Graham Nash on His Musical Journey and Living in the Now

Photo: Graham Nash | By Tom Lanham, Paste Magazine | Graham Nash might have just turned a well-seasoned 81, but the former Hollies and Crosby, Stills and Nash anchor isn’t wallowing in moribund mortality. His old bandmate David Crosby recently passed away, as did his longtime friend David Lindley, both of which hit him particularly hard. But fretting about the hour of your own pending demise will get you nowhere, he sighs. “Because you never really know. And obviously, I realize that I’m probably coming to the end of my life, although I hope to be around for at least another 20 years. So that’s why my new solo album is called Now, because it reflects exactly what I’m feeling now.”

And he seems to be entering a busy Renaissance period, having recently re-teamed with Hollies vocalist Allan Clarke on that artist’s own comeback effort I’ll Never Forget, providing harmony vocals on almost every track and duetting on “Buddy’s Back,” a rollicking Buddy Holly tribute they co-wrote. The dedicated shutterbug also has a new coffeetable book out, A Life in Focus: The Photography of Graham Nash, and he still maintains a posh fine-art digital publishing company called Nash Editions. And at this point in his career—which he’s celebrating in concert on a current “Sixty Years of Songs and Stories Tour”—the English-born artist has garnered almost every award a musician can earn, including four honorary university degrees, two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions (for CSN and The Hollies), and even a rare OBE, or Officer of the Order of the British Empire, presented to him in 2010 by the late Queen Elizabeth II..

But Now is where his heart truly lies, Nash swears. All told, it’s a cheerful, spiritually-uplifting work, with several love songs, odes to his wife Amy Grantham. There are CSN-echoing folky numbers like the album’s latest single, “A Better Life,” as well as more political screeds, like “Stand Up, “ “Golden Idol,” “Stars and Stripes,” and a life-celebrating “I Watched it All Come Down.” And along with his Clarke collaboration “Buddy’s Back,” there’s even a wisdom-dispensing Letters to a Young Poet-styled cut aptly dubbed “Follow Your Heart.” That’s how Nash says he’s navigated his own existence, and the method seems to be working well for him so far. But again, knock wood, he’s not taking anything for granted, “because you just never know.” Sounding bright and chipper, Nash spoke to Paste from New York last week.
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Read the full, lengthy and informative interview here:
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/graham-nash/graham-nash-interview-now

Photo: Graham Nash (On Facebook by Music Outlet)
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