Allan Clarke on his lifelong friendship with Graham Nash

Allan Clarke continues his return to music with upcoming album I’ll Never Forget. The lead track ‘Buddy’s Back’ is a nostalgic tribute to the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, and it showcases his distinctive voice and Graham Nash’s songwriting talents. The song features them singing harmonies together for the first time in decades, marking a significant moment for fans of The Hollies. The album promises to be a celebration of old friendships, longstanding love, and new beginnings, reflecting on the many experiences and memories that have shaped Clarke’s life.

This is an extract of a forthcoming podcast when Jason Barnard spoke with Allan about his influences and lifelong friendship with Graham Nash. The full written interview can be found here.

Your new single ‘Buddy’s Back’ is particularly poignant. It connects back into your early years, not only with the inspiration of Buddy Holly, but your lifelong friendship with Graham Nash.

Yeah, very much so. When I’d done the first album, I met Graham and he wanted to hear it. He sat there with the cans on all the way through. And he said, “Wow. That’s really good. That’s great. Maybe we can do something in the future”. Well, that was about four years ago. And intermediate to that we’ve been seeing each other off and on with mutual friends that he knows and I know. And each time we’ve said, “When are we going to do this?”. So what happened was, I did a FaceTime to Graham, I said, look, “Let’s do it. Instead of talking about it, let’s do it”. And he said, “Okay, you send me some songs and I’ll write something for the album”. So I said “Wonderful”, so immediately that I had been writing songs. And there’s one particular song, which is called ‘I’ll Never Forget”. I wrote that, about the uncertainty of doing it with Graham. It might happen, or it might not happen. So it’s a collective of words, hoping that it will happen. But if it doesn’t, I’ll never forget what happened anyway. So it was one of those types of songs, I sent it to him and he said, “Okay, let’s do it”. And that broke the camel’s back. And we said, “Okay, let’s go ahead”. And we’ve done it, we finished the album, and I’m very, very pleased with it. Graham’s very, very pleased with it. I wrote all the songs on the album. Because when we were halfway through, Graham said, “Well, I looked to see if this is the way that it’s going. This should be your solo album”. I was quite relieved in a way that the songs that I was writing were for me and him in the way that we used to write songs in the past, which showed our harmonies together beautifully. And he said, but I will write a song about something about us in the past. He said “I’ve got this one called ‘Buddy’s Back’. I’ll send it to you and see what you think”. So it ended up being on my solo album, in which he sings all the harmonies on which is brilliant, and ‘Buddy’s Back’ because Graham and I are in a thing called the Buddy Holly Education Foundation. We were presented with a guitar each of a famous Buddy Holly guitar that he used to write his songs on, and he also chiseled a leather jacket on. It was a Gibson really.

I met Graham at the Albert Hall, because that’s where I was going to pick it up. Halfway through I went to see him in the dressing room. He says “Right, we’re starting the show and we’re going to start with ‘Bus Stop’. So he said “You better be ready to do it”. I hadn’t even rehearsed anything, it was crazy. So there I was stood on the famous stage again at the Albert Hall in the middle of Graham, David Crosby and Stephen Stills, which was absolutely fabulous for that to happen to them or to me. When I actually walked on stage at the Albert Hall it was just fantastic. I never thought that I’d be there with people standing on their feet, actually applauding and cheering and things like that. And so I went into it, and I did my imitation of what I was producing in Bus Stop at that particular time. But then when I got my guitar and Graham got his. It’s called ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’, I did want Peggy Sue but someone else had got it. So there’s my guitar, and it’s on my wall over there and I write all my songs on it. And that’s how we started Resurgence. Every morning I’d come here. This used to be a bedroom. But at that particular time, I’d just put my guitars on the wall there. And I always pulled the Buddy Holly guitar down from the wall. And the first thing I do is play ‘Peggy Sue’. [laughs] I haven’t worked on that further with the chords really. I started with doing three chords and now I think I’ve got to five. To me five is enough. So that’s me and my guitar and what Graham and I do Buddy Holly Foundation.

