Graham Nash

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the singer-songwriter Graham Nash. He was a Salford teenager when he formed The Hollies with a childhood friend. They were spotted at the Cavern Club in January 1963, shortly after another Mersey beat combo had made the venue famous. Their foot-stomping sound took them to the top of the British charts, then to America, where his next adventure began. In Los Angeles, he was introduced to David Crosby of the Birds and Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield. In the course of one life-changing, mind-altering evening, they formed Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Their debut album spent over 100 weeks on the US top 40, and their crystalline harmonies defined LA's Laurel Canyon sound in the late 1960s and early 70s, though many of their biggest hits, including Our House and Marrakesh Express, were written by the lad from Lancashire. It was the start of a lifelong, shape-shifting, creative journey for the band's founders and sometime collaborator Neil Young. Harmony on stage was a given. Off it, not so much, but the music endures, and Graeme Nash's musical progress continues. He's still touring at 81 and recently released his seventh solo album. He says, The art of songwriting to people who enjoy music but don't write music is very mysterious. I wake up in the morning, I'm alive, I get on with my day, and I write about my life. That's all I've been doing all my life. Graham Nash, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Graham Nash2:07

Good morning. How are you?

Presenter2:08

I'm extremely well, all the better for seeing you. And you are still making music, Graham, after almost seventy years. It's such an extraordinary achievement. How much has your songwriting changed in that time?

Graham Nash2:19

It changed when I started to hang out with David and Stephen. In the Hollies I kind of learned how to write a melody that you probably couldn't forget if you'd heard it a couple of times. But the words left a lot to be desired. When I came to America and I saw what David was writing and what Stephen was writing and what Joni was writing and what Neil was writing.

Graham Nash2:40

I decided that if I put better words to my melodies I'd have better songs, and that's when my songwriting changed.

Presenter2:47

I mean, such an extraordinary high bar to set yourself keeping up with your contemporaries, as you say, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. You yourself have written some monster hits. Do you know it in the moment when you've written a song like that that's going to connect?

Graham Nash3:00

The only thing I know is that I want to not waste your time with a song. And when I've written a song like Our House,

Graham Nash3:09

Because of my experience with the Hollies, I I knew it was going to be a a radio hit.

Presenter3:14

It must have meant so much to you you wrote it for Joni Mitchell.

Graham Nash3:17

I did, and Johni was the only witness to the beginnings of Crosby Stilson Nash.

Graham Nash3:23

I had come to uh Los Angeles to spend uh three or four days with Johnny.

Graham Nash3:27

I got to the parking lot. There were other voices in the house and that kind of upset me a little, you know. I just wanted to be with Joan.

Graham Nash3:36

But it was David and Stephen, and they were having dinner with Johnny.

Graham Nash3:40

And after dinner, David said to Stephen, hey, play Willie that song that we were just doing. And because the Buffalo Springfield had broken up and because David had been thrown out of the birds, they were trying to get like a duo kind of thing together, like an Everly Brother kind of thing. And they had this song that they sang called You Don't Have to Cry, which is on the first record.

Graham Nash4:03

And I said, Do me a favour, sing it again.

Graham Nash4:06

When they finished the second time, I said Trust me, do me a favour, just sing it for the third time.

Graham Nash4:14

When we studied the song

Graham Nash4:16

And I added my harmony.

Graham Nash4:18

After forty five seconds, we had to stop.

Graham Nash4:22

And laugh.

Graham Nash4:24

We were all in bands that were pretty decent harmony bands, but this was completely different. It had a magic to it immediately. And so the the sound whatever sound that is of Crosby Stils and Nash was born in forty five seconds.

Presenter4:40

Graeme, you're joining me today to share the eight tracks that you'd take away to a desert island. What's your first choice?

Graham Nash4:46

I'm going to start out with a record that really changed my life in many ways. It's Be Boppalula by Gene Vincent.

