Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

by Graham Nash

  David Hockney felt the same way as she did—at first. Soon, however, we began printing for him, as well as for great photographers like Douglas Kirkland, Pedro Meyer, Robert Heinecken and his wife, Joyce Neimanas, and painters like William Mathews, Francisco Clemente, and Jamie Wyeth.

  Our studio was doing incredible work. Henry Wilhelm, who wrote the definitive book on the degradation of color images, said that the same image printed by another company wasn’t as good—that the Nash Editions prints were at least 20 percent more valuable, thanks in no small part to Christine Pan Abbe, our office manager, and John Bilotta, who’s been our master printer for the last twenty-odd years. We had our own identifying chop, and we bought more Iris printers, with at least three of those beasts in our studio at one point.

  Sad to say, Iris Graphics did not treat me and Mac, two hippies from California, very well. They did not truly believe in what we were doing. They believe in us now; perhaps they should have from the beginning because they’re out of business now. But other people saw the future coming, particularly Epson. In the early days, Epson’s images were rather crude. To improve their image quality, they relied heavily on Mac and me to keep the technology moving forward. They’ve always been receptive, and we’ve been using Epson printers for the last eighteen years. We’ve printed images on all kinds of stock—rice paper, white velvet, tin, you name it. We really pushed this technique as far as we could, which is why we are so honored that our original Nash Editions printer is in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. They recognized what we accomplished and awarded us the gold medal for technological achievement. We changed the history of photography—just a little. My father would be so proud. From those humble beginning lessons, to this. Wow.

  In September 1992, I was attending Photokina, a large photography convention in Cologne, Germany, when Susan called. She told me about the devastation caused by Hurricane Iniki, which had struck the Hawaiian islands. She urged me to consider doing a benefit concert. Susan’s personal response to the storm was immediate. She flew to the islands, rented a helicopter in Maui, filled it with the necessary provisions—lamps, generators, chain saws, etc.—and flew to Kauai. She was the first civilian to get permission to do so. Stills had put her in touch with one of the commanding officers of the Pacific Fleet and he gave his permission for her to land on the island despite the terrifying conditions. Of course, once the thought of helping was in my head, I expanded the idea. I always want to push a great idea to the absolute limit. I called my friend Tom Campbell, head of the Guacamole Fund in Southern California, and suggested that we rally the troops. I knew how committed Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt were to making the world a better place, so we called them to ask for their help. I also knew that David and Stephen would support the idea of helping out the people affected by the devastating storm. And so, together, we performed an acoustic concert at the Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu and one on Kauai with Jimmy Buffett. We raised over $1 million—giving every dollar to the Hawaiian people. I’m so proud of Susan for spearheading the event. She and our friend Mimsy Bouret took great care to make certain that every cent went to help the people in greatest need.

  The year after Iniki, the islands had recovered from the devastation and I found myself sitting at a piano and vocal mike that had been set up in the telephone company offices in Lihue, Kauai. I was linked via ISDN, a then-new digital telephone technology, to Joel Bernstein, who was playing along with me live from a stage set up at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where the audience of AT&T telephone engineers watched me through a video linkup. This was the first instance of a simultaneous live musical performance carried via digital telephone lines.

  I’ve always been fascinated by technology and its global reach. The essence of “Teach Your Children” is about passing along, on a two-way street, knowledge and insight, a mission greatly facilitated by the information superhighway. Any method that enlightens is a move toward greater understanding, making a difference in the world, and new forms of expression—be they interactive multimedia, virtual reality, or digital interface—provide tools that extend our influence to the global village and its children.

  But how to take this concept to another, personal dimension? I envisioned a fully interactive computerized stage show, utilizing the latest technology, in which I could talk about my life and all the incredible things that have happened to me. More than anything, however, I wanted it to be thought-provoking and visual, perhaps a new way of teaching our kids.

