Graham Nash
Graham William Nash OBE (born 2 February 1942) is an English-American[1] musician, singer and songwriter. He is known for his light tenor voice and for his contributions as a member of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
For the quiz show champion, see Graham Nash (quiz contestant).
Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of the Hollies in 2010.[2][3] He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours List for services to music and to charity.[4]
Nash holds four honorary doctorates, including one from the New York Institute of Technology,[5] one in music from the University of Salford in 2011[6] and one in fine arts from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[7]
Early life
Graham William Nash was born on 2 February 1942 in Blackpool, Lancashire, to where his mother had been evacuated from her hometown of Salford when World War II began. The family returned to Salford, where Nash grew up. At the age of 14, Nash's father was sent to prison for a year for receiving a stolen camera; he had bought the camera as a present for Graham but had then refused to disclose to the police the name of the relative who had sold it to him.[8][9]
Personal life
Nash was married to his first wife, Rose Eccles, from 1964 until 1966. As part of an inside joke, her surname inspired the 1968 song "Jennifer Eccles", and a jocular verse about Jennifer Eccles was also included in the 1968 song "Lily the Pink". Nash was married to his second wife, actress Susan Sennett,[29] from 1978 until he left her for artist Amy Grantham in 2016.[30] Sennett, the mother of his three now-adult children, divorced Nash in 2016[31] and died of cancer in September 2020.[32][33][34] After moving to New York City, Nash married Grantham in April 2019.[35]
Nash released an autobiography in September 2013 called Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, published by Crown Publishing.[36] Photographs that he took during his career are on display as an art collection at the San Francisco Art Exchange.[37] In interviews pertaining to both the memoir and art exhibit, he mentioned the impact of Canadian-American musician Joni Mitchell, with whom he had a relationship between 1968 and 1970 in California. He also had a brief relationship with American musician Rita Coolidge, as had his bandmate Stephen Stills.[36][37][38]
Nash endorsed American politician Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries.[39] In October 2020, he revealed that he had recently started practising Transcendental Meditation after American filmmaker David Lynch paid for him and his wife to study it as a gift.[40] He said of the practice, "Quite frankly, I'm 78 years old and I wish I'd been doing it for 50 years."[40]
On 7 January 2024 Nash was the guest for BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. His choices included "Be-Bop-a-Lula" by Gene Vincent, "Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, and Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber. His favourite disc was "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, which he described as "the greatest song that was ever written, I think."[41]