The song Graham Nash wrote as an ode to Joni Mitchell and happier times
Arguably the best-loved song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is ‘Our House’, a track which arrived on the supergroup’s debut album Déjà Vu in 1970. It’s considered an “ode to countercultural domestic bliss” and remains one of the best songs that Graham Nash has ever written.
The song had been written by Nash about a house that he shared with his former partner Joni Mitchell in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, in the late 1960s. The story goes that the pair had gone out for breakfast together and had a wander around the shops of Ventura Boulevard, where Mitchell bought an inexpensive vase.
Discussing the origins of the song back in 2013, Nash said (via NPR), “Well, it’s an ordinary moment. What happened is that Joni and I [were] on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley; there’s a very famous deli called Art’s Deli. And we’d been to breakfast there. We’re going to get into Joan’s car, and we pass an antique store. And we’re looking in the window, and she saw a very beautiful vase that she wanted to buy. I persuaded her to buy this vase. It wasn’t very expensive, and we took it home.”
He continued: “And [when] we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, I said, ‘you know what? I’ll light a fire. Why don’t you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought?'” Of course, we know now that those very lyrics would find their way into the song’s introduction.
Nash noted that at the time he wrote ‘Our House’, Mitchell was in the garden “getting flowers” for the vase, which meant the piano was free for him to use. “An hour later, ‘Our House’ was born,” he said, “out of an incredibly ordinary moment that many, many people have experienced.”
The folk musician told biographer Dave Zimmer about the time he spent with Mitchell and the joy it brought him. “The time that Joni and I were living together was really interesting because I had left my band successfully, I had left my country successfully, and I was feeling great,” he said (via Songfacts). “And Joni was feeling great, too; she had started to realize who she was and the fantastic work she was doing.”
Nash added: “She was painting and designing her second album cover, doing that self-portrait. And I remember being totally in awe of her. She’d go and make some supper and come down, and we’d be eating, then she’d all of a sudden space out, go to the piano and write ‘Rainy Night House’ and all those other things. [It] was just mind-blowing“.
Did Joni Mitchell ever write a song for Graham Nash?
Neil Young, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and David Crosby are all songwriters who were given a song by Joni Mitchell. Not all of them were favourable, but they all have their imprint on vinyl. Mitchell, however, as far as we know, never penned a track for her one-time boyfriend Nash.
But, there was someone who did write a song for Nash, his future bandmate Neil Young, who captured their love in song. Nash and Mitchell shared a fast and furious relationship and considered one another soulmates for a period of time. In fact, Nash had a hand in writing 13 songs about Mitchell during his career. It’s clear he was devoted to Mitchell and completely in love, meaning when their relationship did finally end, Nash was left broken-hearted.
As a surefire way to help lift his friend and sometime bandmate out of the depths of heartbreak, Young decided to pen Nash a song of his own about his long-lost love, the truly astounding ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’.
