(Credits: Far Out / Marsha Miller / LBJ Library)
Mon 2 February 2026 19:00, UK
As Graham Nash recalls, he first met The Beatles on November 19th, 1959, when they competed against each other at a talent contest in Manchester.
“They weren’t even called The Beatles,” he said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2016. “It was after The Quarrymen. I think they were Johnny and the Moondogs… Everybody knew, every girl, every kid knew, when they looked at them, something special was about. They were four kids, and you couldn’t get inside that; they took care of themselves, and everybody knew it.”
Nash, in his pre-Hollies days, competed against the Fab Four in the contest, the latter of whom sang Buddy Holly’s 1956 tune ‘Think It Over’. Nash performed with his school friend Allan Clarke, and the pair would go on to co-found The Hollies together in the early 1960s. Nash remembers that, while The Beatles’ pre-fame star power was palpable in the room, the contest was still anyone’s for the taking.
“Allan and I won that night probably because the lads had to leave before the judging,” he reveals. “Lucky us.”
Across his work with The Hollies, alongside David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young in their eponymous band, or as a solo artist, Nash’s voice has remained a beacon of his age. In his work, he soundtracked the countercultural spark that began in the 1960s and continues decades later, with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young classics like ‘Our House’, a song he wrote about his home in Laurel Canyon with his then-partner, Joni Mitchell, and ‘Just a Song Before I Go’ to his credit, chronicling an unrivalled era in music.
Before he immersed himself in the dreamy California landscape, however, Nash was born in Blackpool and raised in Salford, co-founding The Hollies, in a similar fashion to The Beatles, as a Merseybeat-type group in Manchester.
The Hollies would become one of the UK’s most victorious pop groups, and The Beatles, of course, were transcendent in popularity beyond even their most fervent champions’ comprehension. Nash foretold their success, though, as early as that fateful talent competition they entered as young, burgeoning musicians.
Nash has spoken of his infatuation with The Beatles on multiple occasions, even despite a slight rift between The Hollies and George Harrison, the latter of whom was displeased with the band’s rendition of his song ‘If I Needed Someone’. Still, Nash’s admiration for The Beatles has always remained. He once named ‘A Day In The Life’ as being “one of the most adventurous songs ever written and recorded,” he enthused on The Foxhole in 2015, reflecting on when he was able to hear an advanced copy of their 1967 album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
However, Nash names the band’s previous album, 1966’s Revolver, as his ultimate favourite. Compiling a list for Classic Rock in 2022, Revolver sits alongside selections by Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, encapsulating the music that has stuck with Nash, spanning beyond time. “I loved Revolver – the energy, the sound,” he raves, naming the hallucinatory ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ as his favourite track from the record.
“I don’t believe that there will ever be a group as talented as The Beatles,” Nash declared, a profession that shows that, even as Nash himself stands as one of rock music’s most essential voices, the impact of The Beatles may always remain at the helm.
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