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Graham Nash is one of the most durable and prominent supporting figures in rock music history. As a harmony singer and sometime lead singer with the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, his voice is among the most familiar in two distinct eras and schools of rock music. He has since gone on to a productive if usually unexceptional career as a singer/songwriter, both as a solo artist and, more often, in collaboration with David Crosby. He has also reunited periodically with Crosby and Stephen Stills and, more rarely, with Neil Young, and the occasional project with the Hollies. Graham Nash’s musical future was determined on the day in 1947 when he met Allan Clarke, the new boy in his class at the Ordsall Primary School. They became friends, and it turned out that one of the interests that they shared was music. They both sang in choir, and discovered that their voices complimented each other very well. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as rock & roll at the time, and their spontaneous musical efforts together didn’t begin until the 1950s. In 1955, British popular music began to change ever so slowly as rock & roll started trickling in from America. The immediate impetus for Nash, however, lay in the boom in skiffle music, with Lonnie Donegan and his hit version of Leadbelly’s "Rock Island Line." As part of the boom in skiffle music that followed, in which hundreds of thousands of British teenagers began strumming guitars, plunking away at washtub basses, and scratching out percussion patterns with thimbles on washboards, Clark and Nash began playing and singing together as a skiffle duo called the Two Teens. A little later on, they were known as the Levins and, still later, after their acquisition of Guytone guitars, as the Guytones. At one point, after rock & roll was established and it seemed like sibling acts such as the Everly Brothers were the coming thing, they billed themselves as Ricky and Dane Young (Allan was Ricky, and Graham was Dane). Eventually they hooked up with a local Manchester band called the Fourtones. It was while they were playing a gig with this group that Clarke and Nash were approached by Eric Haydock, the bassist for a group called the Deltas, and invited to join his band. With a few line-up changes over the next few months, the Deltas became the nucleus for the Hollies, the new group featuring Clarke on lead vocals, Nash on rhythm guitar and vocals, Haydock on bass, Vic Steele on lead guitar, and Don Rathbone on drums. It was soon after the Hollies got together that Nash abandoned the rhythm guitar (though he made a good show of "playing" one—which either had no strings or, just as often, was unplugged—on stage). The group’s live sound didn’t require the second guitar, and Nash’s rhythmic strumming was made irrelevant by Hicks’s overpowering virtuosity. Curiously, this became a pattern that would repeat itself later on in Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, in which he would happily relinquish his instrumental responsiblities in favor of distinctly better players like Stephen Stills and Neil Young, preferring to concentrate on his real strengths. He continued to play on many of the Hollies’ recordings, which had a different sound from their live work, and certainly on those of his own, most personal songs, however, and Nash’s lack of contribution on guitar was more than made up for by his contribution as a singer (and, on stage, his ability to tease girls in the audience) from the very beginning and, slightly later, as a songwriter. The Hollies’ first gig took place at the Oasis Club in Manchester in December of 1962. Not long after, when the Beatles graduated from the Cavern Club, the Hollies took their place. One of the people who observed them at the Cavern was EMI staff producer Ron Richards, who invited the group to come to London for an audition for EMI’s Parlophone label. Before they played the audition, Vic Steele was out—of his own accord—and was replaced by Tony Hicks. Following the EMI audition in April of 1963, they released their debut single, a cover of the Coasters’ "(Ain’t That) Just like Me," backed with "Hey What’s Wrong with Me." Eventually it rose to number 25, a modest but respectable first showing behind the group’s driving beat and the unusually strong harmony singing, of which Nash’s voice was a key component. The group followed this up with another Coasters cover, "Searchin’," with the B-side, "Whole World Over," a Clarke-Nash original. This record did decidedly better, eventually peaking at number 12. It was just after the recording of "Searchin’" that drummer Don Rathbone was replaced by Hicks’s old Dolphins’ bandmate Bobby Elliott. The group’s next single, "Stay," a cover of the Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs American hit, rose to number eight in England. The Hollies’ fourth single, "Just One Look," made it to number two in England and brushed the American charts at number 98, their first tiny success in the United States. By this time, the Hollies were firmly established in the front rank of British beat boom bands, with a respectable record of success and a formidable stage act. Clarke’s, Nash’s, and Hicks’s voices were among the best in the business. The group’s fifth single, "We’re Through," was their first original A-side, written by Clarke, Hicks, and Nash under their new collective pseudonym on "L. Ransford." Their sixth single, "Yes I Will," released in January of 1965, reached number nine on the British charts. It was followed by their biggest tour of England yet, booked with the Rolling Stones. In April of that year, the Hollies made their first visit to the United States, a week-long engagement at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn