Graham Nash, pensive and feisty, on CSNY, Trump and Father Time, before Morristown show, Oct. 1

 

By Kevin Coughlin

In younger days, Graham Nash gave us gently optimistic songs like Our House and Teach Your Children, along with bouncy confections such as Carrie Anne and On a Carousel.

But the icon who is coming to Morristown’s Mayo Performing Arts Center on Oct. 1, 2016, finds himself in a different mood these days.

At 74, he’s starting to hear footsteps. On This Path Tonight, his new album, Nash reflects on his journey and finds as many questions as answers.

It’s a pensive, sometimes anxious, piece of work from a guy who has plenty of laurels he could be resting on.

The British singer-songwriter has landed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; the Hollies). His songs endure on classic rock stations. He even got knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

Yet the album’s title song reveals the trepidation of a man embarking on a new relationship after 38 years of marriage.

And Nash is writing off his musical partnership with Stephen Stills, David Crosby and Neil Young, a tumultuous relationship forged nearly a half-century ago.

Crosby’s 2014 remarks lamenting the end of Young’s 40-year-marriage and trashing his new flame, Daryl Hannah (a “poisonous predator”), seem to have sealed that deal.

We spoke with Nash about where he’s been, where he’s going, and everything in between.  The naturalized U.S. citizen did not mince words about the state of music, the state of the world, and the state of American politics. Donald Trump probably won’t be pulling any theme songs from the Graham Nash catalog.

Here’s our conversation, edited for clarity.

 

MorristownGreen.com: Before we talk about your new album, I’d like to talk about harmony. We have a little ukulele band, we’ve been trying to learn Find the Cost of Freedom and Just a Song Before I Go. The CSN harmonies are so beautiful–it’s hard to unpack them. Can you give any pointers to all the wannabe singers out there? 

Graham Nash: Basically what happens is whoever wrote the song usually takes the melody. In Find the Cost of Freedom, for instance, it’s Stephen’s song, and Stephen’s taking the melody. And then it’s me and Crosby trying to figure out should I go above everybody or does David want to go underneath Stephen, or let’s try two voices above Stephen. So we just try and work it out and it’s all pretty natural.

MG: Is it something you have to be born with, or can it be taught?

GN: I think it’s a muscle. I think everything’s a muscle. If you put the time in, you’ll get something out of it for sure.

MG: You guys are one of the great harmony bands ever. Do you find it sort of ironic that you’ve been so inharmonious offstage over the years?

GN: No. No, I don’t find it ironic at all. It’s just three, sometimes four kids. I don’t have brothers, so I don’t know what that is. I know David has brothers. I’m not sure if Stephen has a brother. I don’t think so. But you know, we’re just brothers, and we fight sometimes, you know? That’s the way it is.

MG: That brings us to the obligatory question. You’ve said in recent months that CSNY won’t be getting back together. What would it take to change your mind?

GN: Nothing. I’m done. I’m really done. To a large degree, it was the energy that I brought to the band that kept us moving all this time. I just am out of energy. I’m not interested anymore. We’ve lost that magic, whatever that was.

MG: Nothing could change your mind at this point, eh?

GN: No. It’s the way it is. That’s life. Things are born, things grow up, and things wither, and things decay, and things die. That’s the way it is.

MG: When you listen to your new album, do you ever think, “Gee, it would be nice if I had this one on this part and that one on that part?”

GN: Not at all. I could have asked anybody. I could have asked David or Stephen to sing and play on it. I could have asked Neil. I didn’t want to. I wanted this to be mine.

“We’re just brothers, and we fight sometimes, you know?” –Graham Nash on CSNY’s rocky road

MG: This Path Tonight, the new album, is quite different in a lot of ways. It’s a very reflective album, pensive at times,  there’s some anxiety. The title song really sounds like a man who’s jumping off a cliff. 

GN: Oh yes, that’s a very good way of putting it.  [Laughs]

MG: You’ve spoken about your marriage coming apart, and a new relationship. Is that what inspired this?

GN: Absolutely. That’s exactly what inspired the song. My life has changed dramatically over the last couple of years, and I have to go with it. I have to follow my heart. I’ve done that all my life and it’s stood me in good stead, and I don’t see why I should change that process.

MG: Is it difficult to write songs that may be painful to people close to you? Is there anything that’s off-limits to you as a songwriter?

GN: No. Not at all. I think, as a composer, as an artist, you have to be as truthful as possible, and you have to reflect the times in which we live. These are incredible times that we’re living in, from every aspect. From global warming to terrorism to Donald Trump to the great things that happen every single day that you never hear about because it’s really only bad news that sells. That’s all you’ll ever see on your TV or listen to on your radio. It’s a crazy life, and I’m here, I’m alive, I’m breathing, and I’m just going to get on with it.

