Groovy Guys: Graham Nash

In my younger days the Hollies were a fun group, featuring a very young - and studly - Graham Nash. 

This song always makes me smile: the steel drums remind me of flying into the Bahamas, where they used to have a steel drum band meet all the planes - a DC-6, let's say, or a Lockheed Electra - to serenade debarking passengers as we emerged into the sea-scented air and brilliant tropical sunshine, and descended the steps to the tarmac.

But the young'uns among us won't even be able to decipher that last sentence, so just enjoy the song:



Later, of course, after a string of hits with the Hollies, Nash teamed up with David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and sometimes Neil Young, and got his second wind with another truckload of rock classics, including the delightful "Marrakesh Express," which I very fondly recall from the summer of 1969. Here's a hairier, more worldly and wizened Nash doing an interesting live version (1974) with Crosby - consummate musicians:



In 1977, I was lucky enough to see them in concert performing so many great songs, including this one - sung a capella except for Stills's acoustic guitar - all of them perfectly on pitch just as you hear it in this recording, and not a hundred feet away from me. Man, what a thrill that was. I tell you what.



And here's Nash in 2009, explaining why you never hear protest songs on the radio anymore:




Bonus: The guys team up with blues queen Bonnie Raitt on this awesome rendition of "Love Has No Pride":



I remember the song - hell, I lived it once.

A great mistake; but we love and learn.