on a bill with Little Richard, and an appearance on the NBC music showcase Hullabaloo. During the summer of 1965, the Clarke-Hicks-Nash songwriting team, working as "L. Ransford," had become strong enough to justify interest from Dick James, the most prominent publisher of rock & roll songs in England. They were signed to a contract by Dick James Music and given their own publishing imprint, Gralto Music (for GRaham, ALlan, and TOny). The Clarke-Hicks-Nash songwriting team was, at first exactly that, a genuine songwriting team and not one that largely existed on paper, such as Lennon-McCartney—at first, most of the songs might’ve been started by one person but were finished at least in part as collaborative efforts. This era seemed to herald a series of great original hits for the group, including "Stop Stop Stop," "Pay You Back with Interest," "On a Carousel," "Carries Anne," "King Midas in Reverse," "Dear Eloise," and "Jennifer Eccles," as well as numerous album tracks of extraordinary beauty. The years 1966 through 1968 saw Clarke, Hicks, and Nash become one of the strongest song writing teams in English rock, capable of holding their own against the likes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Their album For Certain Because reflected this prolifacy and quality, made up of all original songs. In many respects the Hollies’ equivalent to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, For Certain Because also displayed a new side of Nash’s songwriting in works such as "Clown," a far more personal song than he’d ever contributed to the group before, and one that was clearly marked as a "Nash" song in style, more than a "Hollies" song. Originals such as "Stop Stop Stop," which reached the number two spot in England and number seven in America, and "On a Carousel," which got to number four in England and number 11 in America, earned them the freedom to experiment with their songs, especially their album tracks. This coincided with the group availing themselves of the new forms of musical and extra-musical indulgences that London offered in the spring before the Summer of Love. The group, with Nash as the most enthusiastic participant, all took part in that psychedelic season, and it began to show. The Hollies decided to try their hand at psychedelic music in June of 1967 with a new song, largely written by Nash, called "King Midas In Reverse." The Hollies’ most elaborate recorded work to date, "Midas" was filled with all manner of sound effects and surprising timbres, and a festive mood that made it one of the most cheerful pieces of psychedelia ever issued. It took some persuading to get Ron Richards to release "Midas" as a single, and it failed to become a major hit, reaching only number 18 at home and number 51 in the States. This was a major disappointment for Nash, who liked the song so much that he still performed it as an acoustic number three years later, in his early ‘70s concerts with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Its failure also pointed to a problem with the group’s sound and image—and the audience that they’d cultivated—that would ultimately drive Nash from their ranks. The Hollies had a pop/rock image, and an audience that only desired Top 40 rock. The best and most ambitious work that Nash and the others were producing, especially on their albums, was going largely unheard. The year 1967 saw the band release not one, but two long-players, Evolution and Butterfly, that are genuine classics of the psychedelic era, commanding a place alongside the Beatles’ Revolver or Sgt. Pepper’s, and Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Nash made a major contribution as a singer and songwriter to both, but neither ever found an audience except among hardcore fans. Evolution, released in June of 1967, has its weird, spaced-out side, dressed up in the obligatory tinkling harpsichords and tremolo effects, as well as softly sung ditties ("Stop Right There") about druggy, romantic states of mind, as well as harder rock numbers like "Then The Heartaches Begin," "When Your Light’s Turned On," and "Have You Ever Loved Somebody." The band’s next album, Butterfly, was a venture into psychedelia on a more sophisticated level. Released in November of 1967, the record ran through a myriad of psychedelic, trippy, spacey, generally upbeat numbers. Nash’s "Postcard" was proof that less is more, a driving love song with a bunch of memorable hooks, gently harmonized and featuring a stripped down sound, little more than acoustic guitar, drums, and bass, with a few sound effects. "Butterfly" was the most sublimely beautiful record that Nash ever recorded with the Hollies, a song of lost love and fading beauty, embellished with flutes, a string section, and horns that recalled the opening section of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." Nash’s enthusiasm for the changes taking place in the music scene was matched by his appreciation of the druggy diversions of the era. Where he was eager to experiment with whatever was the chemical of fashion at the time, the other Hollies preferred a pint at the local pub. "It was one big party," remembered Clarke. "Graham was much more into all of it." Nash was also becoming closer to a couple of California-based musicians, David Crosby and Stephen Stills, whose acquaintance he’d made while the Hollies were touring America. He’d met Crosby at a Mamas and Papas recording session, and first sung with them in either Cass Elliot’s or Joni Mitchell’s home (nobody can quite agree), and the grouping of their voices seemed a natural. In July of 1968, he’d play with Stills and Crosby in a jam at the latter’s California home that month. The next month the three of them were in England, where Nash prepared his exit from the band. Nash also