Pushkin. I want to let you know that Rick has a new podcast called Tetragrammaton. After about four to five years of recording Broken Record, Rick decided he wanted to talk to more than just musicians, So on his new podcast, he'll be talking to actors, directors, wrestlers, business people, anyone that Rick finds interesting. So make sure to subscribe to Tetragrammaton wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we have the second part of Rick Rubin's conversation with legendary singer songwriter Graham Nash. We drop part one a couple of weeks ago, so definitely go check that out if you haven't already. On today's episode, Graham tells Rick about the time The Grateful Dead we're recording next to Csen and how Jerry Garcia improvised a near perfect pedal steel solo on Teacher Children. Graham also describes a bizarre encounter with the judge who sentenced his father to prison, and shares the inspiration behind his upcoming solo album. Now this is Broken Record Line of notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Michman. Here's part two of Rick Rubin's conversation with Graham Nash. They start off with Graham talking about how the Classics CSN song Our House came to be. Can we talk about some of the other songs that you've written, just to talk about how they how they came to pass Our House. I'd taken Joani to breakfast Arts Delhi Unventura Boulevard in Los Angeles. It's a famous deli, and because the food's great and we had a nice breakfast. It was a tail end of winter. It was a shitty day. It was miserable and it was cold and just not not a nice day. So we finished breakfast and we leave Arts Deli and we're walking towards the park lot where Joan had parked her car, and we saw an antique store, and of course we're looking in the window. I like to I like to see stuff that people have made and said, you know, isn't this fantastic? And one hundred years later it's covered in dusting. Some weird store. Anyway, Jonnie saw a vase that she liked, very simple, about ten inches high, had some hand painted flowers around the top edge. It was beautiful and it was reasonably priced, so she bought it. And as I said, it was a miserable day. So we get in John's car and we drive down to the house in Laura Canyon and go through the front door, and I said, hey, John, why don't I light a fire and you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought today. I'm a musician. How can I not follow that? How can I not go away a second? That's an interesting phrase. I've finished this and it only took a maybe an hour and twenty minutes to finish. Unbelievable. Yeah, it speaks to the as an artist, you being aware at all times, looking for opportunities to turn real life into the art that you make. That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, you didn't sit down to write a song. You said something offhanded, recognize hmm, that sounds like something right, and you followed up, which is another part of it, because both you have to have the the awareness to recognize it and then the discipline to not do what you were planning to do, but sit down and play and commit to doing this thing and don't forget. You have to add something to that. Yes, I'm living in a house with a brilliant writer, Yes, who normally is at the piano, and I always gave her the space to to write, always always encouraged to write. I would go on long walks and she'd write, you know, but this time she wasn't at the piano. She was actually in the garden looking for flowers to put in the varse. So I had an hour to write it. Amazing. Is that the only time you've been in a relationship with another writer? Not quite. I spent a couple of years with Reader Coolidge, how beautiful and reader. It was the writer and she actually wrote that strange piano change in Layla. Wow. And unfortunately her boyfriend Jim Gordon said he'd written it Wow. Can you imagine how much money that reader could have made? Yeah? From Layla. I'm just curious about this. Was there any sense of competition living with a great artist, Not at all. There was no way I recognized the genius of Johnny in those days, and I would never get in the way. Yeah, it's just a fan. You were a fan, and she hopefully she was a fan of yours. I don't know that, but she was at least a fan of yours. As a human, I don't think that we could have spent the time that we did together, and she not at least recognized that I was a decent writer, you know. Okay, how about carry Anne? Ah? Carry Anne was a Holly song that started out by Tony Hicks, I think, and it turned into a song that we had written about Maryanne Faithful, and we didn't have the balls to call it, Hey mary Anne, And we were trying to come up with a girl's name that would disguise the fact that it was about Mary Unfaithful, and we came up with the with the title carry Anne. Had it been called mary Anne in that moment in time, would everyone have said, oh, that's Marion Faithful or not? Necessarily, they would have known. She was quite famous at that point because she was with Mick and Keith, you know, and had done all the being busted naked, you know, a lot all the stuff that unfortunately Marianne went in her life. But she is a brilliant writer, Marianne. She really