NY Daily News: In 'Wild Tales,' Graham Nash opens up about sex, drugs and music behind Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
In his memoir the singer reveals the wild times fueled by sex and drugs and the raging fights between members of a group known for their sweet harmony.
By Sherryl Connelly / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
In "Wild Tales," Graham Nash tells a few about the supergroup constantly at each other’s throats in drug-fueled rages while the world grooved to the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young.
CS&N still tours, and Neil Young’s career as a living legend is thriving. The wonder is not that they are all still making music — it’s that they are all still alive. Of course, David Crosby had to be reconstituted with a new liver, but this band seemed destined for a drug fatality or two.
Nash is provocatively honest in this memoir, out Sept. 17, and the moments he recounts range from glory scenes in rock history to sordid flashes from the past.
Take the night in 1969 when the band’s eponymously named first album, “Crosby, Stills & Nash” (“Wooden Ships,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”) was still in the offing and they joined Joni Mitchell and Kris Kristofferson at Johnny Cash’s Nashville mansion for a party honoring Bob Dylan.
It was just another evening of gold cutlery and reigning music royalty until Cash stood and announced that the family tradition was “you have to sing for your supper.”
Dylan, who hadn’t been heard from in a year after his motorcycle accident, rose up and crooned a new song, “Lay Lady Lay.” The table was in tears.
Contrast that with a moment of recall from the infamous 1974 CSN&Y tour when Crosby hit the road in the company of two warring women. One of them was a lady — Goldie Locks from Mill Valley — whose favors Nash had previously enjoyed.
“Often I would knock on his hotel door, which he kept propped open with a security jamb, and he’d be getting b---- by both of those girls, all while he was talking and doing business on the phone and rolling joints and smoking and having a drink. Crosby had incredible sexual energy.
“It got to be such a routine scene in his room, I’d stop by with someone and go, ‘Aw, f---, he’s getting b---- again. Oh, dear, let’s give him a minute.”
Nash was still contractually bound to his band, the Hollies, in the late ’60s when he met up with Stephen Stills and Crosby at Peter Tork’s house in the Hollywood Hills. The Monkee habitually threw parties that were “legendary, days-on-end affairs with . . . plenty of music, sex, dope.”