Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

by Graham Nash

  David and I tried to make the best of our arrangement. We concentrated on the music we were making, keeping the Chateau’s distractions at bay while coordinating our crazy-quilt schedules. David ate earlier than I did. He’s a breakfast person, and I’m not. Breakfast, for me, comes around noon. So I would walk over to Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard, where one of the Bowery Boys—Huntz Hall—ate every day. One day, I slipped into a booth there with Leslie Morris, who had once worked for Elliot Roberts but was handling our affairs. Sitting at a table adjacent to us was a very lovely, interesting-looking woman, whose beauty and energy captured my attention. She was a blond beauty, wearing a pale-blue sweater, and she had an incredible light in her eyes. Naturally, I wanted to talk to her. She was sitting with a coke dealer named Skip who I didn’t know, but Leslie did. One wave of her hand and I had an immediate in.

  The woman’s name was Susan Sennett, and she fascinated me from our introduction. She was an actress, one of the two “college girls” who moved into Ozzie and Harriet’s house after David and Ricky had moved out, in a TV show called Ozzie’s Girls. I laid the usual rock ’n’ roll number on her: “I’m a musician, we’re making an album and staying at the Chateau.” She was completely unimpressed; it didn’t mean a thing to her. She didn’t have a clue who either CSNY or I was. This made her even more intriguing, so I invited her to visit us at the Chateau the next day. Because I wanted her—desperately.

  Skip smiled through it all. He saw the whole thing going down, but couldn’t derail it. Nothing could. I was determined.

  I spent most of that night trying to figure out how to make myself a little more attractive to this woman. At Schwab’s, she had explained that she’d just been to an Asilomar conference on self-exploration, on the Monterey Peninsula. Aha! Now I knew what to do. I’ll get up in a tree, I thought. (Don’t even attempt to follow this reasoning.) So fifteen minutes before she was supposed to show up, I climbed into a tree outside our bungalow at the Chateau. It was quite fascinating up there, overlooking Hollywood. It reminded me of the peace I’d found in the tree in Ordsall Park all those many years ago. I’d smoked it heavily and was feeling pretty good about everything. And, believe it or not, this stunt actually worked. I could feel that she was attracted to me as soon as she arrived. The next day, I invited her to a session at Village Recorders, to show her what I do. Afterward, she said, “Would you like to come home with me?” Are you kidding? I was already packed.

  She had a kind of energy about her that I’d never experienced. I loved that kind of woman, provocative and complex, but Susan was something else. She was very complete, self-possessed, and alluring. On one of our first dates, we were driving down Sunset Boulevard in her ’69 convertible Karmann Ghia that she owns to this day. I spotted a hooker on the corner who was stunning, a knockout. As we drove past, I was checking her out, but being as discreet as possible to avoid being noticed. Susan slammed on the brakes and pulled to the curb.

  “Don’t you ever not look at a beautiful woman if you’re with me!” she fumed.

  I was stunned. She already had my heart, but that flat-out floored me. No woman had ever been confident enough to say that before—to allow me to be me, whoever the fuck I am. She just wanted to hold me / she didn’t want to hold me down. As a result, I became serious about love. I’d been in love with Joan, but that wasn’t the same. I adored Joan. I loved and became bonded to Susan. Susan is without doubt the love of my life.

  Crosby liked Susan from the start. He went with me to check her out at a little store she owned with her mother, Ginger, called Babes in the Woods. It was an eclectic boutique, candles, women’s clothing, costume jewelry, those sorts of things. Her grandmother had been W. C. Fields’s secretary for fourteen years, so they were selling his personal phone book, a leather cosh, his will, and a police badge he used when he was caught speeding, all of which I bought. Afterward, we got Susan and her mother insanely high on hash oil, and that appealed to Croz, who liked anyone game for a new drug experience. Boy, was I infatuated with Susan Sennett!

  Meanwhile, back at the Chateau, some of David’s psychosis had to do with his unresolved love for and loss of Christine, and a lot of it had to do with his current domestic situation. David was in an intractable scene at home. He was alternately living with two women—Debbie Donovan, now mother of their daughter, Donovan, and Nancy Brown—in an arrangement that put the squeeze on him. Both women were in love with him, and each was getting increasingly possessive.

