Bloggerhythms

Every time I tell myself that the music I love the most earned my affection only because it was the soundtrack of my generation - and not because it's superior to what followed - I have an experience like the one I had on Saturday night and I get defensive of the classic rock era all over again. That experience was Graham Nash. The two-time hall of famer played a two hour set of music that spanned his entire career. He played acoustic guitar, harmonica, electric piano, and regaled us with a lot of stories. Nash's only sideman, Shane Fontayne, supplied electric guitar while harmonizing eloquently with the star all evening. Fontayne has also played lead for Sting and Bruce Springsteen as well as serving as the second lead guitarist for Crosby, Stills, and Nash. He also worked with Joe Cocker, Chris Botti, and Marc Cohn and recently released his first solo album. The Blackpool, UK native opened the show with two Hollies' songs, "Bus Stop" and "King Midas I...

By 1977, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash had not released a studio album as a threesome since their eponymous debut in 1969 or together with Neil Young since Deja Vu in 1970. When they finally issued CSN during the Jimmy Carter Administration it became a major hit even though it's never been held in as high esteem as their two earlier LPs. However, it was good enough to prove there was still a demand for the kind of music they made almost a decade earlier. CSN , with the smiling trio on the cover masking their ever present behind the scenes turmoil, was the last album for seventeen years that would show them to be a functioning, self-contained unit. So, it's amazing that with just three LPs from their golden era (nothing they ever did together after this album would come close to matching the artistic achievements or popularity of these three) that this band became legendary as one of the greatest in rock history. Why? Because the trio is so supremely tal...

In short, Graham Nash's Wild Tales is one of the best musical autobiographies I ever read. To his credit the singer-songwriter used a lot less ink than Keith Richards needed to tell his tale while offering us many riveting details about his personal life and solo career, as well as the careers and lives of The Hollies, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Mama Cass Elliott, Joni Mitchell, and a whole lot more. Nash grew up very poor in Manchester, England but unlike a lot of kids in his situation his home life was relatively stable with two parents who loved him even though his father was eventually imprisoned for theft (unfortunately it appears he was innocent). An interesting pre-Hollies anecdote is about a 1959 battle of the bands that featured a lot of up and coming British rockers including Nash and his best friend from childhood, Allan Clarke, with whom he would eventually form The Hollies. This is where the two teenagers first encountered three Liverpool kids who...