The rock giant discusses his past and present interests. Excerpted from Climate One and Inforum’s “Graham Nash Gets Wild with The Commonwealth Club,” November 15, 2013.

GRAHAM NASH, Singer, Songwriter, Author, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life

In conversation with
GREG DALTON, Founder and Host, Climate One

GREG DALTON: As a member of the 1960s pop group the Hollies, Graham Nash was part of the British invasion that transformed American music. As a young musician in England, he played and partied with the Beatles, Rolling Stones and many other rising stars. In 1968, he left the Hollies to join David Crosby and Stephen Stills in Crosby, Stills and Nash.

I’d like to begin with a story about you and school. One day, you skipped school to go buy tickets for Bill Haley. Tell us that story.

GRAHAM NASH: It was just before my fifteenth birthday. Obviously, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was part of the soundtrack of a movie called “Blackboard Jungle” that had just been shown in Manchester and was driving all the kids crazy. Then one day, we heard from the local newspaper that Bill Haley and the Comets were actually coming to Manchester.

And as Greg says, me and my friend Allan Clarke were young kids just getting into music, just feeling our way through the universe and we knew that we would have to go see the show. I was the one that was chosen to stay off school and get tickets. So I was standing in queue waiting to get tickets and I noticed that one of my teachers, Mr. Lewis – whose name I will never forget – passed by the queue in his car going somewhere.

Anyway, the next day, I went to school and I got called to the headmaster’s office. It’s never a good thing to be called to the headmaster’s office, and I had to admit to the fact that I was not sick as I told them I was, that I was in fact buying tickets to the Bill Haley concert. But it absolutely changed my life. Not only did the music thrill me to death, but also I learned something about school and I learned something about passion and I learned something about not being dissuaded from your passion. I learned a lot in that day. That was a very important day in my life.

DALTON: Was part of that lesson the punishment you received for skipping school?

NASH: Well, yes, because they have to make an example of you, of every kid taking time off school buying concert tickets for a rock and roll show. So I was slippered [spanked]. It wasn’t pleasant. It was upsetting. I didn’t think that I’ve done much wrong just taking a morning off school to buy tickets for a concert. I didn’t kill anybody. It wasn’t that bad to me, but I guess it was to them. Ever since that day, I decided that school was actually not for me – that I can learn much more in life than I could in school.

DALTON: Yet you still wrote a wonderful song called “Teach Your Children Well,” which pays tribute to teachers. So you weren’t a fan of school, but you have a love for teachers.

NASH: I’m not a great fan of school, but I love facts and I love education. Yes, I wrote “Teach Your Children” and we have a lot to learn from our kids. We have a lot to teach them, but we do have a lot to learn from our children.

DALTON: Shortly after that Bill Haley concert, you left school and you started your music career with Allan Clarke, whom you’ve been friends with from six years old. Tell us about that musical relationship in those days.

NASH: I’m not sure why Allan Clarke and I can sing so well together. It wasn’t anything that we were taught. It was completely natural to us.

I met him when I was six years old. WeWe started to sing in the assembly before classes. We would sing the Lord’s Prayer and then we ended up singing in this beautiful harmony. But I knew from a very early age in my life what I wanted to do. I wanted always to make music, and I wanted to create music that made me feel like those early rock and roll records – like the Bill Haley record, like the Everly Brothers. I’m a great lover of harmony, and I’ve been doing this all my life. I guess if I had been a plumber for 50 years, I’d be a great plumber too.

DALTON: You and Allan Clarke had a chance to meet the Everly Brothers. You staked outside of hotel. What was it like to meet them, your heroes?

NASH: It changed my life. The Everly Brothers on April 22, 1960 came to play in Manchester. And me and Clarke would sing their songs. In 1960, I was 18. We were two kids that just played around with acoustic guitars and loved the Everly Brothers’ stuff. When they came to Manchester Rock, obviously, we were going to go and see the show.

