Rhino Factoids: Graham Nash Departs The Hollies

46 years ago today, Graham Nash left a sweet gig with one of the great British pop groups of the ‘60s, partly due to creative frustration but mostly because he’d experienced a harmonic epiphany which convinced him that his future lay not with Allan Clarke and Tony Hicks but with David Crosby and Stephen Stills.

Initially after forming The Hollies with Clarke in 1962, Nash was fine and well with doing cover songs with the group, as that’s what most groups were doing at the time, and as they moved forward into recording material by outside songwriters like Graham Gouldman (“Bus Stop”), that was alright, too, because it was at least an evolution. But as The Hollies began scoring hits with songs that they’d written themselves, Nash grew more confident of his own songwriting acumen, and as his confidence grew, so did his frustration when his contributions to the group were dismissed – including a little ditty called “Marrakesh Express” – in favor of moving in directions which didn’t strike him being as the best of all possible options.

"I was writing what I thought were decent songs that The Hollies were ignoring,” said Nash, in a 2012 interview with MusicRadar.com. “They wanted to do an album of Bob Dylan songs in a Las Vegas kind of style, and I didn't want to do that, although I did ‘Blowin' in the Wind,’ which pisses me off to this day.”

Given his annoyance with the ways things were going with The Hollies, it’s hardly surprising that Nash would’ve been open to career alternatives, but even if he hadn’t been looking for a way to expand his creative options, it’s likely that the impromptu performance that took place in Joni Mitchell’s living room one fateful evening still would’ve left him thinking, “There’s something magical going on here.”

"That's when we first sang together, in Joni's living room,” Nash told MusicRadar. “Whatever sound Crosby, Stills & Nash have was born in a minute. We didn't have to rehearse, we didn't have to slog through – it happened in a minute. After that minute of hearing the three of us sing together, I realized a couple of things: one, that I would have to leave my band, because this was way more exciting than having people put you down all the time, and secondly, that I would have to leave England and come to Los Angeles to sing with David and Stephen."

And so Nash departed the ranks of The Hollies…and on his bandmate Bobby Elliott’s birthday, no less, a fact which Elliott is still quick to mention even now. It could’ve been a terrible move if things hadn’t worked out with Crosby and Stills, but it did work out, thankfully, and in a big way. Still, Nash accomplished quite a lot during his comparatively short time with The Hollies, which is why we’ve put together a playlist spotlighting his time with both camps for your listening enjoyment.