MG: The song Encore that ends the album–

GN: Lovely song.

MG: Yeah, it is a lovely song. And it asks the question who you’re going to be when that last song is over. Who do you want to be, and how do you hope you’ll be remembered?

GN: I only want to be as good a person as I can be. I just want to be a decent human being. This world is so crazy, and we all need so much help. I just want to be known as a decent human being, who tried his best.

MG: How do you think you’re doing?

GN: I think I’m doing pretty good. I’m beginning to realize that at least I’m worth a —-.

“There’s a lot of stupid people in this country.” –Nash on the 2016 election.

MG: If the cosmic wheel gave you a chance to spin again, what would you do differently?

GN: The only thing I would change about my entire life is that I wish I was there when my mother died and when my father died. And I wasn’t.

MG: Where were you?

GN: When my father died I was in Copenhagen with the Hollies, and when my mother died I was in the studio in Los Angeles.

MG: Shifting gears for a second… the Turtles were here in town a couple weeks ago. And I was reading a story that Howard Kaylan put up, that he remembered back in the ’60s, you had brought them to a party where the Beatles were. He said John Lennon tore into their guitar player so badly that the guy quit music. Do you remember that?

GN: That’s not quite the story I remember. The story I remember is that they…came not to where the Beatles were, but to my house in London. And I got them completely higher than a kite, and I said, ‘How are you feeling?’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re all incredibly high. We just got off a plane from Los Angeles and you lit up your hash pipe, and we’re all fantastically high. Why?’ I said, ‘Because I want you to listen to an album. And I put on Sgt. Pepper. It hadn’t even come out yet. [Beatles manager] Brian Epstein gave me an early copy, and I played it for the Turtles, and it blew their minds.

MG: With the Hollies in the ’60s, you were there at the same time as the Beatles and the Stones. Did it feel like a very competitive scene, or were you all supporting each other? What was that like?

GN: I didn’t feel it to be competitive in a nasty way. I think there was a common realization that we had escaped from doing what our fathers and our grandfathers had to do. You were supposed to leave school and get a job and go down the mine or go into the mill, that’s what your choices were. But my mother and father never allowed me to fall for that. And that’s why I’m talking to you right now.

MG: What did your parents do?

GN: My father was an engineer, and my mother worked for a dairy.

MG: So they were supportive of your musical aspirations.

GN: Absolutely. I never would have been who I am if I hadn’t been encouraged.

“I’m really done. We’ve lost that magic, whatever that was.” — Nash on the future of CSNY

MG: You mentioned the hash pipe. When you look back, how did drugs affect your songwriting? Did it open different pathways for you?

GN: Yeah, that’s all it did. I’m not condoning using drugs, and I’m not advising anyone to use drugs. But I did and it’s a well known fact, we all did, we were all higher than —-. When we made all that music  we were high. It’s just the way it was.

MG:  Did the music profit from it?  Would it have been better straight?

GN: I’m sure it did at some point. A lot of people think, what would the music have been had you been straight? Who the —- wants to ever know?  Cause we weren’t. So figure it out. We made all that music high. Is the music less because of that? I don’t think so.

MG: Talk about [guitarist] Shane Fontayne’s contributions to this album. Do you normally like writing with other people? 

GN: I don’t.

MG: How come?

GN: Because I don’t want to give somebody a pretty melody and have it come back with lyrics about a pig in a blanket. I’m uncomfortable writing with people. I rarely wrote with David and I rarely wrote with Stephen. It’s just been uncomfortable for me. However, with Shane it’s like writing in a mirror, almost. He’s English, he’s the same as me, he loves the early rock and roll, just like I do and I trust him completely.  My trust has been borne out because we have written some beautiful songs together

MG: Is he able to make suggestions?

GN: Oh sure… That’s a huge thing, to trust someone with a poem you’ve written, and then have it come back into a beautiful song. And it happened time and time and time again. And that’s why I love working with Shane. There’s no bull— in the way, you just get down to work.

MG: Anyone else you’d like to collaborate with?

GN: No. Actually not.  I’m perfectly content working with Shane.

“We need to make their memory ageless.” –Nash on his tribute to three slain civil rights workers.

MG: A buddy of mine is creeping up on 70. He takes great care of himself, but says he feels like he’s slowing down a bit, he’s going to take things a little easier. What keeps you doing this?  Why do you keep making music when you could take things easier?

GN: I like to create. I’m an artist. Music is a large part of my life, but it’s only a small part. I mean, I’m a sculptor, I collect, I’m a painter, I do a lot of things in my life. I’m just a lucky man. I realize that the universe has put me in a certain place, and I thoroughly believe that the universe loves me.

