Graham Nash, Part 2

0:05Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant. So you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find anywhere else. The best part is those great candidates are already on LinkedIn. In fact, employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. That's a big deal when every hire counts. Hiring doesn't have to be complicated.

0:39With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the confusing steps in recruiting jargon. It filters through applicants based on criteria you've set for your role and surfaces only the best matches so you're not stuck sorting through a mountain of resumes. When you have a business to run, you don't have hours to spend on hiring. You don't want to just wait around hoping the right person stumbles upon your job. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests 25 great candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash broken, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates.

1:15That's linkedin.com slash broken to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Every December, we start singing at church, around the fire, in our cars, with the radio turned up. But have we ever stopped to ask, where did our favorite Christmas carols come from? And what makes them so magical? Join me in unwrapping the meaning and the magic behind these caroling classics. Listen to Hark, the stories behind our favorite Christmas carols. Available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and at americamagazine.org. When it comes to the holidays, I believe you fall into one of two camps. Someone who loves holiday music, or someone who won't admit they love holiday music.

1:58There's something about a voice you love singing a familiar opening phrase. maybe it's Donny Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey, that just flips a switch, and you instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring. For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks caramel brulee latte. That's their signature espresso with steamed milk, and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping. It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form. And that's really what this season's about. because this season and every season together is the best place to be.

2:32Come together over your favorite holiday favorites at Starbucks. I want to let you know that Rick has a new podcast called Tetragrammaton. After about four to five years of recording Broken Record, Rick decided he wanted to talk to more than just musicians. So on his new podcast, he'll be talking to actors, directors, wrestlers, business people, anyone that Rick finds interesting. So make sure to subscribe to Tetragrammaton wherever you listen to podcasts.

3:26describes a bizarre encounter with a judge who sentenced his father to prison and shares the inspiration behind his upcoming solo album now this is broken record liner notes for the digital age i'm justin richman here's part two of rick rubin's conversation with graham nash they start off with graham talking about how the classic csn song our house came to be can we talk about some of the other songs that you've written just to talk about how they came to pass our house? I'd taken Joni to breakfast at Art's Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles. It's a famous deli because the food's great. And we had a nice breakfast.

4:11It was the tail end of winter. It was a shitty day. It was miserable and it was cold and just not a nice day. So we finish breakfast and we leave Arts Deli and we're walking towards the parking lot where Joan had parked her car and we saw an antique store and, of course, we're looking in the window. I like to see stuff that people have made and said, you know, isn't this fantastic and 100 years later it's covered in dust in some weird store. Anyway, Joanie saw a vase that she liked. Very simple, about 10 inches high. had some hand-painted flowers around the top edge. It was beautiful, and it was reasonably priced, so she bought it.

4:56And as I said, it was a miserable day, so we get in Joan's car, and we drive down to the house in Laurel Canyon and go through the front door, and I said, hey, Joan, why don't I light a fire and you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought today? I'm a musician. How can I not follow that? How can I not go, wait a second? That's an interesting phrase. I'll finish this. And it only took maybe an hour and 20 minutes to finish. Unbelievable. It speaks to the, as an artist, you being aware at all times, looking for opportunities to turn real life into the art that you make. That's what I'm trying to do.

5:46Yeah, you didn't sit down to write a song. You said something offhanded, recognized, hmm, that sounds like something. Right. And you followed up, which is another part of it, because both you have to have the awareness to recognize it, and then the discipline to not do what you were planning to do, but sit down and commit to doing this thing. And don't forget, you have to add something to that. Yes. I'm living in a house with a brilliant writer. Yes. Who normally is at the piano. And I always gave her the space to write. Always. Yes. Always encouraged her to write. I would go on long walks and she'd write, you know.