is. Marrakesh Express. I'd taken a vacation from the Hollies in nineteen sixty six, and I'd heard stories of the American beat poets going down to this place called Marrakesh and smoking a lot of dope and writing poetry and all the stuff they got up to, and I kind of I thought it's an interesting idea. And so because I had a vacation, my wife and I at the time, flew to Casablanca and walked around Casablanca. It was a phenomenal place. And then we took a train going south to Marrakesh. I was in a first class compartment with two older American leaders who had their gray hair dyed blue, which was kind of shocking to me at that time. And I left the first class compartment and I go to the third class compartment and that's where that's where almost it was like Snoop Dog was having a party there, you know, you know, there was dogs and pigs and chickens all walking around and people pouring mint tea from like four feet in the air into the small coupe and not spilling a drawer. It was amazing. But that's where mark Express was born. And I just found my original lyrics, which which I'm happy about. Fantastic. So did it start? Do you remember if it started with lyrics first or just the title. I didn't get to the title until once again, at the end of the first chorus. My memory of it is that it all happened at the same time, me trying to translate my feelings of having just come back from the third class compartment party, and it all came out at the same time. The rhythm, the chords on the guitar, and the lyrics, it all came out at the same time. That one beautiful. It's beautiful when it happens. Yeah, amazing, Yeah, yeah, it feels it feels like magic when it happens. I thought it was pretty good, but that once again, at that time, it was one of the reasons why I felt that I had to leave the Hollies because they didn't like Marrakesh Express. Wow. Somewhere in the bowels of Emi, there's a tape of just the track of the Hollies doing Marrakesh Express, but there's no there's no train in there. I want I wanted. I wanted that kind of a rhythm train, which Stephen brilliantly did on the record when he put those uh what sound like trumpets in harmony there, you know, But that's Stephen beautiful because it was David once again saved my life in a way, because the worst thing you can do to a rider is give himself doubt when you say something that questions his veracity. That's awful to do to a rider. But it was Krasban and said, wait a second, let me tell you something that's a fine song. They're the crazy ones, and it was once again another reason why I had to leave the Hollies. Wow on a carousel On a carousel is one of those songs that is completely made up and completely made up from something that we had experienced when we were children, on actual riding on a carousel, and how all the horses are trying to catch up with each other, but they're stationary, of course because they're locked into the carousel. But it was basically a song totally made up from nothing. It's a beauty and teacher children. Well, i'd started teaching children in my last days in England. Basically when I came to America. One of the things that I was able to do, because I was earning a great deal of money at that point, was to collect photography. And I had I think about one hundred and fifty of the images to a show in Santa Clara in California. And I've never told any gallery owner how to hang my stuff. I'm very interested in how they would hang it, because when you have a picture on a wall, it affects the way you see the next picture on the wall. And one of the images that I bought by Arnold Newman was a portrait of Krupp, who was a family member of the Krupp family that manufactured all the armaments for both World Wars in Germany. And I realized that if we didn't teach our children a better way of dealing with each other, that humanity itself was in deep trouble. And that's when I got to finish teach your children. The recording of it was pretty simple. It was me and Stephen on acoustic guitars and Dallas Taylor, our drummer, on tambourine, and we have made the track and we realized that it needed a solo, and Steven said, you know, forgive me, but I'm kind of tired of doing solos. I've done. I've done a lot of solos, you know, is there any other thing that we can figure out? And Crosby said, hey, wait a second. Jerry Garcia has been learning pedal steel for the last three months. Maybe Jerry can put pedal steel on it. So we made a demo, a rough mix of the track. I told David to go over to Jerry, who was in the next studio with the Dead in Wally Hiders in San Francisco, and see if Jerry likes the song, and if he likes the song, does he want to put the pedal steel. He loved the song. He came in, he brought his pedal steel in the studio. I played it. He played the first take. I said, fantastic, unbelievable, that's exactly what this song needed. And Jerry said, and you know, I made a couple of mistakes. Do you mind if I do a second track? And I said, absolutely, you can do a second track, but I gotta tell you I'm not going to use it. What you just did when you were learning the song was so perfect. We did take the two notes that were out slightly wrong out of his second track, but I used that