The 1970 song Graham Nash didn’t mind ruining: “That didn’t mean shit to me”
Hit records are the bread and butter of almost every successful group, but back in 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young demonstrated that there are far more important things in life than commercial success, self-sabotaging one of Graham Nash’s most promising hits in the process.
‘Teach Your Children’ was a track that had been rattling around in Nash’s mind for some years before he finally committed it to tape. Originally, it had been written during his later days with The Hollies, in 1968, but it was with CSNY that the first recordings of it arrived, first for their self-titled debut album, but more prominently for Déjà Vu. By that time, of course, the group had firmly earned their ‘supergroup’ title, pulling off the impossible task of attracting a cult audience coupled with mainstream commercial success.
When that track was put out as a single in 1970, it looked set to become Nash’s next big hit, entering the US singles charts early doors and steadily climbing, before peaking at number 16. While that placing is still rather commendable, particularly for a country rock styled single such as it was, ‘Teach Your Children’ might have gone much further, were it not for the fact that Graham Nash himself sought to sabotage its chances.
“I agreed to shelve my own song, ‘Teach Your Children,’” he recalled to The Aquarian back in 2017, “which had already made it into the Top 30 and was heading upwards on that fateful May 4th.” From that date, history buffs can likely decipher the reason for Nash’s sudden change in focus, but for the benefit of everybody else, May 4th, 1970, was the date of the Kent State massacre, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a university campus anti-war protest, killing four innocent, unarmed students and wounding many more.
It was a watershed moment in the anti-war movement and counterculture years, and given their unwavering support of that movement, CSNY immediately sought to channel their anger and heartbreak into song.
“Crosby told me about it and was very intense about having me book a studio,” Nash recalled. “When I asked him why, he just said, ‘We’re on our way. Just wait until you hear this song Neil’s written called ‘Ohio’. We recorded it that night… We told [Atlantic Records] to put it out immediately.”
One of the most profound protest songs of the entire anti-war movement, Neil Young’s ‘Ohio’ perfectly captured the mood of the time immediately following the incident at Kent State, and so it had to be released as soon as possible. Recorded in late May, 1970, and released only a week or so later, CSNY struck while the iron was hot, but that meant Graham Nash had to reckon with killing off the rising success of ‘Teach Your Children’.
Having two songs vying for chart success at the same time rarely works out, and the release of ‘Ohio’ “ruined” the chance of success for ‘Teach Your Children’, according to Nash. However, he noted, “We felt it was much more important to let people know that America was killing its own fucking children than having another hit record, of which I had 18 when I was with The Hollies.”
“That didn’t mean shit to me,” he continued, concluding, “I was totally in favour of killing ‘Teach Your Children’ to get ‘Ohio’ out now.” As such, that 1970 protest single perfectly encapsulated the spirit, ethos, and motivation of CSNY as a group; hit singles were aimed for, but songs with substance and something to say were invariably prioritised.