MG: Another former Holly, Terry Sylvester, played here last year. I sympathized because he’s singing notes that probably were challenging when you were in your 20s. Your voice still sounds great. What kind of adjustments have you had to make, technically, as you get a little bit older?

GN: None.

MG: None?

GN: Nothing at all. I don’t have a teacher, I don’t have a coach, I don’t have charts to sing. I don’t have exercises. I don’t do —-. I just start singing.

MG: No special exercises to keep it limber?

GN: We warm up our voices a little by singing a couple of songs before we go onstage, but nothing heavy.

MG: What hooked you on harmony so early on?

GN: Don’t know. I’m glad I did, though. I have no idea why. When Allan [Clarke] and I first started singing when we were six or seven years old, it was me that took the harmony. I don’t know why.

MG: It wasn’t the Everly Brothers or anybody else you were listening to at the time?

GN: Not in the very early days, no.

“They just want everyone to lie down and be sheep, so they can sell us another cola, and another pair of sneakers.” — Nash on why you protest songs don’t get airplay

MG: Your bonus tracks include Watch Out for the Wind, about Ferguson [Mo.] and Mississippi Burning,  about  three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in the ’60s [in the South]. What prompted that song now, all these years later?

GN: I’d known about it for many years, of course, but what brought it to my mind most of all was when I heard that my friend Bonnie Raitt had paid to repair some damage done to the grave site of one of the kids, Mr. Chaney, who was the black kid. And when I heard that I realized that these guys’ deaths should not be forgotten, that we need to make their memory ageless, which is what the last line in the song is.

MG:  As a kid from the ’60s, I remember the turbulence of that time, and how the music really really seemed to matter a lot. 

GN: Yes.

MG: Do you think today’s music has any social impact at all?

GN: The people that own the world’s media you can count on two hands. They don’t want protest songs on their television. They don’t want protest songs on their radio. They just want everyone to lie down and be sheep, so they can sell us another cola, and another pair of sneakers. It’s just bread and circuses all over again.

MG: So it’s pretty tough with songs like your bonus tracks, to drive those home nowadays?

GN: No, not at all. They didn’t fit emotionally with the journey that Shane and I planned for the record. Try putting Mississippi Burning into that record. Where would you put it?  Try Watch Out for the Wind. They didn’t fit emotionally with the journey. That’s why they were bonus tracks.

MG: Do you think digital technology is a boon for most musicians?

GN: When  I first started making records it was just two-track. And now you’ve got a thousand tracks in your iPhone. No amount of technology can make a bad song into a good song. You’ve got to start with a decent song, or else you’re just pissing in the wind.

MG: In your mind, what’s a good song?

GN: Something that makes me feel something.

MG: This album was intensely personal. Where do you see yourself going with the next one?

GN: No idea. Won’t know until it’s done.

MG: Did you and Shane crank out enough songs for another album or two?

GN: Well, we wrote 20 songs. We had 10 on the album and three as bonus tracks with the deluxe versions. So we have seven left that we are starting the record with.

MG: When you come to Morristown, what kind of mix will you be presenting?

GN: Music from the Hollies to today.

MG: Some bands don’t like playing their old ones. Do you get a kick out of playing the Hollies songs?

GN: I don’t give a —- what they do.

MG: What’s it like playing the Hollies songs again?

GN: They’re pretty interesting songs. It puts people in a good mood, and that’s what I want. I want people to be in a good mood, I want people to, in the face of all this ——- craziness, with global warming and terrorism and Donald Trump, come and have for two or three hours a night, have a nice evening. And that’s what’s happening, and people are really loving it.

MG: You were a Bernie [Sanders] guy, right? What are your thoughts going into November?

GN: There are no thoughts. It’s only one question: Is it Hillary or Donald?

MG: It’s pretty obvious where you lie on that one.

GN: I’ll never vote for Trump.

MG: What does this election say about this country–could you have imagined anything like this?

GN: There’s a lot of stupid people in this country, Kevin. A lot of stupid people in this country. Of course, there are a lot of incredibly bright people also. But it seems to me that it’s the people who are angry and hate-mongering and divisive that seem to be crowding the airwaves now. And it seems to be the only thing you hear about. Crazy. It’s all weird.

MG: If Hillary prevails, what will happen to all those Trump people? Will they go away?

GN: No, they’re not going to go away. And that’s unfortunately one of the things that will be a lasting effect of the Donald Trump era,  divisiveness and hatred and hatred against women.  It’s all going to still be there. He’s just a figurehead.

 

Video: ‘Myself At Last,’ by Graham Nash on ‘The Path Tonight’

Graham Nash performs his hits from the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and songs from his new album, ‘This Path Tonight,’ at the Mayo Performing Arts Center at 8 pm on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016. Tickets: $39-$79. At 100 South St., Morristown. Call 973-539-8008 for more.