first track because it was beautiful, and I think it was a great deal of the reason why it became such a big hit. Two things interesting about that story. The first one is a photograph, so another form of art that you're interested in inspires the lyric. Yes, and then the happenstance of Jerry Garcia happened to be in the next studio, happened to be learning this new instrument, David happened to know that. It's like, there's so much that just and you say that might that's part of why the song is the song. Yeah, it's an amazing confluence of events, so many of which that are out of our control when we're making something great that it's a marvel and to witness it happen again and again, because we've got to see this over the course of our lives, over and over again. It's a true mystical experience when you see these elements come together in a way that it seems almost random, but through the recognition of oh maybe maybe if this with that right, maybe that'll work. It's amazing. Yeah, amazing, because you know, we wouldn't finding our way through music, but always keeping in mind what is right for the track. And Jerry's solo at the beginning and the solo in the middle, of course, was just perfect for the track, and he'd done it in one take and amazing. I love one takes. I'm I'm with Neil on that thing. I love when you've done a song in the studio you know, twenty times it loses something, you know, and I've been lucky enough to recognize when it's right, agree under and to argue the opposite point. Beatles did a lot of takes, and I really like those records. Yes, yes, that's true. So yeah, but you know there's probably Beatles songs that were done in one take too. Oh, absolutely absolutely. But I think if we listened to him, we wouldn't say the one take songs are necessarily better than the ones that know more effort. It's like whatever is right for like you're taking care of each song in the way that's best for that song, whatever that is. If it's one take, great, and if it's trying it many times until you find the way, it's like, we don't know, we can't know, no, but we know when it's right, absolutely, and that's the best and it's the best feeling because until it's right, I always have the feeling we don't have a we don't have a way to make it right until you do it, until we happen to recognize that it's already right. Yes, you can't do it in advance, that's right, and it takes courage to do that, you know, it takes courage to tell Jerry Garcia, you know, you know, sure you can do a second track, but I'm never gonna Okay, they had the song that had very CSN like harmony Uncle John's band. Was the fact that you guys were recording next to them, that have any impact on that song coming into existence, do you know? Undoubtedly they would come into the studio and watch what we did and how we did it. Yeah, and then they started to do that because they like harmonies too, you know. Yeah, but it's such a specific thing what Crusby, Stills and Nash does, and that's one of the few songs, a NANCSN song that has the makings of a CSN like blend right. They started to do what we did, which was we'd put up an eighty seven and we'd open it up all the way around and we'd just stand the three of us and I would stand further away from the microphone than David did, because I have this voice that cuts through everything. It's just the way my voice is. And when they saw that that we were position in ourselves around an open microphone, they took that and did that and that's how they started to record because normally they would put Jerry would put his part on, and then Phil would put his part on, and then twhoever. You know, right, in general, is there a difference between singing together versus stacking tracks? Absolutely? That example, absolutely, Tell me about it. Tell me about what happens different What happens differently is vibration when the three of us are singing around a microphone, knowing which distance each one of us needs to be to get the blend correct. It takes work to do that, but we managed to do that totally naturally, because there is a difference between when you put on a melody and then you double that, and you put on a harmony and then you do that. But with individual takes, there isn't the DNA blend of three voices hitting the air at the same time. It's a different sound if it's only one voice after another voice. It's fascinating because so few artists do it that way as well, so few we could do it though. Yeah, do you remember did you all wear headphones when you were doing it or were you singing with your no headphones? Do you remember? Yeah? I do remember. We always use headphones with just one with one right, so that we had the other ear free to be able to listen to what the other guys were doing. We wouldn't put both headphones on. We would only put one side on. Understood for the blend part of it of knowing where you were standing. That was more based on what you were hearing in the phone, I imagine, because you couldn't tell how it was affecting the mic just looking at it, right, But then the other ear was for the true mingling of the frequencies. Yes, exactly in real life, exactly right. Because it is different. It's hard to explain how when