Credit: Far Out / Acroterion
Sun 16 August 2026 18:30, UK
When you listen to the work of Graham Nash, especially that which he did with Crosby, Stills & Nash, you would be forgiven for thinking he was American. But no, he was actually raised in Salford.
He moved to America when he first met David Crosby and Stephen Stills. The moment they all put their voices together, forming a group seemed like a bit of a no-brainer. I mean, you’ve heard their music; if you stumble across a sound like that, you have to go and chase it, no questions asked.
That’s not to say that his time in the United Kingdom was wasted, though. Sure, he didn’t form Crosby, Stills & Nash there, but it was on this soil that he was a member of the band The Hollies. The tracks might not have had the same emotion we’ve come to love Nash for, but they were still songs that got people moving and brought a hell of a lot of joy to listeners.
When Nash was interviewed for Far Out, he said, as he’s gotten older, he’s come to appreciate just how good some of the music he wrote with The Hollies was. They had plenty of hits, and it wasn’t an accident either. People really resonated with their music during a time when music was the only outlet for so many struggling individuals. There was nothing that listeners liked more than putting on their dancing shoes, going out and enjoying the sweet tunes of The Hollies.
“I’m realising more and more as I get older just how good The Hollies were,” he admitted, “They were a band, even though I was part of the band, we wanted to have as much fun on stage as possible, and we wanted our audience to feel the same thing. We wanted them to shake their ass and dance and sing. That’s fine with me. Even today, I love it when people sing my songs back to me.”
Emphasis there on the phrase, “I was part of the band”. This was another important lesson that Nash learnt in the early days of performing, and that was how you can effectively be part of a band. Even though he writes in isolation a lot of the time, the songs that he performs, whether that performance is done as part of The Hollies, Crosby, Stills & Nash, or as a solo artist, he still needs a band there to back up every note he plays and word he sings.
That might sound straightforward enough, but finding someone competent and finding someone you really connect with as a musician are two completely different things. Nash liked playing with The Hollies, and they did great things together, but it wasn’t until he went to America that he played with musicians he really felt that unspoken bond with. One of these was the drummer Russel Kunkel, someone with whom he wound up performing time and time again, both in the studio and on the road.
Further reading: From The Vault
It wasn’t just that Kunkel was a good drummer, as there are a lot of good drummers out there. Instead, he was able to well and truly embed himself within the pocket of a track and feel his way around. He knew when to go hell for leather and when to hold back on things; Nash never found himself having to give much direction at all. While he might have performed on stage with plenty of different bands throughout his life, there is no one on stage Nash would rather have behind than ones and twos over Kunkel.
“He’s been one of my favourite drummers for a long, long time,” he said, “He was on every Crosby-Nash record that we made, and he was the drummer in the 1974 stadium tour that CSNY did, so we go back a long way. Incredibly cognitive [sic] of where not to play, what’s very important in a musician is the breathing space. Anyone can play all over things, anyone can be flashy and look groovy, Russell plays the song.”
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