Our Forgotten Hits Buddy
Harvey Kubernik just ran a new piece (along with some archived interview
material) on Graham Nash, long one of our favorite members of Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young, The Hollies and, of course, his solo career.
Harvey’s piece follows … but
sure to check out our reviews of
Graham Nash’s autobiography
…
His live concert at The
Arcada Theatre in 2015 …
And our review of the
EXCELLENT Hollies documentary film, “Look Through Any Window” … all of which
are prominently mentioned in Harvey’s piece …
After our review initially
ran, we heard from David Peck, who directed this extraordinary film ...
Hello Kent,
David Peck here, Director of the Hollies film you so kindly raved about.
David Peck here, Director of the Hollies film you so kindly raved about.
It's very nice when so
much hard work is put in that a writer such as yourself takes the time to
really watch it and really review it. It's very obvious that you watched every
frame and I truly thank you for that. When I first read your review
I was walking with my six year old daughter and I reacted with a very loud
YEAH! and then, after she asked me why I was so happy, I had to explain how
good it feels to have someone compliment your work. I guess it's a good thing
that it was a positive review cause I would have hated to have to explain what
the word "shit" meant.
All the best,
David Peck
All the best,
David Peck
President
Reelin' In The Years Productions
Reelin' In The Years Productions
It's a stellar piece,
David ... everyone connected should be very proud of the results. (Love
your "oh shit" comment, by the way!!! lol) Not to worry
here ... we absolutely LOVED it ... and please let us know as new titles are
being released so we can help to spread the word. (With your collections
featuring Gerry and the Pacemakers, Dusty Springfield, Herman's Hermits and The
Hollies already in our collection, you can tell that we're VERY big fans of
this series!!!) kk
And now … from Harvey
Kubernik …
GOLDENVOICE
PRESENTS AN INTIMATE EVENING OF SONGS AND STORIES WITH GRAHAM NASH - APPEARING IN
LOS ANGELES ON OCTOBER 11, 2018
By Harvey
Kubernik ©2018
[Published September 18, 2018 | by cavehollywood]
Singer
/ songwriter / photographer / author and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
inductee Graham Nash will be returning to downtown Los Angeles on
Thursday, October 11th, for his intimate song and story tour
at The Theater Ace Hotel. Doors open at 7:00 pm, show starts at 8:30 pm.
Guitarist
/ vocalist Shayne Fontayne and keyboardist / vocals Todd Caldwell join Nash in
the stage lineup.
Graham
selected the concert repertoire from his catalog which incorporates tunes from
the Hollies, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and his solo career.
The
tour debuted in his hometown of Salford, England earlier this summer.
Rapt
audiences have been devouring musical treats from his stellar songbook: “Wasted
on the Way,” “Bus Stop,” “King Midas in Reverse,” “I Used
to Be a King,” “Sleep Song,” “Myself at Last,” “Military
Madness,” “Wind on the Water,” “Marrakesh Express,” a medley
of “On a Carousel / Carrie-Anne,” “Immigration Man,” and a cover
of the Beatles’ “Day in the Life.”
Graham
Nash was born in the seacoast town of Blackpool, England, and raised near
Manchester.
Overlapping
his seventies life with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Nash’s solo career
began with Songs For Beginners (1971), whose “Chicago / We Can Change the
World” and “Military Madness” were fueled by the trial of the
Chicago Eight, and the ongoing Vietnam war. Songs from that LP have remained in
Nash’s concert appearances for years including “I Used to Be a King” and
“Simple Man.”
In
2009, Nash’s own recording journey was issued in the three-CD retrospective box
set Reflections.
2011
marked the DVD documentary release, The Hollies: Look Through Any Window
1963-1975 which featured live performances, vintage television appearances,
and new interviews with the group.
In
September 2013, Nash published his autobiography Wild Tales: A Rock &
Roll Life by Crown / Archetype. The book landed him on The New York
Times Best Sellers list and was issued in paperback in late 2014.
In
recognition for his contributions as a musician and philanthropist, Nash was
appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen
Elizabeth.
