One song caused feud between Graham Nash and George Harrison

Credit: Far Out / Alamy

The song that caused a feud between Graham Nash and George Harrison

Mon 29 August 2022 16:30, UK

The matrix of Beatles’ connections to fellow artists and moments in rock music in the 1960s is full of colourful fate. Many faces and singers returned for second and third passes through the Fab Four orbit, and most of those meetups were positive and influential. Some, however, not so much.

Both David Crosby with the Byrds and Graham Nash with the Hollies enjoyed numerous moments with the Beatles long before they set out with Stephen Stills on that trio’s legendary career. And their brushes with The Beatles came while the Liverpool lads were on top of the world in every way imaginable, artistically and commercially. “They were our heroes,” Crosby said in 1995. “They were absolutely what we thought we wanted to do. We listened to every note they played, and savoured it, and rubbed it on our foreheads, and were duly affected by it.”

The feeling was mutual between the Beatles and Byrds. In August of 1965, the Beatles were in Beverly Hills on a rare day off during another hectic US tour. Roger McGuinn and Crosby went to the house the Beatles were renting, hung out, partied and, according to McGuinn, dropped acid together. “David, John Lennon, George Harrison and I took LSD to help get to know each other better,” he said. “There was a large bathroom in the house, and we were all sitting on the edge of a shower passing around a guitar, taking turns to play our favourite songs.”

Two months later, back in London, the Beatles recorded ‘If I Needed Someone’ during sessions for what became the Rubber Soul album. Harrison wrote it and plainly admitted that the song’s style was a homage to the emerging Byrds’ songs, particularly ‘The Bells Of Rhymney’. “He gave a copy of his new recording to Derek Taylor, the Beatles’ former press officer, who flew to Los Angeles and brought it to my house,” McGuinn recalled. “He said George wanted me to know that he had written the song based on the rising and falling notes of my electric Rickenbacker 12-string guitar introduction. It was a great honour to have in some small way influenced our heroes the Beatles.” Into that lovefest came the Hollies and Nash.

He first met the Beatles in November 1959 when John, Paul and George were performing in Manchester – where Nash lived – as Johnny and The Moondogs. “They weren’t even called the Beatles,” Nash recalled decades later. “They were four kids, and you couldn’t get inside [their circle]. They took care of themselves, and everybody knew it.”

Nash’s own band evolved into the Hollies three years later, and they burned their way up the same UK record charts that the Beatles were dominating by 1965. The Hollies had put seven consecutive singles into the top 10, including the number one ‘I’m Alive’ that spring. They saw ‘Look Through Any Window’ become their first single to crack the US top 40 that fall. The Hollies planned to continue that upward momentum when it came time to record their follow-up.

Beatles producer George Martin had given Hollies producer Ron Richards a demo of the as-yet-unreleased song ‘If I Needed Someone’, and Nash was among those to vote for taking up Harrison’s track. They even recorded it in the same EMI studio that the Beatles cut theirs just weeks earlier. Ultimately both versions were released the same day that December – as a Beatles album track on Rubber Soul and as the highly anticipated Hollies’ new single.

The Hollies cracked the top 20, giving Harrison his first penned chart hit. George, however, wasn’t keen on the Hollies’ spin of the song and certainly wasn’t shy about sharing that opinion in the music press.

The December 10th, 1965, issue of New Musical Express showed the state of the pop scene that week. One week after the Beatles’ track ‘Help!’ was number three on the album charts, Rubber Soul was already Britain’s best-selling LP, not to mention ‘Day Tripper’ was the best-selling single in the country. The back pages of the issue also included a feature on Xmas Radio with the Hollies and Herman’s Hermits.

Elsewhere in the magazine, writer Alan Smith was travelling with and documenting the Beatles’ tour that winter in support of Rubber Soul. He asked Harrison, in particular, if he had more songwriting plans in the future since he, as Smith noted, had written ‘If I Needed Someone’ “for the Hollies.”

“Tell people I didn’t write it for the Hollies,” George snapped back Smith. “It’s called ‘If I Needed Someone’ and they’ve done it as their new single, but their version is not my kind of music.” George wasn’t done.

He added: “I think it’s rubbish the way they’ve done it! They’ve spoilt it. The Hollies are all right musically but the way they do their records they sound like session men who’ve just got together in a studio without ever seeing each other. Technically good, yes. But that’s all.”

