Graham Nash On His 10 Greatest Songs

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“It’s going to be a really good evening of songs and stories,” says Graham Nash of his current live show, which hits the UK on October 4. “I’ve got three people with me that are half my age, so I have to bring my A-game every night. There’s Todd Caldwell, who’s the organ player for the CSN band, on all keyboards. Adam Minkoff, who plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass and sings – sometimes at the same time. And Zach Djanikian, who plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, drums, bass, mandolin and tenor sax. They’re kicking me in the ass every single night. And both Adam and Zach sing like angels. It might be the last time that people will get to hear a lot of these CSN songs that they love. I mean, I’m not going anywhere, but I am 83.”

Of his old band, Nash also reveals that there’s a new CSN documentary in the works: “It’ll be out in about a year and it’s being made by Bob Zemeckis, who did Forrest Gump. Right now it’s three hours long. And my friend Joel Bernstein – who is not only a great photographer, but was the guitar tech for Dylan, Neil, Joni, Prince and Tom Petty – found 33 CSN songs that have never been released before. So we’re putting those together to be released with the movie.”

In the meantime, as a taster of what to expect on his current tour, Nash talks Uncut through ten of his best songs…

“Hey, those guys are the crazy ones!”

MARRAKESH EXPRESS

CSN, CROSBY, STILLS & NASH (1969)

“This is one that I always play. I’ve got about six or seven of those kinds of songs that people really expect to hear. They obviously want to hear things like ‘Teach Your Children’, ‘Our House’, ‘Military Madness’ and ‘Chicago.’ Somewhere in the bowels of EMI, down at Abbey Road, there’s a version of The Hollies doing ‘Marrakesh Express’. It wasn’t very good in my opinion. The Hollies didn’t really like it. And they weren’t that happy that I’d written ‘King Midas In Reverse’ either. I wrote both of them while we were in Split in Yugoslavia. Crosby was actually there the very last time I played with The Hollies, which was on 8 December 1968. He was saying to me: ‘Hey, those guys are the crazy ones! “Marrakesh Express” is a really decent song. Don’t let them tell you different.’ The worst thing you can do to an artist is give them self-doubt. We have enough of it within ourselves. But Crosby was very encouraging about that particular song. I was coming to the end of my time with The Hollies, and I knew it. The original version of ‘Marrakesh Express’ needed a train through there, because it’s obviously about a train journey. And that’s what Stephen did so brilliantly with his overdubbed electric guitars with CSN.”

“Jerry Garcia bought his pedal steel..”

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

CSNY, Déjà Vu (1970)

“I was playing with The Hollies in Leeds, staying in the Oulton Grove Motel, I think, when I started writing ‘Teach Your Children’. But I didn’t finish it until later. I had a collection of paper images of photographs that I’d collected, and I’d given about 30 of them to a museum to display. And when I went to see what they’d done – you have to really be careful, because pictures talk to each other, they have to relate – I saw a picture of my son, Jackson, that I’d shot when he was four years old, next to Arnold Newman’s image of Krupp. The Krupp family made most of the bullets and bombs and armaments for both World Wars. And I realised at that point that if we didn’t teach our children a better way, than humanity itself was in danger. That’s when I finished the song. 

“We were doing Déjà Vu up at Wally Heider’s studios in San Francisco, and I’d written this pretty simple tune. It was just me and Stephen on acoustic guitar, and he overdubbed the bass. Dallas Taylor, our drummer, was on tambourine. When we got to what was supposed to be a solo, both Stephen and Neil said: ‘Y’know what? We’ve done a lot of guitars on this record. Is there anything else we can do that’s a little different?’ Crosby said, ‘Hey, I heard that Jerry Garcia has been learning to play pedal steel.’ Jerry and the Jefferson Airplane just happened to be making music in the studios next to us. So I made a rough two-track of ‘Teach Your Children’ and I said to Crosby: ‘Take it into the Grateful Dead’s studio and play it for Jerry. And if he likes it, maybe he’ll play pedal steel.’ Well, he liked it, and brought his pedal steel and amp into our studio. I hit the red light, played him the song and he just started playing. When he got to the end, I said, ‘Jerry, that was unbelievably great!’ He said, ‘Well, y’know, I made a couple of mistakes. Can I do a second take?’ And I said, ‘You’re Jerry Garcia. You can do as many bloody takes as you want. But you’re finding your way through a song you’ve heard once, and it was magic.’ We did use a second take to change a couple of mistakes that he thought he’d made, but that was basically it. That’s why I gave him the Fender Strat that later became the Alligator guitar.”