Graham
Nash is a recent recipient of the Americana Music Association’s Spirit of
Americana: Free Speech in Music Award that was held at the group’s annual award
show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium.
During
2009 and 2013 I conducted interviews with Graham Nash about musical endeavors
with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Wild Tales, and his songwriting
career.
Q: In 1966 you wrote “Marrakesh
Express” for the Hollies. And another of your compositions, “King Midas
in Reverse” was penned initially for the Hollies. And you still do these
songs in your shows.
A: I knew “King Midas”
was a good choice. It works. You know, the truth is, a song has got to live if
I am sittin’ you down in the kitchen and playing it to you on one acoustic
guitar. It has to live.
Photo by Henry Diltz
Q: By 1969 you were
exiting out of the Hollies and embarking on a new expedition with David Crosby
and Stephen Stills.
A: I think that my
time with the Hollies was done. And I knew that instinctively. That was a
little tense. I left them on December 8, 1968. On December 10th, I
was in Los Angeles with David (Crosby) and Stephen (Stills). I end up at Cass
Elliot’s house. Cass’ house was kind of a central point for a huge amount of
very bright and very colorful people. Basically, I was hanging out with David,
Stephen and Cass. I didn’t know many people. I knew Henry Diltz, since he took
photos of the Hollies in 1966.
Q: How did it feel
being the only Brit in a group with two Americans.
A: I felt pretty good
about it. Because, you know, I have a decent sense of humor and I have a decent
understanding of how the universe works. And I was faced by these two, and they
really were Americans.
Crosby
was so fucking American. American attitudes. American ego. And Stephen was the
same. I admire Stephen and love him dearly, but Crosby is a different animal on
this planet. And I recognized it from the very first moment I ever met him, which,
of course, was through Cass. I was with two real Yanks. Absolutely. I was with
two Americans of doom.
I
felt fantastic. I know that because of the British invasion and what British
music was doing to the American scene, and how admired British groups were by
American groups, I felt pretty confident in myself. You know, I happen to
believe, and this is not ego talking, I’m pretty good at what I do.
You
gotta understand ... David, Stephen and I came from harmony bands. I mean, we
were harmony freaks. So although, as I’ve said before, CS&N never had any
claim on any of the notes that we sang. It’s just when that sound happened it
was instantly recognized by me, David and Stephen as something stunning.
Q: Your first encounter
with Neil Young.
A: When we finished the
CS&N album we realized that we would have to go out and play live. We knew
it was going to be a hit when we walked out of the studio and gave the two-track
to [Atlantic Records] Ahmet Ertegun. We knew it was going to be a smash. We
just knew. Ahmet got it immediately. He listened to that music and said, ‘Ah
fuck … I want.’ But we realized we would have to go out and play live. OK.
So,
we’re talking about this and, Stephen says, ‘Man, I really need to spark off
somebody. You and David are pretty good rhythm guitar players but man, I wish
we had another … somebody … maybe an organ player that I can jam with and
solo.’ We talked with Stevie Winwood. We talked with Van Dyke Parks. We needed
somebody just to keep Stephen on his game and competitive and on fire.
And
I think basically that Stephen and Ahmet came up with the idea of or maybe it
was Ahmet to Stephen, was getting Neil on board.
I
was the only one reluctant to bring Neil into the band. And the reason was that
we had spent the last few months making this incredible record and developing
this beautiful harmonic sound, right. But Neil wanted to be more than a
musician for the road show. I know who Neil Young is.
One
of my favorite songs is ‘Expecting to Fly’ from Buffalo Springfield that
he did with [arranger / producer / keyboardist] Jack Nitzsche. Listen to it.
But
I said ‘I can’t commit to this until I meet Neil. I gotta sit down with this
cat. I wanna know who he is. I wanna know if I can go on the road with him. I
wanna know if I want him to be a part of my life.’ And, that made sense to
them.
So,
at a coffee shop on Bleeker Street in New York I went and had breakfast with
Neil. After that breakfast I would have made him the President of Canada.
When we talked about this band, Neil replied, ‘Well, have you ever seen
me and Stephen play together?’
