The one line Graham Nash said he should have never wrote
Every song Graham Nash ever wrote was always about something more than playing the bare basics of rock and roll.
The Hollies had started off making the same kind of music that every fan of the British invasion loved, but when working on his own and with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, he was a lot freer to say what was on his mind than worry about whether a record was going to sell or not. He still had his pop sensibilities, but every album was now a statement rather than a collection of songs.
And compared to the rest of his bandmates, Nash was always the one who had something more than the silly love song up his sleeve. There would be those occasional sentimental moments on tunes like ‘Our House’, but even when making songs with a lot more depth to them like ‘Teach Your Children’, he was willing to push it aside if it meant releasing songs that would last forever like ‘Ohio’. But making that kind of art can be a double-edged sword as well.
There are plenty of tunes to come from CSN that were bound to last forever, but when listening to their tunes, Nash probably needed to be a little bit more careful than usual. They had the world’s ears when they were playing Woodstock, and since this was an opportunity to get a message out to the world, there’s no telling when some fans could pore over lyrics for days and try to make sense of what the hell Nash was on about.
But that’s why records like Deja Vu have that perfect balance between all the members. Neil Young may have been a wild card that Nash wasn’t all that comfortable with at first, but if you listen to that record in full, hearing Nash’s songs standing alongside tunes like ‘Helpless’ and ‘Country Girl’ is just the right mix of snide and saccharine that anyone could have enjoyed. When looking back on his prime years, though, Nash didn’t exactly love every single thing he put out.
As much as he was defiantly proud of being one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, he felt that tunes like ‘Chicago’ had a few rough edges behind them, saying, “There’s only one line in one song that I wish I hadn’t written, in ‘Chicago’. We were pretty blitzed. The line, ‘Regulations – who needs them?’ We need regulations. You’re not allowed to drive through a red light. There are certain societal rules that we have to live by. So I sing it differently now.”
That might have been the exact opposite of what the free love movement was about, but there’s a good reason behind it as well. Although everyone was tuning in and dropping out, Nash knew the dangers of what could happen if someone went too far. He had already seen what drugs had done to geniuses like Brian Wilson, so he knew that he was better off throwing only a few regulations to the side.
In fact, what Nash was getting at there was a lot closer to what John Lennon was doing when writing ‘Revolution’ a few years prior. Lennon was famously on the fence about that one line about destruction, so even if he was playing both sides on a few of the versions, he knew it was better to count him out and advocate for peace rather than turning a blind eye to the violence happening around the world.
Some hippies may have been a little bit pissed about Nash dialling things back, but it was only natural for him to start seeing the bigger picture as he got older. No one can live without regulations forever, and the Nash of today is a man who has taken inventory of everything that went on in his life and knew better than to go that over the top.
