Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

by Graham Nash

  As a musician, Stephen was coming into his own. He could sing. He played practically every instrument with style and finesse, and he was an exceptional arranger. And he was a damn good writer. He’d written “For What It’s Worth” and “Bluebird.”

  Stephen was a guy in the Crosby mold. He was brash, egotistical, opinionated, provocative, volatile, temperamental, and so fucking talented. A very complex cat. And a little crazy, because he grew up in a very fucked-up family. His father was a hustler and his mother devoted to booze. His two sisters had their own issues. And all that shit rolls downhill. Stephen was the one that it all landed on, and that had a profound effect. He felt “less than” throughout his youth. The first time he felt “more than” was when he picked up a guitar, so he often mixed bluster with insecurity.

  Crosby loved the way Stephen played—and lived. They were both on the make, ready for anything. Both brilliant, innovative musicians, competitive as a result of both coming out of bands that stifled them in some way. Even then, I got the sense they’d wind up doing something together. And though I never articulated it, never allowed myself to so much as entertain the thought, I longed to be part of whatever they ended up doing. There was something incredibly magnetic about those guys. I had never met anybody like David Crosby. He was irreverent, funny, brilliant, and a hedonist to the nth degree. He always had the best weed, the most beautiful women, and they were always naked. He’d be having a phone conversation with somebody while getting a blowjob—from two women. This was completely alien to me, and so attractive. I was pretty much of a straight arrow. Even when I smoked weed, I was relatively straight. I’d had my share of women, but I wasn’t anything like Crosby. He was out front about it and didn’t give a shit what anyone thought.

  I invited them both to a gig we were doing on Valentine’s Day 1968. The Hollies were in town anyway and happened to have several days off, so I called Elmer Valentine, who owned the Whisky A Go Go, and said, “Why don’t we just bring all our gear down to the club and do a show?” And he went for it, no questions asked.

  Word got around town that the Hollies were playing. That night, the audience was mostly musicians. All the great bands in Hollywood showed up: the Monkees, the Mamas and the Papas, the Beach Boys, the Springfield, the Spoonful, the Doors. And we didn’t disappoint. We were at the top of our game. For “Carrie Anne,” we prerecorded the steel-drum solo and the bass part from the record and played along to the tape, long before bands did that. The same for the string section in my song “Butterfly,” and the horn sections on “Games We Play.” That was pretty technically innovative for 1968.

  Afterward, I left with Stephen and David, which the Hollies thought was a little strange. We spent an hour or so tooling around in Stephen’s secondhand Bentley, which he called the Dentley, everyone smokin’ it, talking about the show. They’d loved the Hollies, how we had it all together onstage, but they especially loved the way I sang harmony with Allan, seemingly able to hit any intricate note. Finally, stopped at a red light, Stephen turned to David and asked the question on everyone’s mind.

  “Okay,” he said, “which one of us is going to steal him?”

  chapter7

  THE HOLLIES CONTINUED OUR TOUR, AND ON March 15, after our show in Ottawa, Canada, I went to a party thrown by our record company’s local rep at our hotel. It was the usual corporate affair, impersonal and aimless. I grabbed a ginger ale and was about to make my escape when I noticed a striking woman sitting in the corner by herself. Absolutely beautiful: great face, long blond hair cut in Cleopatra bangs, extremely short pale-blue dress, sapphire eyes. There was a Bible of some sort on her lap—one of those old jobs, with tooled leather, embossed, big, maybe half the size of a night table. That interested me right there. Who the hell carries something like that around? She wasn’t reading it because she was looking at me … and I was looking at her. Man, I wanted that woman the moment I laid eyes on her.

  Our manager, Robin Britton, started yapping in my ear. Experience told me it was something about business, how much we made that night, which hands I had to shake, where we’re going the next day. I wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. This woman had hypnotized me; she was a stunner, period. Finally, I said, “Robin, fuck off, I’m trying to check out this woman.”