Graham Nash4:53

It was the first record I ever bought. It was a seventy eight, which I'm sure there are many people out there who have no idea what a seventy eight is. And I uh I traded it with my friend Fred Marsden for

Graham Nash5:07

Four pieces of toast.

Graham Nash5:10

I would always bring a toast for a little lunchtime snack and he liked my toast and we made a deal. I got the record, he got my toast. Jean Vincent, this record is an amazing record.

Graham Nash5:35

We bought the loosey small

Graham Nash5:39

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Graham Nash5:50

Well she's the gal in the red blue jeans.

Speaker 15:50

Will it

Graham Nash5:54

She's the queen of all the teams

Presenter5:58

Gene Vincent and B. Boppalula. Well worth those pieces of toast.

Graham Nash6:02

Yes, it's a nice song to start off with.

Presenter6:04

So let's go back to the beginning, then, Graeme Nash. You were born in Blackpool in nineteen forty two to Mary and William, brought up in Salford. When you think back to those early days, what is it that you remember?

Graham Nash6:15

I remember rationing.

Graham Nash6:17

where you had to have a a coupon to be able to even buy basic, you know, bread and milk and stuff.

Graham Nash6:24

I remember collecting pieces of coal at the rubbish dump, filling my my sister's pram with coal for the fire. I have very warm

Graham Nash6:36

feelings about Salford. I didn't know that it was a slum.

Speaker 16:38

Uh

Graham Nash6:41

Nobody had any money, you know, and maybe we had a a ball to kick around, you know, but uh yeah, I I didn't know I lived in a slum.

Presenter6:50

That post-war picture that you paint, it would have been heavily bombed in the area. Were you playing on bomb sites and that kind of thing?

Graham Nash6:56

Absolutely.

Presenter6:56

Tell me about music. I mean, how old were you when you realized that you had a voice that you could sing?

Graham Nash7:01

When I was six, I was sitting in class, mister Burke's class, and uh

Graham Nash7:08

The door opened and an older lady with this young boy came in. And Mr. Burke said, This is Harold Clark, and they're moving here. And where can he sit? There was a seat next to me that was empty. And he came and sat next to me, and me and Alan became friends. And we would sing in the school choir, and we'd sing the Lord's Prayer. For some reason, Alan always took the melody, and for some reason, I always took the harmony.

Presenter7:37

For the two of you before long before you formed the Hollies, you you started in church.

Graham Nash7:40

Yes, yes. Alan had a brother. His name was Frank. And he said, you know.

Graham Nash7:46

I see that what you're doing, you're a couple of guitars and you're doing all the skiffle stuff and stuff. He says, you know, there's a sportsman's club. Maybe you can go and just play a couple of songs. And we went down there and we did, I think, three skiffle songs and they loved us. And at the end of that, Bill Benny took this incredibly large roll of pound notes, five pound notes, ten pound notes, out of his pocket, and he gave us each ten shillings. And we just sang. We had a great time singing and we got paid for it.

Presenter8:19

Your eyes were still wide at the memory, I should say, for our listeners. So that was a really important moment for us.

Graham Nash8:24

It was.

Presenter8:25

Tell me about your mum, Mary. When you remember her, what kind of parent was she?

Graham Nash8:29

incredibly proud of her son.

Graham Nash8:33

I had two sisters, uh my sister Elaine and my sister Sharon. She was the reason that we're talking right now, because if she had not encouraged my passion for music, I I don't know what I'd done with my life.

Presenter8:46

Where do you think that came from in her? Because she must have been struggling to bring the three of you up in the circumstances you describe.

Graham Nash8:53

It's very interesting. I asked my mother that very question.

Graham Nash8:56

And she said

Graham Nash8:57

She wanted to be a singer.

Graham Nash9:00

She wanted to be on stage.

Graham Nash9:02

But she married my father, she had three kids, you know, la la la it she never got to fulfil her dream.