But more than that, Allan and I decided that we would meet them, and that entailed a couple of things. Where they were playing in Manchester was only about 100 yards from the best hotel in Manchester, so we kind of figured that that’s where they were staying and that was kind of driven home to us by the fact that there was no tour bus. So it wasn’t like they were doing the show in Manchester then getting on the bus and driving to the next city. So we knew that they were in town.

So we waited, me and Allan, on the steps of the Midland Hotel until about 1:30 in the morning and they came around the corner. I think they were a little drunk. They’d been to a nightclub after their show. Allan Clarke and I obviously missed the last bus home. We had a long way to walk home in the cold, north of England weather at 2:00 in the morning. But it changed my life.

In many ways, I think that we’re all trying to touch the flame. Anybody that we admire, any music that we like, any sculpture that we like, any painter, any musician, all that stuff, we want to touch; we want to get as close to the flame as possible. The feeling that I’m trying to explain, when we met the Everly Brothers, was there was only me and Allan Clarke, and Don and Phil Everly on the steps of the Midland Hotel at 2:00 in the morning, right? And instead of like just patting us on the head and signing an autograph, they stood and talked to me and Allan Clarke for what seemed to be about a couple of weeks. It may have only been 10 minutes, but they taught me something very interesting in there. I think when you meet your heroes, if you can look them in the eye and know that you have even a microsecond of contact, that’s enough. We do want to touch the flame, but we don’t want to get burned.

So the Everly Brothers were incredibly important in my life. If we want to continue with these crazy Everly Brothers stories, we told them that night that we wanted to be in the business, that we did acoustic songs like they did, and one day we would like to make records and stuff – la-la-la-la, same old stuff. But six years later, the Hollies would play a show at the London Palladium and it was a big deal. It was kind of like “The Ed Sullivan Show” here in America. After sound check, the phone rang backstage and our road manager, Rod Shields, picked up the phone and looked at me and he said, “Yes, he’s right here,” and hands me the phone. I, of course, want to know who it is before I say hello. He said, “It’s Phil Everly.” I said, “That’s not nice. Come on. Why do that to me?” He said, “It’s Phil Everly.”

So he hands me the phone and I say, “Hello.” It’s Phil Everly on the phone, and he’s in town with his brother Don, and they want to make a record in England, and did the Hollies have any songs that they haven’t recorded? We had a lot of songs we hadn’t recorded. So we went over to their hotel and they chose six to seven of them. We started recording with them the very next day. We had a couple of session men in there, John Paul Jones on bass of course and Elton John – who was [at the time known as] Reggie Dwight – on piano and Jimmy Page on guitar. There were a lot of interesting musicians....

Now you got to understand, I really wanted to pay them back for what they have given me, what their music had done for me in my life. I have a cassette of me singing “So Sad” three-part with the Everly Brothers. Just two weeks ago, when I spoke to Phil, he gave me permission to use it on the electronic version of the autobiography. So you’ll be able to get to hear me singing three-part with the Everly Brothers, which was a dream to me – that’s for sure.

DALTON: When you left the Hollies, you came to America. You open your book, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, talking about a cab ride up to a bungalow in Laurel Hills, where you’re about to see your girlfriend, and you have a musical experience.

NASH: I had met Joni Mitchell several months before in Ottawa when the Hollies were playing in Ottawa. Needless to say, I fell completely in love with this woman; not only was she incredibly beautiful, and still is of course, but she’s a genius. Joni Mitchell is one of our greatest musicians. No doubt about it. [Applause.]

So we had a good time in Ottawa, and she invited me to come and see her when I had some time off. So I flew from London to Los Angeles to be with Joni for a while. There were a couple of people at dinner at her house, and it was Stephen [Stills] and David [Crosby]. Then, after smoking a big one and having a nice dinner, David said to Stephen, “Hey, play Willy that song that we’ve been working on.” You see –

DALTON: Willy is your nickname that they call you.

