Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills and Nash)
“It was just me on the train, with my guitar, jamming with the experiences of what was happening around me. Every line in that song is true. We were sharing a cabin with American ladies 5 feet tall in blue. We were in the first class cabin but I would wander to the back of the train, where there were people in djellebas lighting fires, and had pigs and cuks and chickens and goats and straw.”Graham Nash (91)
“In 1966 I’d just finished a book on the Beat Poets who had gone down to Marrakesh and all they would do all day was smoke dope and write. I don’t know why but it appealed to me! So I decided that we would re-trace their steps. We got to Casablanca and got the train down to Marrakesh. I’d booked first class tickets with my first wife Rosie and our friend Joanne and a couple of American ladies who were slightly older, maybe 70-80 years old, their hair was dyed blue – and they were the American ladies dressed in blue. Anyway, it was boring to me so I went to the third class compartment and saw real life. Goats, pigs, chickens, people cooking food on a little stove, blowing into a reed instrument with a snake coming out of a basket. I went back to my First Class compartment and wrote Marrakesh Express.”Graham Nash (92)
Cathedral (Crosby, Stills and Nash)
“This was born from a realization that most of the world’s wars to that point had been, in part, in most part, created from religious differences. “Cathedral” is about a real experience of me being on LSD and going to Stonehenge, lying in the middle of Stonehenge. Trying to figure out what was happening with my life, going to Winchester Cathedral, opening the door, feeling this strange presence at my feet, looking down at my legs which are now wavering, and seeing that I was standing on the grave of somebody who had died on my birthday.”Graham Nash (93)
Immigration Man (Crosby and Nash)
“That came out of pure anger. I was in Vancouver with CSNY. Coming back across the border, Neil got in, David got in, Stephen got in, but I didn’t, because I was on a H-1 visa at the time from England. I was not an American citizen and they weren’t going to let me back in. In the meantime, there were people asking for my autograph. When I finally got back in and got back to San Francisco, I wrote the song on the back of a book called “The Silver Locust” by Ray Bradbury. It was the first thing I could find.”Graham Nash (93)
Wind On The Water (Crosby and Nash)
“This is about my feelings for Crosby. People were always throwing harpoons at him, in England – the press that hated The Byrds and all that stuff. So, as a matter of fact, even though it is a song that evolved into a statement about how we treat the great whales, and that great statement of Gandhi’s that the signpost of every civilization is how it treats its pets and animals, it really started with my thoughts on Crosby.”Graham Nash (94)
“[So after the first CSNY break-up, you and Crosby went on a sailing cruise – Ed]…which had an effect on my life…totally. I’d never really been on my own and decided that I just needed to just go and be alone for a while. I know that’s hard to do with four other people on a 60-foot boat, but as far as not dealing with other areas in my life, I was relatively alone. And I saw some incredible things, just great stuff. The most mind blowing thing was seeing an 80- to 90-foot blue whale come within 50 feet of us; it had a blow hole about six feet across. And to feel a monster like that, with a couple of dozen dolphins swimming around it…that’s basically where ‘Wind on the Water’ came from.”Graham Nash (944)
Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
“This was written for Joni Mitchell. She and I were having breakfast and ended up in a small antique store on Ventura Boulevard. She was just coming into money and was buying special things for herself. She found a beautiful vase, negotiated a price and we took it home. It was chilly, and I said, “You know, I’ll light a fire, you go put flowers in the vase.””Graham Nash (95)
“A love song for Joni in one sense and a love story for every woman in another sense.”Graham Nash (945)
Black Notes (Crosby and Nash)
“David and I were doing an acoustic show at Carnegie Hall. Then, just before we were about to go on, Stephen shows up with his guitar. So, we hurriedly decided that after a certain song, David would leave the stage, go get Stephen and bring him on. In the meantime, I would talk to the audience and introduce the next song. So during the concert, we did this song, and David left and I started talking, and David’s still not back, so I talk a little more….Crosby’s still nowhere in sight. So, I’m beginning to feel a little uneasy now, here I am alone in Carnegie Hall. So I look, and when I still don’t see Crosby, I go and sit down at the piano, and get an idea for this song: about when I started to learn how to play the piano, and how it was so awesome, unapproachable. With this song, I tried to deal with overcoming the difficulty of approaching and starting anything, especially piano playing. I started to just bash anywhere on the black notes, not using any white notes, and wrote this little song, right on the spot. And if anybody could see me, on stage at Carnegie Hall, just thumping with my arms and my elbows on the black notes and making up a song, they should have realized that they could play and they could write songs, because I’d just done it. I’m very fond of ‘Black Notes’.”Graham Nash (944)
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