  Our engineer, Stanley Johnston, led me to Rand Wetherwax, the ultimate computer geek, who helped me create a database of my life, from the earliest days—pictures of my granddad, my bedroom in Salford, Clarkie and me at Ordsall Board, that kind of stuff—right up to the present. For the show, however, I wanted to be able to go freely anywhere in my life, not necessarily chronologically. To do that, we needed an interface, a way of accessing the database. So we devised a huge gold watch that moved on a twenty-five-by-thirty-foot screen. It represented the “gold watch theory” of having to do what your dad and grandfather did: working until the owners awarded you a gold watch and replaced you with someone younger and cheaper. I held an infrared remote control that I could click on the watch, causing the hands to spin either forward or backward, landing on a year. This enabled me to go from 1942, the year I was born, all the way through to the early nineties. And once I clicked on a year, other interfaces would appear, and I would talk about, say, listening to Radio Luxembourg. We re-created my bedroom so that young Graham could put his ear to the bedpost, enabling him/me to hear the radio in the kitchen. I made the computer screen image literally move down the bedpost, the Everly Brothers would come up on the radio, and I’d sing “Bye Bye Love” with them in three-part harmony. I then spoke about how important their music was to me.

  For another segment, I sent someone to map the interior of Winchester Cathedral so that when I was at the piano, live, banging out “Cathedral,” the view on-screen started in the nave, at floor level, rising upward through the church toward the stained-glass windows—which would shatter at the appropriate moment, launching me into space in rhythm with the song. I even had Crosby singing live with me from Los Angeles on my song “Military Madness.” No mean feat.

  The show was called LifeSighs, and we did a week’s worth of performances at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. I was manipulating images, with the information going over fiber-optic lines to Los Angeles, compiled by computers, and sent back to me in real time (well, almost real time; there was a ten-millisecond delay that I had to deal with). So it was a live interactive computer show. To my knowledge, this was the first time that a live stage performance incorporating this highly complex application of digital technology had ever been attempted.

  LifeSighs cost me just under one and a half million dollars to mount, and we only performed six shows. CSN was going back out on tour, so the staff and equipment separated, and I didn’t have the time or the energy to get it all back together.

  Going back to the summer of 1989, CSN headed back East, to upstate New York, for the twentieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival. Talk about déjà vu! It was like an acid flashback. But the first Woodstock was an incredible event. Five hundred thousand people in the rain and mud soaking up all that music, having a great time and perhaps finally realizing that together they were a force to be reckoned with. I believe that Woodstock was the end of something and the beginning of something else, moving from four or five kids playing their hearts out in a garage to corporations realizing that half a million people could become customers. Man, what twenty years can do. I hadn’t been expecting much at this “new” Woodstock. It seemed harebrained, trying to recapture the magic of Michael Lang’s original festival. That first concert had been so much a part of its time. And the times, as the poet once said, were a-changin’.

  There were only about thirty thousand people this time around. But not a bad lineup: Melanie; Buddy Miles; Edgar Wi
nter; Canned Heat; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Humble Pie; the Chambers Brothers—a lot of good music and a pretty good vibe. It had been overcast and rainy throughout most of the show, but right before our set the clouds opened and the sun came shining through. The audience really connected with what we did. It was very much an echo of what had gone on in ’69, except that the sound was great, which it wasn’t at the original festival.

  The twenty-fifth anniversary in 1994 was bullshit, completely overrun by corporate interests. I didn’t want to go. It was held on a flat piece of concrete on a boiling-hot day. Water was going for twelve dollars a bottle. An utter rip-off. A lot of people showed their displeasure by burning stuff. I sure couldn’t blame them. Some things, no matter how profitable, aren’t worth fucking with.

  DOING BENEFITS ALWAYS helped us to keep things in perspective. CSN has done so many of them over the years, it’s been an ongoing commitment. If the schedule permits, we show up and sing. Very seldom do we say no to doing our share for the worthy causes we support.