“Joni had found a vase…”

OUR HOUSE

CSNY, Déjà Vu (1970)

“When I wrote ‘Our House’, out of love for Joni, I knew that it would apply to a lot of people. I’m just the same as everybody else. I mean, who doesn’t love their house? Who doesn’t love their home? It’s a pretty simple tune, I think it took me about an hour to write. It was an incredibly cold day and Joni had found a vase that she wanted to buy. So we had the vase and we drove to our home in Laurel Canyon, went through the front door and I said, ‘Hey Joni, why don’t I light a fire and you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought?’ Well, I’m a musician. That’s all I needed for a lyric.”

“I wrote it at the Chateau Marmont…”

I USED TO BE A KING

Songs For Beginners (1971)

“This is about the king I used to be in ‘King Midas In Reverse’. Joni and I had just broken up and I wrote it at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. I think of Joan every time I sing it on stage. It was the same with ‘Simple Man’ – I wanted her to know that ‘I just want to hold you, I don’t want to hold you down.’ And ‘I Used To Be A King’ is very much like that too. I actually wrote ‘Simple Man’ in New York City when CSNY was doing the Fillmore East. I’d written the song that morning, so I wanted to perform it that night. Then when I start singing it, I look up and there’s Joni sitting in the third row. It’s like, ‘Fuck! What can I do?’ Does she still talk to me about the songs I’ve written about us? Absolutely.”

“This came out fast”

BETTER DAYS

Songs For Beginners (1971)

“This came out fast. I was actually living with Rita Coolidge at the time, and Rita played piano on it. Do you know that she also played and wrote, that beautiful piano part on ‘Layla’? Her boyfriend at the time, Jimmy Gordon, said that he wrote it, but he actually didn’t. It was Rita. I play ‘Better Days’ every single night, with Zach Djanikian on tenor sax. Was that song partly directed at Stephen as well? Yes, it definitely was. It was about what had happened between Stephen and Rita and I. I also wrote ‘Wounded Bird’ for Stephen, about some relationship problems he had with Judy Collins.”

“Look at the war between Russia and Ukraine”

MILITARY MADNESS

Songs For Beginners (1971)

“I wrote this about my dad going off to World War Two, but it was recorded while the war in Vietnam was happening. Obviously I’ve got over 50 years of hindsight to analyse what was popular about particular songs of mine. But I never really realised then how long they would remain relevant. ‘Military Madness’ – look at the war that’s going on between Russia and Ukraine, and with the Israelis in Gaza, which, in my own personal opinion, is a genocide against the Palestinian people. I wrote ‘Chicago’ around the same time. Wavy Gravy, whose name was actually Hugh Romney, called me one day and said: ‘Can CSNY come to Chicago and do a concert and give the proceeds to the Chicago Eight?’ Crosby and I were able to go, but Stephen and Neil, unfortunately, couldn’t make it. So I wrote ‘Chicago’ for Stephen and Neil.”

