Two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Graham Nash says — even at 82 — he’s “pretty good in the memory department.” Still, he’d be forgiven if his recall faltered based on the sheer volume of momentous occasions he’s witnessed and created.
He helped usher in the British Invasion with childhood chum Allan Clarke in the Hollies, was personally invited by Paul McCartney to attend the first-ever live satellite broadcast of the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” and forged a storied love affair with fellow songwriter Joni Mitchell that ultimately disintegrated but inspired his classic hymn of domestic bliss, “Our House.”
He also wowed Woodstock in 1969 with a brand-new folk-rock supergroup whose harmonies were as tight as their egos were large. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had only played live once (in Chicago at the Auditorium Theater, no less) before taking the stage in front of the muddied masses.
A month later, Nash, along with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young, convened in New York on their first tour. The fruits of those inaugural sets will finally see the light of day on Oct. 25 with the release of “Live at Fillmore East, 1969.”
“That music brings all those memories back,” Nash says of prepping the concert album. “You can really feel that me and David and Stephen really loved each other. We really loved the music that we were making.”
Calling in from Boston before he and his current band (keyboardist Todd Caldwell, drummer Adam Minkoff and guitarist Zach Djanikian) perform at Evanston’s Cahn Auditorium on Oct. 15 and 16, Nash is eager to share an unbelievable nugget about the before times — before infighting tore CSNY apart, before the back and forth reconciliations that marked each subsequent decade, before Crosby torched these relationships with public criticism of Young’s marriage to actress Daryl Hannah and before Crosby’s death in 2023.
Nash summons the specter of influential music promoter Bill Graham to set the scene in the dressing room of the Fillmore East after the band delivered multiple encores to an unsatiated crowd.
With demanding cheers reverberating through the venue, Graham begged for another song. “We said, ‘No man, we’ve already done three!’ and he starts to put $100 bills under the door,” Nash exclaims. “And when he got to $800, Neil said, ‘OK, OK, OK!, I’ll throw them into the audience.’ And we said, ‘No, man! This is New York. You can’t throw $800 into the audience. They’ll start to kill each other!’”
Some 55 years later, Nash doesn’t need bribing to get on stage. Like many of his ‘60s contemporaries, he can’t seem to trade in touring for retirement.
“I want to do what I do best. And what I do best is write songs, and the moment you write a song you want to play it for people,” Nash explains. “I owe it to my audience. I want to be there to make music for them. I’m not going to phone it in. I’m going to do it with the same passion as I wrote all those songs.”
Nash doesn’t have to reach back to the chaos of the 1968 DNC convention to conjure the passion abound in “Chicago” or take stock of his own naturalization journey to embody the defiance of “Immigration Man,” he can just browse the daily headlines. “It’s incredible how my songs have lasted so long,” he says. But doesn’t it sting a little that they are still so relevant? “Yeah,” he concedes. “It seems like we don’t learn much from history, do we?”
“Military Madness” particularly rings with solemnity in concert. “Look what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine. Look what’s going on with Israel and Gaza. Look at what’s going on in Sudan … We’re still killing each other in the name of politics and religion,” he says.
On “Now,” his 7th solo album released last year, Nash took aim at former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement on “Golden Idols” (“You’re living in a different dimension”) and “Stars and Stripes” (“I won’t fall for this illusion/Just tell me the truth”).
Nash says he’s always working on songs and has over 50 melodies crowding his head right now, but completing them takes being “either in love or pissed off.” He felt deeply enough about the events on Jan. 6, 2021, to put pen to paper.
“I still want to express my opinion. That’s why I became an American citizen over 50 years ago. I wanted to be a part of this country. I wanted to be a part of this society. I wanted to vote,” Nash proclaims. “America is an incredibly great country and at the same time there’s a lot of things we do that are not right.”
There’s only one thing left on Nash’s bucket list: “I would love to do a two-part version of ‘Yesterday’ with McCartney. I could really hear us doing that and it would be a wonderful thing to do.”
He’s just putting it out there in the universe without any expectations. Wilder things have happened in his career before. “I’m just a lucky man,” Nash admits.
Graham Nash at 8 p.m. on Oct. 15-16 at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston; tickets are $54.50 to $250 at evanstonspacemusic.com
Janine Schaults is a freelance writer.