(Credits: Far Out / Raph_PH)
Tue 6 January 2026 1:00, UK
The term supergroup is thrown around a lot in the modern age, but none have managed to achieve the calibre that Crosby, Stills and Nash have.
Music is littered with eureka moments. We often wonder, if we were in the vicinity of a classic before it had such a label thrown upon it, would we know? If you were in the crowd of an early Oasis gig, could you envisage those crowds at the reunion shows losing their minds decades later? If you were in the room when Paul McCartney wrote ‘Get Back’, would you know it was going to be a hit? If you saw the next big thing supporting a local band this week, would you know it?
It’s difficult to say with any certainty, and it leads to us wondering whether bands are able to recognise when they have stumbled upon something unique within the creative process. When an artist pens a song which will go down as a classic, do they know exactly what they’ve stumbled upon? For instance, when Freddie Mercury started writing the lyrics to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, did he know that they would be sung in clubs, arenas and stadiums years after he passed?
While we can’t know about these individual instances, we do know that there have been a number of different moments of revelation in the world of music. Led Zeppelin had it when they first jammed together, as Jimmy Page’s vision for the band was all well and good in theory, but none of them knew whether it would work. When they finally played together, it was evident they had created something special. A similar thing happened when Graham Nash first started singing with David Crosby and Stephen Stills.
Graham Nash was already singing in The Hollies when he first met who would become his musical counterparts, and while The Hollies were no strangers to success, upon hearing the beautiful sound of those Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies, it was evident he needed to leave the band and follow whatever this gorgeous music was.
“I was born and raised on the outskirts of Manchester, and I heard a magical sound when me and David and Stephen put our three voices together to try and make one voice,” said Nash. “And when I heard that I had to go back to England, leave The Hollies and instead go back to that magical sound that we had created.”
David Crosby was happy when Nash agreed to join the band, as he recognised how successful The Hollies member was and that he was taking a huge risk by leaving the band. Even looking back now on their careers, Crosby admits that Nash had the most hits and The Hollies still trump CSN when it comes to songs that landed with the public.
“We had already had some success. You know, The Hollies had had more hits than we’ve ever had, already, for [Graham] Nash,” he said. Of course, Nash wasn’t the only member with success, everyone in the band had already seen stardom on some level with projects prior, which Crosby thought took the pressure off the writing process when the three of them put their creative identities together. “Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds have had a good running,” he noted. “So it wasn’t the launch point for us, you know, really. It was the launch point for CSN.”
What was the secret behind Graham Nash’s string of hits with The Hollies? Well, it’s pretty simple, they had a specific identity, and it revolved around fun. “I’m realising more and more as I get older just how good The Hollies were,” he concluded. “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.”
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