He
was incredibly funny. He had an incredibly dry sense of humor. He always had a
bunch of songs that I loved. And at the end of that breakfast we walked down to
the Village Gate where we were rehearsing and I said, ‘OK.’
It
was obvious that this man was as serious as a heart attack about his music. It
was obvious by hanging out with him that he was destined for great things. And
it was obvious by hanging out with him that he could put a fire under Stephen
that we needed.
We
rehearsed for the first tour on the Warner Bros set of They Shoot Horses,
Don’t They in Burbank. So, it was pretty obvious from the sounds I was
listening and the way that Neil was affecting Stephen that this would be a
really great thing.
Q: There is CS&N and
then there is CSN&Y.
A: It was a different
band when Neil joined. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is a completely different
band than CS&N. And not a lot of people understand that. They think it’s
just an added voice. But it’s not. It’s an added attitude. Neil brings a
sharper edge. I was gonna say a darker feeling but I don‘t mean that in a
negative way. He brings this edge to us that we don’t have. And, of course, you
have to take into account his ability to play lead guitar against and with
Stephen.
Q: As your book
documents and as we look at the legacy and mythology of CSN&Y, I know as a
child your family in England in the forties were bombed by the Germans in World
War II. So I guess that prepared you for a life and strife in rock ‘n’ roll,
let alone dealing with the personalities that make up CSN&Y. Band tensions,
politics, and Neil Young’s isolationist stance.
What
is the secret of surviving within this band? On stage and on recordings it’s
harmonious. But you’ve taken some real silly crap dealing with these
self-centered musicians and careerists.
A: That’s right. And so
what. You know, it’s whatever it is. I let people be who the fuck they want to
be. And Neil sometimes is a difficult man to deal with. And sometimes he’s a
very easy man to deal with. But I respect him completely.
It
doesn’t matter what we’re going through. We all realize that the most important
part of our relationship is the music. And it is the music that drowns out all
the other shit.
We
knew we had the magic. We’ve always known. We’ve always know our music speaks
to people’s hearts. We’ve always known it’s been as real as possible. We’ve
always known that we’ve taken incredible chances. We’ve always known that we do
things that are not normal for a band.
I
mean, a great example is my song ‘Teach Your Children’ going up in the
top twenty and Ahmet Ertegun telling me I was ‘going to have a number one hit.’
Then
there’s the killing of four students (shot by National Guardsman) at Kent State
(in Ohio). And we do Neil’s song ‘Ohio.’ And we think America
killing its children is more important than us having another hit record. And
so I told Ahmet to pull ‘Teach Your Children,’ and put ‘Ohio’
out. We decided on ‘Find the Cost of Freedom’ as the B-Side.
We’ve
always known that we’ve been completely in control. Once you sell millions of
pieces of fuckin’ plastic you have control.
I
say in my book that in the early days of recording with the Hollies we weren’t
allowed to even touch the board. If I wanted more bass I’d have to ask Ron
Richards (producer) who then would have to ask Peter Bown (engineer) to bring
up the bass. After we’d had hit records, that all changed. Because they began
to realize that these guys who were not wearing white lab coats really knew
what they were doing. And we never lost the ability to do what we do. We always
wanted to be winners and not victims.
Q: I seem to remember
when you were rehearsing for the CSN&Y 1974 tour at Neil Young’s Broken
Arrow ranch in Northern California you wanted to include “When You Dance I Can
Really Love” from Neil’s After The Gold Rush album in the set.
A: I wanted to open with
that song! There are lots of Neil Young songs I want to do. I want to do ‘Expecting
to Fly.’ Are you kidding! I brought it up in the CSN&Y 2006 tour. ‘Can
we do ‘Expecting to Fly?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Ahhh. I don’t
think you can sing the high part.’ And I thought, ‘You fuck! You know damn well
that if I’m asking you to do it I have my fuckin’ part down.’
Q: Can you give me a
memory of the Woodstock 1969 Music and Arts Festival? The 50th anniversary is
in August, 2019.
