Taking his songbook on the road at 83, GRAHAM NASH proves he was always much more than the “glue” in CSNY And as he reflects on his adventures with the Hollies, Beatles and Hendrix, and a reconciliation with David Crosby tragically thwarted by the Croz’s 2023 passing, he reveals an upside to his enforced solo path. “I have the freedom to do whatever I want,” he tells DAVID FRICKE.

Portrait by HENRY DILTZ

ON A BITTERLY COLD AFTERNOON three weeks before his 83rd birthday, Graham Nash strides crisply up to a Ukrainian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village, walks in and takes a seat at a window table like a native of New York – which he nearly is. Born in Blackpool, armed with an accent and can-do attitude forged in post-war Manchester, the singer first came to America with the Hollies in April, 1965, landing in New York to join a pop-music revue at the Paramount Theatre hosted by the children’s TV host Soupy Sales and featuring Little Richard with a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix on guitar. Three years later, Nash formally settled in Los Angeles to start a group with two new friends, ex-Byrd David Crosby and Buffalo Springfield guitarist Stephen Stills, that the three simply named after themselves.

Yet for the last decade, Nash – who became a US citizen in 1973 and a full-time solo artist after the exhausted dissolution of CSN in 2015 – has lived in New York with artist Amy Grantham, his third wife. Their apartment is two blocks from the restaurant. “It was always lovely to come here,” Nash says of his adopted city, his accent still intact, over a plate of fried eggs with chips and a couple of lattés. “Once you became popular in Manchester, you want to do the same thing in London. But after London, where do you go? New York was it. I loved it immediately.”

Over two afternoons at the same table, Nash reflects vividly and candidly on his American experience; the turbulent, parallel passage with CSN and the periodic CSNY with Neil Young; his painful estrangement from Crosby after the group broke up, fuelled by the latter’s rash, often hurtful outbursts in interviews and on social media; and the daily pangs of loss since Crosby’s death in 2023, as the two were on the verge of reconciliation. “I think of David,” Nash says, “every time I drive through Van Cortlandt Park [in the Bronx]. Don’t forget: It’s David Van Cortlandt Crosby.”

Nash is frank about the belated liberty he enjoys as a songwriter and performer: two well-regarded albums, 2016’s This Path Tonight and 2023’s Now; three tours with his current group in 2024 and three more set for this year, including UK dates with opening act Peter Asher, who nearly signed the newborn CSN to Apple Records. “I’m much happier alone,” the singer declares. “I don’t need anyone’s opinion. I have the freedom to do whatever I want without having to ask three other people if I can do this.”

Henry Diltz

The peacemaker: Graham Nash, February 1969 – “I followed the magic of the music I heard.”

Credit in here

Nash is king: (clockwise from left) Graham with the Hollies at Sunday Night At The London Palladium in the early ’60s; the Hollies (from left) Nash, Bernie Calvert, Bobby Elliott (in hat), Tony Hicks, Allan Clarke, 1965; Nash gets close to Joni Mitchell, Big Bear Lake, California, 1969.

ITV/Shutterstock, Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo, Henry Diltz (2)

He also has the health to carry on: going meat-less for nearly seven years, exercising three times a week and meditating twice a day. Between road trips, Nash – an avid photographer since childhood – has been working on a follow-up to his 2021 volume, A Life In Focus: The Photography Of Graham Nash. And he is, as he puts it, “a huge collector of interesting objects.” Pressed to expand on that, he brightly replies, “I just bought the master tapes for Bob Dylan’s first record” – privately held by a Columbia engineer since the November, 1961 sessions.