo career and had already served notice. So together they’d made some demos, calling themselves The Frozen Noses (that’s a cocaine reference, folks, and a harbinger of things to come) and trying to make something happen.

Nash: I fell in love with Stephen and David’s music, and with them as people, because they were free and sunny, and devoid of all the ‘Well, if you don’t know John and Paul, yer fookin’ no one, are ya?’ kind of vibe that was present in England at the time.

They were working together, but I’m not sure they had a plan. I think they felt instinctively that there was something missing. And when they came and saw The Hollies live, they realized that the missing part of the plan was me. And I think that Cass Elliot, God bless her soul, had instinctively realized, vocally, what that sound would be. She realized that what David and Stephen were doing was good, but it could be better.

The Hollies had tried a bit of string-soaked pyschedelia, with Nash’s “King Midas in Reverse,” and the single had flopped. One after another, his next songs — “Lady of the Island,” “Right Between the Eyes,” “Sleep Song” and even “Marrakesh Express” — were deemed “too weird” for The Hollies to record.

Nash: I was starting to doubt myself as a writer. I thought ‘Well, f**k, I guess they’re not that great.’ That’s when Crosby came along and said ‘No, no, no, no, wait a second. Let’s get real here. These are really fine songs. Don’t be put off, just keep writing.’ And in a way, he saved my life.

The Hollies had found a formula for writing pop songs. They didn’t want to change. They were great pop songs, but they weren’t very deep.

And then I see David and Stephen, who are writing “Long Time Gone,” “Guinevere” and “For What it’s Worth” and “Helplessly Hoping,” and I’m going ‘Holy shit! Now I get it.’

They just reinforced the feeling I got when I started listening to Bob Dylan and later Beatles stuff. There was more to making music than just getting a hit record. There was information, and emotions, to impart. There were feelings to be discussed. You could put your heart into a song, and turn it into a fine record.

It’s a famous story. At Cass’ house (or maybe it was Joni Mitchell’s) The Frozen Noses were impressing everybody, running through Stills’ new tune “You Don’t Have to Cry.” Nash listened carefully, then asked them to sing it again, and on the third go-round added a high harmony… and just like that, organically, a brilliant new sound was born.

Nash: I swear to God, in the middle of singing “You Don’t Have to Cry,” we all had to stop and start laughing. Because it was instant! That CSN sound happened instantly. Without any rehearsal or working on it for months. It happened within the space of half a song.

So I knew that I would have to spend years with these guys. I heard that sound. I wanted that sound. It was different that anything I’d heard before, and The Hollies and the Springfield and The Byrds were good harmony bands. But this was different.

So the decision to leave my home, and my first wife (we were getting divorced at the time), and my bank account and my band, it was a no-brainer for me. I knew in my soul that this could make incredible music.

Nash’s sprightly “Marrakesh Express” was the first single released from Crosby, Stills & Nash — rejected by The Hollies, it was the world’s introduction to the new trio’s acoustic-based, harmony-intensive hippie music. The album sold a bajillion copies, turned FM radio on its electronic ear, won a Grammy and inadvertently helped the “countercultural revolution” start turning a profit.

And you know the rest.

Were you the one who didn’t want to add Neil Young to Crosby, Stills & Nash?

Nash: I was. We had just discovered this vocal sound, and just made this great record. Obviously, we would have to go out and play it live, and although David and I are very decent rhythm guitar players, Stephen was used to being challenged by another lead guitarist because he’d spent years with the Springfield. After many discussions, after it was decided that Neil should be invited to join, I didn’t like the idea at first because I didn’t want to disturb that vocal sound. We were intimately linked, and we knew where we had to go with any particular piece of music. And that would all have to change with the addition of another voice.

I loved Neil; when The Hollies toured Canada, I’d brought a small record player with me, and the Buffalo Springfield Again album. I’d constantly play “Expecting to Fly” — it was one of the best records I’d ever heard in my life. I loved his voice, but I didn’t know how it would fit in with this three-part that was so strong in my soul.

And so I went to breakfast with Neil on Bleecker Street in Manhattan. And I swear to God, after that breakfast I’d have made him president. The guy was incredibly funny and very, very dry. I already knew his songwriting ability and sensibility. And after that, there was no doubt that he should join us.

Next came Woodstock, (the song) “Woodstock,” Big Sur, Déjà vu and Nash’s sunny singalong “Teach Your Children.” They were rock royalty; fans and the music press hung on their every word (they had become, in effect, “America’s Answer to the Beatles”).

The “Teach Your Children/Carry On” single was climbing the charts in June 1970 when CSNY rush-released “Ohio,” Young’s spontaneously written and recorded reaction to the murder of four Kent State students by National Guardsmen.

“It was on the street 12 days after it was recorded,” Nash says proudly. “We killed our own single. We didn’t give a f**k. We love upsetting apple carts.”