Presenter9:09

It's time for some more music on the programme now. I want to talk more about your early life next, though, Graeme. Disc number two, what are we going to hear and why are you taking it to your desert island today?

Graham Nash9:19

We're gonna hear one of the best rock'n'roll songs from that age.

Graham Nash9:23

Jerry Lee Lewis was a madman. I've seen and experienced in real life his passion and his incredible energy in in terms of making music. So what we're going to hear now, Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Graham Nash9:39

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain. Too much of love drives a man insane.

Graham Nash9:45

You broke my wheel, the world of free. I'll let you know what I fought in the square.

Speaker 19:55

You came along and wooed the honey

Speaker 19:58

I've changed my mind. This world is fine.

Presenter10:00

Yeah.

Graham Nash10:02

Balls of fire, kisses the baby

Graham Nash10:08

It was good.

Presenter10:09

Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis. So Graham Nash, your your dad William was a keen amateur photographer when you were growing up, I think. Did he have a dark room at home?

Graham Nash10:18

Yes, in a way he would take a blanket off my bed and put it up against the window and tape it down to block out the light. I always will remember the very moment that I fell in love with the photography.

Graham Nash10:31

My father would would take um me and my younger sister Elaine, but he would take us to Bellevue Zoo in Manchester, and he would take pictures. And he'd put a a blank piece of paper into a colourless liquid, and he'd say, wait.

Graham Nash10:48

And there.

Graham Nash10:50

Fading into existence was a photograph of me and my sister that my father had taken that morning, and it changed my life. It was a piece of magic that I remember to this day.

Presenter11:02

And photography was your first creative passion, and that continues in your life. You have a very successful career as a photographer in parallel to your work as a musician. I know that your dad bought you your first camera when you were ten, but what should have been a a lovely birthday present for you had some terrible consequences for the family. What exactly happened?

Graham Nash11:20

Yeah.

Graham Nash11:21

My father did give me this little small Agva camera, uh it had it tiny, and it had a little bellows and stuff.

Graham Nash11:29

But then the police came to the door.

Graham Nash11:32

And that was shocking. And they told my father that uh the camera that he had bought from his friend at work, that he gave to me, had been stolen, and who was it that sold him the camera?

Graham Nash11:44

And my father w would not tell them, and uh they put him in jail for a year and uh he died at forty seven.

Presenter11:52

And as a child, you know, to to experience that, it must have just been devastating. What do you remember about your own feelings? I think the news was just delivered to you, you know, that that dad wasn't coming home.

Graham Nash12:04

The only thing that I that I always remember w was m my father talking to me at bedtime and telling me that he would have to go away for a year.

Graham Nash12:15

He didn't tell me why. I was only thirteen, fourteen, maybe. My father never spoke a word about his time in strange ways.

Presenter12:23

Could you see the change in him, though, when he came home?

Graham Nash12:25

Yeah, I think he was uh

Graham Nash12:28

Feeling a lot of shame, feeling that he had let his family down, feeling that his life was never going to be the same. And in fact, it wasn't. But it did affect me as a person. I've always appreciated the underdog. I've always rooted for the team that's not supposed to win, but does. I hate injustice. My passion against injustice comes from what happened to my father.

Speaker 112:37

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:52

And that makes its way into many of your songs.

Graham Nash12:55

Yes.

Presenter12:56

And what about your mum? How did she cope? I mean, it must have been incredibly difficult to make ends meet.

Graham Nash13:01

I remember her leaning against the wall and telling me that my father had been sentenced to a year in jail.

Graham Nash13:08

She was crying, of course.

Graham Nash13:11

I tried my best to help her over this emotional trauma that she was going through.

Graham Nash13:17

I would always do the best I could to help her throughout the day. I always did the dishes. I tried to help my mother as much as I could.

Presenter13:26

Did music and culture at the time provide an escape from what was going on?

Graham Nash13:31

Absolutely. It saved my life.

