Graham Nash Quotes

It just doesn't get any more stripped down than going out totally alone and doing songs.

There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

I love being in a small club where everybody has a good seat, and we don't look like ants. And you can feel the audience, which makes it kind of magical, and I miss that. I guess I have the best of both worlds.

What I love is when I play gigs, it's just me and a guitar - very simple, very direct and intimate, and you hear every lyric, and you hear every detail.

I play shows sometimes, and if everything's connecting, I start blabbing to the audience about anything. Between songs, talking about things in my personal life, or whatever. But there are other situations where I feel a little closed-off. It's really kind of a day-to-day thing.

That's why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.

When you do acoustic shows, there's always a more intimate vibe. I go into them with lowered expectations and assume that people don't want to hear me.

Gentle souls! You play your love on the violin. The crude ones play it on the drums violently. But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me And become just two lips entirely?

The less people present in an urgent situation that a moderately high stakes recording session can create - the less people there are in the room - the more openness there can be. These songs share that as well, in addition to just the obvious, basic starkness.

We just sang real simple songs in a simple way that got to people. We didn't try to tart them up with orchestral arrangements and all the stuff. We were all blues fanatics. We like R+B and blues and simple, gut-feeling music.

Playing live is closer to theatre, although when you're up there on your own, it's quite scary and revealing because you're playing your own songs. It's like a one man show that you've written yourself.

I don't let people use me. That's why I like a small number of people in my life. The more people in my life, the more complex it becomes, so I just try to keep it at a minimum.

All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.

You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.

I'm making a record that's half stripped down acoustic which is the way I perform a lot and half of it is very produced. It's really hard to keep music simple but I was trying to keep it simple and focus on one or two instruments and vocals.

What I learned then was there is a certain power in a three piece band. The more people you put on that stage, the more diluted it becomes.

I've always loved acoustic music because I've always loved to hear someone's words or just watch them and just get into them. The distancing thing about rock is it's so assaulting.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

It's a different thing playing in a smaller venue where you can actually see people's faces and reactions. It's so much more intimate. You walk away with a more personal experience.

I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

Sometimes I would write something that was so private, people would say, 'Make it more universal.' I never liked that idea. I always thought the more personal a song was, the more people would want to hear it.

One of the advantages of playing in a club is that even with bass and drums, the atmosphere remains intimate with the audience.

The true meaning of an artist/actor is opening my heart to the audience and, at the same time, opening their heart.

It's hard to get intimate with an audience.