A: I could never
figure out why Neil didn’t want to be a part of the Woodstock film. My memory
of Woodstock was that it wasn’t that good. Except I was just with (engineer / producer)
Eddie Kramer, who has done the 5.1 mix for a Woodstock record. I listened to ‘Marrakesh
Express’ and it was quite good.
Woodstock.
The rain, and the mud, and the getting together of a half a million people that
thought the same way that we did.
Landing
in the helicopter that had a couple of problems. Hanging out backstage in John
Sebastian’s tent, and, of course, John breaking out his best stash, and then
realizing that nobody there has ever seen our band. And this is the Grateful
Dead, Richie Havens, The Band, John Sebastian, Santana. None of them had ever
seen us. They loved the record and they were all going, ‘Well, you know,
fuckin’ show us. Shit or get off.’
Q: I love “Sea of
Madness” on the subsequent Woodstock soundtrack, even though it was culled
from a CSN&Y 1970 New York concert.
On
the late 1969 and ’70 CSN&Y tours the group would play political-themed
songs: “Chicago - We Can Change the World,” “Ohio,” “Military
Madness,” and “Long Time Gone,” along with many new tunes. Do the
older songs somehow resonate even deeper today because more history is attached
to them?
A: That’s because the
history has never changed. You could take the word Vietnam War and replace it
with Afghanistan and IRAQ. You can take a song like ‘Great Concern,’
that I wrote about Washington during the Watergate hearings. It’s the same
thing going on now. History has not changed.
We
have refused to learn. Holy shit, with the Afghanistan war. If fuckin’
Genghis Kahn and the British and the Russians can’t fuckin’ defeat this
country, who the fuck can say that America can do it? It was absurd. It was
insane. And it’s been proven to be insane. Humanity still doesn’t learn.
Q: I always felt some of
your songs like “Military Madness” were supposed to help us end wars or,
at the very least, educate people about the war game. You know the experience
of being bombed during World War II and then seeing your neighborhood reduced
to rubble. War is still happening globally.
A: I know. It’s very
depressing. What’s going on is what was always going on. This world is
controlled by the media and the businessmen that make profit from war. It’s the
same fuckin’ story. It’s awful and it’s criminal.
photo by Henry Diltz
Q: What is it like to
re-visit songs on recordings four and five decades after they were first cut? I
know how popular the CSN&Y catalog is and recordings are downloaded. Many
are still relevant. What have these songs become to you right now?
A: It’s the same
thing, kid. If I can sing you a song with my guitar and piano and knock you on
your ass, it’s a great song. And it doesn’t matter how many people you are
playing it for. The essence of the song and what the song says still lives to
this day.
Ironically,
Graham Nash recently told the same “breakfast meeting” Neil Young story to
Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights Radio Program.
Graham Nash recalled opposing Neil
Young’s addition to Crosby, Stills and Nash – and how a
breakfast meeting changed his mind.
The incident took
place after the 1968 release of the trio’s self-titled debut album, as they considered the
challenges of touring.
“We knew exactly what
we had,” Nash told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio
show. “We knew it was unique, we knew it was different, we knew the vocal blend
was fabulous – that nobody had heard anything like that – and we knew the songs
were fine. When you make a record, the obvious thing to do is go on the road to
promote the record and to get more experience. We realized that Stephen [Stills] really needed somebody to
play against, as a lead guitar player, because he’d been used to playing
against Neil in Buffalo Springfield, conversing with Neil
via their electric guitars.”
Nash admitted
that both he and David Crosby were aware that they “weren’t
strong enough” as guitarists to deliver what Stills needed.
However, he wasn’t
impressed when Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun suggested Young was their
man.
“I’m not very happy
about this,” he remembered thinking. “I didn’t think that we should mess around
with the vocal blend that we’d created. But
I recognized that Stephen needed somebody to play off, so I decided one day on
Bleecker Street in New York City to go to breakfast with Neil Young.”
That was the moment
that changed everything. “After that breakfast I would have made him president,
even though he’s Canadian,” Nash laughed. “He was so funny and so direct and so
refreshing that after that breakfast with Neil, he had my vote.”
Be sure to listen to Ultimate
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