Wednesday 11th May

As a teenager The Beatles were my favourite group, but I really liked The Searchers and Gerry and The Hollies amongst others.  The Hollies came out of Manchester and like many bands following The Fabs example started writing their own songs.  The band had been created by Alan Clarke and Graham Nash, and in 1968 Graham left, despite the band being incredibly successful.   He left England too and travelled to California and the loving arms of Joni, and the musical pull of David Crosby and Stephen Stills.  They formed the incredibly successful Crosby, Stills and Nash and then Neil Young joined and they became mega-superstars.  Graham was liberated from writing ‘pop’ songs and began writing songs straight from the heart; too many for CSNY albums so he released his solo album “Songs for Beginners”.

I actually bought this before the CSN records and fell in love with it.  It is truly one of my essential records; from the opening bars of ‘Military Madness’ (In an upstairs room in Blackpool, the army had my father, my mother was having me) to the Political song Chicago which segues into the chorus of “We can change the World”.  Graham epitomized the Hippy Dream for me and as I was in love with all the singer-songwriters releasing wonderful records from the West Coast this record almost became the one I measured all else by.  1971 was the best year ever for brilliant albums and though Graham made many more records with CSN and a few lovely ones with David Crosby his solo records never quite lived up to this record.  Every song is a winner but especially the wondrous ‘Sleep Song’, an ode to Joni who had just left him (while you were asleep I was kissing your forehead, you gave a sigh so I kissed you again), wistful and yearning and beautiful all in one song.

I advise everyone wondering what on earth all those singer-songwriters in the early seventies were all about to listen to this one record.  It is wonderful, you might even get hooked like I did.