you put on headphones it's just different. Yes, it is. Then you have to deal with it. But we knew, we knew how to do our voices. Like I said, that sound csn hand vocally. It was done in forty five seconds. It was not saying it just bloody happened, and it happened so beautifully that I then made I have to go to England and undo my life. I want to follow this sound. This sound is amazing. I mean, yes, anyone can sing the same notes that we can. You can't sound like us. Yeah, we'll be back after a quick break with more from Rick Rubin and Graham Nash. We're back with Rick Rubin's conversation with Graham Nash. Coming from England, did you have any sense of feeling like an outsider when you came absolutely different than the other people. Yeah, but I was an outsider that I had a history of knowing how to make hit records because I'd been in the Hollies for seven years and like I said, we had fifteen or so top ten records. So I wasn't outsider, but I came with a certain weight. Yes, And you came post British invasion, where basically all of the music being made in California at that time, in what's one form or another, seemed to be influenced by what was going on in England. Yeah. We were amazed in England that we would take American songs and sing them with a kind of a British accent and sell them back to the Americans. That was weird to us, but it's what we did, you know, Because you'd have somebody that was in the Merchant Navy. You'd have a brother or a cousin or somebody, and they would go to America and they were musicians, so they would bring records back. So we were hearing all the Miracles and Barrett Strong and all these really strange rhythm and blues things that hadn't hit the charts in England. And yeah, the British Invasion. What a strange theme that was. Yeah, we're making all this American music and singing it with a British accent and selling it right back to the Americans. This is amazing. Yeah, I think there's something about I think it's more than just singing it with a British accent. I think the romantic view from a distance allows a different interpretation, not even just in the accents, but even in the way the music's approached. It's like, we can use the example of led Zeppelin and the American blues that it's based on. No American blues man would take it to such bombastic. It would be unseemly to do what led Zeppelin did from the blues master perspective. Yet they were taking this fantasy from a distance in the same way that Sergio Leone made the Spaghetti Westerns that were different than the Western Westerns. It's like seeing it from a distance can give you a romantic vision of it that's bigger than the reality of the situation. Yeah, it feels like the Hollies had that. It's like, yes, there was the influence of the American music, but it didn't sound like the American music because you guys were different and your life experience was different, right, And we'd all we'd all learned, you know, from skiffle. You know, we'd all learned from from early folk music. And we started out in dance halls, and we wanted to make music that people could dance too, and we wanted to make them think too, and why not do both things at the same time. But yeah, the Hollies did have a certain sound that was different than American bands, that's for sure. And let's talk about skiffle a little bit, because that was not something that happened in the United States, no, or at least it didn't happen as being called skiffle. Tell me about skiffle. There was an Irish folk singer called Lonnie Donegan, and he went to America and he witnessed Lad Belly and he witnessed all these blues people and how simple it was. Big Bill runs just on acoustic guitar, and he brought that music back with him from America. So now you have to think of Okay, in the late fifties, it was only ten years since World War two happened, and there was nothing that fifteen and sixteen year old kids could do, particularly where I lived, there was nothing to do. Really. You had a ball you could kick around or play cricket with, you know, but there was no There was no music because we couldn't afford it. And then skiffle came along, where if you had a cheap acoustic guitar and you created a bass from a t chest box with a pole and a string that you could play the bass, and for the drums you would put thimbles on your right hand if you right handed, and we had a washboard, which is an instrument that your grandmother used to wash clothes with and go stop, and so it was simple, it was cheap. We could afford to do that, and we all of a sudden we had something to do and we followed it directly. We loved skiffle and it started the background of our musical journey. And Lonnie Dogan is very famous in England. I mean, ask anybody, they all know who Lonnie Donigan was because he was very important in the creation of music in England. I guess the closest approximation we had in the United States would have been jug band music, which wasn't particularly popular. It was more of an a tiny regional fringe movement. Yes, so Lonnie Donigan must have seen that. I had no idea that the roots of skiffle were rooted in American music. I never would have guessed that. They never would have guessed that