  On November 18, 1989, we were doing it again—CSN and our friend Michael Hedges appeared at the United Nations General Assembly for a “Children of the Americas” benefit that was connected with UNICEF. (I’d put together an earlier benefit for them in Los Angeles that was able to provide enough money to inoculate three hundred thousand kids against diseases that kill close to a million children a day.) The room we played in was where Khrushchev banged his shoe on the desk and where President Eisenhower had tried to explain to the world about the U2 incident, in which the Soviet Union had succeeded in shooting down the pilot Gary Powers, much to the embarrassment of the United States. At the time of the concert, word drifted in that the Berlin Wall was being torn down. Stephen said, “I know this sounds crazy, but we’re already in New York, shouldn’t we go?” What insanity that would be on a moment’s notice. It’s not easy moving the three of us around. There’s so much ephemeral stuff that goes on, people handling this and that. “We’ve got American Express cards. Let’s just buy tickets and get on the plane.” So away we went, just like that. On our own, with only our friend Stanley Johnston to take care of us. We just went to witness the Wall coming down.

  Of course, CSN would never be far from the center of action. Our arrival in Germany was picked up by the media, and we agreed to be interviewed. We were guests on a radio station, talking about the usual shit—music, politics, personal stuff, whatever they threw at us. I’d just released a single, “Chippin’ Away,” written by Tom Fedora, which James Taylor sang on, about chipping walls down in general: the walls around your heart, your community, around your town, pulling them down. How, slowly but surely, they will eventually fall. So the station played it while we were in the studio.

  During the song, I came up with an idea. The next day, we were going to be onstage at the Brandenburg Gate to watch the Wall come down. We had no gear, so we really couldn’t play, but there would be microphones. So when we came back on the air, I said to the deejay, “Why don’t you play ‘Chippin’ Away’ at exactly 3:40 tomorrow, the time we’re supposed to say a few words, and we’ll sing along with it?” The host of the show thought it wouldn’t work because there wouldn’t be speakers to pump out the sound. “That’s okay,” I said. “Let’s just invite everyone listening right now to bring a transistor radio tuned to your station, and they can hold up their radios for everyone to hear.”

  And that’s what we did on November 22. It was a clear, cold day. We had heavy jackets on, trying to keep warm as thousands of people massed outside the Brandenburg Gate. We did “Long Time Gone,” inviting everyone to join us and give the song new meaning. Then, at 3:40, right on schedule, everyone held their radios in the air and we sang along with “Chippin’ Away.” Right after that, we all went to the Wall and started chipping it away, helping to raze it once and for all. Oppression comes in so many guises, but its downfall is always the same: joyous.

  That afternoon we went across what remained of Checkpoint Charlie. We had lunch at a restaurant in the East Sector, where a little trio was playing background music. They were pretty good, so during a break, I went over and introduced myself and started telling them how I was in a band in America, but they recognized me, they knew who we were. “Come on over, have a drink with us,” I suggested. Oh, no, they couldn’t do that. “Look,” I said, “we’re all just musicians—from the east, the west, it doesn’t matter.” They were adamant, they couldn’t do it. Why? “Because you’re sitting at a table for four. Here in the east, only four people are allowed to sit at a table for four.” I thought they were kidding and said as much. “Oh, no,” they insisted. “If we joined you at that table we’d get thrown out of here, and we need this gig.” They absolutely refused. I could see the manager was already giving us the stink-eye. No wonder they wanted to escape this shit. But that all came down along with the Wall, all the repression, all the crap that went with it. No wall can stop ideas for very long. You can build your blockades, put up your barbed wire, but eventually people communicate, and once that happens there’s no stopping them.

  THERE ARE a lot of perks to being a rock star, and once we all got straightened out, we were able to enjoy them. Yeah, sure, it took long enough—forty-odd years, give or take a couple lives. But what the hell. You’ve got to try on the clothes before you can wear ’em with confidence.

