My sex life is insane,’ declares Graham Nash, the Blackpool-born singer and songwriter, Grammy award winner and double inductee to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame with Crosby, Stills and Nash and The Hollies. ‘It’s better than it’s ever been in my life.’
Two years ago, Nash left Susan Sennett, his wife of 38 years, and his family home in Hawaii to be with a new girlfriend, Amy Grantham, an artist, in New York City. ‘I thought, I’m not in love with my wife, so what do I do?’ he wonders in a curious, Atlantic-straddling accent.
‘I figured, I’m at the end of my life, I could just settle, but I couldn’t do that – my heart was screaming at me to move on.
My sex life is insane,’ declares Graham Nash, Grammy award winner and double inductee to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame with Crosby, Stills and Nash and The Hollies
Nash, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young
‘So I divorced my wife and fell in love with a woman who’s just brilliant. She’s half my age. I’m 76 now, she’s not even 40 yet. Wild, eh?’
Wild indeed. However, his kids, Jackson, Will and daughter Nile, now nearly in their 40s, are far from fine with Nash dating a woman the same age as them. ‘No, it’s not fine at all,’ Nash says quietly. ‘I don’t speak to my boys at all. It’s terribly sad but maybe time will heal all wounds, maybe one day. I divorced their mother, you know?’
In the Sixties, Nash had famously set up home with Joni Mitchell in Laurel Canyon, California, as documented in his song Our House. There is, you note, a physical similarity between the young Mitchell and Nash’s latest lady-love – both have blonde fringes and cheekbones like wing mirrors.
‘I know, a lot of people have said that,’ he nods. ‘People do react interestingly when we’re out. I guess I’m attracted to that look.’
Nash with Joni Mitchell. In 2015, Nash heard the ‘very disturbing’ internet rumour that Mitchell, ‘at one time the love of my life’, had died
In the Sixties, Nash became friends with George Harrison, who was also quite a ladies’ man, and frequently referred to himself as ‘a crumpeteer’.
Nash casts an eye around the customers taking afternoon tea in this London hotel. ‘We’ve all got our weaknesses,’ he winks. ‘Actually, I’d love a crumpet right now.’
He has sold in excess of 40 million albums, in his various artistic guises, over six decades. His gently strummed songs Marrakesh Express, Our House and Teach Your Children are now standards. The new collection, Over The Years, revisits these songs and includes the original demos to what would become modern American anthems. Crosby, Stills and Nash, always CSN to their fans, were famous for their angelic harmonies and devilish habits – they were choirboys on cocaine. The addition of ‘Y’ – Neil Young on guitar and vocals – added a darker dimension, but the warring egos, fuelled at the time by excessive drug consumption, became a big problem that continues to this day.
‘Right now, I don’t like David Crosby,’ Nash explains. ‘He’s a very negative person in many ways and I don’t have the energy for that.’
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of CSN’s first album, and there is little sign of the band reconvening to celebrate their half-century. Might Nash regret it, if he doesn’t do it? ‘I might regret it if I do it,’ he reasons.
Nash has no regrets about giving up cocaine, which he did on December 9, 1984, in Honolulu. ‘I snorted a lot until then,’ Nash admits. ‘There was an end-of-tour party and everyone had these horrible cocaine smiles and I said “Wow, I must look like that too”, and just stopped instantly. I still smoke dope, of course.’
CSN&Y have been offered £75 million to reform, and while Nash, who is estimated to be worth £25 million, admits that is ‘quite enticing’, he insists that ‘we’d have to like each other before we can make magic music’.
In 2015, Nash heard the ‘very disturbing’ internet rumour that Joni Mitchell, ‘at one time the love of my life’, had died. In truth, she was alive but very ill and in a coma. ‘She had a brain aneurysm and wasn’t found for three days, on the kitchen floor,’ Nash shudders. ‘When I last saw her, four months ago, she was in a wheelchair, but she was lucid.
‘It’s terrible that something so tragic happened to such a genius. The world needs Joni Mitchell songs.’
Nash’s break-up from Mitchell, while being traumatic for both parties, brought us some important music. A large part of her classic Blue album is about Nash.
‘Blue is hard for me to listen to,’ Nash admits. ‘Even now.’
He also finds listening to his old buddy Bob Dylan a struggle these days, albeit for different reasons. ‘I saw him at the Beacon Theatre in New York two months ago,’ Nash reports. ‘And I left halfway through the show. He never said one word to the audience, nothing. I felt like he didn’t care about us and it p***** me off, so I left.’
Nash left first wife Rose Eccles and his life in Manchester with The Hollies to pursue a Californian dream in 1968 and never looked back. He has been a US citizen since the Eighties. Imagine his surprise then when, while collecting an OBE from the Queen in 2010, Her Majesty asked after the other members of The Hollies.
‘I was shocked that the Queen even knew who The Hollies were,’ he says. ‘I said, “With respect, Ma’am, I’ve been gone for 45 years and I didn’t realise anyone was watching what I did over there.” She leaned towards me, and with that twinkle in her eye, said, “And now you know.”
‘I’m still this poor kid from the north of England, wondering what the hell I’m doing here in this life,’ adds Nash. ‘I just followed the music and made some real strange friends along the way.’
Graham Nash is on tour in the UK and his new album ‘Over The Years’ (Rhino) is out now. grahamnash.com
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