GRAHAM NASH

As the CSNY legend releases the "most personal record" of his half-century career, he tells us about speaking truth to power, selling his Woodstock D-45, and making up with David Crosby in his final days

- Henry Yates

If you had lasted until three in the morning at the fabled Woodstock festival of August 1969, you’d have witnessed the performance that caught the peace and love era in a bottle. The newly formed folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young took the stage cautiously, with Stephen Stills memorably informing the crowd: “This is the second time we’ve ever played in front of people, man… We’re scared shitless!”

But for Graham Nash, looking out on that sea of humanity, there was a sudden sense that anything was possible. “Woodstock was a coming of age, a flowering of a generation of kids who decided they could take responsibility for their own lives and affect their destiny,” the songwriter later told Rolling Stone. “There was a certain glow about the 60s, a certain naiveté and exploration, an excitement for the future…”

As we know, it didn’t quite work out that way. But while CSNY is surely finished now – David Crosby having left us in January – Nash is still questing at the age of 81, releasing a new studio album, Now, that speaks out against crooked politicians and urges listeners to leave a better world behind them.

Are you pleased with Now?

“I wouldn’t be releasing it otherwise. I wouldn’t waste your time. I wouldn’t make an album that has one great track and nine other miserable tracks. No, I love this record. I’ve said that it is my most personal record. It’s exactly how I feel, right now. I’m 81 years old and if I can’t be honest now – I’m fucked!”