“I was stopped at the border with Crosby…”

IMMIGRATION MAN

Graham Nash David Crosby (1972)

“On the way back from a tour with Crosby, I was stopped at the Canadian border in Vancouver on the way back to California. The customs official started giving me a paper chase, as I say in the song. I mean, why choose me to stop? I’ve got an angelic face [laughing]. It must have been pure bad luck. I mean, holy shit, he let Crosby in first! But he did give me a very hard time, and it pissed me off so badly that I started working on ‘Immigration Man’ as soon as I got home. But the thing with ‘Immigration Man’, and, as I said, stuff like ‘Military Madness’, is that those songs are still incredibly relevant. The themes of ‘Immigration Man’ made the front cover of The New York Times the other day.”

“It turned out to be CSN’s biggest hit…”

JUST A SONG BEFORE I GO

CSN, CSN (1977)

“I wrote this in less than an hour. It was a response to a friend of mine called Spider, who was a low-level drug dealer. I’d gone to Hawaii for about a week, and on my last day there, I was in his house and had a couple of hours to kill before I had to catch a plane. Spider said, ‘Wait a second. You’re supposed to be a songwriter. I’ll bet you can’t write a song before you go.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I’ll bet you $500 you can’t write a song just before you go.’ He didn’t know that he’d just given me the title of the song. I’m my own hardest critic, but I know when I’ve written a decent song. And I knew that ‘Just A Song…’ was going to be a hit. It actually turned out to be CSN’s biggest. About two tours ago, I was leaving the hall on the last night, and a young lady came up to me and gave me an envelope. I put it in a back pocket of my jeans, and quite frankly, forgot about it. The next day, I’m getting dressed and I realise I hadn’t opened this envelope. So I did, and inside was a cheque for $500 from the family of the kid that made me write the song in the first place. I still have it. I’ll never cash it.”

“I tell everybody that I was on acid…”

CATHEDRAL

CSN, CSN (1977)

“I started writing this in 1971, but it took me a long time to finish, because I realised just how important religion is to many people. I’m not a fan of organised religion myself – my prayers are to the spirit of the entire universe – but I do realise that it’s very important, and every word had to be totally right. So it took a while to complete ‘Cathedral’. It was the only song, I think, that I ever wrote on acid. I’d gone on a trip to Stonehenge and then Winchester Cathedral with our road manager, Leo Makota. Originally, the chorus was ‘on acid in Winchester Cathedral’. But Crosby, for some reason, didn’t think that it was appropriate. He said, ‘No, sorry, you can’t do that. You’ve got to say something else.’ That’s why I changed it to, ‘I’m flying in Winchester Cathedral’. But I do tell everybody that I was on acid. The first time I ever played it was at the Hammersmith Odeon with Crosby, on one of our Crosby-Nash tours. We got to the end and somebody shouted, ‘Play it again!’ So we did. When somebody wants to hear a brand new song again, I know that it’s a decent one.”

“I don’t have to ask anyone’s opinion…”

WASTED ON THE WAY

CSN, Daylight Again (1982)

“I wrote ‘Wasted On The Way’ at my home in Hawaii. And I choose to open up my live show with this because, as a band, CSNY wasted a lot of time, and a lot of love, for silly reasons. Timothy B. Schmidt sang harmonies on this one. I really like singing with Timmy. He’s a great songwriter too. I remember Ahmet Ertegun walking into the studio while we were recording it and saying it was going to be a big hit, which it was. Ahmet was always a big fan of CSN. I think he recognised exactly what we could do before anybody else did. In a way, ‘Wasted On The Way’ takes on a different meaning for me now, because I actually love being a solo performer, even though I’ve got a band with me. I don’t have to ask anybody what to play next, I don’t have to ask anyone’s opinion. I’m totally on top of what I do.”

Nash’s UK tour dates are below – click here to buy tickets

October 4 – The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Gateshead

October 5 – York Barbican, York

October 7 – Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool

October 9 – New Theatre, Cardiff

October 10 – Bristol Beacon, Bristol

October 12 – Princess Theatre, Torquay

October 13 – Symphony Hall, Birmingham

October 15 – Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

October 16 – Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

October 18 – White Rock Theatre, Hastings

October 19 – The London Palladium, London