One week later, again in New Musical Express, the headline screamed that Nash and the Hollies “blast back at George” across the top of the front page. “Not only do these comments disappoint and hurt us … but we are sick and tired of everything the Beatles say or do be taken as law,” Nash said, and like George one week earlier, he wasn’t done. “So the Beatles are the biggest group in the world, and George Harrison and the rest of them are entitled to their own opinions, but when things like this are said, they really must believe their own publicity”. Because of Harrison’s comments, Nash also said he didn’t want the Hollies to release ‘If I Needed Someone’ as a single in America as “a matter of principle”.

It’s hard to say if Harrison’s comments doomed the Hollies’ effort, but ‘If I Needed Someone’ stalled at number 20 on the UK charts, a clear disappointment. The Hollies got back on track quickly, though. Their next five singles, starting with ‘I Can’t Let Go’, all reached the top five in the UK, and they took two into the US top ten.

Both Nash and Crosby continued to travel in Beatles circles soon after.

One year after partying with the Byrds in Beverly Hills, the Beatles were back there in August 1966. And they were back hosting a house party with members of the Byrds, including Crosby, who had accompanied them to their Los Angeles press conference to announce the release of the Revolver album. “That’s Dave from the Byrds,” John quipped about Crosby during the press conference. “A mate of ours”.

Visiting England six months later, Crosby turned up at EMI Recording Studios on Abbey Road while the Beatles worked on ‘Lovely Rita’ for the upcoming Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band record. A few months after that, Nash was at EMI at the request of Paul McCartney. Graham joined friends like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Keith Moon seated on a floor of gathered guests while the Beatles recorded ‘All You Need Is Love’ before a worldwide live television audience.

Both Nash and Crosby clearly were on friendly terms with the Beatles, despite Nash’s dust-up through the press with George over ‘If I Needed Someone’. Crosby and Nash, meanwhile, were on the verge of leaving their respective bands. By 1968 they joined up with Stephen Stills, and the trio immediately sparked a three-part harmony that was just trying to get off the ground as a new act. “I was in Los Angeles with David and Stephen,” Nash recalled. “And [we] went into the studio and recorded two songs, ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ and ‘Helplessly Hoping.’ And they’re pretty stunning.”

So thrilled about their new sound was Nash that he arranged for the trio of Crosby, Stills and Nash to audition in London for the Beatles’ new Apple Records label, which also happened to be looking for fresh new talent. “We had an apartment on Moscow Road in London, we were rehearsing the first record [Crosby, Stills & Nash, 1969], and we had our shit down,” Nash said. “To hear ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ in our living room was pretty fucking impressive.”

Nash, along with Crosby and Stills, would find himself auditioning with Apple’s new head of A&R, Peter Asher. And, also with Harrison, with whom he had traded barbs about talent and records three years earlier. The new trio was full of energy and momentum and came to the session armed with the songs that would eventually comprise their seminal debut album and launch Crosby, Stills and Nash into superstardom.

Except that Harrison and Asher weren’t feeling it. The trio got a prompt, polite letter the very next day explaining that signing Crosby, Stills and Nash to Apple “would not be a good fit”.

“They turned us down,” Nash recalled years later. “How could you listen to that first album sung by the three of us and go ‘No thanks’. I never understood that.”

Whatever vibes may have existed between Nash and Harrison, from the ‘If I Needed Someone’ fuss to the surprisingly failed Apple audition, Nash rarely lets on. Interviews over the decades since regularly feature Nash extolling the Beatles’ talent and influence, and Nash has even covered Harrison’s signature song ‘Here Comes The Sun’ in concert. But Nash did let his guard down a bit in his 2013 autobiography Wild Tales: A Rock and Roll Life. “In those days tweaking a Beatle was like blaspheming the pope,” he wrote. “Every English group owed them a huge debt, but I had no intention of kissing their asses. … Besides, last I looked, the Hollies were holding down places on the same top ten as the Beatles, so pardon me if you don’t like our fucking record but keep it to yourself, if you please.”

Whatever opinions Harrison had on either Nash and the Hollies’ take of his song or Nash’s audition with Crosby and Stills back then, Nash earned a measure of vindication later. He was enshrined twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – once with Crosby, Stills and Nash, and again with the Hollies.

Links between the Hollies and Harrison took an unpredictably personal twist a generation later. The band Thenewno2 surfaced in 2006 and comprised Dhani Harrison – George’s son – and Paul Hicks, who is the son of Hollies guitarist Tony Hicks. Paul has also worked on George Harrison’s posthumous releases.