Graham Nash13:33

and still does to this day.

Presenter13:35

Well, Grim Nash, I think we'd better hear your next disc on that. No, number three. What is it?

Graham Nash13:40

We were the Hollies. We were named after Buddy Holly. He was one of us.

Graham Nash13:45

He wore a suit and tie and he had glasses. He wasn't like Elvis and you slicked his hair back and shake his backside and stuff. He wasn't one of those. He was one of us. I remember so distinctly when Alan and I heard that he had died. We were both absolutely crying on the street. So why don't we hear Maybe Baby by Buddy Holly?

Graham Nash14:09

Maybe baby, I How have you

Speaker 114:12

Yeah.

Graham Nash14:12

Maybe baby you be

Speaker 114:14

We drill the

Speaker 114:16

Maybe, babe, I'll have you for me

Speaker 114:23

It's funny, honey, you don't guess you never listen to

Graham Nash14:28

Leave my friend.

Graham Nash14:30

Maybe baby, you will love me someday

Graham Nash14:36

Well you are the one that made

Presenter14:38

Smith web

Graham Nash14:39

Uh

Presenter14:39

Better any other one. Buddy Holly and the Crickets with Maybe Baby. Graeme Nash, as we've heard at school, you and Alan formed a duo. You then expanded your lineup and became the Four Tones.

Graham Nash14:50

So then we had me and Alan and Pete Bocking and Joe Abrams who was the drummer and we needed a a bass player. So we got Butch Mephem, great bass player. Then we were the four tones even though there were five of us. W we we didn't quite understand that, but anyway.

Presenter15:10

So you were off and gigging and already getting quite good bookings by the sounds of it. I mean, I wonder what your school friends made of what you were up to, your aspirations. Did you sing at school? Did you have a bit of a name for yourselves?

Graham Nash15:21

I'll be honest with you, if you did know two or three chords and you could play a guitar at a party, you know, the girls would be much more interested in you.

Presenter15:29

At what point did your horizons start to expand? What were you dreaming of in in the first place when you and Alan first started to play together? How big were your dreams?

Graham Nash15:39

The only dream we had was that we would get paid for doing what we would do naturally anyway. We wouldn't have done it for nothing and we did often play shows for free. But we knew that that's what we wanted to do. So we didn't have any dreams about going to America and stuff like that until later, because we were just thrilled that someone would pay us to sing.

Presenter16:05

It's time for some more music. Your next disc today, if you wouldn't mind, Graeme Nash. Number four, what have you got for us and why have you chosen it?

Graham Nash16:11

I was, I think, fifteen years old, and me and Alan were going to a Catholic schoolgirls' dance on a Saturday night, and Bye Bye Love by the Everly Brothers came on loud.

Graham Nash16:27

And it stunned me and Alan. We knew that me and him could sing together.

Graham Nash16:33

But the blend that Don and Phil had was profoundly deep and it was DNA. They came from the same mother.

Graham Nash16:42

That song changed my life. It made me want to do that more than we were doing. I think we still remember that moment to this day.

Presenter16:53

My love with my love

Presenter16:56

There goes my baby with someone new She sure looks happy

Graham Nash17:03

Happy

Presenter17:03

Uh

Graham Nash17:03

We sure am blue.

Graham Nash17:07

She was my baby

Presenter17:13

I don't know match that might have been

Presenter17:20

Bye-bye.

Presenter17:23

The Everly Brothers and Bye-Bye Love, a track Graeme Nash that you said changed your life. Did you ever see them live, meet them?

Graham Nash17:28

Did you add

Graham Nash17:30

They played in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester 1962 and Alan and I decided two things.

Graham Nash17:38

One, we would go to the concert.

Graham Nash17:40

But too, we would meet them.

Graham Nash17:43

The best hotel in Manchester, or one of them, the Midland Hotel, was only a hundred yards away.

