Authors: Graham Nash
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 Winter; 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.
D
OING 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.
T
HERE 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 and 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.
In 2010, another significant and unexpected honor came my way. I was minding my own business in our Encino house when I took a call that sounded suspicious from “Hello.” A lady on the other end of the line introduced herself as Dame Barbara Hay of the British Consulate (really, Dame Barbara!?) and asked me if I was sitting down.
“No, I’m standing in my kitchen,” I replied skeptically. “How can I help you?”
She hesitated for a moment before responding. “Her Majesty the Queen of England has bestowed upon you the honor of OBE.”
I thought she was messing with me. “Did Crosby put you up to this?” I asked.
“No, no, no, no,
no.
I’m quite serious. Her Majesty the Queen would like you to become an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.”
After I picked myself up off the floor, all I could think about was how my parents would have felt. Their kid from Salford, from the slums, just trying to do the best with his life, being honored by the Queen of England. Ridiculous! They’d never have imagined it in a million years.
It took me a while to figure out how this business came about. Turns out
Pete Bocking, our original guitar player in the
Fourtones, kept petitioning the Palace, saying, “You really should think about honoring Graham Nash.” He listed all my accomplishments, the good work that I’d done, the benefit concerts, charitable contributions to worthy causes, the many donations to museums that I’d made. And to think I hadn’t been in touch with Pete all these years. I learned much later that he’d come to a CSN show in Manchester, but he never told me he was there. Sadly, Pete died in the midst of his efforts but his friend, Danny Hardman, continued to badger the Palace. Eventually, it must have struck the right chord.
The OBE: I liked the way it sounded. The
Beatles were MBE, which is one rank lower, and David Gilmour is CBE (Commander of the British Empire), one above. Would I have to suck up to Sir Paul and Sir Elton? Not in this lifetime. You know me better than that.