Graham Nash’s Photographs

"That was taken in my suite at the Plaza Hotel, in New York City. I think it was August of 1974. We were coming to the end of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion tour. And with all due respect, it was fucking crazy. There was so many drugs, and it was so chaotic. I needed to find an inner peace within myself, so I started to draw in a book, and I filled it with drawings.

"I'm drawing in the bathroom here. I saw myself in that little pull-out mirror for shaving and I knew it was a great image. My girlfriend Calli Cerami was with me. She wasn't a photographer. I said, 'Here's my camera. Hold it up and press halfway down to focus and then press the trigger.' And that's the shot. So although it's a self-portrait because it was what I imagined in my mind, the trigger was pressed by somebody else." 

"That's Neil Young driving home to his ranch at Broken Arrow. We were recording the American Dream album. I'm in the limousine with David [Crosby] and Steven [Stills] behind him. Neil, of course, wasn't in the car with us. It's Neil. He has an English sports car. I think it's called a Jensen. I saw him driving along this lonely road and I thought, 'This is a perfect image of Neil Young.' And even though you can't see Neil, except the back of his head, it is in fact Neil."

"That's Joni listening to Clouds, which was the album that she was making at the time. She was listening to an acetate of her record prior to the release to make sure everything was right. Even though I was living with Joni, I didn't want her to know why I was taking the image. I'm actually shooting through one of those kitchen table chairs that have a hole in the top where you put your hand in to lift the chair. That's why you only see her partial face. My God, isn't she beautiful?"

"The four of us were in Neil's house that he had rented on the beach there in Hawaii. We had been working on an album that was going to be called Human Highway. It had fabulous songs in it which later appeared on David's record and Stephen's records. The last day we were there, I realized that we didn't have any image of that moment. I also thought we might need an album cover, so I borrowed Stephen's Hasselblad, because I wanted it to be a big format. I worked out the exposure in my mind. I set it down in the sand, looked through the viewfinder, composed the picture, had the boys go into the picture, and I knew where I would be standing. I had my friend Harry Harris, who was the builder of my house in San Francisco, press the trigger. There was only one shot."

"This was when Crosby, Stills and Nash were rehearsing the first record. Our friend John Sebastian said, 'We want you to be out of Los Angeles, out of all that scene, just to be private, to rehearse that first record.' So he suggested that we go to Sag Harbor, just outside of New York on Long Island. He rented us a house, and of course Stephen was madly in love with Judy Collins, as she was with him. She said something about something – she was giving him advice. That's the moment when she's kissing him on the cheek, and her right hand is giving him the advice."