Graham Nash has been discussing the songs that have defined his career, and he’s described how the most selfless song in his repertoire was penned during a time of crisis in the heart of a rainy English city.
As one-third of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the 83-year-old guitar player has achieved greatness 10 times over. The trio rose to prominence in the wake of the Beatles’ split in 1970 and Bob Dylan’s ongoing reclusiveness during that period. That turned them into standard bearers for the counterculture movement that was sweeping across America, and Nash’s penchant for honest, heartfelt songwriting was, in many ways, the cornerstone to that success.
Speaking to Vulture, he says “Cold Rain”, from their third album, CSN, represents his most selfless song, and it speaks volumes about the guitarist’s character.
“David [Crosby] would frequently tell people, ‘If you want to know anything about Graham Nash, listen to “Cold Rain”,’” he reveals. “He thought it was incredibly personal and informative about who I am as a person.”
Tucked into the tail end of the album, and driven by delicate piano lines and the trio's signature three-part vocal harmonies, the song is a bruised and brooding work storytelling.
“I wrote it on the steps of the Midland Hotel in Manchester,” he explains. “I was visiting my mom, who was a little sick and in the hospital. I stood on the steps in the rain and watched all the people go by, and most of them had a lost look in their eyes. It seemed like they hated their jobs, they hated their bosses, and they hated what they were doing.”
The grand hotel, built in 1903 in an Edwardian Baroque style, is full of history. The Beatles were famously refused entry to its elegant, high-end restaurant for being inappropriately dressed, meaning they weren't wearing ties.
It's also the place where Charles Rolls met Henry Royce, leading to the creation of Rolls-Royce just a year after it had opened, and rumor has it, the hotel was spared from Nazi bombing strategies as Adolf Hitler was a huge admirer of the building.
Nash, in the late '70s, carved his own lesser-known piece of history into the fabric of the Midland's palatial architecture. As he watched people walk by, rain bleeding from a grey skyline, as it often does in England's third largest city, he was left asking questions.
“It began to make me question, ‘Why me?’” he continues. “Why, out of everybody in Manchester, was I the one who got to go to America thousands of miles away and start a brand-new career? I’ve always asked myself that question. I hope I never get the answer to it.”
Nash was born some 50 miles north in the seaside town of Blackpool, where his parents had evacuated to during the Second World War. He made his name in the Hollies, one of the most successful pop groups in the U.K. at that time, as the outfit's lead songwriter and crossed paths with the Byrds’ David Crosby on a U.S. tour in '66. Three years later, they joined with Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills to form Crosby, Stills & Nash after they realized the power of their voices together.
“I was at dinner with my girlfriend at the time, Joni Mitchell, in her living room, when [Crosby and Stills] started to sing a song,” he explains. “I know when Stephen’s going to start or end a phrase. I know when David is going to do the bottom harmony. It’s the way they were breathing. So I said, ‘Do it one more time.’
“The third time they sang it, I added my voice. In 45 seconds, we had to stop and laugh because, obviously, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, and my band, the Hollies, were decent harmony bands. But nothing sounded like what the three of us created when we invented ourselves.”
Yet he never forgot his roots, and “Cold Rain”, as Crosby has often said, is testament to that. As is “Teach Your Children”, a song with roots stemming back to his Hollies days, and one intrinsically tied to “Cold Rain’s” sentimentality.
Like "Cold Rain", a hotel — and a little smoke — helped inspire the song into a half-life state.
“We were playing a five-night stand at a nightclub in Leeds, and we were all staying at a hotel close by,” Nash tells Guitar Player. “Back then, I was smoking a little dope, and the rest of the Hollies were not. In one night, I wrote ‘Lady of the Island’ [which would eventually find its home on 1969’s Crosby, Stills & Nash album] and half of ‘Teach Your Children.’ I thought I had something good, but I just didn’t get around to finishing it.”
As he explains in the candid interview, the song was completed after relocating to America. He attended a photography exhibit, featuring pieces from his own collection, when a curious mistake saw two images with wildly differing messages were displayed together. It made him realize “that we had better start teaching our children better.
“That was it,” he reflects. “I went back and finished what I’d started in England.”