did demos of his songs with them that he would present to the Hollies. The Hollies had given him room for his own songs ever since "Fifi the Flea" back in 1965. During 1968, they’d tried to record "Marakesh Express" during sessions for a never-finished album. "Graham had reached a point," explained Clarke, "where he wanted separate credit for the songs that he wrote, instead of having everything credited to Clarke, Hicks, and Nash." Finally, in November of 1968, following the group’s return from a tour of Europe, it was announced that Graham Nash was leaving the Hollies. His final project with the band was an obligatory appearance at a benefit concert at the London Palladium in December of 1968. By the middle of that month, he was in New York cutting the original version of "You Don’t Have to Cry" with Stills and Crosby. As early as the summer of 1968, maneuvering had begun to get Nash out of his contract through the Hollies with Epic/Columbia Records. A trade was worked out by attorney David Geffen, wherein Nash was released from Columbia, while Richie Furay of the Buffalo Springfield was released from his Atlantic contract with the group, and each was traded to the other’s label. Nash moved to California and began rehearsing and recording with Crosby and Stills. The resulting self-titled album, with Nash singing, Crosby singing and strumming, and Stills and Dallas Taylor playing most of the instruments, was recorded in the spring of 1969 and released that June. It never placed higher than number 6 on the American charts, but Crosby, Stills, and Nash stayed on the charts for more than two years and sold more than two million copies. For Nash, as for Stills and Crosby and their eventual new partner Neil Young, the next few months saw the kind of rise to super stardom that most musicians only dream about. From relative obscurity in their prior bands, each one of them, and the collective four of them, were suddenly part of a rock hierarchy occupied by the likes of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton. Although Nash didn’t play any instrument on the debut CSN album (except guitar on "Marakesh Express" and "Lady of the Island"), his voice was everywhere, his high nasal tenor adding a distinctive twang to the group’s vocal sound, and occasionally singing a lead vocal part. "Marakesh Express," which the Hollies had never finished, finally saw the light of day as a CSN single that got to number 28 in America and 17 in England. These were modest showings, especially compared with the success of the group’s album, but "Marakesh Express" got more AM airplay (at a time when this still mattered) and, for the younger, less serious portion of the listening public, it became the song most identified with the group. The song was also performed by the group at their second (and most famous) gig, the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969, and later turned up on the album of the festival. The very fact that he had played Woodstock showed how far he had come from the Hollies. While one could’ve visualized Crosby’s former band the Byrds, or Stills’ and Young’s former group the Buffalo Springfield playing at Woodstock, it was impossible to imagine the Hollies there. Nash acquitted himself exceptionally well in a situation in which, except as a singer, he was something of a lightweight. As players, Stills and Young could run circles around Nash as well as Crosby, and Stills’, Young’s, and Crosby’s songs were more substantial and ambitious. Nash’s songs, by contrast, were the most accessible to the casual listener. Moreover, his voice couldn’t be ignored—Stills’ "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was CSN’s most famous song, partly due to its length and personal subject matter, but even there Nash’s harmony singing was one of the most prominent elements of the song. His "Lady of the Island" was one of the most popular tracks off the album. Their second album, Deja Vu, took 800 hours to finish, rose to number 1, and sold more than two million copies, and also yielded the Nash classic "Teach Your Children," which may be the most fondly remembered song off the album. For the next two years, Nash made good use of this newfound stardom. Even when Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young proved to be somewhat unstable with the group wearying of each other’s company the shine scarcely wore off of any of the members, as far as the public, the critics, or the record companies were concerned. Despite his best songs going to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, a Nash solo album was a necessity. Songs for Beginners, released in July of 1971, featured his own efforts at topicality, including "Chicago" and "Military Madness." The album got to number 15 in America and 13 in England, and "Chicago" which, in fairness, seemed a pale imitation of Neil Young’s "Ohio" got to number 35 in America. Even the most cynical of critics, however, appreciated the upbeat mood and radiant singing and playing on Songs for Beginners. The two most musically engaging numbers on Songs for Beginners embodied all of the strengths and weaknesses in Nash’s work. "I Used to Be a King" cast him as the sensitive, introspective singer-songwriter, indulging in some self-pity (a necessary component of the field) amid some exceptionally clever word-play that even managed to recall "King Midas in Reverse." The autobiographical/topical "Military Madness" was just as clever in the play of its lyrics, and sung with extraordinary passion, capturing an idealism that, in many ways, recalled the sensibilities of the early/mid-‘60s folk boom. A closer look at its content, however, also revealed a disconnection from the reality behind his subject (the necessity for the war raging in England during the early ‘40s) that, in