Graham Nash at the Union Chapel

Graham Nash
Union Chapel, 24 May 2016

First, this show had to have had the longest line I've ever seen at the Union Chapel before, stretching all the way back past the houses beside the old church. I guess that's what you get when you have a legend of Graham Nash's stature playing a relatively small venue for his first solo jaunt in the UK in years (in fact I'm not even sure he has toured solo here before). Secondly, the majority of the audience were of an older vintage, which I loved, it's nice to feel you are one of the young ones at a concert for once.

Crosby & Nash at the Royal Albert Hall

Crosby & Nash

Royal Albert Hall, 8 October 2011

For the past couple of years I've been lucky enough to catch Crosby, Stills & Nash at the Royal Albert Hall and each time has been a pretty amazing experience.

Crosby, Stills & Nash at the Royal Albert Hall

Crosby, Stills & Nash
Royal Albert Hall, 3 July 2010

Almost a year to the day that I first saw Crosby, Stills & Nash in the suitably magnificent setting of the Royal Albert Hall, I was back in the same place to see them again. This time I didn’t have quite as impressive seats (last time I was practically at the front), but was pleasantly surprised to find I was still quite near the stage but in the side stalls this time. I always forget just what an incredibly beautiful place the Royal Albert Hall is and how perfectly designed it is as a music venue, and to be fair I imagine no matter where you were sitting you would get a good view. But I must admit it is nice to be fairly close to your heroes where you can even hear their off-microphone banter on stage (my favourite being when Crosby responded to requests from the crowd saying “I’ll do all the ones I can remember” playing on his notorious drug-fuelled reputation and earning a huge laugh, to which Stills, off mike, pointed to Crosby’s tele-prompter and said “But you have that!”) .

More barn!

A quote from Graham Nash from Jimmy McDonough's superb Neil Young biography Shakey: “I’m down at the ranch and Neil goes, ‘Hey Willy, wanna hear something?’ So we go down to the lake and row out to the middle in this rowboat and I think, ‘Jesus Christ, this guy’s been a fuckin’ mystery to me all my life - if he wants to talk to me privately, surely there’s more places to do it than in the middle of a fucking lake in a rowboat.’ What he’d done is he’d wired his house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker, and they played Harvest. And at the end of it Elliot Mazer comes down to the shore of the lake and goes, ‘Neil, how is it?’ Neil turns around and shouts, ‘More barn!’”

Crosby, Stills & Nash at the Royal Albert Hall

 
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Royal Albert Hall, 1 July 2009

It would be a tough act to follow Mr Young after his jaw-dropping show on the weekend but if anyone was going to give it a try then I suppose his old bandmates Crosby, Stills & Nash were as good a bet as any.