Graham Nash17:48

So we kind of figured that that's where they were staying.

Graham Nash17:51

And we waited, and we waited, and just after one o'clock in the morning, they came round the corner.

Graham Nash17:58

They stood and talked to me and Alan for what seemed like 20 minutes to me. It may have only been, you know, two minutes. They called me Graham and they called Alan Alan and we said, you know, we sing together and one day we'd really love to make records and, you know, they patted us on the head and that was it. Three years later, the Hollies were playing at the London Palladium and they were playing Sunday Night. After we did our sound check around 4.30, the telephone rang and our road manager, Rod Shields, picked up the phone. He goes, yeah?

Graham Nash18:32

Uh-huh.

Graham Nash18:33

Yes, right here.

Graham Nash18:35

And he starts to hand me the phone, and I go, Who is it? He said, It's Phil Everly. I said, Hey, that's not nice. You can't what are you doing joking like that? He said, Hey.

Speaker 118:43

What are we doing, Joe?

Graham Nash18:46

It's Phil Everly. And he goes, Hey, Graham, Don and I are in town.

Graham Nash18:51

We're about to start a record called Two Yanks in England, and do the Hollies have any songs that they haven't recorded yet? And we did. So they said, Come on down to the hotel and I think they were staying at the Ritz here in London.

Graham Nash19:05

We went down to the hotel. We played him a bunch of songs. They chose, I think, six songs to sing. And we said, okay, we'd like to help you with this. When are you going to start the record? And he said, tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. And so we went and we helped him record our songs. And part of the backing band was a pianist called Reggie Dwight.

Presenter19:28

I'll join.

Graham Nash19:29

Yeah. And Jimmy Page on guitar and John Paul Jones on bass.

Presenter19:32

Yeah.

Presenter19:34

Peace.

Graham Nash19:35

And they made two Yanks in England.

Presenter19:38

Wow. What a moment for you.

Graham Nash19:40

Really?

Presenter19:42

I wonder what your parents made of your success in the Hollies Graham? Because, you know, things took off very quickly for you guys once you got that deal.

Graham Nash19:50

They were very proud, particularly my mother, because she knew what my passion was for music, and I always carried a little container of my mother's ashes.

Graham Nash20:01

And I've always sprinkled a little of her ashes in the places where I think she would have wanted to sing had she become.

Graham Nash20:10

A singer in her dreams.

Graham Nash20:13

Carnegie Hall, the Royal Albert Hall,

Graham Nash20:16

and a couple of other places.

Presenter20:18

Oh, how wonderful.

Graham Nash20:20

Yeah.

Presenter20:20

She made it in the end.

Graham Nash20:21

Don't tell anybody, okay?

Presenter20:23

Don't worry. I won't tell anybody. Secret's safe with me.

Graham Nash20:24

Yeah.

Presenter20:26

It's time for some more music, I think, Graeme Nash. Your fifth choice today, if you would. What is it?

Graham Nash20:31

When you were putting out albums originally, what it was was basically uh a way for the record company to make more money. And what they would do is they put on eight A sides and and four B sides and they would put it record out, right?

Graham Nash20:47

But it was the Beatles and the Beach Boys, particularly Brian Wilson of course, who realized that an album could be a journey.

Graham Nash20:56

It didn't have to be just

Graham Nash20:58

Chock full of singles to make money for the record company. It could be a journey. And the Beach Boys had done a record called Pet Sounds, and it was brilliant. So, why don't we hear a great song from the Beach Boys? This is also one of the best records in the world. God only knows.

Speaker 221:21

I may not always love you

Speaker 221:25

Yeah.

Graham Nash21:25

Uh

Speaker 221:25

Yeah.

Graham Nash21:25

Uh

Speaker 221:25

Yeah.

Graham Nash21:25

As long as there are stars above you

Graham Nash21:29

You never need to doubt it.

