Salford music superstar Graham Nash took to the stage in a flying visit to Salford Museum and Art Gallery this week, launching his first ever photographic exhibition to open in his home city.
‘My Life Through My Lens’ runs until to 3 July 2016.
Read all about it, and see exhibition photos here
He arrived at the Crescent just before 2pm on Monday 23 May before settling in to a sold-out Q&A with BBC Radio Manchester’s Mike Sweeney.
Despite his shock of blond hair and elfin frame, Nash is still sharp as a knife and shows no sign of slowing down.
As he took to the stage he threw out a cheery “How y’all doing?” in what has become an odd but signature part-northern England/part-American accent.
Graham had some incredible, unheard stories to tell.
Now based in Hawaii, the 74-year-old rocker is also touring his first studio album in 14 years, called ‘This Path Tonight’.
Graham filmed with SalfordOnline.com back in 2011 when he picked up an Honorary Degree from Salford University, revealing incredible and never-before-heard gems about growing up in Skinner Street in Ordsall, swapping rumours for fact on his early career.
Watch: Graham Nash returns to Salford, settles music history
Back to Monday’s gig, and Graham talked about his early days growing up in the Ordsall district of Salford where he freely admits that there was no money about at that time and life was hard.
Everything changed when he went to a school disco at St Clements Church with good friend Allan Clarke, later to be the lead singer in The Hollies.
They both fancied a local girl called Norma Timms – I wonder where she is now? – and as they summoned up the courage to ask her for a dance, a song came over the speakers that he called, “a moment that changed my life”: it was ‘Bye, Bye, Love’ by the Everley Brothers.
The pair decided to form a band and had their first public performance at Salford Lads Club, gigging under the name of the Four Tones – despite there being five of them.
As they continued to perform around the Manchester club scene, now under the moniker of The Deadbeats, they were given a gig at Christmas 1962 at The Oasis club.
When the club owner asked who he was introducing, they decided on the spot – since it was the festive season and Holly was the name of one of their favourite singers – to choose their world-famous The Hollies name. The rest, as they say, is history.
The packed-out audience in Salford were treated to some incredible rock and roll anecdotes from the days when Graham moved over to California to join Stephen Stills and Dave Crosby in what was to become the world’s first supergroup: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
He told how Jimi Hendrix was the most competitive player of the board game, ‘Risk’, even when he’d taken legendary amounts of LSD.
He still considers Bob Dylan to be the finest American songwriter and singer he has ever seen.
Laughter broke out in the audience when he was asked how a Salford lad could easily fit into the laid back Californian, hippy lifestyle; he gave the simple answer…”Marijuana.”
Graham spoke candidly about his divorce from his wife of 38 years, Susan Sennett, and spoke of his new love, actress and photographer, Amy Grantham who took the cover shots for ‘This Path Tonight’.
We learned that Graham was introduced to “the magic of photography” at the age of 10 by his father who was a keen amateur photographer, and he still remembers a snap he took of his mother when he was 11.
Joni Mitchell plays with David Crosby reflected in the window – 1969
The images on display at the exhibition, it has to be said, are stunning.
Famous friends nestle along images of children, a stag night celebration and several self-portraits.
One of these is quite staggering. It reminds me of a skeletal, messianic figure clutching a pencil in his teeth, reflected in a bathroom mirror in New York.
He told us that he was constantly taking photographs on his travels around the world and was encouraged by then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell to exhibit his work more widely.
The popularity of his work exploded when he was able to print larger editions of his work, but it came with a hefty price tag.
Pal David Coons, an illustrator for Walt Disney, introduced Graham to the Iris printer in 1989, which was revolutionary for its time.
On learning that the inkjet colour printer could blow up his works to wall-size, he immediately went out and bought one for $126,000.
I leave the last word to Graham Nash when asked whether photography could truly be considered art.
He replied with an answer Bob Dylan would have been proud of: “There are 600 million cameras in the world and only 12 photographers, I am not one them.”
The exhibition, ‘My Life Through My Lens’ runs at Salford Museum and Art Gallery on The Crescent, Salford, until Sunday 3 July and is a must-see.