NASH: Yes, I hope so. Yes. The Byrds had broken up and David had been thrown out of the Byrds. And the Buffalo Springfield had broken up, so David and Stephen were trying to figure out something to do because they had this incredible musical energy. So David says, “Play Willy that song we were just working on.” They sang the song of Stephen’s called “You Don’t Have to Cry,” which is on the first CSN record. It was a beautiful song and I told Stephen that it was a wonderful song and would they sing it again. They sang it again, and they came to the end of it and I said, “Okay. Do me a favor. Bear with me here. Just bear with me. Just do it one more time.”

Now remember before we were talking about if I would have been a plumber how good I would be? I’m good at singing harmony, because I’ve been doing that a long time in my life. I had, in the first two performances of that song, studied not only the lyrics and not only the melody, but their body language, how they were standing, how they were breathing. As a harmony singer, you have to become who you’re singing harmony with, if you want it right. That’s the way I think about it.

So whatever sound Crosby, Stills and Nash has vocally was born in less than a minute. We didn’t have to work for months, we didn’t have to rehearse for a year, it happened immediately. So much so that about a minute into the song we had to stop and start laughing. I mean it was silly. I mean the Byrds and the Springfield and the Hollies were good harmony bands, but this was completely different. We had never heard anything like the sound of our three voices together. Nobody has any claim on any of the notes, of course, but you can’t sing like me and David and Stephen when we are on our game. It was incredibly great.

DALTON: I’d like you to tell us the story of what prompted you to write “Our House.”

NASH: [In] 1969, I was having breakfast with Joni at a delicatessen in the Valley in Los Angeles, Art’s Deli. We finished breakfast. We were walking back to her car and we passed an antique store, and we were looking in the window obviously and we were most curious. Joni saw this vase that she wanted and she bought it. We went back to her house in Laurel Canyon where we lived. We went through the front door. It was kind of a miserable morning as some Los Angeles mornings can be – a little drizzly, a little rainy, a little chilly. I opened the front door and I said, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t I light a fire and why don’t you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought today?” [Laughter.] I’m a musician, what do you think I’m going to do with that? So Joni went out to pick some flowers. She went to the garden to pick some flowers and I set the piano. I’m a musician and I don’t like nothing happening. So because she was not the piano, I sat down at the piano and “Our House” was written probably in about an hour. Just an ordinary moment, but I think we’ve all been there. I’ll do something while you get the dinner going. We’ve all been at these ordinary moments, and I personally love ordinary moments. I actually cherish them more than some other more insane moments of my life. Ordinary moments, that’s where the secret is.

DALTON: Talk to us how about the entry of Neil Young into the band.

NASH: On that first Crosby, Stills and Nash record, Stephen played most of the instruments. Obviously, David and I played rhythm guitar on “Long Time Gone,” “Lady of the Island” and those other songs, but Stephen played most of the instruments. He played lead guitar obviously. He played bass. He played piano.

When we finished the record and we realized that we’re going to have to go out on the road and play live, how exactly do we do that, right, when Stephen played most of these, right? So I think, at some point, Stephen and Dallas Taylor, who was our drummer, went to England and asked people like Stevie Winwood and Jimi Hendrix, to join our band, right. But we needed somebody else. Ahmet Ertegun, who was the CEO and owner of Atlantic Records and a true, true music man, had dinner one night with Stephen and David suggested that they get Neil. Stephen was kind of upset of that, because he had just been through 20 months of insanity with Neil, of Neil not turning up, of not doing TV shows, being difficult. And me, I had never met Neil Young, right? I knew who he was. I knew he was a great writer. I’d heard “Expecting To Fly” and I thought it was a brilliant piece of record making and songwriting, but I’d never met Neil.

So I said, “Look, with all due respect, before we make this momentous decision to bring somebody else into what we consider to be a beautiful object of three-part harmony in this first record, I’ve got to meet this kid, right?” I went to breakfast in New York City with Neil. And after that breakfast, he was in the band. He was self-assured. He was very funny. He knew exactly what he wanted.

