Graham Nash’s new album, Now (out May 19), features a reunion with an old bandmate—just not the old band nor the old mate that you might first guess.
The song “Buddy’s Back” is a duet between Nash and Allan Clarke, school friends growing up in Salford, England, near Manchester, who formed The Hollies together in 1962. It’s a song Nash wrote for them to sing together in tribute to Buddy Holly, a crucial influence on them, appearing both on Nash’s album and Clarke’s recently released I’ll Never Forget, which features Nash throughout.
“We did love Buddy Holly, man,” Nash says on a call from his home in New York City.
Well, duh. They named their group for him.
“Yep,” he says, laughing. “The Hollies.”
The song looks back, but really it’s about what endures, the music that transcends the ages, and the bond of friendship that it represents—pointedly, perhaps, given that Nash furiously ended his most famous musical bond with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Neil Young after Crosby made an insulting remark about Young’s then-new relationship with his now-wife Daryl Hannah in 2014.
It’s not the only look back on the album. In the themes (home and hearth, concern for future generations, fiery politics), styles (sparkling folk-rock, tender ballads) and, of course, Nash’s voice and peerless harmonies (he did all the layered vocal parts on this one), it’s hard not to hear echoes of such Nash-written classics as “Our House” (drawn from his late-‘60s romance with Joni Mitchell), “Teach Your Children,” and “Chicago.” Now has a lot of then in it.
Yet the album, co-produced by Nash and Todd Caldwell, who also plays keyboards, is firmly planted in today, in all that Nash is at this moment. He points to the song “Right Now,” which opens the set:
“It’s probably my most personal record,” says Nash, who has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame both with The Hollies and CSNY. “I mean, don’t forget the opening line is ‘I used to think that I would never love again.’ Because I’m 81 now and, you know, holy shit!”
The love in question is with photographer and artist Amy Grantham (Nash himself has been an acclaimed photographer for decades, with a new book, A Life in Focus: The Photography of Graham Nash, and a current exhibit at New York’s City Winery). The two have been together since 2016 and married since 2019.
That love courses through the album, but it comes in the wake of turmoil and change for Nash, of beginnings and endings. Most prominent among the beginnings is the relationship with Grantham, and with it Nash’s move to New York after decades splitting time between California and Hawaii. He has also put full musical focus on being a solo artist, not part of a group, for the first time in his long career.
Those changes came out of endings, though, which were dramatic and traumatic. He ended his 38-year marriage to Susan Sennett, which created rifts between him and their three children. And, of course, he pulled the plug on CSN, which had remained vital and active (with Young’s occasional participation). Most profound in the latter was the split of the Crosby-Nash duo, a consistent recording and touring partnership—and friendship, if sometimes testy—through many previous upheavals. He and Crosby never spoke again, though there was movement toward a reconciliation, left unfulfilled, when Crosby died in January.
The new album sees Nash not rehashing the battles, but looking forward with a sense of strength, certitude, even defiance.
“Yes,” he affirms. “I’m very delighted to be 81 years old and still rocking like this. And I hope it goes on for another 20 years. Why not?”
REF: SPIN