6:33But this time she wasn't at the piano. She was actually in the garden looking for flowers to put in the vase. So I had an hour to write it. Amazing. Is that the only time you've been in a relationship with another writer? Not quite. I spent a couple of years with Rita Coolidge. Oh, beautiful. And Rita was a writer, and she actually wrote that strange piano change in Layla. Wow. Interesting. And unfortunately, her boyfriend, Jim Gordon, said he'd written it. Wow. Can you imagine how much money that Rita could have made from Layla? I'm just curious about this. Was there any sense of competition living with a great artist?

7:19Not at all. There was no way. I recognized the genius of Joni in those days, and I would never get in the way. Yeah, just a fan. You were a fan, and hopefully she was a fan of yours. I don't know that, but she was at least a fan of yours as a human being. I don't think that we could have spent the time that we did together had she not at least recognized that I was a decent writer, you know.

7:46Okay, how about Carrie Ann? Ah, Carrie Ann was a Holly song that started out by Tony Hicks, I think. And it turned into a song that we had written about Marianne Faithful. And we didn't have the balls to call it Hey, Marianne. And we were trying to come up with a girl's name that would disguise the fact that it was about Marianne Faithful. And we came up with the title Carrie Anne. Had it been called Marianne in that moment in time, would everyone have said, oh, that's Marianne Faithful or not necessarily? They would have known. She was quite famous at that point because she was with Mick and Keith, you know, and had done all the being busted, naked, you know, all the stuff that unfortunately Marianne went in her life.

8:41But she is a brilliant writer, Marianne. She really is. Marrakesh Express. I'd taken a vacation from the Hollies in 1966. And I'd heard stories of the American beat poets going down to this place called Marrakesh and smoking a lot of dope and writing poetry and all the stuff they got up to. And I kind of thought, well, it's an interesting idea. And so because I had a vacation, my wife and I at the time flew to Casablanca and walked around Casablanca. It was a phenomenal place. And then we took a train going south to Marrakesh. I was in a first-class compartment with two older American ladies who had their gray hair dyed blue, which was kind of shocking to me at that time.

9:36And I left the first-class compartment, and I go to the third-class compartment, and that's where almost it was like Snoop Dogg was having a party there. You know, there was dogs and pigs and chickens all walking around and people pouring mint tea from like four feet in the air into this small cup and not spilling a drop. It was amazing. But that's where Marrakesh Express was born. And I just found my original lyrics, which I'm happy about. Fantastic. So did it start, do you remember if it started with lyrics first or just the title? I didn't get to the title until once again at the end of the first chorus my memory of it is that it all happened at the same time me trying to translate my feelings of having just come back from the third class compartment party and it all came out at the same time the rhythm the chords on the guitar and and the lyrics it all came out at the same time that one beautiful it's beautiful when it happens yeah amazing yeah It feels like magic when it happens.

10:48I thought it was pretty good, but once again, at that time, it was one of the reasons why I felt that I had to leave the Hollies because they didn't like Marrakesh Express. Wow. Somewhere in the bowels of EMI, there's a tape of just the track of the Hollies doing Marrakesh Express, but there's no train in there. I wanted that kind of a rhythm train. which Stephen brilliantly did on the record when he put those what sound like trumpets in harmony there. But that's Stephen. So beautiful. Because it was David that once again saved my life in a way because the worst thing you can do to a writer is give himself doubt.

11:35When you say something that questions his veracity, that's awful to do to a writer. But it was Crosby that said, wait a second, Let me tell you something. That's a fine song. They're the crazy ones. And it was once again another reason why I had to leave the Hollies. Wow. Wow. On a Carousel. On a Carousel is one of those songs that is completely made up and completely made up from something that we had experienced when we were children on actual riding on a carousel and how all the horses are trying to catch up with each other, but they're stationary, of course, because they're locked into the carousel.

