Graham Nash has revealed that he was in the process of reconciling with estranged Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmate David Crosby before his death earlier this year.
Speaking in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, on sale now, Nash confirms that the two men had reconnected after a long period where they didn’t talk.
In a 2016 interview with Billboard, the Manchester-born Nash said: “Right now, I don’t want anything to do with Crosby at all. It’s just that simple.”
While Nash didn’t go into the specifics behind the bad blood, he doubled down on his view in an interview with Lust For Life magazine the same year.
“I don’t like David Crosby right now,” Nash said at the time. “He’s been awful for me the last two years, just fucking awful. I’ve been there and saved his fucking ass for 45 years, and he treated me like shit. You can’t do that to me. You can do it for a day or so, until I think you’re going to come around. When it goes on longer, and I keep getting nasty emails from him, I’m done.”
But speaking to Classic Rock ahead of his UK tour in late August, Nash said the two men had re-established contact in the days prior to Crosby’s death in January 2023.
“That’s correct,” he tells Classic Rock’s Dave Ling. “We were emailing and voice-mailing each other, and had set up a Facetime for two p.m. my time in New York, 11am in California, where he was.
“I waited and waited [for the call] and it never came, and two days later, it was announced that he was dead.”
Asked if he would have accepted an olive branch from Crosby, Nash says: “If it was sincere, yes. And I do believe it would have been.”
The relationship between Nash and Crosby dates back to July 1968, when the then-Hollies guitarist and Byrds guitarist/singer played a song with Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills at a party in LA’s Laurel Canyon.
The three men formed Crosby, Stills & Nash a few months later, releasing their self-titled debut album the following year. They would also be joined by Neil Young in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and make four albums as Crosby & Nash.
In the new issue of Classic Rock, Nash recalls his initial meeting with Crosby and Stills.
“When David, Stephen and I sang together for the first time, things were never the same again,” he says. “The Hollies, Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds were good harmony bands, but nothing sounded like our three voices becoming one voice. I knew I would have to go back to England and leave The Hollies. I had to follow that sound.”
In the same interview, Nash looks back at the meeting the Queen when he picked up his OBE in 2010 – and his surprise at the fact that she was aware of his former band.
“She asked me how The Hollies were,” says Nash. “I replied: ‘Your Majesty, I’ve been gone from this country for almost fifty years and I had no idea that people in England were still aware of what I do.’ She looked at me and said: ‘And now you know.’”
He continues: “[Her death] saddened me. When I met Queen Elizabeth I realised that in a way I was looking at the DNA of a thousand years of English kings and queens. To be at Buckingham Palace talking to her was an unbelievable moment. I wish my father had lived to see that.
Read the full interview with Nash in the brand new issue of Classic Rock, on sale now. Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door.