  In his way, David loved Debbie—and in his way, he didn’t. They were good friends. She was motherly toward him. She took care of him, everything from washing his clothes to lovemaking to giving him advice. And she had been Christine’s best friend. He knew her long before he knew me. But while we were making Wind on the Water, he’d started to disconnect from Debbie, and he was racked with guilt, which triggered more drugs.

  Coke, in large doses, makes you suspicious. It’s supposed to make you feel fantastic, on top of the world, daring, invincible, but in excess, as with any drug, it turns to the other side. Croz was having trouble sleeping at the time; it’s difficult to sleep behind massive doses of cocaine. During this period, a prowler invaded his Mill Valley home. David routinely kept a loaded Colt .45 on his night table, and if he hadn’t been awake enough at the time to roll over, grab his gun, and fire it, he and Debbie would most likely be dead. On another occasion, he picked a fight with a garage attendant at the Chateau and ended it by sticking his gun in the guy’s ribs. That is the kind of behavior he was exhibiting then.

  All this behavior came at the wrong time, because Wind on the Water proved a critical and popular success. The album was finally released in September 1975, catching fire right out of the box. It got tons of airplay, a tsunami of buzz. David and I and the entire band with whom we made the record went on the road as the record climbed steadily up the charts.

  Even though David and I were coked to the eyeballs, we managed to kick ass on that tour. It was an excellent scene, in every respect. We were both in great voice and enjoyed working together. There was no competition, no egos interfering with the act. No bullshit, no weird trips. The energy we put out was incredibly focused. This time, we were also in a better financial situation. Because of the ’74 tour fiasco, from which we’d netted only a fraction of the gross, we fired our manager, Elliot Roberts, who was Neil’s man to begin with and never entirely in our corner. Everything he did was always colored by how it would affect Neil’s career—and God bless him for that: To this day, he remains Neil’s man. But we needed someone looking out for our best interests, and Elliot was definitely not that guy. Instead we hired his assistant, Leslie Morris. She took over everything for us—management, publishing, recording schedules, the works—and hired new accountants and lawyers. Out with the old, in with the new. In our fragile way, we were on the right track.

  That tour took us right across America, and in December we wound up performing in Japan. Our performances were mostly acoustic—David and I on two guitars, with Craig Doerge on keyboards and David Lindley playing anything with strings, with Joel Bernstein on guitar occasionally as well. The musicians were there to gently amplify what we were doing. Croz’s and my songs shone in that kind of intimate setting. We believed that if you couldn’t play a tune on an acoustic guitar and move someone’s heart, it was a useless song.

  Working there was a little unsettling. Each time we came to the end of a song, the audience applauded wildly—and then stopped, as though someone had flipped a switch. Followed by silence, like a vacuum. It unnerved me, until I realized it was an act of politeness, and even then it took some getting used to.

  Once, during our soundcheck at the Budokan in Tokyo, an accident occurred that reconfigured our shows. Our four Martin guitars always sat on stands at the side of the stage, and when David Lindley launched into an extended violin solo called “Reel of the Hanged Man,” his playing caused all of the guitars to resonate on the same note; they were shaking and buzzin
g like crazy. Instead of stopping, Lindley played right along with them, expertly altering the melody of his riff. Needless to say, it floored us. We already knew the guy was a brilliant musician, but this was a display of extreme virtuosity. It became a regular part of the show, and he could make the fillings fall out of your teeth the way he accompanied himself with those phantom guitars.

  Another aspect of those shows was the way our focus changed. A few weeks earlier, Jackson Browne had introduced David and me to a man named Tom Campbell, who runs the Guacamole Fund, a not-for-profit foundation that deals with relevant social issues: antinuke, environmental, energy, and wildlife stuff. We had dinner in my bungalow at the Chateau Marmont to discuss how our appearances could benefit his efforts and people in general. Jackson had been doing benefits from the moment he started performing. His dedication to the human condition is staggering and inspiring. I wanted to do my share. In the course of this dinner, I learned that Jacques Cousteau was coming to town. He was in the States trying to figure out how to get the Calypso down to the Amazon. I was a huge fan of Jacques’s and I wanted to meet him, so Tom arranged a get-together at a restaurant in LA, along with Linda Ronstadt, another admirer of Monsieur Cousteau.

