Graham Nash Opens Up About Trump, Divorce, and Neil Young

(photo: Amy Grantham)

When Ronald Reagan ran to be the governor of California in 1967, the members of Crosby, Stills & Nash said they would leave the state if he won. Then, when Reagan ran against incumbent president Jimmy Carter in 1980, the musicians threatened to leave the country.

“Of course, we did no such thing, because we realized that the president is a figurehead. He’s not really running the country,” Graham Nash tells Yahoo Music during an interview to promote his first solo album in 14 years, This Path Tonight, which comes out April 15.

Nash, a left-wing political activist, feels much the same way about Donald Trump running for president as he did back when Reagan was campaigning for election. And like many Trump-haters, he is dumbfounded that the inflammatory, loudmouthed candidate is a heartbeat away from winning the Republican party nomination.

“It must be incredible frustrating for Jeb Bush, who thought he had the nomination won,” Nash says. “He had millions and millions of dollars and he had famous name recognition. What a crazy scene this is all turning out to be. It’s scary. Trump speaks to a lot of people’s feelings that don’t have the courage to say what he’s saying. I don’t agree with the majority of what he’s saying. But he is preaching to a certain level of the choir. It’s so sad. Could you imagine if he actually became president? It could happen. I just don’t see his popularity diminishing whatsoever in the months ahead. You would have thought that after his anti-Muslim rants that his numbers would plummet – and they went up! It’s insane.”

Whether creating for Crosby, Still, Nash & (sometimes) Young or any of the six solo albums he has released since 1971, Nash has been motivated by the desire to “make the world a better place for me and my friends and my family and my children and for everybody else’s children.” In addition to crafting poignant, inspirational folk rock songs that often soared with three- and four-part harmonies, Nash has written about war, corruption, the environment, and other pressing cultural and political concerns.

With This Path Tonight, however, Nash has stepped off of his soapbox and written an album of intensely personal and intimate songs about his life as a man in his seventies who, until recently, was searching for happiness despite having a wife and children. He hopes the sentiments will resonate with fans that are more used to Nash’s less confessional songwriting. But as much as This Path Tonight reads like a diary, two of the bonus tracks are political, including “Watch Out for the Wind,” which was inspired by the way the public reacted to the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American who was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

“I didn’t want to include the more pointed stuff on the main body of the album, because I wanted this to be a study in me as a person rather than the causes that I embrace,” Nash said. “I wanted people to know I’m a human being going through a million changes the same way they are, and I’m trying to get on with my life and have the best time I can before I pass.”

The greatest recent change for Nash was separating from his wife of 38 years, Susan Sennett, and starting up again with his new girlfriend, Amy Grantham. “I fell in love with this wonderful person in New York City and my life has changed,” Nash reveals. “People are going to have to understand that. On my next birthday I’ll be 74 years old, and I need to be happy with whatever life I have left. So this album is a complete reflection of my life changing and me having the courage to go on with it.”

Grantham shot the cover photo for This Path Tonight on New Year’s Day 2014. The shot depicts Nash from behind, walking through the snowy woods in Woodstock, New York during his first visit to the artsy town.

“I’d actually never been to Woodstock before then,” he says. “Of course, I played Woodstock, but that wasn’t in the actual town. [The 1969 Woodstock festival actually took place in Bethel, New York]. I never went to Woodstock until Amy turned me on to it. And it’s actually quite a charming little village. There’s a great feeling in that town.”

The same terminology could be used to describe This Path Tonight. The songs are evocative and multihued, from moody and reflective to revelatory and upbeat. Songs like “Cracks in the City,” “Another Broken Heart,” and “Golden Days” speak of fading old relationships and budding new romances, and in the process address feelings of being trapped in uncomfortable situations and having the conviction to follow uncertain paths.

“I hope that people come away enjoying the album as a journey,” Nash says. “I think people are going to enjoy it because it’s very introspective and personal, but the art of a songwriter is to take something that happened to you and make it understandable by everybody that listens to it. That’s one of the art I really like to try to accomplish. I can write about something that happened to me and have you go, ‘Holy s—, I know exactly what he’s saying.’”

Nash wrote This Path Tonight with Crosby, Stills & Nash second guitarist Shane Fontayne during a one-month period in 2015 and recorded the 13 songs in just eight days in the studio. Those tunes were pared down from 20 full compositions the pair wrote between CS&N tours. “I had so many songs running around my head driving me crazy and I had to get them out,” Nash says. “I was inspired by my personal life being so chaotic. There was a lot going on within me and major changes that I felt I wanted to write about.

That Nash is so upfront about his life and so candid in his lyrics is surprising, because he has cherished his privacy since Crosby, Stills & Nash became popular after the release of their 1969 self-titled debut. Prolific as a songwriter and photographer, but reticent in public, Nash would much rather be an anonymous artist than an attention-seeking celebrity.

“I’ve always tried to remain behind the scenes,” he says. “I like to be invisible. It’s the same approach I’ve taken as a photographer, and it has spilled over into other areas of my life. I’m just not a socially adept person. I do check Instagram, but I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Twitter. I don’t have enough time for the real friends that I have.”

There’s a good reason Nash is cautious about what he says these days in public and in the press. In September 2014, during an interview for the Ohio Statesman, Nash’s bandmate Crosby called Neil Young’s girlfriend, actress Daryl Hannah, a “purely poisonous predator.” The move incensed Young, who told Howard Stern “a [CSN&Y reunion] will never happen. Not in a million years.” Nash, who played 80 shows with Crosby and Stephen Stills last year, won’t say anything specific about Crosby’s comments, but he remains friends with Young and is hopeful that they may work together again.

“I last spoke to Neil [in November] at his [70th] birthday party,” Nash says. “He invited me. Neil has always been very kind to me and very cognizant of the fact that I want to stay focused on the music rather than the personalities involved. I think he invited me to let me know he was still my friend regardless of his relationship with David Crosby.”

As for Crosby, having worked on and off with him since 1968, Nash understands his bandmate’s quirks, but insists the strength of their chemistry far outweighs any tension between them. “The truth is that David and I have been friends for so many years,” Nash says. “Sometimes it’s calm and sometimes it’s chaotic, but it’s life.”

On Jan. 21, Nash will perform a solo set at the 2016 winter National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention in Anaheim, California. In addition to playing a set, he’ll likely be signing autographs, shaking hands, and kissing babies. “It’s quite an honor for me and I’m looking forward to going, actually,” Nash says. “But NAMM is a strange place for me. It’s hard to walk five feet without being approached by somebody who wants to say thanks for all the music. Sometimes it’s hard to be around that, because I do try to be invisible. But I also appreciate the recognition.”

To grease the wheels for the release of This Path Tonight, Nash will launch a tour that stars Jan. 27 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and runs through Feb. 26 in New York City. After the album comes out, Nash will hit the road again, starting in Austin, Texas on May 5 before he heads to the U.K.

“I enjoy playing my songs onstage because I really feel like I’m speaking to a lot of people with my music, and especially with this new album,” Nash says. “I don’t feel like a rock star. I really feel like I am [the same as] everybody. I just happen to make music, and I’ll be creating it until they put me in my grave. I’ll be creating as they close the lid.”