directly. Fascinating. Yeah, I have one more song to ask about, so I'll ask about it before I go on. Okay, the next song to ask about is just a Song before I Go, which was the biggest hit of the band. Yeah. If I knew it was going to be such a big hit, i'd written a better song. Just A song started very simply. It was me on piano. I've been to England to visit my mother who wasn't feeling too well and she was in hospital. And during that visit I stood on the steps of the Midland Hotel in Manchester. That was the same steps that Alan and I had met the Evely brothers in nineteen sixty two. And I was standing on the steps of the Middleland Hotel and I was watching people come and go. I realized that half of them didn't like their job, didn't like their boss, hated work, but had to do it, digging graves, doing whatever is they had to do. And I realized that why me? Why did I leave and become famous when I knew a lot of musicians that were better than me, that weren't famous. You know, it was really strange. Anyway, I took a small vacation. Me and David and Stephen were in a studio in Los Angeles making a record. We decided to take a small break from each other. I went to Hawaii and I went to the home of a friend of mine, acquaintance really named Spider, and he was a drug dealer, just marijuana. And I had, you know, about an hour and a half, two hours before I had to catch a plane back to the studio. And as I got up to leave, he said, wait a second, you're supposed to be some big shot songwriter. I bet you can't write a song just before you go. I said what he said, I'll bet you can't write a song just before you go right now? I said how much? He said, five hundred dollars. I said five hundred dollars. I sat down and I wrote just a song before I go in an hour and twenty minutes. It was amazing and in terms of an incredible circle. On my last tour, at the end of a show leaving and a lady gives me a small envelope, I put it in my back pocket and I forgot about that I had it there. I'm getting dressed the next morning and I realized, I have an envelope that I haven't opened. And I opened it up and guess what was inside? A check for five hundred dollars from the family of the kid that made me write the song in the first place. They realized that he was a dealer, that he probably hadn't paid me, and they were going to pay me and they did. Wow, I didn't. I just cashed the check, of course. No. It's an incredible story, yeah, amazing. Yeah, and what a great song. So that's a song that you wrote on a challenge, Yes, a total challenge. Yeah. So it shows it can come from anywhere. It doesn't. It doesn't have to be because it wasn't some lightning bolt hit you and this magic song came out. No, it was a five hundred dollar bet before you were flying off. Yeah, this kid's not going to beat me for five hundred dollars, that's for sure. Unbelievable. And he sent me the original lyrics, actually the original piece of paper that I wrote it on, which I have fantastic. Tell me about Nash editions. Okay, I'd gotten a Mac computer in nineteen eighty two or something very early. You could actually scan things. It was called a thunderscan and it moved across the image and it transferred all the information into the computer. And I was getting interesting images on the screen. I couldn't get him off the screen in a way that satisfied me. I tried photographing them. I tried inkjet prints, I tried thermal prints, and I couldn't get them off the screen. So this friend of mine, Charles Wirremberg in San Francisco, who is a scientist, called me one day and he said, hey, have you have you seen this printer that Fuji are putting out? And I said no, and I he gave me the name of the master printer in Los Angeles that was working the machine. I went to see it check it out. It was incredible. You know that when you're standing waiting to go into the cinema and you see those posters for the upcoming shows. Well, this machine was made to do that. Cheap paper but great color. So I found out someone who was using the machine and went down to check it out with my friend Mac, and I saw this machine, which looks like a small refrigerator, but it has a hood that you lift it up in. It has a drum that you attached the paper too, and it spins a million miles an hour, and these four print heads are spraying ink at it as it's going round. That sounds weird. And it's going round at twelve miles an hour and you're spraying ink on it and it's turning out like this. It was one hundred twenty five thousand dollars for the printer. I bought it immediately, and I wanted the machine to do what I wanted it to do. I want a thicker paper. I had to move the print heads a little further away because of the thickness of the paper, so I had to avoid the warranty within the first ten minutes. And I didn't care because I was forcing this machine that I had seen make this photograph looking print. I wanted it to do black and white and fantastic stuff purely for me. Yes, And then we decided that in eighty nine that we would open this up as Nash Editions and be the first portfolio maker in the world to do black and white inkjet prints. And not only that, but we got a beautiful medal from the Smithsonian Institution and my first printer is