In the case of someone like Jackson Browne, the kid
brother of the Laurel Canyon crowd, you can take the history back to when the
artist was 15 or 16; Browne having written "Fountain of Sorrow" in high school.
But with Graham Nash, the story goes back to when he first sang with fellow
Hollie Allan Clarke when the two were just five years old. The rich, multi-part harmonies of the Hollies - Bernie Calvert, bass; Allan Clarke, vocals; Bobby Elliott, drums; Eric
Haydock, bass; Tony Hicks, guitar; Graham Nash, vocals, guitar; and Terry
Sylvester, vocals, guitar - sung over consistently sharp, backbeat arrangements, made them one of the most popular bands
of the 60s. Indeed, the Hollies charted more hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from 1964 to 1975 than any other British band except The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five and The Rolling Stones.
The two founding members of the Hollies were encouraged
to play music for a living, the same way most postwar Brits did, through the
skiffle craze of the late 1950s. Americans don't even know what that is (essentially folk with a jazzier tempo), yet it was the inspiration, in addition to the American bent, that brought the
British Invasion to the states in the early 60s. Named after Buddy Holly, the
Hollies got their start in the same place as the Beatles, Liverpool's Cavern
Club in 1964.
Nash, Clarke, and Tony Hicks had already begun to perfect
their signature vocal blend, and their songwriting, reaching the British Top Ten
with the originals "We're Through," "I'm Alive" and "I
Can't Let Go" (the latter two No. 1 hits). Yet it was Graham Gouldman (later of 10cc) who got them onto the American charts, first
with "Look Through Any Window," then the Top Ten "Bus
Stop." This gained the band greater creative control, resulting in 1967's For Certain Because LP of all original music, which finally got them a U.S. hit of their
own in "Stop! Stop! Stop!" and led to hits like "Carrie
Anne." (In the early 70s, without Nash, The Hollies would hit it big again with "He Ain’t Heavy, He's My Brother," "The Air That I Breathe" and "Long Cool
Woman").
By 1968, the Hollies were in control of their own
destiny, dabbling in heavy psychedelia, but a planned album of Dylan covers
struck Nash as a step backward, and he soon left the band. "I was writing what I
thought were decent songs that The Hollies were ignoring," Nash said. "They wanted to do an
album of Bob Dylan songs in a Las Vegas kind of style, and I didn't want to do
that, although I did 'Blowin' in the Wind,' which pisses me off to this day."
Given his annoyance with the ways things were going with
The Hollies, it's hardly surprising that Nash was open to career alternatives; he didn't have to look far, when a happenstance meeting and impromtu performance took place in Joni Mitchell's Laurel Canyon living room. It left Nash thinking, "There’s
something magical going on here."
"That's when we first sang together, in Joni's
living room," Nash said. "Whatever sound Crosby, Stills & Nash have was
born in a minute. We didn't have to rehearse, we didn't have to slog through –
it happened in a minute. After that minute of hearing the three of us sing
together, I realized a couple of things: one, that I would have to leave my
band, because this was way more exciting than having people put you down all
the time, and secondly, that I would have to leave England and come to Los
Angeles to sing with David and Stephen."
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