1968 was a time of immense change for Graham Nash. It was the year when he said goodbye to pretty much his entire life as he knew it.
His first marriage came to an end and he went through a divorce. He reached a musical impasse with The Hollies and decided to leave the band he had formed with Allan Clarke some ten years earlier. This was very hard – the band was his baby and the guys were his friends.
On top of it all, he left his native England behind, including his family, friends, and his entire network, to move to America. This also meant leaving all of his holdings who were tangled up in his activities up to that point – his bank account, his recording contract, his publishing, etc. He could have fought for it, but he was willing to leave it all behind just for the freedom of leaving.
He did have friends who would help him out in the US, but it was still very much about starting over on square one. All he brought with him was his guitar in a case and the clothes he was wearing. Everything else would be new.
There were two main reasons why he was highly motivated to change everything in his life and start anew. For starters, he had met David Crosby and Stephen Stills. They had been courting him for a while as they wanted him to join them in forming a new group. The new project would be more based around vocal harmonies, lyrics about things that mattered, and a “groovy” sound. After getting goosebumps when he heard how incredibly well their voices meshed, Nash found himself more than willing to take the leap.
The other reason? He had fallen in love with Joni Mitchell.
The first time Crosby, Stills and Nash sang a song together was in fact in Mitchell’s house in Laurel Canyon. She was part of the gang surrounding these musicians, and had even been seeing Crosby at an earlier point. But with Nash it got really serious, and he ended up moving in with her for a while.
Before too long, they were a real item. Living together, constantly spending time together, and even talking about the future to the point that they met the in-laws and each other’s families. Having two songwriters under one roof led to a few compromises, though. For one thing, there was only one piano in the house. They both liked tinkering and writing songs on it, but obviously only one could be on it at a time. If one of them wasn’t on the piano, the other one often was.
One March morning in 1969, while CSN were working on their first album, Nash and Mitchell went out to breakfast at a famous delicatessen called Art’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley. They parked the car down the street, and on the way back they passed a small antiques store that drew their attention. In the window was a vase that took Mitchell’s fancy – clear glass with little enamel flowers on it.
In his autobiography Wild Tales, Nash wrote “Joan rarely bought anything for herself. It just wasn’t her style to blow money on something frivolous, but this time I suggested she treat herself. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘How much can it be? It’s not Gallé or Steuben, it can’t cost thousands of dollars.’ In fact, it was pretty cheap, between eighty and a hundred dollars, so Joan bought it and took it home.”
They got back to the house in Laurel Canyon and put their stuff down. Nash suggested lighting a fire as it was a chilly day – one of those grey, cloudy days in LA that seems to foreshadow the spring.
Nash wrote of that moment in his book: “She had an open fireplace with a stash of wood in the back. I told her, ‘I’ll light a fire. Why don’t you place some flowers in that vase you just bought?’ Then I stopped. I thought, whoa! That’s a delicious moment. How many couples have been there: ‘you light a fire, I’ll cook dinner.’ I thought that in the ordinariness of the moment there might be a profoundly simple statement.”
Mitchell did go out into the garden to gather ferns and leaves and a couple flowers to put in the vase. That meant she wasn’t at the piano! Full of inspiration, Nash did not hesitate. He started tinkering and a song quickly started coming together.
I’ll light the fire
You place the flowers in the vase
That you bought today
Staring at the fire for hours and hours
While I listen to you play your love songs
All night long for me, only for me
It came together like magic, mostly because it was so real – it was all about their day, and about their lives there and then. It did not have to be imagined, it just had to be descriptive and honest. The moment was captured like a photograph.
This continued in the second verse: ‘Come to me and rest your head for just five minutes, everything is done.’ This is an English expression which signals that the dishes are washed, the washing’s been taken in – i.e. the chores are done. It was that simple, and that precious.
We all have songs which immediately can take us right back to a moment in our life in a very real way, just like a smell or a taste might remind us of something specific. Our House is universal in providing the theme for such a moment. It speaks of a situation that we all recognise. The carefree early stages of a relationship. Most people have been there. The sentiment is universal.
The chorus summed up exactly where Nash was at, after the upheaval of his last few years:
Our house is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy ‘cause of you
Within an hour the complete song was done. Nash knew he had something special, but as they were not looking for more songs for the classic first CSN album it was held over for the second one. By then they had been joined by Neil Young and the next album was going to be released under the CSNY-moniker. Not that it mattered much.
The song was recorded and pretty much finished on 5 November 1969. The first part of the song retained the original element of Nash performing by himself with mainly just vocals and piano, and this remains the focal point of the song even after the band has come in to add quiet emphasis. Then, of course, there was the addition of eloquent harmonising by Crosby and Stills. Young does not appear on the song.
Our House retains its initial basic, simple structure, being as close to a Nash solo song as you’d get under the CSN(Y) umbrella.
Nash was asked about those harmonies in a 2013 interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air”: “It’s me and David and Stephen doing our best. That’s all we ever do. You know, we’re lucky enough to be able to do anything that we want to do musically. And, you know, these two guys are incredible musicians. Crosby is one of the most unique musicians I know, and Stills has got this blues-based, South American kind of feeling to his music. And I’m this Henry VIII guy from England. It’s not supposed to work, but it does, somehow.”
The song was released as the third single from the album (not counting the non-album single Ohio, which also fits into the timeline of this album) and released in October 1970. It reached #30 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It has gone on to become a staple of radio and is still frequently played over 50 years later. Most people will know the song even if they have never sought out CSN(Y) music.
RELATED ARTICLE: The story behind the CSNY song «Ohio»
The song has endured. Nash and Mitchell’s relationship did not, but they remained friends over the years. When a 75th birthday tribute show was put on for Mitchell in November 2018, Nash happily agreed to appear as a special guest. A huge cast of artists had appeared on stage to play Mitchell’s songs to her (and the rest of the packed house) in their own way.
Nash came out last, and said: “The songs you have heard tonight have all been written by Joni. Except this one. I wrote this song for Joni when I was 27 years old, and Joni was 26.” He proceeded to play Our House. Although the person of honour had often seemed moved over the course of the evening, this was the only song that brought her to tears.
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