in the Smithsonian Museum in the American History Museum. Incredible. It was funny. I was a mean sushi in Boston once and a couple of people recognize me, and I took no notice of that. And as I'm leaving this lady shouts out, hey, Graham, and I'm expecting, where's Neil, you know, who did you screw last night? And what call the sults you have on? And all she said was great, Prince, And I went, wow, Okay, you've made it. I've made it. It's another beautiful story where you're making something for yourself and it's so good that you open it up to the world to participate, because that's how good it is. It's the same with all my songs. I only write songs for me. I don't write for anybody else, just me. But if you like the song and you want to do it fantastic. Now it's to see us and song. We have to take another quick break and then we'll be back with more from Graham Nash. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubbins conversation with Graham Nash. I read a story, I don't know if this is true, maybe apocrypha, that there was a cs AND reunion in Sauceldo in nineteen seventy four and the band ended up breaking up during those sessions over an argument over a harmony note choice. Does that ring true? Yep? Do you mind talking about it? Yeah, there were two times it happened. Once in my house in San Francisco. Stephen had this song that I was putting my harmony on and he wanted me to sing a minor set of changes through a major chord on the track. And I have to admit, I think I'm pretty good at what I do as a harmony singer, and my body couldn't do it. I could not every time I came to the chorus. Whether you wanted me to sing in minor thing through a major set of changes, I couldn't. My body couldn't do it. And Stephen got so angry that he We had just mixed my song win on the Water and gotten a master two track of it, and he sliced it up with a race of blade. Yeah. And another time it happened, and I think it's this ALSOLDO one that you're referring to. We were playing a song of David's called Homeward through the Haze, very beautiful song, and for some reason one of the bass parts was not quite right, and we began arguing about whether it was right or whether it was not, And all of a sudden I look over to where Neil was sitting and Neil wasn't there. He just left. He just gone. Amazing. The same happened when we were making the record in Fort Lauderdale. I'd have been having breakfast with Neil every day at the hotel, right, and for some reason, he's not there at ten o'clock and I call the front desk, I said, as mister Young been around. They said, yeah, he left this morning for San Francisco. I said, we're wait, we're in the middle of it's Neil amazing. He was gone. And that's why not robing a song called Mutiny. It's funny in the different examples, it was always a Crosby song. Yeah, Yeah, beautiful song though. Yeah, an amazing writer. David was an amazing writer. I mean his sense of combining these strange guitar tunings with the jazz feel made him a completely unique musician. I don't know anybody that writes music like Crosby. It's interesting hearing you tell the story of Marrakesh Express and it being inspired by the beat poets and essentially the drug culture. And while there's a tremendous emphasis on drug use in Crosby, Tilson Nash, you're usually viewed as the grounded, straight person, or that's the perception in the outside world, is that the other two guys are off the rails. So it's interesting to hear that you were also a participant. Yeah, with Crosby, I mean I tried everything. I tried not taking any drugs. I tried taking more drugs than he was taking. I tried everything. But you know, having been in the Hollies and had all these success I was kind of stable and I knew what was best for us. And I've always kept the music in the forefront of my mind, and I've always been the one that says no wait a second. If something's wrong, let's figure out a way where we can all win. And I've always been that kind of person since I was a kid. Tell me about one of my favorite vocal performances is not on one of your albums, and I only recently found out that it's you singing, and that's on Donovan's song Happiness Run. Yes, I love the song, and I used that outro as a reference for musicians all the time, talking about what interesting arrangements you could do vocally. Don't think of it just as the lead voice. Right, here's an example of the vocals are the whole thing and the relationship between the different vocals. Tell me how that came about and the writing of it and everything about it. Donovan was the man that taught me how to play finger pick a guitar. I couldn't do it before he showed me how to do it. And he was a big fan of mine, and he knew that the Hollies were not happening in my mind anyway. He played me this song, Happiness Runs, and I realized that it was a perfect example of a round meaning you could go happiness runs in a happiness runs in all happiness runs. You know you can make a round of it, yes, like row row row your boat, exact famous round that most people knew, right, And yeah, it was very easy to do. We did it in ten minutes, really easy because it was the song was there. We just had to make it sound more interesting than