12:20But it was basically a song totally made up from nothing. It's a beauty. Ah. And Teach Your Children Well? I'd started teaching children in my last days in England. Basically, when I came to America, one of the things that I was able to do, because I was earning a great deal of money at that point was to collect photography. And I had lent, I think, about 150 of the images to a show in Santa Clara in California. And I've never told any gallery owner how to hang my stuff. I'm very interested in how they would hang it because when you have a picture on a wall, it affects the way you see the next picture on the wall.

13:08And one of the images that I bought by Arnold Newman was a portrait of Krupp, who was a family member of the Krupp family that manufactured all the armaments for both world wars in Germany. And I realized that if we didn't teach our children a better way of dealing with each other, that humanity itself was in deep trouble. And that's when I got to finish teaching children. The recording of it was pretty simple. It was me and Stephen on acoustic guitars and Dallas Taylor, our drummer, on tambourine. And we had made the track and we realized that it needed a solo. And Stephen said, you know, forgive me, but I'm kind of tired of doing solos.

13:54I've done a lot of solos, you know. Is there any other thing that we can figure out? And Crosby said, hey, wait a second. Jerry Garcia has been learning pedal steel for the last three months. Maybe Jerry can put pedal steel on it. So we made a demo, a rough mix of the track. I told David to go over to Jerry, who was in the next studio with the dead in Wally Hyder's in San Francisco, and see if Jerry likes the song. And if he likes the song, does he want to put pedal steel? He loved the song. He came in. He brought his pedal steel in the studio. I played it. He played the first take. I said, fantastic.

14:36Unbelievable. That's exactly what this song needed. And Jerry said, you know, I made a couple of mistakes. Do you mind if I do a second track? And I said, absolutely, you can do a second track. But I've got to tell you, I'm not going to use it. What you just did when you were learning the song was so perfect. We did take the two notes that were slightly wrong out of his second track. But I used that first track because it was beautiful. And I think it was a great deal of the reason why it became such a big hit. Two things interesting about that story. The first one is a photograph. So another form of art that you're interested in inspires the lyric.

15:20Yes. And then the happenstance of Jerry Garcia happened to be in the next studio, happened to be learning this new instrument. David happened to know that. It's like there's so much that just, and you say that's part of why the song is the song. It's an amazing confluence of events, so many of which that are out of our control when we're making something great. Yes. That it's a marvel. And to witness it happen again and again, because we've got to see this over the course of our lives over and over again. it's a true mystical experience when you see these elements come together in a way that seems almost random but through the recognition of oh maybe maybe if this with that right maybe that'll work it's amazing yeah amazing because you know we were finding our way through music but always keeping in mind what is right for the track.

16:26And Jerry's solo at the beginning and the solo in the middle, of course, was just perfect for the track. And he'd done it in one take. Amazing. I love one take. I'm with Neil on that thing. I love when you've done a song in the studio 20 times, it loses something, you know. And I've been lucky enough to recognize when it's right. Agree 100%. And to argue the opposite point, Beatles did a lot of takes, and I really like those records. Yes, that's true. So, yeah. But, you know, there's probably Beatles songs that were done in one take, too. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But I think if we listened to them, we wouldn't say the one take songs are necessarily better than the ones that more effort.

17:16It's like whatever's right for, like you're taking care of each song in the way that's best for that song, whatever that is. If it's one take, great. Yeah. And if it's trying it many times until you find the way, it's like, we don't know. We can't know. No. But we know when it's right. Absolutely. And that's the, it's, and it's the best feeling because until it's right, I always have the feeling we, we don't have a, we don't have a way to make it right until. Until you do it. Until we happen to recognize that it's already right. Yes. You can't do it in advance. That's right. And it takes courage to do that.

17:53You know, it takes courage to tell Jerry Garcia, you know, you know, sure you can do a second track, but I'm never going to. OK. They had the song that had very CSN like harmony. Uncle John's band was the fact that you guys were recording next to them. Did that have any impact on that song coming into existence? Do you know? Undoubtedly. They would come into the studio and watch what we did and how we did it. And then they started to do that because they like harmonies too, you know? Yeah. But it's such a specific thing, what Crosby, Stills & Nash does. And that's one of the few songs, a non-CSN song, that has the makings of a CSN-like blend.

