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GRAHAM NASH BORN 2/2/1942 – TIMH

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Whoa Nellie's picture
February 2, 2016 at 8:29am
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Happy 74th birthday to folk-rock tenor and songwriter Graham Nash, OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). Nash was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, a resort town on England’s west coast and the Irish Sea. The family had been re-located there for safety during WWII. When it was over, the family moved back to Salford, where Graham grew up. The Nashes were a lower class, blue-collar family. Still, his mum nurtured his passion for music, hoping he could live out her dream of singing on the world’s great stages. He certainly did, and took her along in a way, scattering her ashes on the boards at Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and elsewhere.

In his late teens, Graham and pal, Allan Clarke, formed the successful pop group, the Hollies. The group had a string of hit records and were touring the US in 1966 when Graham met David Crosby and Stephen Stills. He was with the Hollies on a second US tour in 1968 when mutual friend Mama Cass Elliott pulled the three together at Joni Mitchell’s home in Laurel Canyon. Cass was the acknowledged Earth Mother of the artists’ enclave, also home to Frank Zappa, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Jim Morrison. Nash was dazzled by the US, in general, and this scene in California, in particular. So, it didn’t take much to convince him to quit the Hollies and join in a trio with Crosby and Stills. Pretty soon, they added a fourth guy who also crashed in the canyon, Neil Young.

Graham went a little further than that, though. He left his wife back in England and moved in with Joni Mitchell, with whom he was hopelessly in love. His song “Our House” is an homage to their home in Laurel Canyon.

CSN and CSN&Y took off like a rocket. Nash is said to have been the group’s stabilizing influence, keeping the peace between Stills’ big talent/big ego personality, Crosby’s drug-fueled unpredictability and Young’s intense, mercurial ways. The group has famously broken up and re-united several times over the years but, like the Hollies, has always been characterized by beautiful harmonies with Graham’s tenor on the high end.

During the various group vacations from each other, Graham could still be found performing as a duet with “Cros”. They were also part of the Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra (oft-mentioned in TIMH), the on-and-off jam band made up of members of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was actually PER&RO that played on Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire. In 2006, Crosby and Nash sang on David Gilmour’s On An Island album and its subsequent tour.

Credited with having written over 200 songs, Graham Nash was inducted in the rock and roll HOF with CSN in 1997, and with the Hollies in 2010. He is also an accomplished photographer.

 

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