it was. It's great and that the interaction of the vocals at the end make the whole thing. I absolutely love it great. Oh, this is interesting. I've seen footage of Crosby Stills in Nash playing at Esselyn in Big Sir, and Esselyn was sort of a hippie capital and the birth of the Human Potential movement took place there. So it was forward thinking place, lots of young people, naked, hot springs. Yes, And interestingly, Crosby, Sials and Nash show up with these D forty five very expensive guitar, the most expensive guitar you could buy from Martin and wearing fur coats into this piece and love hippie world. And it's a wild juxtaposition. And just wanted to ask you what do you remember about that? Did thought go into it? Tell me everything? Esseelin was exactly how you described, particularly the hot tubs and the naked Ladies. Joanie was there at that time, and she had a song that she used to end her shows with called get Together, and we would casually get up there and sing. And she didn't mind, you know, at all, because she knew how good we were, and so if we got up there to sing, it was going to be okay. And it was like a gang sing at the end, you know. But what I remember most about Esseelin is that Johnie and I were growing more apart by the minute. And there's a photograph of me and Joanie explaining each other to each other that somebody took. That is a perfect example of what it was that I was feeling during that Eselent thing because Johnie and I were breaking up. Basically, tell me about David Blue. It's all over now. David Blue was a fine songwriter in New York City at the same time that Dylan was upcoming, David Blue was upcoming. I liked his songs. I brought him to my studio in San Francisco and recorded a great album with him called Nice Baby in the Angel. In my book of photographs that I put out recently, there's a photograph of David Blue and he's smoking a cigarette but he has a cigarette in each hand. And that was David Blue. He was a man that felt that he didn't get enough dues because this other guy, Bob Dylan, was taking most of the headlines, even though David felt that he was already. Maybe Dylan took his name and it's all over now, baby Blue. You know who knows. But David David was a nice man. Do you know anything about Leonard Khne's relationship with David Blue? No, interesting that Leonard Khne always had a feeling the way that David Blue felt as it related to Bob. Leonard had some feeling that the relationship between him and David Blue, like maybe why isn't it David Blue? And why is it me? You know, like like he he didn't understand there was the opposite side of the David Blue story of why do I have the success versus David Blue? Like almost like imposter syndrome. Yeah, And then David was very cognizant of that. He understood that he was being completely shadowed. But he was a decent songwriter and I enjoyed that album that I made with him, Beautiful. In one of the stories I read about Crosbie Silson, Nash reunion attempts. It happened in the famous studio in Miami. Oh yeah, Criteria, Yeah, Criteria. What was it about Criteria in the seventies that drew so many artists. First of all, it's a great studio. There's a great sound in the studio, and that's why a lot of artists got there. But also there were two ladies that provided a service that was great. You could rent a house and they would do all the cooking and they would clean all the beds and do all that stuff. And that's exactly what we did. That's what Eric had done previously one on his album. And so that combination of not being in Hollywood and being in a sunny being in a sunny place with the same kind of freedoms and Criteria had a great sound and we took advantage of it. For sure. Beautiful because I always wondered because Miami was not really a hot spot at that point in time, but so many great artists all were traveling there and I never really knew what the draw was. But that's interesting that there was like a live in situation, yes, that you could go off and make a record and everything would be taken care of besides you being in the studio making the music right. And as you say, it was out of the way. It wasn't Hollywood. Yeah, you know, it wasn't New York. It was completely out of the way in terms of why Miami. But it was the combination of a sound of the studio itself and the availability of being able to rent a house away. You didn't have to think. Tell me about Judy sil Judy was a very interesting woman. I think she was a brilliant composer. I think that she wasn't pretty enough to be a Joni Mitchell kind of long blonde hair, folksinging kind of thing. She opened up on a tour that David and I did for about two or three weeks. She would often drive in the car with David and I. She was darkly funny, and the more she told us about her life, the more amazing she got. She told us she used to you know, she was a hooker at one point, but her love of music was undeniable, and she loved a particular guitar that I had. It was a Martin D twenty eight, and at the end of the tour I gave it to her. But Judy was a really interesting woman, and I think that a lot of people I'm now being turned onto her music. I recorded a song with her called Jesus was a Crossmaker. I