  The biggest perk of all was singing together as CSN. Always was, still is. I’ll never get tired of it. That unique sound we make. It’s like the pull of gravity to the center of the earth. When I sing with those two, it keeps my world in balance. Call it crazy—and, trust me, some of it is—but musically, I’m happiest in character as Crosby, Stills & Nash.

  Through the 1990s, we were humming like a Hemi. I felt better about the three of us than I had in years. We kept busy singing, either together, solo, or in interchangeable pairs, made no difference. Neil came in and out of our lives at intervals. I played on a lot of shows with Jackson Browne and Carole King. Grace Slick and I did a couple of things. And my idols, the Everly Brothers, invited me onstage at a gig of theirs in Toledo, Ohio, in 1992. Singing harmony on “So Sad” fulfilled a lifelong dream.

  Before they went onstage, Don said to me, “So … what are you going to sing with us?” I was dying inside. Phil said to me, “Okay, I’ll sing underneath Don’s melody, you take my part.” I asked him why. “Because I’ve got the top part,” he said. Mmm, think so? I said, “Don’t forget that you’re the guy who taught me to sing. You stay where you are. I’ll sing on top of you.” That kind of threw him, but basically it’s what Crosby, Stills & Nash do. The Everlys never sang a three-part that way and I really wanted to impress them, because I’m good at what I do and I’ve been doing it a long time. Besides, I wanted to pay them back with a blistering three-part, because of how their music had affected me as a kid in Salford. I have a board tape of me singing “So Sad” with the Everly Brothers, a prize possession that thrills me to this day.

  In 1986, Paul Gurian produced the movie Peggy Sue Got Married, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and while researching the music for the film, Paul had access to a demo tape that Buddy Holly had made of the title song in his apartment in New York City in 1958. This was just before he was killed in that tragic airplane crash in 1959 that also took the lives of the pilot, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper.

  When Paul played it for me, we came up with the idea of adding musicians to the track because it had been recorded by Buddy with only his acoustic guitar. Paul and I wanted to ask Phil Collins to play drums, Paul McCartney to play bass, and George Harrison to play lead guitar. Alas, nothing came of our idea … until late 1995. A tribute album to Buddy called Not Fade Away—Remembering Buddy Holly was being proposed by MCA Records, and the Hollies were asked to take part. What comes next? You guessed it. The Hollies had a copy of Buddy’s original two-track tape transferred to digital, rearranged the song, and added the instruments to make a new track. I then flew to England to record the added vocals, and made my a
nd Clarkie’s childhood dream come true by singing (even if posthumously) with our idol Buddy.

  Music wasn’t the only thing on CSN’s agenda. A blur of ongoing benefits sharpened our commitment to the homeless, drug education, victims of earthquakes, the needy, Greenpeace, the antinuke movement, Farm Aid, the Bridge School, the California Environmental Protection Initiative, UNICEF, everything important. And all of those efforts came back to us in spades.

  In 1996, CSN received word that the White House had asked if we would sing “Happy Birthday” to President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn when he turned fifty. We’d heard that the Clintons enjoyed our music. And after all, they had named their daughter Chelsea after Joan’s song “Chelsea Morning.” So we flew down to Washington on David Geffen’s beautiful Gulfstream G3. Afterward, Susan and Jan had their photograph taken with the president. There he was with a good-looking woman on either side—instead of saying “cheese” when I took the picture, Susan said, “Hey, it’s just like a ménage à trois.” I could swear I saw Bill flinch.

  Sometimes what goes around comes around. On May 6, 1997, CSN was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with Buffalo Springfield, Joni, the Bee Gees, Bill Monroe, the Rascals, the Jacksons, and Parliament-Funkadelic. A hell of a class that year. James Taylor inducted us. And Stephen became the first musician to be inducted twice at the same ceremony. A pretty nifty honor for him and for all of us in the group, even though Neil chose to boycott the event because it had turned into a spectacle, rather than an intimate jam by the inductees.