@EasyAce
I consider "Evolution" by the Hollies to be a great album, I guess this is when we are talking about the deep cuts by a group. I read that Graham Nash left the Hollies because they decided to do that all Dylan album. I'm sure the songs are okay but why do an album dedicated to Dylan.
Evolution is an excellent album. As for Graham Nash, he actually began to think beyond the Hollies
somewhat before the Dylan album project. He'd had to fence to get them to cut "King Midas in Reverse"
(it had the usual Clarke-Hicks-Nash songwriting credit but it was Nash's song all the way) and, when
that single didn't do as well as their previous ones, they rejected another new song he'd written at the
same time they decided on the Dylan project.
In the interim, he'd met Mama Cass Elliot when the Hollies were in California on a tour, and she in
turn introduced him to Joni Mitchell, who invited him to meet two friends of hers who were walking out
of
their bands: David Crosby was being forced out of the Byrds, and Stephen Stills---who'd just
done the studio jam (as Mike Bloomfield's pinch hitter, when Bloomfield's insomnia struggle forced him
home to San Francisco after the first day's jamming) that helped Al Kooper complete the legendary
Super Session---was free from the collapsing Buffalo Springfield. The threesome took a liking to
each other and their impromptu playing and singing together in Mitchell's living room prodded Nash to
leave the Hollies ---as it happened, on the same day as Hollies drummer Bobby Elliott's birthday, which
rankles Elliot to this day---and move to Los Angeles to begin proper rehearsing with Crosby and Stills.
(Two years earlier, another supergroup formed in kind of the same way: Eric Clapton was pondering
walking out of John Mayall's Blues Breakers after former Graham Bond and incumbent Manfred Mann
bassist Jack Bruce sat in with the Blues Breakers for a couple of gigs and Clapton was impressed with
Bruce's improvisational abilities. They began working together a bit; meanwhile, on another occasion,
another Bond alumnus, drummer Ginger Baker, sat in with the Blues Breakers and he and Clapton
took a liking to each other---at which point Baker let it drop, "I'm getting a band together, do you want
to do it?" Clapton agreed so long as Bruce could be the bassist; Baker agreed to "let bygones be bygones"
and bring Bruce in; the three jammed at Baker's flat one afternoon and clicked. And thus was born
Cream . . . )
This, by the way, was the Nash song the Hollies spurned . . .
! No longer availableAccording to Bobby Elliott, the Hollies were pushed to reject the song by their then-producer Ron Richards.
Elliott swears he liked the song and would have done it in a minute but for that. Nash's last live
performance with the Hollies before he left the band was at the London Palladium.
This was the Hollies' first post-Nash British hit single . . .
The Hollies, "Sorry, Suzanne"
! No longer available
