MIAMI — Graham Nash, the musician-songwriter who wrote “Teach Your Children” on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s landmark “Deja Vu” album in 1970, says he’s not done learning.
“I want to stay curious,” Nash, 80, said in a telephone interview with the Miami Herald.
The two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee for his work with The Hollies in the 1960s and subsequent Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young collectives, is touring an Evening of Songs and Stories. The show features Nash singing from his catalog of group and solo releases and sharing stories on the songs’ origins.
The tour, which pulls into Coral Springs Center for the Arts on Saturday, also highlights the release of Nash’s recent collection of his photography, “A Life In Focus: The Photography Of Graham Nash.”
“I’ve lived a long and very interesting life,” said Nash. “I’ve seen and taken pictures of incredible moments and I want to share them. And that’s what I want to do with my music, too. People that don’t write music are fascinated with the process of how you do write music.”
For instance, Nash wrote the 1970 CSN&Y classic, “Our House,” about his 1968-1969 romance with songwriter Joni Mitchell.
Mitchell really did “Place the flowers in the vase/ That you bought today” for their house with “two cats in the yard” that Nash detailed in his lyrics for “Our House.”
Mitchell, in turn, shared details about their near marriage and the breakup on songs from her iconic “Blue” album in 1971. “Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby that I ever had,” she wrote and sang of Nash on that album’s melancholic “River.”
The two remain friends.
All these years later, Nash reflects that being the muse for a talent like Mitchell’s, and having a muse like Mitchell and other individuals that populated his songs is a “gift,” he said. “I’m incredibly, incredibly fortunate to be a musician.”
Nash at the Mutiny
One Nash song with a famous connection to Miami’s history is “Mutiny,” a track Nash wrote for a duo album he made with David Crosby, “Whistling Down the Wire,” in 1976.
The Mutiny Hotel, on South Bayshore Drive in Coconut Grove, was the notorious hot spot where Cocaine Cowboys, celebrities and the power elite got their buzz on in the 1970s and '80s — a Studio 54 meets the 305, and then some.
Performing “Mutiny” at the Coral Springs Center, 50 miles north from where that decadence dance took place, at this type of songs and conversations evening, would seem a good fit.
However, Nash couldn’t say if “Mutiny” might make the night’s setlist.
“Maybe. I don’t know. It all depends on how I feel when I get to that part of the show,” he said. But Nash did share his memories of the song’s Miami origins.
“The Mutiny Hotel. It was a song that I wrote. David didn’t write that. And it was basically, well, I’ll be honest with you, it was 16 stories of coke dealers. There was a tremendous amount of cocaine in those times,” Nash said.
“And what happened is I used to get up for breakfast and I’d have breakfast with Neil occasionally. I called his room one day to go to breakfast and there was no answer. I called down and I said, ‘Is Mr. Young down there?’ And they go, ‘No. He checked out and left for Los Angeles yesterday.’ I said, ‘Really? We’re in the middle of doing ... really?’ Neil had disappeared and he left so that’s what I remember about the Mutiny Hotel.”
One song that Nash says he likely will do, however, is about another building. “Half Your Angels” is a song he wrote in 1995 for another Crosby-Nash album about the domestic terror bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bombing, by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, killed 168 people, including 19 children.
“I was playing it last night at rehearsals and I think I’m going to do it when I get down there. And I’ll tell them why I wrote it and how I wrote it,” Nash said.
Meantime, the tour, which should prove a learning experience for both artist and his audience, should have happened two years ago but for the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m really pleased that some of the people have kept their tickets from two years ago. That shows hope,” Nash said.
As part of that learning process Nash remains active. His last solo album was “This Path Tonight” in 2016. He is also about 10 songs deep into a new album he’s writing with his boyhood friend Allan Clarke — the man he co-founded The Hollies with in 1962.
Clarke, 79, and Nash, have been friends since the two met while going to school in Manchester, England. The pair’s new album should be out around August, Nash said.
“For 74 years he’s been my friend,” Nash said. “We love to sing together and we have since we first started singing together when we were 6. And we’re singing together now.”
Of course, given the recording reunion with his old Hollies partner on the way, one has to ask if there will be a reunion with Crosby, Stills or Young either in the studio or on the concert stage.
“No, not at all. Never,” Nash said.
That relationship, particularly between Crosby and Nash, would seem to be irretrievably broken given public statements on both of their parts.
About the only thing they can all agree on is backing their partner Young on his decision to pull his music off the streaming service Spotify. Young fired the first shot in January, announcing that he did not want his music on the same platform as Joe Rogan whose podcast aired “dangerous disinformation” about COVID-19. Joni Mitchell was the first to join Young in solidarity and had her music removed from Spotify, too.
The distaste for the streaming service began before the Rogan controversy, however, Nash said.
“Crosby, basically on our behalf, has been rallying against Spotify because of the amount of money that they don’t pay musicians. As a several-billion-dollar company, all they do is play other people’s music and pay them very little. And then when Neal came upon Joe Rogan letting people express opinions saying that the vaccinations don’t work and masks don’t work, and all that stuff that Neil has been upset with Joe Rogan and we totally agree. And that’s why we took our music from Spotify also. But it started out with Crosby talking about how much they didn’t pay musicians.”
Nostalgia vs. growth
Nash’s evening of songs and stories, by design, is nostalgic. But a recent performance by Elton John at Hard Rock Live also proves illustrative of the way some pop-rock veterans can continue to challenge themselves to grow as artists.
When told how Elton, at 75 this March, had tweaked his vocal phrasing to put a richer emphasis on the meaning of the lyrics he sings, Nash felt he could relate. Here was a peer who could easily coast on his celebrated history but instead opted to learn more about his craft and work to develop his delivery more than 55 years into a career.
(Nash and Elton actually go way back. In 1965, a publishing company Nash and Clarke had formed, signed a young Reg Dwight, before he changed his name to Elton John. Elton, in turn played piano and organ as a session musician on some Hollies songs, including “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” in 1969.)
That’s one reason Nash still writes and releases new music and continues to work on his instruments — which include the voice and the brain. He shared an example.
“I put out an autobiography a couple of years ago and I was doing a book signing in Manchester where I come from. This kid came up to me and he gave me a like an 8-and-a-half by 10-inch manila envelope and he said, ‘You need this.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘I’m not going to tell you but don’t open it until you get back to the hotel.’ So I was curious. So I got back to the hotel and I opened up this thing and it was my report card from when I was 11. One of the first things one of the teachers wrote on the report card was, ‘This boy wants to know everything,’” Nash recalled.
“And I guess I’m still curious,” Nash said of his outlook. “What can I say? I live my life. I get up in the morning and I’m glad to be alive and I check the news. I check my friends. I check the world. You know, I’m curious. I want to know what’s going on here.”
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