(Credits: Far Out / Atlantic Records)
Sat 25 October 2025 21:30, UK
Throughout music, there are many great supergroups, but without a doubt, one of the most prolific is Crosby, Stills and Nash.
We often wonder, as fans, whether artists and bands know they’re onto a winner before they’ve had the approval of the public, and it’s a question which continues to require pondering. When Arctic Monkeys first wrote ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, did they know they were about to revolutionise indie music? When Slash penned the opening riff for ‘Sweet Child O Mine’ did he have any idea what a success that would be? When Led Zeppelin jammed together for the first time, did they understand what they had happened upon?
Chances are, every single name listed will have had a different mindset when it came to uncovering the classics that they made, but one supergroup who immediately knew that they were onto something was Crosby, Stills and Nash. During an interview with Far Out, Graham Nash once admitted that he was enjoying his career with The Hollies, but as soon as he, Stephen Spills and Bill Corsby put their voices together, it was clear they had a sound they had to pursue. The rest of the band agreed.
“I’m realising more and more as I get older just how good The Hollies were,” admitted Nash, “They were a band, even though I was part of the band, we wanted to have as much fun on stage as possible, and we wanted our audience to feel the same thing. We wanted them to shake their ass and dance and sing. That’s fine with me. Even today, I love it when people sing my songs back to me.”
He continued, “I was born and raised on the outskirts of Manchester, and I heard a magical sound when me and David and Stephen put our three voices together to try and make one voice […] And when I heard that I had to go back to England, leave The Hollies and instead go back to that magical sound that we had created.”
It’s amazing what harmonies can achieve. Forget instrumentation, you don’t need it when voices like this can come together so beautifully. By using the voice, something which has been used in music for centuries prior, Nash, Stills and Crosby were able to give listeners something entirely unique. Their music remains timeless, as new generations continue to stumble upon their sound and be amazed by it.
Such a formation seems to have left an impact on Stills, as he always had an eye on the next best supergroup. He almost managed to find one alongside Jimmy Page, but it never came to fruition. While Stills might not sound like the perfect voice to go alongside Jimmy Page’s guitar style, the Led Zeppelin guitarist’s ability to play into multiple genres means that he and Stills would have certainly been able to find a sound that worked. Unfortunately, this never happened, as the music gods had other plans, and the band was left merely as an idea.
“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” said Stills when discussing Jimmy Page, “We were keen to start a band for a minute, but it was just a minute – before The Firm. A very sweet guy. Scatterbrain. He played on the record [Stephen Stills’s Right By You, 1984] and was just lovely, and we shot snooker all night and then got in a boat on the Thames and rowed up and down. I guess this is how they used to pick up girls, but we were middle-aged geezers by then so it just wasn’t going to work.”
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