Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 94
‘There was an enormous amount of drugs being taken’: Graham Nash on groupies, feuds, divorce and ego, Micah Recommends: new music and podcasts, Facebook's endless pivot, Recipe Corner, and more.
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‘There was an enormous amount of drugs being taken’: Graham Nash on groupies, feuds, divorce and ego
The Crosby, Stills and Nash singer on the wild early years, Joni Mitchell, his former bandmates and why his children no longer speak to him
Buckle up. This is a wild ride. Instead of trying to present this piece in any meaningful order, I will just share some of my favorite portions without further commentary.
His recent activities include touring, publishing a book of his photography, recording a live version of his first two solo albums, and running his lucrative fine art printing studio, Nash Editions. And then there’s his 2019 marriage to artist Amy Grantham, 37 years his junior. “I’m singing excellently, the music is great, and I’m selling lots of merch. Everything is going really well.” But, as I discover later, it’s more complex than that.
When did he realize he could make a career out of music?
“The first time Allan and I with our two acoustic guitars attracted really pretty women. I was like: ‘Oh, I see!’ Once I could play three chords on the guitar, my attractiveness to the ladies went up sky-high.” Ladies and his attractiveness to them loom large in Nash’s life story.
Your memoir is pure sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, I say. He grins. “That’s what my life was. And is.” That’s amazing at 80, I say. “Absolutely. It’s totally amazing. Let me get my tea.” He reaches for his mug.
Drugs:
Even today, he says, much of his joy comes from the way dope enables him to focus on the world’s beauty rather than its horror. “I’m glad that I got to know marijuana when I did. It changed my life completely,” he says in that unlikely Salford-Californian hybrid accent (imagine Mark E Smith as an LA lifestyle guru). “I get up every morning and I’m glad I’m alive.”
Did acid also have a positive impact? “It did. I took less than a dozen trips in my life but I realized with the first one that here we are, this ball of mud whizzing at 67,000 miles an hour through space, on one of trillions of planets. I understood when I took acid that everything is meaningless. And because of that everything is completely deeply meaningful.”
The start of CSN:
Drugs taught him to embrace his contradictions, and prepared him to work with Stills and Crosby. He first played music with them in 1968 at his then girlfriend Joni Mitchell’s home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. He had gone out to stay with Mitchell, parked his car in the driveway, and heard two male voices in the house. “I wasn’t happy about that, but it was David and Stephen. They were having dinner with Joni. At one point David goes: ‘Hey, Stephen, play Willy [Nash’s nickname] that song we were just doing’, and they were doing a song called You Don’t Have to Cry. I say: ‘It’s a great song – play it again.’ They play it again. I say: ‘That’s really a great song – do me a favour and play it one more time’, and the third time I added my high harmony and the world fucking changed from that moment. And that’s what Joni was the only witness to.”
CSN last toured in 2015 and formally split up in 2016 after a lifetime of spats. What are his memories of their early days together? He smiles. “We used to go to our friends’ houses in Laurel Canyon, me and David and Stephen with a couple of guitars, and we’d kill them. We were fucking fantastic. We had discovered a new way of singing, of creating a vocal blend, making our three voices into one. We would kill them. They could not believe what we were doing. Then we’d follow that with Guinnevere, then Lady of the Island, then Helplessly Hoping, and You Don’t Have to Cry and they’re all on the floor with their fucking brains melting. That’s the image I see every time I think of those moments.”
The early days were fabulous, he says. “We were in heaven.” But it didn’t last long. They were soon undone by rivalry, egos, excess and drugs. The band that harmonised so sublimely could not have been more discordant. “When we first started there were no egos. I think that came from all the cocaine we snorted. That’s what brought egos into it. There were an enormous amount of drugs being taken.” He runs through a typical day. “I’d get high in the morning and snort in the afternoon and I’d keep going till 3-4am.” Without drugs would the music have been different? “I don’t know, but we may have been able to make more music if we’d not been quite so stoned.”
I bet you didn’t expect to see a wild quote about the Mamas and Papas in your inbox this Monday, but here is one.
I ask whether Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas got in touch after the book was published. “No,” he says sheepishly. He mentions her once, saying that the only reason he went to meet the band was because he “wanted to fuck Michelle”. I wonder how she felt about that single reference, I say. “Well, I didn’t want to fuck John, I didn’t want to fuck Denny, and I didn’t want to fuck Cass. I wanted to fuck Michelle.” He pauses. “Now this was pure toxic masculinity. Completely.”
