(Graham Nash’s 2013 autobiography “Wild Tales” is a fabulous example of his storytelling brilliance.)
By Jeff Maisey
No matter how simple or complex every song has a story behind it, and inspiration for its creation.
David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash were seemingly always been in tune with their surroundings on both personal and worldly levels, but it was an on-again off-again member, Neil Young, who penned perhaps the most politically charged song ever — “Ohio.”
It was May 1970 and protest against the Vietnam War were breaking out on college campuses across the nation. At Ohio’s Kent State University, however, national guardsmen were sent to keep the peace and then a stirring tragedy was to unfold.
Students were shot and killed.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s poignant song, reflected in music and lyrics of the horrific images that Americans were bewilderedly watching unfold on their television screens.
“I was down in Los Angeles with Stephen, and David was up in the house I had in Northern California with Neil,” recalled Graham Nash. “The news came over that the students were shot.
“Neil walked into the woods,” continued Nash, “and he comes back with that song.
“Crosby calls me and he says, ‘You will not believe what Neil has just written. Book the studio we’re coming down tomorrow.”
“They came down to Los Angeles. We went into the studio and we cut “Ohio,” and we put it out immediately as a single with “Find The Cost of Freedom” as the B-side.”
The lyrics were on point and Neil Young’s angry voice and piercing guitar made them all the more biting:
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
According to Nash, the band members had always been about “what’s going” on before the group formed.
The members of Crosby, Stills and Nash had already established themselves as prolific songwriter’s and have been an intricate part of the most popular acts of the 1960s before coming together is Crosby, Stills and Nash. The harmony-rich trio was instantly recognized as an all-star band.
“David have been thrown out of The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield had come to an end,” said Nash. “At the same time I was very unhappy in The Hollies.
“We met through our mutual friend Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas, and we sang together in Joni Mitchell’s living room for the first time, and from that very moment, we knew that we would have to be making music together for a long time.”
Crosby, Stills and Nash made it’s debut in 1969 at the Woodstock Festival, performing some of their most memorable songs — “Wooden Ships,” “Helplessly Hoping,” “Marrakesh Express,” and “Guinevere.”
Nash said the songs the group wrote as a trio as well as with Young more than 40 years ago are just as important today. Take “Teach Your Children” for instance.
“I began to realize that if you didn’t teach your children a better way of relating to our fellow human beings, the very future of our planet is in jeopardy,” he said. “I believe it’s gotten worse.”
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Graham Nash
August 1
Sandler Center