Graham Nash21:33

I'll make you so sure about it

Graham Nash21:38

God only knows what I'd be without

Graham Nash21:46

If you should ever leave me your life to go

Presenter21:52

The Beach Boys and God Only Knows. Graeme Nash, you were one of the first British artists to leave the UK and live in America. The place had captivated you from the very beginning. You teamed up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills to form Crosby, Stills and Nash, and you've described that kind of quality in your voices that within under a minute you knew that life had changed for all of you, forever. You had to sing together.

Presenter22:17

And that must have been such a pivotal moment, but at the same time a really difficult one because you were in a band with your childhood friends.

Graham Nash22:25

Yes.

Presenter22:25

How did you break it to Alan that you were leaving the Hollies?

Graham Nash22:29

I didn't.

Graham Nash22:30

I didn't have the courage.

Graham Nash22:32

I was coward.

Graham Nash22:34

I had Ron Richards tell him.

Presenter22:36

Ugh.

Graham Nash22:37

I knew it was going to be difficult.

Graham Nash22:40

As a musician I had fallen in love with the sound that the three of us had created.

Graham Nash22:46

And at that moment I knew that I'd had to go back to England and leave my band and leave my equipment and my money and go to America and follow that sound. And that that's what I did. It was very awkward for me and Alan. He was my best friend then. I'd known him since, as you know, since I was six years old. We had done all this singing and started the Hollies in December of'62 and

Graham Nash23:11

Made all those records and and it was a it was very awkward for me, but I wanted that sound.

Presenter23:20

Did you feel guilty? You

Graham Nash23:21

Yes.

Presenter23:23

So you had a a musical partnership that you had to pursue, Crosby Stills and Nash obviously, and then Neil Young, and the collaboration between the three, sometimes four of you, actually sometimes two of you, because you and David Crosby made records together, was so creatively fruitful and longstanding. But you were all huge personalities. How did the creative process work? What was an average day like?

Graham Nash23:48

There was a huge difference between the first Crosby Stills and Nash record and Deja Vu. Basically it was this. When we made the first record, I was in love with Johnny and living with her in Los Angeles. David was in love with his girlfriend Christine. Stephen was in love with Judy Collins. A year later when we're doing Deja Vu, I'm no longer with Joan.

Graham Nash24:09

Stephen and and Judy had broken up, and Christine had been killed in a car accident, so it was darker.

Presenter24:17

Hmm.

Graham Nash24:17

And we had Neil. He was funny, he was dark. And at the end of breakfast, he looked me in the eye and he said, Because I looked him in the eye, I said, Why should we invite you into this band? And he looked at me and he said, You ever heard me and Stephen play guitar together? I said, Yes. He said, That's the reason you need me in this band. And I agreed.

Graham Nash24:40

And so it became Crosby Still's Nash and Young.

Presenter24:44

It was just the most incredible adventure for all of you. But often, you know, offstage drug problems, alcohol problems came to the fore and caused difficulties. Crosby in particular had serious substance abuse issues. And I think, as you mentioned, he lost his girlfriend. She was killed in a car accident. And that really

Presenter25:02

Put him in a very difficult place. How did the other band members, and how did you, as a friend, deal with that? Because I know that you were particularly close, the two of you.

Graham Nash25:12

I needed to really be with him, support him. And we decided that we would go around the world and drink ourselves to death. We had a favorite drink which strangely enough was uh Cavoisier and and Coca Cola. Strange. I stayed with him because I knew that he had a very short grip on life, you know, and he I knew that he how

Graham Nash25:37

Desperately he felt because Christine had been killed.

Graham Nash25:41

So and I just

Graham Nash25:44

Wanted to support him. You know, I wanted to be his friend. And that's what we did.

Graham Nash25:51

We went drinking around the world.

Presenter25:53

You took a boat trip together and and I think you wrote the song To The Last Whale.

Graham Nash25:57

Yes.