thought that that might be a radio hit. But that's the only track that I ever produced for Judy. But it was a good creative experience. Yes, very much so. I only got turned onto her recently and find the music very, very beautiful. Yes, she was a I'm profound songwriter. How do you think the last chapter of your father's life impacted your choices going forward in life? A great deal. My father went to jail for about a year for a camera that he had bought from a friend of his at work, and the police came to the door and wanting to know who it was, and sold it to him. My father wouldn't tell them, and he ended up in a jail for a year, and he died at forty six. It affects my life in the following way. I always cheer for the underdog. I'm always championing the team that's not supposed to win. And a very interesting thing happened to me. I'd written a song called the Prison Song, and the first verses about my father, I was in Granada Television in Manchester. I was doing a show and I was singing that song. Also on the show tape was the judge that sentenced my father to prison. You must believe that I was in a very strange state of mind. Nobody else knew except me. Nobody knew. I don't even know how to process it. What tell me? Did you want to leave? Did you want Yeah? I wanted to get to him and you know, tell him off for doing that. I mean, I wrote every ridiculous thing to even think of doing. But he was on tape and he wasn't available for me to converse with him. But what a strange event, me singing the song about my father in prison with the judge that put him in prison. Unbelievable. Did you grow up in Manchester or Blackpool? I was born in Blackpool. I lived I lived in Salford, which was one of the slums of England, which is a suburb of Manchester. But during the World War Two, they would evacuate all the pregnant ladies outside the bombing area to have their children in peace. And that's that's why I ended up being born in Blackpool, which I never lived there. I was just born there. I actually, quite a few years ago, took two of my sons into that room and I ended up. I started. I went into the hotel, which is on the front in Blackpool, and I looked at the guy that was in the front desk and I said, I have a really strange question. He said, it's you go around, Dane. It's down right down the stairs. I said, how did you know that? He said, listen, a lot of you've come here and you wanted anyway. He pointed me to the room and there was the room. And I'm breathing in the room in which I took my first breath. Wow, and maybe see so cool? I know my life is full of this. Yeah, magic, We're black, we are blessed, indeed we are. We'll tell me about living in New York. Is this the first time you've ever lived in New York? Yes? I'd been to New York many times, you know, sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for a couple of weeks. And I couldn't wait to get out of here. What changed? What changed is I divorced my wife, Susan, after thirty seven years of marriage. We were not in love. It was totally over we divorced. I'm playing a show with David and Stephen at the Beacon here in New York City, and Amy and I shook hands, and I believe at that point I knew what I needed to do. I needed to find out more about this woman, find out who she is, what she does, and every question. And I asked myself, she answered in total brilliant. She's a brilliant artist. And I wish now that I had been strong enough to realize earlier that my marriage to Susan was over and I should have been living in New York for twenty years. And this is an incredible city. I've said it before, but I one of the things that I love about it is hearing five different accents on the way to get a cup of coffee, you know, and then when you add the galleries, and you know, this is a fantastic city. And I wish I'd have been here for many years, but I have been here for at least eight now. Amazing, amazing and beautiful that you got to meet your partner after all these years, and after being in an unhappy situation for a long time, It's again a blessing. Don't forget the opening line of my album, I used to think that I could never love again, but I did. I found it again. Don't screw it up. I'm trying my best. I really, I mean I am trying my best. I mean living with some with another person is difficult. It's full of compromises. But I'm learning every day and she's teaching me everything that I thought I knew. Beautiful, congratulations, Thank you, can't wait for the new album. Thank you so much for doing this. I loved talking to you, love seeing you, and can't wait till we get to hug in person. Thank you, Rich, thank you, You're welcome kid. Thanks again to Graham Nash for sharing stories from his magical life with us. His new album Now is out in May. In the meantime, you can hear all of our favorite Crosby, Stills and Nash and sometimes Why songs at Broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from me A Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Taliday, and Eric Sandler. Our editor is so Ukraine. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted actually listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. A theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.