  Instead of backing away, he slapped me on the side of the head. “Hello! Hello! If you’d just shut up for a second, I’m trying to tell you that this blonde wants to meet you. She’s a friend of David Crosby’s. Her name is Joni Mitchell.”

  Oh. Fantastic!

  I remembered Crosby telling me something about her. He’d met her in the Gaslight South, a coffeehouse in Coconut Grove, heard her sing, and felt he was hit by a grenade. He was absolutely gone forever. “If you ever run across her in Canada,” he said, “mention that we’re friends because I’ve already told her about you.” So I shuffled over and introduced myself.

  “I know who you are,” she said, slyly. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Oh. Fantastic!

  I sat down next to her and asked about the Bible business in her lap. Joni pulled back its ornamental cover. “It’s not a Bible, it’s a music box,” she said. And it played a funny little melody with a broken note in it: dee-da, dee dee-da, da-doink. It cracked us up in a way that only people succumbing to infatuation could find funny, and we played it—and laughed—over and over again. Eventually, she invited me back to the place where she was staying, the Château Laurier, a beautiful old French Gothic hotel in the heart of town. Her room on the seventh floor was out of this world, literally: It had a beautiful steepled ceiling, walls made of stone with gargoyles hunched just outside the windows. Flames licked at logs in the fireplace, incense burned in ashtrays, candles were lit strategically, and beautiful scarves had been draped over the lamps. It was a seduction scene extraordinaire.

  That was all any healthy man needed, but Joni wasn’t done, not by a long shot. She picked up her guitar, sat in front of the fireplace, and started to play songs: “I Had a King,” “Marcie,” “Michael from Mountains,” “Song to a Seagull,” “Nathan La Franeer,” “Urge for Going” … She played fifteen of the greatest songs I’d ever heard in my life, and I’m dying. She killed me with those songs, each one a gem. I never knew anyone could write like that. There was pure genius sitting in front of me, no doubt about it. I was awestruck, not only as a man but as a musician. I thought I knew what songwriting was all about, but after listening to Joni’s masterpieces, one after the next, I realized how little I knew. She was twenty-four years old. My heart opened up and I fell deeply in love with this woman on the spot.

  We spent the night together. I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life. It was magical on so many different levels. The next day we woke up at two in the afternoon and I realized I was in hot water. I’d put in a wake-up call with the hotel’s front desk, but somehow misplaced putting the receiver back in the cradle. The Hollies had already checked out of their hotel without leaving details about our itinerary. I only knew they’d be somewhere in Winnipeg. I had no idea where they were staying or playing or how to get there. Our gig was only a few hours off. Somehow, I got the details and found a flight to Winnipeg. Traumatic, but worth every minute of it.

  BUT YOU CAN’T process an experience like that without consequences. Meeting Joni did a number on my head that reverberated through my entire life. It affected the way I thought about music. Hearing her songs opened another door in my head, just the way acid had earlier, and Crosby’s influence had before that. I was in transition, rethinking everything I knew, or thought I knew. It’s hard to describe how I felt hearing Joan’s songs and playing a set with the Hollies later the next night. Impossible not to draw comparisons. I enjoyed our music, we’d made some great rock ’n’ roll, but, man, had I moved on.

  I remembered David telling me about a similar situation with the Byrds. They had a musical parting of the ways, didn’t want to do his more ethereal songs, weren’t supportive, started undermining him
onstage. Tensions blistered on June 18, 1967, when David finished his set with the Byrds at the Monterey Pop Festival, then sat in with Buffalo Springfield as a replacement for Neil Young. The Byrds went apeshit. After a while, he realized it just wasn’t fun anymore. But David didn’t take shit like that lying down. He was a provocative cat. He fought back, trying to make his point, and at times was a real asshole about it. In his case, the situation became so combustible that, in August 1967, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman had enough and just sacked him. That wasn’t the case with the Hollies, whom I loved, but my dissatisfaction was real.