18:38Right. They started to do what we did, which was we'd put up an 87 and we'd open it up all the way around and we'd just stand, the three of us, and I would stand further away from the microphone than David did because I have this voice that cuts through everything. It's just the way my voice is. And when they saw that, that we were positioning ourselves around an open microphone, they took that and did that. And that's how they started to record. Because normally they would put, Jerry would put his part on and then Phil would put his part on and then whoever, you know, right? In general, is there a difference between singing together versus stacking tracks?

19:22Absolutely. That example, tell me about it. Tell me about what happens different. What happens differently is vibration. when the three of us are singing around a microphone knowing which distance each one of us needs to be to get the blend correct it takes work to do that but we managed to do that totally naturally because there is a difference between when you put on a melody and then you double that and you put on a harmony and then you do that but with individual takes there isn't the DNA blend of three voices hitting the air at the same time. It's a different sound if it's only one voice after another voice.

20:08It's fascinating because so few artists do it that way as well. So few. We could do it though. Yeah. Do you remember, did you all wear headphones when you were doing it or were you singing with your no headphones? Do you remember? Yeah, I do remember. We always used headphones with just one, with one, right? So that we had the other ear free to be able to listen to what the other guys were doing. We wouldn't put both headphones on. We would only put one side on. Understood. For the blend part of it, of knowing where you were standing, that was more based on what you were hearing in the phone, I imagine.

20:45Yes. Because you couldn't tell how it was affecting the mic just looking at it. Right. But then the other ear was for the true mingling of the frequencies. Yes, exactly. In real life. Exactly, right. Because it is different. It's hard to explain how when you put on headphones, it's just different. Yes, it is. Then you have to deal with it. But we knew how to do our voices. Like I said, that sound that CSN had vocally, it was done in 45 seconds. It was nothing. It just bloody happened. And it happened so beautifully that I then made up. I have to go to England and undo my life. I want to follow this sound.

21:29This sound is amazing. I mean, yes, anyone can sing the same notes that we can. You can't sound like us. We'll be back after a quick break with more from Rick Rubin and Graham Nash. I firmly believe when it comes to the holidays, you fall into one of two camps. Someone who loves holiday music or someone who won't admit they love holiday music. There's something about a voice you love singing that familiar opening phrase, maybe it's Donny Hathaway, maybe it's Mariah Carey, that just flips a switch and you're instantly back into that warm and cozy headspace only the holidays can bring. For me, that feeling pairs perfectly with a cup of Starbucks caramel brulee latte.

22:09That's their signature espresso with steamed milk and a rich caramel brulee flavor topped with whipped cream and a crunchy caramel brulee topping. It's like the sound of the season, but in drink form. And that's really what this season's about. Little moments of pairing, little moments of connection. Sharing a song, sharing a story, sharing a caramel brulee latte. Because this season and every season, together is the best place to be. Come together over your holiday favorites at Starbucks. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant so you can feel confident you're finding top talent that you can't find anywhere else.

22:49The best part is those great candidates are already on LinkedIn. In fact, employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. That's a big deal when every hire counts. Hiring doesn't have to be complicated. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the confusing steps in recruiting jargon. It filters through applicants based on criteria you've set for your role and surfaces only the best matches so you're not stuck sorting through a mountain of resumes. When you have a business to run, you don't have hours to spend on hiring and you don't want to just wait around hoping the right person stumbles upon your job.

23:27That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash broken, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash broken to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, the holidays have this way of bringing up all these feelings about tradition. For me, some of the best traditions aren't elaborate. They're just moments.