  In the course of our discussions, I asked Jacques what he thought was the biggest problem facing humanity. Admittedly, I was expecting some standard fish answer: how we’re fucking up the oceans (which we are) or the near extinction of whales (which we are doing little to contain). But without batting an eye, he said, “Nuclear police.” That took me by complete surprise. He explained that he foresaw a time in the not too distant future when federal authorities would be able to enter your house without a warrant to discover whether you had any nuclear material. With help from Tom Campbell, he proceeded to explain how the nuclear power industry resembled a snake: from the head of the snake being all the miners dying from radon poisoning, to the mining of uranium and its transportation, to the enrichment, to the storage of nuclear waste, to the threat of nuclear terrorism, to the dangers of nuclear explosions and the nuclear-war scenario. I must confess, he got my attention, although I’d already had some awareness of this issue. In the 1950s, Bertrand Russell led a famous march from Aldermaston, the seat of Britain’s nuclear facilities, to London. I had followed it with great interest. But Jacques and Tom drove home to me how important it was that young people should know what was going on at present, as well as the problems they’d be facing in the future.

  Croz and I agreed to make a serious effort to educate our audiences about the world’s enduring social ills, particularly the antinuclear and environmental issues. We immediately initiated a process known as tabling—sponsoring tables in the foyers of all the theaters we perform at, where we, through Tom Campbell’s auspices, invite local grassroots activist organizations to disseminate information about their ongoing social projects. And we gave the Cousteau Society a table to sign up new members and promote their cause. We’ve been “tabling” religiously for almost forty years.

  Jacques loved the whole theme of Wind on the Water, to which Croz had added his a cappella song “Critical Mass” as an introduction. So Mac Holbert and a few of our friends at the Cousteau Society cut together a lovely six-minute film with footage that detailed the absolute beauty of the whales balanced against images of them being harpooned and slaughtered. It played behind us on a screen as we sang the songs and was extremely effective and emotional for everyone involved.

  The whole time on the road, Croz and I were writing like mad, and when we got back, at the beginning of 1976, there was enough material for another album, to be called Whistling Down the Wire. In order not to lose the momentum, we immediately set to work, getting the songs down in the studio. We also cut a slew of spontaneous tracks with the Jitters—things we just vamped on that will never be released, like a jam called “The Dirty Thirty,” a funky blues of Croz’s called “Drop Down Mama,” and a thing of mine, “Taxi Ride.” It was as loose and groovy a session as I’d ever been involved in, just smokin’ it and playing. The music was great, creativity was raging, things in general were pretty peaceful.

  And then Neil came calling.

  I was pretty surprised to hear from him. Last I’d heard, he was in Europe with Crazy Horse and churning out albums, Tonight’s the Night and Zuma, one right after the other. When he stopped by my house it was ostensibly to say hi and catch up with me and Croz. I say “ostensibly” because it’s never straight-up with Neil. Same ol’ shit: “Hey, Willy, I want to play you something.” Out came a cassette with four of Stephen’s latest songs, one of which was “Black Coral,” and all of which were amazing. Of course, Neil is never going to play you four songs of someone else’s if he doesn’t have eight songs of his own.

  “Aw, man!” I sighed. “Why are you playing me this?”

  The long and short of it was that he and Stephen had been holed up in a studio in Miami, working on an album together. They’d already cut about twelve songs. Just the thought of those two working together sent a shiver down my spine, but, as I said, the output sounded incredible.

  “Listening to it, though, isn’t there something missing?” Neil asked.

  Croz spoke right up. “Yeah—us.”

  Neil continued: “Because I’m heading back to Miami tomorrow, man. You guys want to come?”

  Aw, fuck—here we go again. Croz and I put our session on hold. The next morning the three of us were on a plane to Miami.

  I KNOW WHAT you’re thinking: Didn’t we learn a thing or two about four superegos trying to coexist in one studio? Why in heaven’s name were we gonna do that again? But it’s the music. It’s always the music. It’s like a drug, irresistible. And we’re both smart enough—and dumb enough—to recognize that.

