Graham Nash - Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

Copyright 2013 by Graham Nash

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nash, Graham
Wild tales/Graham Nash.First edition.
pages cm
1. Nash, Graham, 1942 2. SingersBiography.
3. Crosby, Stills & Nash. 4. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I. Title.
ML420.N353A3 2013
782.42166092dc23
[B] 2013012077

eISBN: 978-0-385-34755-6

Photography: Graham Nash,
Jacket design by Michael Nagin
Jacket photographs: Graham Nash

v3.1

August 1968

I T ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO THE MUSIC.

I had a tune running through my head as my flight touched down a few minutes late at LAX. All my life Ive had music in my head, but that night the tune (the theme from the TV series 77 Sunset Strip) was doing battle on my behalf, helping me fend off the other shit that was rattling around in there. For the past few months, my well-ordered world had been turned upside down, and throughout the long flight from London everything seemed to gang up on me. There was no escaping it in that crowded cabin. With few distractions, Id taken stock of the difficult choices on my holy mess of a plate.

Hows this for starters: I was contemplating leaving my country, my marriage, my bank account, and my bandall at once! Any one of those would have been enough to put a grown man in the hole, but I was close to running the table.

My band, the Hollies, and I had come to an impasse. We had grown up together, spent many years making music, writing songs, drinking and larking about; wed had a fantastic string of hits, incredible successbut from where I stood we were growing apart. Id moved on, I was headed in an exciting new direction, and my heart and soul werent in the Hollies anymore.

The same with my marriage. My wife, Rosie, and I had been drifting for some time. We both knew things were coming to an end. In fact, during the last six months, wed been seeing other people. Now she was off in Spain chasing another man, and I was on my way to Los Angeles to visit a woman who had captured my heart.

I was also in love with LA and the States. Id known it from the moment I first set foot on American soil. It was the Promised Land, and I was drenched in the Hollywood scenethe music, the sun, the palm trees, the attitude, the looseness. The way people there asked me, What do you think? In England, nobody ever asked your opinion of anything. You learned to keep your business to yourself, to mind your ps and qs. In America it seemed like there were no rules, everything was up for grabs, and I loved the freedom of it. I wanted all of it for myself.

No doubt about it, my life had gotten complicated. I was at a hell of a crossroads. There were plenty of unanswered questions. My plight became more apparent as I got off the plane and headed to the taxi stand. There was no point stopping for baggage. I had my guitar. That was it; that was all I had come with. Nothing else mattered. I was in America. I was going to see my new girlfriend, to be with Joni.

T HE SUN HAD just left the western sky as the cab crawled up Laurel Canyon, bathing the Hollywood Hills in the golden flush of summer. I got a great vibe every time I came up here. Only a few minutes from the madness of the Strip, but a world apart. There was a shabby hippie chicness to it, with crazy little houses on stilts teetering along each side of the twisty-turny road. It was a place where there were free-spirited people just like me doing the things that I wanted to do, being creative and making music. I felt the pull of Laurel Canyon, its community spirit. Man, it looked like home to me.

We stopped in front of a small wooden house on Lookout Mountain Avenue. It wasnt a posh affair, just a one-bedroom bungalow, a little jewel box, with a sloping shingled roof and a lovely garden out back on a lick of land. A tiny tree had taken root near the porch. A green VW van was parked by a mailbox at the curb. Inside, lights glowed brightly and I could hear the jingle-jangle of voices rising in unison. I knew she had company; Id called her from the airport. And I knew who was with her. Still, I hesitated, fearing to intrude. I leaned on my guitar case and considered again where I was and what I was doing. Deep down, I was still a kid from the north of England, a place that continued to leave its mark on me. Sure, I know, I was an English rock star, I had it made. But my past made me feel that I wasnt cool, that maybe, even now, I was out of my element. Ahhhwhat the hell? Id been in all kinds of situations the past ten years. No point in getting hung up on that now.

Suddenly, Joni was at the door and nothing else mattered. It had been a few months since wed last seen each otherand that was, in fact, the first time wed metbut our connection was instant. Joni Mitchell was the whole package: a lovely, sylphlike woman with a natural blush, like windburn, and an elusive quality that seemed lit from within. Her beauty was almost as big a gift as her talent, and Id been pulled into her orbit, captivated from the get-go.

Behind her, sitting at the dining room table, the two men Id expected to see were finishing dinner. I grinned the moment I laid eyes on them.

Hey, Willy! David Crosby called from across the room, using a nickname reserved for my closest friends. He was one of those incredible guys it was impossible not to like, a gregarious character, irreverent as hell, with a gorgeous voice and a great sense of humor. Id met him almost two years earlier, when he was still a member of the Byrds, and wed become fast friends. There was something that just clicked when we were together. We were on the same wavelength. We loved the same music and the same kind of women, including Joni, whod been a lover of his some months back. Croz was a no-bullshit kind of guy who called things as he saw them. Besides, he always had the best dope in LAmaybe the best dope anywhere.

The guy next to him was Stephen Stills, an amazing guitar player who had just left Buffalo Springfield, one of the primo LA bands. Wed gotten to know each other a little the last time Id been in the States. He was already something of an underground legend, a guy who played and held his own with Clapton and Hendrix, totally unique, with a slew of incredible songs. Together, Stills and Crosby were a powerful combination. They had great chops, and I could tell from things they said that they had something cooking.

Seeing them put me totally at ease. Plus Joni really loved them. Stephen had played on her first album, which David had produced. They were all great friends, really comfortable in each others company, and were eager to roll me into their circle.

Crosby had been smokin it before I got there and was reasonably high, so I had some catching up to do. They must have been making some music, too, because guitars were lying all over the place, which Id come to learn was par for the course. In that Laurel Canyon scene, people always brought their guitars to dinner. They took their guitars everywhere; it was part of who they were. And at some point, someone would always say, Get a load of this new song Im working on. You could set your watch by it, never failed.