later years and writing about other causes, would ultimately cost Nash a major part of his audience in the more cynical 1980s. During the early ‘70s, however, when youth was supposed to wear its idealism proudly and prominently, nobody noticed the inconsistencies in the songs. Where Stephen Stills was making a splash on radio and in concert with "Love the One You’re With," probably the last musical gasp of ‘60s hippie sexual hedonism, Nash was urging people to love one another on a different, probably healthier level. In December of 1971, Nash hooked up with David Crosby for a tour of Europe. Their team-up proved comfortable and productive, and in May of 1972 resulted in the release of the Graham Nash/David Crosby album for Atlantic. That record, coming out in the midst of the American presidential elections, at a time when Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young were all considered cutting-edge artists, and the Vietnam War was still raging, shot to number four on the U.S. charts. Nash’s catchy, topical "Immigration Man" one of the most pleasant sounding songs ever written about paranoia got to number 36. Later that year, Nash hooked up with Neil Young and his band the Stray Gators for a one-off single, "War Song," that got to number 61. It seemed as though Nash could do little wrong. Then, in early 1974, he released Wild Tales, his second solo album. This record was far more dour and downbeat than it predecessor, and was roundly criticized by reviewers. Part of the reason for its downbeat mood, lost on most reviewers as well as the public, was the fact that the album had been done in the wake of the murder of his girlfriend Amy Gosage. After Wild Tales, Nash devoted his efforts for the next five years to work with David Crosby as a duo, with periodic reunions of CSN and CSNY. By the end of the ‘70s, the partnership was on hiatus, exacerbated by Crosby’s on-going substance abuse problems, and Nash began re-emerging as a separate presence. His first solo album in five years, the environmentally focused Earth & Sky (Capitol) -- which had started out as a Crosby-Nash project—appeared in February of 1980. Released amid the disco and punk booms, it peaked at number 117 and received poor critical notices, despite some good singing and playing. Nash was more successful in his participation in various anti-nuclear events and benefits during this period, including a September 1979 featuring such luminaries as Bruce Springsteen that was filmed and taped for subsequent release. The No Nukes album featured Nash performing a stunning version of "Cathedral," a song he’d premiered on the last CSN reunion record, and also included Stephen Stills among its participants. In 1980, the CSN album Daylight Again was also the beneficiary of a Nash song, "Wasted on the Way," that became a modest chart hit. In 1981, amid all of his political activity, Nash got back together briefly with his former bandmates the Hollies for an appearance on British television’s Top of the Pops. This proved sufficiently comfortable for all concerned, so that two years later a formal reunion was arranged, with Nash rejoining the Hollies for an album, What Goes Around, recorded under the auspices of his contract with Atlantic Records, and a concert tour of the United States. Nash’s 1986 album Innocent Eyes (Atlantic) was a critical and commercial disaster, dominated by synthesizers and drum-machines that simply didn’t work on his songs. He has since toured with Crosby, and appeared and recorded with CSN and CSNY, who will always have an audience, especially when Neil Young is with them. He also got back with the Hollies in 1995 for another one-off project, a recording of Buddy Holly’s "Peggy Sue Got Married" over Holly’s own vocal track for a tribute album. Nash’s contributions, other than as a singer, to the Hollies and CSN (& Y) were important but not essential to the success of either group. The songs on which he served as principal writer for the Hollies were good but generally not among their very biggest hits, and CSN needed "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" or "Triad" more than it did "Marakesh Express" or "Lady of the Island" to sell two million copies of their debut album, not that either of those hurt in any way. On a purely personal level, however, he was essential to the image and accessibility of CSNY, having the most genial and outgoing musical persona, with none of the personal demons that have afflicted David Crosby. Indeed, Crosby gives Nash much credit for his successful battle against drug addiction. In many ways, he has served the same function in the lingering memory of the supergroup quartet that both George and Ringo served in the Beatles in the early days after their break-up. Like George, he showed himself a songwriter and singer-guitarist capable of creating an unexpectedly fine album amid some heavyweight competition (and Songs for Beginners is arguably superior to any of Stephen Stills’ solo albums); and, like Ringo, Nash has little enough ego that he always seems ready to work with the others whenever they decide among themselves to get together and perform. Additionally, Nash’s selflessness has served the group and its fans well on a practical level. As co-producer of the Crosby, Stills & Nash boxed set, he could have thrown in an extra song or two or three of his own, and everyone would have understood and accepted it. Instead, he was so evenhanded in his selection of tracks, that his songwriting contribution is, if anything, slightly less well represented than it might otherwise have been. Bruce Eder
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This biography has been copied from the All Music Guide web site. No alterations have been made.
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