  There was plenty of music to listen to when we got to Miami. Lots of great songs were already in the can: “Midnight on the Bay,” “Human Highway,” “Long May You Run,” “Ocean Girl,” “Black Coral,” “Guardian Angel,” “Make Love to You”—one right after the next. I was duly impressed. Croz and I barely had time enough to drop our bags before we were propped in front of microphones, putting harmonies on those babies. It was like an assembly line—bang! bang! bang! bang! Yeah, we were banging ’em out like the pros we were, with none of the residual bullshit to sidetrack us.

  We also knew this: The minute we put the vocals on those songs, it was going to be a CSNY record. David and I were already making Whistling Down the Wire, but we had a few extra tunes that we could contribute to the cause.

  For the time being, everything flowed beautifully. We were working at Criteria Studios, which was a great little studio. And we were all staying at the Mutiny Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, an unbelievable place. If it was eighteen floors, it seemed like there were seventeen floors of coke dealers. It was one big scoring emporium.

  Unfortunately, by mid-May David and I had to get back to LA to finish our new album on time. “We’re sorry,” I told the others, “but we have studio time booked. We have to go. Let’s figure out when to continue this baby.”

  That’s the moment when the shit hit the fan. Stephen insisted we stay and finish their album, and suddenly all the positive energy began to shift. You could feel it just get sucked out of the room. Something else was driving this sucker, and it didn’t take us long to learn what it was. Elliot Roberts had a Stills/Young Band tour booked and ready to roll. They had to have an album to support the tour and were counting on us to make sure it got done. Hey, too bad. We had just as important a deadline, and we weren’t about to scrap it for their tour. Everything would get done in due time.

  We only had a few days left in Miami, but things were heading perilously downhill. One morning, I couldn’t get any reply from Neil’s room. I called the front desk of the Mutiny and said, “Am I out of it? Am I dialing the wrong number?” The receptionist said, “Oh, no—Mr. Young has checked out.” Whaaaaat? “Yes, Mr. Young checked out earlier this morning.”

  “Going where?” I asked.

 
“Back to San Francisco.”

  We were supposed to be in the studio in four hours. Man, some things never change. It was another case of Neil having had enough—whatever enough was supposed to be—and he’d split without telling anyone.

  I went straight back to my room and began writing “Mutiny.”

  With the ice man cooling the wind the coastline can’t be very far,

  With the shore man rowing behind we’ll find our way beneath the stars.

  But the captain sat there and grinned, and he set the sails for Shangri-la

  Mutiny at Sail Boat Bay

  I was disgusted with the whole situation. Just when it seemed things were rolling along, all the old demons rose up to embrace us. To make matters worse, when Croz and I went back to LA, with every intention of returning to Miami, I heard that Neil and Stephen had come up with the brilliant idea to take David’s and my vocals off the tracks and turn it into a Stills/Young record. When word of it got back to us, we totally flipped out. I couldn’t believe anyone would be crass enough to wipe our voices off those tracks, and, if true, it was disrespectful to us and, much worse, to the music. All of our good work unheard and wasted. Just completely wrong and unjustifiable. I swore I would never work with them again.

  Admittedly, I got some satisfaction hearing war stories about the Stills/Young Band’s tour. Seems that it was snakebit from the start. With too little time to rehearse, the band never felt comfortable onstage. A review in the New York Times called the show “an ill-conceived evening,” blaming the sound, which was “rough and overly loud.” The tour needed work. Stephen wanted to stick to a single set list until the band got tight, but that apparently bored Neil. And eventually, Neil reverted to being Neil. Heading to a gig in Atlanta, he was traveling in his bus down the highway when the driver put on his left turn signal to go to the gig. Neil insisted they go right instead. “But, Neil, the gig is to the left,” the driver assured him. Neil got right in his face. “I said turn right!” The next day, at the gig in Atlanta, Neil just never turned up. Instead he sent everyone in the band a telegram: FUNNY HOW SOME THINGS THAT START SPONTANEOUSLY END THAT WAY. EAT A PEACH. LOVE NEIL. He’d gone home and left the entire company—the band, roadies, support staff, and promoters—holding the bag.