DALTON: Another British rocker, John Lennon, had troubles with his immigration status. Did being British ever cause you to think about being careful, being politically active in America when John Lennon had famously had troubles?

NASH: No, I don’t care. A lot of people say, “Talk to the FBI and get the freedom of information [files]. Find out if they got files on you.” Why the [heck] do I want to know whether they got files on me? What the hell can I do about it? We all know what’s been going on in the last 10 years with the NSA. We know it’s going to get worse in the future. So the way I feel about it, I’m not doing anybody any harm. Anyone can know anything they want about me.

DALTON: Why did you write that song about Bradley Manning [now known as Chelsea Manning]?

NASH: Because it was unfair. Constitutionally here in America, we’re entitled to a speedy trial. A speedy trial in normal legal lingo is about 100 to 120 days, while all the lawyers get their stuff together for the trial, right? That’s what you’re entitled to. Manning, a U.S. soldier, a whistleblower, gave all the military and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, right? Kept in a 12-foot by 8-foot white cell with bright lights 24 hours a day, often has to stand naked, being woken up every five minutes at night to see if he’s okay for a thousand days before the trial.

It wasn’t fair to me. I don’t particularly care whether he’s innocent or guilty of what he was charged with. That’s not fair to keep somebody in such incredible conditions that the United Nations likened it to torture. This is America. We need people like Manning to tell us what’s going on in our name.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was wondering if you had any great stories or memories about Live Aid?

NASH: Any time that we can get hundreds of millions of people to all be on the same page at the same time, it’s a good thing. When Live Aid went down, there were obviously concerts in London and in Philadelphia. There was a great camaraderie about it all. We knew that what Bob Geldof wanted to do, in terms of feeding the children in Ethiopia, was a good thing.

Now I know it’s possible to critique it, because you can say all that money you gave, it never really got to the people because the warlords took it. I know all that stuff could have gone on. But the point is that his point was these kids are starving – we have to take care of them. So there was a great feeling of camaraderie. We did the show in Philadelphia. There was a great feeling of camaraderie, especially with the four of us because we hadn’t really sung and played together for maybe years before that. But yes, Live Aid was a really good event to be a part of, because we thought we were making a difference in the world – and possibly we did.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Songs for Beginners is one of my favorite albums. I wanted to know your inspiration behind the song.

NASH: I’m a loud mouth. [Laughter.] I need to speak my mind. It’s one of the reasons why I am so proud to be an American citizen for over 35 years. I want to be a part of this country. I have a different view of this country than you do. I’m not from here. I see it differently than you do. This is an incredibly great country. This was based on principles that should go on for the next 100,000 years. It’s being f---ed up right now, and we all know why it’s being f---ed up. But don’t you ever, ever forget how great these people are and how great this country really is.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Speaking of your background in the protest movement in the ’60s and with all the trouble we have today with the environment and the government shutting down and the things you just mentioned, I wonder what your perspective is on where is the anger, where are the people or the public of America? Why aren’t we rising up as some of the folks did in the ’60s and ’70s?

NASH: Remember Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber? That’s where the majority of people are.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: They don’t care?

NASH: It’s not that they don’t care; they’ve been trained not to care. They have been trained to lie there. They have been trained by the media. You can count the people that own the world’s media on two hands. Do you think that they really want protest songs on their airwaves? Do you really think they want people speaking out about real things on the TV? Not at all. They don’t want any of that.

But let me tell you something. When CSNY did the last Living with War Tour with Neil, we knew what we had to say, particularly about George Bush, right? I had never been on a tour in my life where there were bomb-sniffing dogs. I was never on a tour where there were FBI agents all the time. I had never been on a CSNY tour where people walked out. About 10 percent of the people, every single night, walked out, especially in the South when we got to a song called “Let’s Impeach the President.” [Laughter.] They stood for three hours before that song came on the show, right? But they have a right to leave. They paid for that ticket. But if you go and buy a ticket to a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert, what do you expect?