Graham Nash thinks he wasn’t on par with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.
“I never thought I was equal to them – never,” the musician recently told Mojo in a new interview. “It’s David, Stephen and Neil. Listen to what the f*ck they do. I’m not that person.”
He continued, “I can play guitar and piano, good enough to write my own songs. I can play [Young’s] ‘Down By The River’ and any of David or Stephen’s songs. But I never put myself equal to them as a musician.”
Nash also previously discussed his former bandmates’ musical skills. In a 2014 chat with Guitar World, he compared the guitar playing styles of Stills and Young, explaining, “They’re very different, not only sonically, but different in style, as well. Stephen is much more blues-based and Neil is more … ‘experimental’ isn’t the right word… ‘futuristic’ isn’t the right word…”
When the interviewer used the word ‘angular’ to describe Young’s playing, Nash agreed, “That’s a good word, yeah. To me, Neil’s one of the great guitar players in the world. They both are, and to stand in the middle of that sh*t and watch these two longhorn stags — ‘Hey, I’m playing this.'”
The rocker added, “‘Oh, yeah, motherf*cker? Well check this out!’ ‘Oh, really?’ — it’s very interesting as a musician. I can’t look at them from the point of view of being a guitarist as I’m an incredibly simple guitar player. I hardly know what I’m doing.”
“I’m not kidding. I know enough to write for myself and express myself in my songs, but it’s not like anyone’s going to look to me to learn how to play guitar,” Nash further said of his skills as a musician. “But Stephen and Neil are really geniuses at what they do.”
Nash and Crosby had a big falling out in the mid-2010s, and it led to the end of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Before Crosby died in 2023, they started talking again and hoped to fix their friendship. Sadly, Crosby passed away on January 18, 2023, before they could reconnect.
