Graham Nash 'for Beginners'

Sunday News
Published: Oct. 5, 2008
By JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

In 1971, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were on the ropes. Their album "Déjà Vu" had been massively successful, but the group's members were heading in divergent musical and personal directions, well-evidenced on the disappointing live effort "Four Way Street," which consisted mostly of members playing by themselves.

On top of that, Nash's three-year relationship with songwriter Joni Mitchell — about whom he wrote the hit "Our House" — had ended abruptly. The dissolution of these partnerships would be a creative inspiration for Nash. His first solo album, "Songs for Beginners," was a surprise release that year, and to this day is considered among his best achievements.

This fall, that album gets its first proper CD treatment as a two-disc set from Atlantic/Rhino, complete with remastered sound with several mix options, new liner notes and an insightful interview with Nash about his award-winning photography. Its release coincides with a tour Nash is undertaking as a duo with David Crosby, an on-and-off partnership since the very days of "Songs for Beginners." The duo will perform at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading.

When Crosby, Stills & Nash first came together in Cass Elliot's living room in 1968, Graham was the outsider. Stephen Stills came from the genre-defying Buffalo Springfield, and David Crosby from the folk-rock inventing Byrds, the closest thing America could offer as an answer to the Beatles. Both were Southern California music veterans.

Nash, on the other hand, was English, formerly a member of the twee pop group the Hollies. He had an incredible voice, had written several hit songs for the Hollies and had pushed the band toward bold psychedelic experiments. But he had little street cred.

Early CSN hits like "Marrakesh Express," "Our House," about his early bucolic bliss with Mitchell, and the group's most recognizable standard, "Teach Your Children," all came from Nash's pen. Neil Young, another heavyweight writer, joined the group in the summer of 1969.I

t wasn't until things fell apart in both Nash's musical and personal spheres that he finally earned recognition as a solo artist.Nash never intended to release a solo album, hoping instead to bring CSN&Y back together. (He had taken on the role of peacemaker in the group.)

But the songs came, and friends — from Young (who appears under a pseudonym) and Crosby to Dave Mason, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Rita Coolidge — were there to help out. The results are as good, and perhaps better in some cases, than the solo efforts of Crosby, Stills and Young that came first.

"Better Days" channels classic gospel to find hope in a hopeless situation, rising from a simple piano into a rousing refrain, drenched in saxophone and churchy singing.

On the gentle, acoustic "Wounded Bird," Nash expresses pain reborn as empathy in a tune written about bandmate Stephen Stills, then going through a tumultuous breakup with folk singer Judi Collins. He hints at his own well of loss on "Sleep Song," rolling over in the morning to kiss his lover awake, only to realize it was a dream and she is already walking out the door. A glimpse of her dress is the last thing he ever sees of her.

By far, the album's great triumph is "I Used to Be a King," a scathing, soul-baring bit of self-mockery that alludes to "King Midas in Reverse," an old Hollies hit that was still knocking around the CSN&Y set list.

Garcia's glassy pedal steel and Crosby's shaky baritone guitar give the song an epic feel befitting a story of a man fallen from great heights: "I used to be a king, but everything around me turned to rust," sings Nash, a man standing very much alone. Ever the stoic optimist, Nash manages a little hope in the chorus: "Someone is going to take my heart/ But no one is going to break my heart again."

Nash being Nash, of course, a couple of protest songs made the cut as well, as if to certify that he hadn't given up on ideas greater than his own pain."Military Madness" linked Nash's wartime birth to Vietnam, while "Chicago" was written about the fallout from the 1968 Democratic Convention protests. By 1971, seven people were being tried for inciting the riots. The song also was a thinly veiled jab at Young and Stills, who turned down an invitation to play a benefit for the defendants as a group. Nash went anyway.

To this day, these activist songs are two of his best, played as recently as 2006, when CSN&Y came to Hersheypark Stadium on their critically praised, culturally toxic Freedom of Speech tour.

This time around, Crosby and Nash are again out to change the political landscape in an election year. But as gentle, pensive and thoroughly inward-looking as "Songs for Beginners" is, the duo can do it quietly.