“And now for the performer you’ve all been waiting for,” said Emma, “Graham Nash!” And Graham was, in a word, “transplendent.” (Yes, that’s a word stolen from “Annie Hall,” the scene where Woody Allen is in bed with Shelly Duvall who is playing a Rolling Stone reporter and commenting on seeing the Stones.) Graham began with a joke about this being his 85th show of the tour (sans Crosby & Stills tonight, but with great players James Raven and Shane Fontaine) (CORRECT NAMES, BOTH OF THEM, TK). He reflected for a moment on playing in such an intimate venue “in my neighborhood”: “It’s been 40 years since I’ve plugged in my own guitar…it’s going to be an interesting ride.”

Then he took off, attacking the guitar and piano. Here was the outrage. Graham would play “Almost Gone” a song he wrote for Bradley Manning and another called “Back Home” which he wrote about Levon Helm.

“We’re losing friends,” Graham said calmly. “By the day.”

He became impassioned immediately at the beginning, singing while banging away at the keyboards, from his earliest solo days of Songs For Beginners, in 1971: “I am a simple man/and I play a simple tune,” which brought my date and me to tears and hugs, while four folks in front of us held up their phones to capture the moments passing. We looked at each other after and said: “We just had a moment, didn’t we?” (Our previous moments, well that’s a whole ‘nother story: falling for each other in minneapolis when it seemed music was part of the revolution and so were we…)

Graham played a song he wrote for the Bridge School Concerts Neil Young puts on in Berkeley, called “Try And Find Me.” He brought me to tears with a song written about a “nine week sailing trip from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco” with David Crosby and their families. Somewhere off Costa Rica, they saw a blue whale and “To the Last Whale: Critical Mass/Wind On The Water” made me cry and cry for the whales at his line: “It’s a shame you have to die/to put the shadow on our eye.” The melody (while whale effects howled out of Fontaine’s guitar) concludes with one of those great finishes where crescendo crashes into lyrics talking time’s passing and us with it: “Maybe we’ll go/maybe we’ll disappear…It’s not that we don’t know/it’s just that we don’t wanna care…Under the bridges/Over the foam/Wind on the water carry me home…”

The Church-in-Ocean Park has a few old and darkened stained-glass windows but they seemed to reverberate during “Cathedral,” a song Graham tells us he wrote after taking LSD on the way to Stonehenge and wandering into Winchester Cathedral.

Then came this: In 1969, he got a call from Wavy Gravy to come to Chicago to sing at a benefit for the defense of the Chicago 8 who were on trial at the time. He and Crosby called Steven Stills and Neil Young to join them. “Please come to Chicago,” Nash begged, “just to sing.”

And then he came back and wrote this for Steven and Neil who had begged off. “So yer brother’s bound and gagged/and they’ve chained him to a chair/Won’t you please come to Chicago/Just to Sing…We can change the world/rearrange the world/it’s dying/to get better…”

He spoke about Bradley Manning in between songs, continuing on the attack, at one point remarking: “And our government, in its insanity, has been torturing him! Aren’t we a nation of laws?”
“Almost Gone,” about Manning in solitary confinement came across as an aching indictment and urgent bark to come to attention America! (Well, as much as Graham Nash can “bark”: that voice from the starry heavens somewhere has continued since I heard it on his records even more wonderful with lightness: less matching heights with his-man-in-harmony forever David, and more low warmth in that warble we could see his terrifically-aged neck vibrate with effort. Compare them to the YouTube videos of him and Crosby on BBC TV and you can sense his ageless wisdom. I don’t know from “old souls” but Graham seems to not be very old at all, voice-wise. Perhaps there’s a correlation between talent + energy given out =in good, insides-wise?)

Best thing Graham said in between songs: “This kid faces life in prison, plus 150 years, while George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are all walking free! I don’t think we’ll be a really great country ’til we deal with this shit.”

First comes “America Come Home”, a special song written and sung by a friend of Nash’s (NAME TK) _____Rafael who came up and got us all caught up its Dylan-inspired hardcore folk. It also reminded me of George McGovern who had just passed; his famous convention speech had the cry, “Come Home, America,” as its refrain. And speaking of Greatest Hits of 1972, Graham wrapped up the show with his biggest hits, back-to-back, “Our House” and “Teach Your Children.”

Walking home we gabbed back and forth about how great it was to finally get to see this one-time Brit (remember his “Immigration Man”? Way ahead of its time, checkitout.), part of CSNY but it was listening to his solo albums together and singing back-and-forth in cars and in parks his wonderful tunes since whenever, since we met (which I told you is a whole ‘nother story). This iconic figure of a man, it must be said: is so personable and revealing in his talkings and singings to us. “From here to Venezuela, there’s nothing more to see/than a hundred thousands islands flung like jewels upon the sea/For you and me…”

Okay so that was from Crosby’s “Lea Shore.” No biggie.

Question Finally: Was CSNY as big as I liked them? Did everyone love them? Or was there a lot of snickering going on? I was so unhip back then but tonight love is in the air and we are fourth row from the stage listening to Graham Nash in a church singing for justice for our fellow Manning, right?