Presenter25:58

I think that's, you know, in a way you

Presenter26:01

Wondering about him and trying to figure him out as a person. It must have been incredibly hard to support him.

Graham Nash26:06

Yeah, it was difficult. It was difficult.

Presenter26:06

Yeah, it was during that time.

Graham Nash26:09

We went from s um Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco, through the Panama Canal and up the coast, all the way to San Francisco. Nine weeks. I'd never sailed before in my life. I put my life in his hands. Crosby was an unbelievable captain of a ship.

Graham Nash26:29

When we got to San Francisco, um

Graham Nash26:32

We started to make deja vu. It was a magic time and and when I wanted to make sure that David understood that I was his friend and I was going to love him and support him.

Presenter26:42

Did you understand him, do you think? Did you ever figure him out? He sounds like a pretty complicated person.

Graham Nash26:46

Nope.

Graham Nash26:48

I don't think anybody figured Crosbie out, not even Crosbie.

Graham Nash26:52

He was also uh

Graham Nash26:54

A profound individual.

Graham Nash26:56

who could light up a room with a sentence.

Graham Nash27:00

and kill everybody with another sentence a minute later.

Presenter27:05

Graham, let's have some more music at disc number six.

Graham Nash27:08

Next I'm going to choose a classical piece of music that I've always loved. It always puts me in an incredible mood, as most great music does. I've always loved the feeling inside of me when I listen to this. So why don't we play The Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.

Presenter28:30

Barba Ziddaggio for Strings with the City of London Symphonia conducted by Richard Hickox.

Presenter28:36

Graeme, you've chronicled your life in photography, and alongside creating a fine art printing company, many of the images that you've taken have become part of the rock photography canon because of the access you've had. Do you have a favourite shot?

Graham Nash28:49

I think that one of Crosby is my favourite shot. He looks incredibly young and very handsome, and he had no idea.

Graham Nash28:57

And once again, the look in his eye, I know deeply what he's thinking, and I I want to be invisible. I don't want people to know that I'm taking their picture.

Presenter29:08

Has photography helped you understand yourself?

Graham Nash29:10

I had a show of my self-portraits.

Graham Nash29:13

In Berlin.

Graham Nash29:15

I was in the gallery. A lady comes up to me and she says, you know something? You should have your head examined. She said, yeah, look at all these self-portraits. There's never one of them where I can see your face. They're distorted. They're reflections in broken mirrors. They're not straightforward portrait of myself. And she said, you better get your head examined.

Presenter29:39

And did you?

Graham Nash29:41

No. I do have a therapist. A lot of people in New York have a therapist. And uh I'm no different than anybody else. I need someone to talk to occasionally. And so I every week I talk to uh my therapist.

Presenter29:45

Do not

Presenter29:54

It's time to go to the music. Graham Nash we've got to make room for your seventh disc. What are we going to hear next?

Graham Nash29:59

Peter Gabriel is a fantastic musician.

Graham Nash30:04

A brilliant, brilliant record maker.

Graham Nash30:07

He did a song called Don't Give Up with Kate Bush, and I've loved it since the moment I heard it. And if anybody out there

Graham Nash30:15

has something that they would love to do. Don't let anybody put you off. Don't let anybody dissuade you from doing what you love.

Graham Nash30:29

I've changed my face, I've changed my name.

Graham Nash30:34

No one wants you when you lose.

Graham Nash30:40

Don't kill the

Graham Nash30:43

Cause you have well

Graham Nash30:49

Don't give up.

Graham Nash30:52

You're not me

Presenter30:54

Yeah. Uh

Presenter30:57

Don't give up, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. Graham Nash, you're still writing, still performing and taking pictures at eighty one. Can you imagine a time when you might step back and put your feet up?

Graham Nash31:09

My feet are always up.

Graham Nash31:11

I love what I do. That's the thing about, you know, don't give up. I love what I do. You know, don't let anybody stop you. If you have something that you love,

Presenter31:19

They f

Graham Nash31:22

Get to it. Do it.