  WHEN WE GOT back to England, “Jennifer Eccles” was clawing its way up the charts. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It embarrassed me to hear that fucking song on the radio. Now we had to promote it as well. I felt like such a whore, especially after hearing some of the new stuff Crosby was working on, like “Tamalpais High” and “Wooden Ships.” Talk about stretching out as a writer! He and Stills were experimenting like mad, exploring new musical forms, summoning new imagery with words, while we were making bubblegum singles. The guys wanted to protect their little fiefdom: more hit singles, more club dates, more tours, more Top of the Pops appearances, more fans, more-more-more of the same. I couldn’t do it anymore.

  My mind was on fire. Ideas were flowing. I couldn’t put the brakes on, not now, not with all this stuff coalescing around and inside of me. The drugs were pushing me in all kinds of interesting directions. Weed unlocked my mind and my emotions, which had to be awakened for me to start writing meaningfully. I’d spent too many years in the Hollies creating songs from situations that weren’t very real. I didn’t want to find myself ten years from now singing the latest version of “I love Jennifer Eccles / I know that she loves me.”

  In some way, the Hollies knew that wouldn’t work. Those guys had ears. They knew when songs weren’t cutting it, and they knew I was dissatisfied. Something had to give. Then they started making noise about doing an album of Dylan covers. I had nothing against giving it a try. Who the fuck doesn’t like Bob Dylan songs? People tend to think you can’t cover his stuff unless you do a high-gloss Peter, Paul and Mary number to it, but just play a Byrds album. Roger McGuinn and Crosby had a gift for translating Dylan, and that band took his songs in a whole new direction. They sewed a different set of balls on them. I figured the Hollies could cook up something tasty. But an entire album of Dylan covers? Something about it sounded cheesy.

  I talked it over with Ron Richards. He liked the idea. In the past, we’d done some folk-inspired material—“Stewball” and “The Very Last Day”—and he believed putting the Hollies and Dylan together was a logical step. Okay, I get it, count me in, I’m with the band. But once we got into the studio, everything went wrong. The guys decided to make Dylan swing. The arrangements whitewashed the songs, giving them a slick, saccharine, Las Vegasy feel. They emasculated them, obliterated their power. We did a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” that sounded like a Nelson Riddle affair. It was a hatchet job, just awful.

  That was it, as far as I was concerned. No more Dylan. I put my foot down.

  I was convinced the Hollies had lost their focus. I thought we weren’t getting anywhere and perhaps we needed some time apart. The same thing was happening to my marriage. Rosie had met someone on a trip to Spain, and you know how those things go. I was a little angry, but I completely understood. I was a musician on the road. I was gone every night. And quite frankly, I could never keep it in my pants. It was difficult to stay out of trouble after those gigs. The girls were beautiful, available, willing to do anything. And when you spend a couple hours being adored and then go back to an empty hotel room with its dreadful wallpaper, you want to do something to warm the place up. So I couldn’t blame Rose. We were both kids trying to get out of Manchester. And we’d done it, too, but that was as far as we were going. Besides, I was in love with Joni.

  I had moved out of our flat into a sweet little mews house in Kynance Mews. An old converted stable, two bedrooms, simply decorated, washed pastel walls. Typical new bachelor pad. Furnishings were limited to a good stereo, several guitars, and a drum kit that belonged to Mitch Mitchell. I’d met Mitch on a TV show the Hollies did in Bristol with Ravi Shankar. Bobby Elliott had taken ill and ended up in hospital, so we replaced him for a couple of gigs with Mitch. He was a great kid, more of a jazz drummer, in the Charlie Watts mold. Our respective groups were on the road all the time, so whenever Mitch was in town he stayed at my place. As a result, we hung out together and went around to Jimi’s quite a bit.

