Graham Nash has every right to brag. He's a founding member of Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Hollies; a two-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; a Grammy winner; and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). He played Woodstock and has written or co-written more than 200 songs over the course of his career, including such classics as Carrie Anne, On a Carousel, Our House, Marrakesh Express and Teach Your Children.
So you'll have to forgive him for enthusiastically patting himself on the back through much of his autobiography, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life (3 stars out of four). Describing more than five decades of music famously filled with harmony and dissonance, sex and drugs (lots and lots of drugs), meaningful activism and pointless, wretched excess, Nash, 71, is every bit the rock star. At turns petulant, childish, churlish and pedantic, in the end, he confesses, "I am a simple man."
Raised in the slums of Salford, England, he discovered music at age 13 and left school three years later with the blessing of his parents, soon finding himself on the leading edge of music's British Invasion. "Once rock 'n' roll got under my skin, it was all over for me," he writes. "Daydreams took over, and I pulled myself toward those dreams."
Those dreams culminated in encounters, friendships and musical associations with The Beatles, Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Marianne Faithfull, Cass Elliot and, of course, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young — as well as love affairs with Joni Mitchell and Rita Coolidge.
Inspired by the harmonies of the Everly Brothers and one of their concerts that he attended at age 15, Nash says, "That was it for me." By 1962, he was off and running with The Hollies and a string of hits. But it was his move to Los Angeles in 1967 and his work with Crosby, Stills & Nash (and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) where his music and life really took off — where "things got wild" and his autobiography gets truly interesting.
Though CSN and CSNY made more than their share of beautiful music together and lived in a kind of hippie heaven replete with mansions, money and free love, Nash doesn't hesitate to share the dark side of stardom, too, particularly the drug-fueled ego trips and meltdowns that so often derailed the group. Nash's closest friend and musical partner, Crosby, whose battle with drug abuse miraculously did not end in death, plays the starring role here, with Stills (who had an ongoing rivalry with Young) also prominently featured. (Young, he concludes, "is a weird cat.")
But Wild Tales thrives on that "what a long, strange trip it's been" energy, and Nash is the first to admit he was no angel. (He says he long ago swore off cocaine.) And the reader is inclined to believe that the drugs, the women, the accolades and the money were never the point.
"It always comes down to the music," Nash says. And that's what makes this trip worth taking.
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