Neil Young:
He then pays Young the ultimate backhanded compliment. “I’ve got utmost respect for him. You can put a European tour together with a crew of 25 people and then a week before he says: ‘Nah, I don’t feel like it’, so all those people are now out of a job. Things like that with Neil I don’t agree with, but I understand his strength and I applaud him for it.” (To be fair to Young, he cancelled tours in 1997 after he sliced the top off his finger while making a sandwich, and in 2013 after Crazy Horse guitarist Frank Sampedro broke his hand.) Does Young know he’s selfish? “Neil knows what is best for Neil.”
David Crosby:
Nash says he simply got tired of Crosby badmouthing him. What was the final straw? “My patience, my love for him, it all just stopped.” And you had loved him? “Of course, for 50-odd years. But when he goes on social media, says I wasn’t his friend, and all I was in it for was the money, that’s fucking heartbreaking for me.”
On killing Hitler…
Nash returns to the subject of toxic masculinity. “Why do you think Russia invaded Ukraine? Pure fucking ego of one man. Thousands of people are dying because of one man.” He looks at me, severely. “If you could kill Putin, would you? I would. And I’m a total peacenik. But I realize that if somebody had killed Hitler, millions more people would have been alive.” So if somebody handed you a gun, would you be willing to serve time for killing Putin? “Yes, knowing what I know now, absolutely.”
Joni Mitchell":
Before splitting up with him, Mitchell told him: “If you hold sand in your hand too tightly, it will slip through your fingers.” Did he hold on to her too tight? “We were each other’s lives then, and I just loved her so much, and she loved me – there’s no doubt about it in my mind. We would light up a fucking room when we walked into it. People would go, ‘Holy shit – what is the glow around these two people?’”
His life now:
So we deal with something he finds easier to talk about – his third wife, Amy Grantham, who resembles a young Joni Mitchell. Nash left Susan Sennett, his wife of 38 years and the mother of his three adult children, for Grantham in 2016. (In his memoir, he referred to Sennett as the love of his life, and wrote dotingly of his children and grandchildren.) Now he says he feels as if he has been born again. In 2018, he told Event magazine: “My sex life is insane. It’s better than it’s ever been.”
Micah Recommends
Lyle Lovett’s new album, 12th of June
The album is a nice listen featuring the legendary Large Band. From Texas Monthly’s recent interview with Lyle:
12th of June is his first studio album since 2012’s Release Me, his cheekily titled final album with Curb Records. Much has changed for Lovett over the ensuing years. He’s now a married man and the father of twins, and his wife and kids supply much of the inspiration for the record’s eleven tracks. “The point of this record,” Lovett told me, “really was just to write about that and to think about life in general.”
Check it out. I think you’ll enjoy.
My new podcast interview with Dr. Joe
Lyle isn’t the only musician with a new album out. My friend Dr. Joe is back with a new single called Let it Shine. His newest album is set to come out in the fall. FWIW, I think it may be the best podcast interview I’ve ever done.
I Never Thought It Would Happen - Christopher Guest
And speaking of interviews, this one with Chris Difford and Christopher Guest is a riot. Guest has had an amazing career, and his stories about touring stadiums with the made-up band Spinal Tap are incredible. It’s an enjoyable listen.
Facebook's endless pivot
Speaking of podcasts, here’s a quick look at Facebook’s long-planned and quickly abandoned foray into the space.
Facebook's podcast platform has stopped taking new uploads and shut down for good next month, Bloomberg reported. The platform was part of a bigger audio plan Zuckerberg unveiled a year ago amid a pandemic-driven mania for live audio app Clubhouse.
Some observers jokingly referred to the move as a "pivot to audio" — a reference to Facebook's "pivot to video" in 2016, when Zuckerberg pitched "a new golden age of video."
That push to promote video news content prompted multiple media companies to reorganize their offerings to take advantage of promised new revenue.
The companies were left high and dry after the metrics Facebook based its shift on turned out to be faulty and the company moved on to new efforts.
Facebook's plan to wind down its podcast platform is the latest in a long line of projects the social network has launched with fanfare and then unceremoniously scuttled.