  All that time, I never saw the fucker sleep. Mitch was always up, always zoning. With all due respect, we smoked a lot of dope, but Mitch was higher than that most of the time. He loved to greet the morning with a half tab of acid, just to see what the day brought.

  Another guy who came around was Eric Burdon. I was drawn to Eric because we were both in bands from the north of England. The Animals were from Newcastle, one of the toughest towns in England. Eric knocked on the door of my new digs one night in the spring of ’68. “Hey, how ya doing? C’mon in. Want a beer? Here, snort this.” Same shit—musicians, right? He was pretty high already, and so was I.

  “You ever seen this?” he asked, shoving a book into my hand.

  It was a collection of work by M. C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist whose architectural constructions and geometric grids explored infinite space. Encountering Escher under normal circumstances was challenging enough, but Escher on acid was a mind-blower. I was into his vision from the moment I laid eyes on the worlds he’d created. I loved the irony, the light and dark opposites, the division of space. Seeing the images in that book was like another form of acid. I thought, “Jeez! Somebody sees like that? Well, then I can see like that, too.”

  Escher turned me on to art in general. Remember, I was a guy who never read a book or had any image on his walls, never went to museums. But I had a bottomless supply of curiosity, and Escher tapped right into those reserves. I began educating myself, studying the European expressionists—Erich Heckel, George Grosz, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and especially Egon Schiele. Later I amassed a large collection of Eschers, including the twenty-one-foot Metamorphosis III, which I still have, the only extant print in the world. I was searching for something, and I found it in art. Just like that, another door had opened wide.

  At the same time, I seemed to be closing one on the Hollies. My dissatisfaction with our direction became an untenable tug of war, with each faction pulling in opposite extremes—me on one side, Allan, Bernie, Bobby, and Tony on the other. To ease the tension, I suggested I take some time off in order to work on a solo album. I’d stockpiled a nice little set of songs that either the band had rejected or I didn’t feel like sharing. But the other Hollies were completely opposed. They didn’t feel I could make my own music while remaining a member of a band. They were being dicks. It was like: “What in the bloody hell are ya tryin’ to do?”

  We prided ourselves on keeping internal struggles private, but it was hard to mask my frustration. Even harder to keep a secret in that incestuous scene. That May, as we were leaving on a tour with the Scaffold and Paul Jones, NME broke the news with a headline: GRAHAM NASH MAY SPLIT HOLLIES. I must have shot off my mouth to a predatory reporter, because they had the whole story, with a fat quote from me: “I believe in a completely different musical direction to that in which the Hollies are going, and right now I feel as if I’m letting myself down not doing as I want.”

  That was a nice little grenade lobbed into the works. Once that happens, it’s almost impossible to hold things together. Out on the road everybody’s in such close quarters. You’ve got to keep your cool, not let that stuff interfere. But, man, everyone was feeling it. I was so bored, trying not to let it show. I’m sure the other guys were resentful in their own way, wondering what was going to happen to the group. There was a sense that things were getting away from us. The marriage was on the rocks.

&nb
sp; Looking at us onstage, you’d never know we had problems. It was always such a joy singing with those guys, so for a few hours each day the Hollies were a happy family. But afterward, something would spark the fires. Business moved to the front burners. Recording would come up. “You know, we need another single.” “Time to start thinking about a new album.” Boom! We were back on that bandwagon.

  I remember talking this business over with Mickie Most. He was a damn fine producer, knew a hit record within the first two bars. A couple years back, he’d been recording Donovan, and if the session was booked from four to eight, Dono would be done by six. With the leftover time, Mickie worked with my friends from Newcastle, the Animals, and in a couple of takes “House of the Rising Sun” became the cheapest hit record in history. I hung out with Mickie and his wife, who were encouraging me to go solo. He offered to produce me. We’d do an album together, no strings attached. And Dono’s manager, Ashley Kozak, agreed to take me on: He was ready to go. It was tempting, but my mind kept flashing on Crosby in the States.