Presenter31:24

Well, I appreciate that for you the day job might not feel like work, but you're still embracing changes and new experiences. I mean, in recent years you've married for a third time, you've relocated to New York. You know, a lot of people in their seventies would find that kind of upheaval quite difficult, but it seems like you really relish it.

Graham Nash31:41

I do. I can't do anything about the past.

Graham Nash31:45

You can't buy a second of time. Even Bill Gates and Zuckerberg can't buy a second of time.

Presenter31:52

And you talked about using time wisely and the importance of embracing it. I wonder for you, when are you happiest? What's the best use of your time?

Graham Nash32:00

I love that feeling within me that I've created a song and I love the feeling inside me when I think I've created a great photograph.

Presenter32:08

Will he sing on your desert island, do you think, Graham?

Graham Nash32:11

Absolutely.

Presenter32:12

Well, one more disc before we cast you away, Graeme Nash. What's it gonna be? Final choice today.

Graham Nash32:18

A programme like this needs to be a journey, and we have made the journey from the early 50s all the way through to today.

Graham Nash32:27

I want to end up with one of the greatest songs that was ever written. It's incredibly profound.

Graham Nash32:35

Let's finish off this show.

Graham Nash32:37

With A Day in the Life by The Beatles.

Graham Nash32:44

Let the news today, oh boy!

Graham Nash32:50

About a lucky man who made the grave

Graham Nash32:56

Though the news was rather sad.

Graham Nash33:02

Well I just have to laugh now.

Graham Nash33:08

I saw them photograph

Presenter33:13

A Day in the Life by The Beatles. So, Graeme Nash, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the books, the Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you, and you can have one other of your own choice. What will it be?

Graham Nash33:26

I just finished a book called The Island at the Center of the World, and it's a history of Manhattan from 1600 to the present day. And it's a brilliant, brilliant book about exactly what happened, and why all the politics was all moved to Washington, D.C., and why New York was only a center made for making money. So it's an incredibly beautiful book by a man called Russell Shortow called The Island at the Center of the World.

Presenter33:56

It sounds like quite a good place for someone with such a enormous drive to be at the stage of life you're at.

Graham Nash34:03

Yeah. I'm lucky to be alive.

Graham Nash34:07

Who knows when I'll pass. But you know what? When they're putting the coffin lid down, I'll still be riding.

Presenter34:14

You can also have a luxury item to take with you to the desert island, Grain. What would you like?

Graham Nash34:19

I'd want a great sleeping bag.

Presenter34:21

Oh, a sleeping bag. Tell me more. Are you an outdoorsy person? Not at all.

Graham Nash34:24

Not at all. No way. None, none, no.

Presenter34:26

Okay.

Presenter34:27

Just a a luxury sleeping bag of some style.

Graham Nash34:30

Yes.

Presenter34:35

Oh, yeah, I can do that. I'll even throw in a a quality camping mattress for you.

Graham Nash34:39

Fantastic.

Presenter34:40

Finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first, if you had to?

Graham Nash34:47

A Day in the Life. It's the greatest song that was ever written, I think.

Presenter34:52

Graeme Nash, thank you very much for sharing your Desert Island discs with us.

Graham Nash34:55

You're very, very welcome. Thank you.

Presenter35:10

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Graham and I hope he's happy on his island tucked up in that luxury sleeping bag of his. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to. We've cast so many musicians away over the years including Paul McCartney, Tom York, Adele and George Michael. You can find all those programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hart and the producer was Sarah Taylor.

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Speaker 235:53

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Graham Nash35:57

that shape the musical landscape for everyone who comes after

Speaker 236:00

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Graham Nash36:07

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Speaker 136:15

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Graham Nash36:19

Legend, the Joni Mitchell story, with me, Jessica Hoop. Listen now on BBC Sounds.