24:02Like when my kids and I are experimenting with different hot chocolate recipes or when I'm making gumbo with them for Thanksgiving. But then there are also these quieter moments where I need to step back and actually think about what all of this means to me. And that's really where therapy has made a difference. A practice that keeps me centered when the calendar gets overwhelming or when emotions run high or when I look up and realize half the year has somehow disappeared. Just having one hour a week that's completely yours can cut through all the noise and bring real clarity. If therapy is something you've been considering, December is actually not a bad time to take that step.

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25:04That's BetterHelp.com slash broken. We're back with Rick Rubin's conversation with Graham Nash. Coming from England, did you have any sense of feeling like an outsider when you came? Absolutely. Did you feel different than the other people? Yeah. But I was an outsider that had a history of knowing how to make hit records. Because I'd been in the Hollies for, what, seven years? And like I said, we had 15 or so top 10 records. So I came, I was an outsider, but I came with a certain weight. Yes. And you came post-British invasion, where basically all of the music being made in California at that time, in one form or another, seemed to be influenced by what was going on in England.

25:52Yeah. We were amazed in England that we would take American songs and sing them with a kind of a British accent and sell them back to the Americans. that was weird to us but it's what we did you'd have somebody that was in the Merchant Navy you'd have a brother or a cousin and they would go to America and they were musicians so they would bring records back so we were hearing all the the miracles and Barrett Strong and all these really strange rhythm and blues things that hadn't hit the charts in England and uh yeah the british invasion what a strange thing that was yeah we're making all this american music and singing it with a british accent and selling it right back to the americans this is amazing yeah i think there's something about i think it's more than just singing it with a british accent i think the romantic view from a distance allows a different interpretation not even just in the accents, but even in the way the music's approached, it's like we can use the example of Led Zeppelin and the American blues that it's based on.

27:09No American blues man would take it to such bombastic, it would be unseemly to do what Led Zeppelin did. Right. From the blues master perspective, yet they were taking this fantasy from a distance in the same way that Sergio Leone made the spaghetti westerns that were different than the western westerns. That's right. It's like seeing it from a distance can give you a romantic vision of it that's bigger than the reality of the situation. Absolutely, yeah. It feels like the Hollies had that. It's like, yes, there was the influence of the American music, but it didn't sound like the American music because you guys were different and your life experience was different.

27:56Right. And we'd all learned, you know, from skiffle. You know, we'd all learned from early folk music. And we started out in dance halls and we wanted to make music that people could dance to. And we wanted to make them think, too. And why not do both things at the same time? But yeah, the Hollies did have a certain sound that was different than American bands, that's for sure. And let's talk about skiffle a little bit, because that was not something that happened in the United States. No. Or at least it didn't happen as being called skiffle. Tell me about skiffle. There was an Irish folk singer called Lonnie Donegan.

28:37And he went to America and he witnessed Lead Belly and he witnessed all these blues people. and how simple it was, Big Bill Brunzi just on acoustic guitar, and he brought that music back with him from America. So now you have to think of, okay, in the late 50s, it was only 10 years since World War II happened, and there was nothing that 15 - and 16-year-old kids could do, particularly where I lived. There was nothing to do, really. You had a ball you could kick around or play cricket with, you know, but there was no music because we couldn't afford it. And then Skiffle came along where if you had a cheap acoustic guitar and you created a bass from a tea chest box with a pole and a string that you could play the bass, and for the drums, you would put thimbles on your right hand if you're right-handed, and we had a washboard, which is an instrument that your grandmother used to wash clothes with.

29:46And it would go... And so it was simple. It was cheap. We could afford to do that. And all of a sudden, we had something to do. And we followed it directly. We loved skiffle, and it started the background of our musical journey. And Lonnie Donegan is very famous in England. I mean, ask anybody. They all know who Lonnie Donegan was because he was very important in the creation of music in England. I guess the closest approximation we had in the United States would have been jug band music, which wasn't particularly popular. It was more of a tiny regional fringe movement. Yes. So Lonnie Donegan must have seen that.