"Launch, test, shut down" is a common pattern in tech's "fail fast" culture, but Facebook has a striking record of big product reversals — and now founder Mark Zuckerberg is betting the whole company on a vast metaverse project that it can't afford to see fail.
Lately, Facebook has made pivoting a habit.
The pivot to free speech: In October 2019, Zuckerberg put a freedom-of-speech stake in the ground in a big speech at Georgetown University resisting calls for the social media firm to police misinformation and hate speech more aggressively.
A little over a year later, in the wake of the Capitol riot, Facebook permanently banned then-President Trump.
The pivot to crypto: In June 2019, Facebook unveiled a long-hatching master plan to build its own cryptocurrency named Libra, to be deployed in partnership with big names like Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Uber and Lyft.
Regulators were not happy, partners dropped out, an effort to reconceive the project under a new name (Diem) flopped, and the entire effort collapsed in February 2022.
The pivot to privacy: In March 2019, Zuckerberg announced that all of Facebook's services were going to be reorganized around encryption to bring a new level of privacy to users spooked by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Encryption, he wrote, was "the future of communication."
It still is. Facebook says it's made some progress on its encryption plans but most of the company's services still operate in an unencrypted mode.
The pivot to the metaverse, announced in July 2021, looks to be the biggest shift ever for Facebook. It's led Zuckerberg to rename the company and set aside $10 billion (at least) to make the idea real.
The frantic pivots of the last few years suggest a different dynamic is now at work: Rather than failing fast, it looks like Facebook is just flailing.
Let’s link and build together
Perhaps you heard the news. It’s Realtor Week. Calling all real estate professions: let’s grow our business together.
I’ve got some very powerful loan tools to help you and your clients win more deals. Let’s talk about it.
I had a great conversation with a budding real estate mogul this morning. Shouts to Stephen for reaching out.
Schedule your call now at micahwiener.com. You can also email me at micahwiener@me.com.
Thank you,
M
New Yorker Cartoon of the Week
Recipe Corner
Spicy Mint Beef
It’s the return of stir fry szn.
3 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
4 cloves garlic, minced or finely grated
3 small serrano peppers or Thai (bird's-eye) red chile peppers, deseeded and thinly sliced
3 small shallots (about 4 ounces), thinly sliced
1 medium red bell pepper (4 ounces), thinly sliced
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons sweet soy sauce (see headnote)
2 tablespoons black soy sauce (see headnote)
1 tablespoon sriracha, or your favorite hot chili sauce
1 pound sirloin steak, thinly sliced (see NOTE)
1 1/2 cups packed (about 2 1/2 ounces) fresh Thai basil
1 cup (a generous 1/2 ounce) fresh mint leaves
Cooked white or brown rice, for serving
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the oil and heat until shimmering. Add the garlic and the small peppers and stir-fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the shallots and bell pepper and stir-fry for 1 minute, then add the fish sauce, sweet soy sauce, black soy sauce and sriracha. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring often, until the vegetables are tender, about 2 minutes.
Increase the heat to medium-high, add the meat and cook, stirring a few times, until just cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes.
While the meat is cooking, coarsely chop the Thai basil and mint leaves (together is fine).
Remove the skillet from the heat, and stir in the basil and mint until just wilted.
Divide the rice among individual bowls or plates, followed by the beef; serve warm.
NOTE: Place the steak in the freezer while you prep the other ingredients. (This will make the meat easier to thinly slice.)
Jose Andres's Miso-Roasted Asparagus
1 pound (1 large bunch) asparagus
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup white or light miso paste
Position an oven rack 6 inches under the broiler element and preheat the broiler (to high if your broiler has different settings).
Trim the bottom 1 inch off the asparagus stalks. If any are bigger than a pencil, use a vegetable peeler to peel an additional 2 or 3 inches' worth of the skin from the bottom of the stalks.
Whisk together the sugar and water in a small bowl, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then whisk in the miso paste.
Arrange the asparagus in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan or rimmed baking sheet. Spoon the miso mixture over the asparagus, turning the stalks so they are evenly coated.
Broil until the asparagus is lightly browned and the miso is bubbling, 6 to 8 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Did Micah practice yoga this week?
Yes. 60 minutes Sunday at Fairground Austin with Jessica.
That’s 18 in-person weekend classes in 19 weeks this year. Namaste.
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