‘Buddy’s Back’, it tells a story. This is the type of way that Graham writes his stuff. He says it eloquently in so few words. About us getting the guitars, hearing Buddy Holly, trying to copy him in whatever we do; and all the other rock and roll people that we found that were coming on the scene at that time. And eventually we got to the Everly Brothers but this is a song about Buddy Holly. We named the group after him. It’s a really nice catchy song, which we wanted to put out as the first single because it relates to me and Graham and how we really sound when we sing together. And when they do hear that they go, oh, yeah, there’s the Hollies sound. So yeah, I’m really pleased with that. And I’m pleased that Graham said, “Yes, let’s do it”. So here we are.

Going back to, around 67, that latter period of when Graham was in the group. The songwriting there for the singles, and you mentioned, ‘Carrie Anne’ earlier showed that your own material was as strong if not stronger than the material that were hits earlier.

Yeah.

You’d seem to have mastered what made a great pop song.

As you know, ‘Carrie Anne’ when we started, I didn’t know whose idea it was, but I got in on that idea. But there are other things like ‘Jennifer Eccles’.

Yeah.

I think this is where Graham started getting a bit annoyed about what he was doing with boys, and really wanted to move on. But I think it was with ‘King Midas In Reverse’. It was his baby. We let him have his head on the Butterfly album. I think he sings about four of the songs which were more than less the way he wanted to go. When it didn’t make it, I think Graham over orchestrated it too much. I think that, him palling out with or listening to The Beatles too much I think after Sgt Pepper’s came out, he saw a new way forward, really. And you couldn’t do that with The Hollies. Anyway, it had been done by them. But when it failed, coming in number 15 and staying there, to us was a failure.

So there was one night we were together. I was with my wife, Jenny. And he was with his first wife, Rose, and was let’s write a silly song. ‘Jennifer Eccles’ just came out, it was easy to write those kinds of songs that we were well known for. Graham didn’t want to be a part of that anymore. When we took it to Ron, and Ron says, “Let’s record it.” it went into number two. It just showed what the people wanted from The Hollies. They wanted us to sound like The Hollies, they wanted to feel happy about The Hollies. There were songs in between all the other songs that we wrote, which had a serious message most of the way, but we were known for doing that. So it’s not as if we could put a whole album out of our songs saying stop pulling the trees down. The political side of it wasn’t our thing to do as The Hollies. But we went on to write other things. He recorded with us quite a lot after ‘Jennifer Eccles’ and we had hits. So the reason for him to leave was because he didn’t want to be a part of what he called pop bubblegum songs. Hey, now when we make a living out of that. What can you do when you’ve got The Beatles on one side, you’ve got The Stones on the other, and you’re known as being The Hollies, you don’t want to stand outside that little part of the dartboard that’s yours. You’ll get lost. Well, Graham decided that it was time for him to go. He didn’t make that apparent. If you look at the videos that we made with him just before he left, ‘Listen To Me’ and those others. Again, he didn’t want to stay with a hit group.

He went over to America and he fell in love with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. David wasn’t a friend of mine, but I knew Stephen very well, because I’d met him in the Buffalo Springfield years before, along with Neil and Richie, all those people. I remember when we went over to Los Angeles. I remember them coming back to the hotel after a show we’d done at the Whisky a Go Go, everybody was there who wanted to see us. We brought the house down, everybody was raving. I went to bed because I was tired but I did hear guitars strumming in the other room. I knew that it was Crosby who was singing and I knew that it was Stephen. I thought “They’re having a jam”. So it was planned in such a way that it wouldn’t be noticed. Anyway, I was told by a friend of mine in Hampstead. He came up to me and said “Do you know, Graham’s forming a group?” I had no idea that was happening. Then it all came out and Graham suggested he wanted to leave. It wasn’t a good time for The Hollies. It wasn’t a good time for me or the rest of the guys.

We did have a big meeting with everybody involved, the heads of EMI and things like that. And Graham said “I’ve made my mind up, it doesn’t matter what you do, I’m going.” and he left the meeting. So I was actually devastated even though I hid it very well. I had a family.. None of the guys in the group had kids, I was the only one that had two children. That was something that I would never ever do like just nip off, to leave the group and go to another group; knowing that this other group is going to has got a brilliant guitarist, a songwriter, and the other guy who is a brilliant singer is a songwriter. And the three of them together make a great sound. I don’t know. I would have had to have thought twice about that because I’m a family man. When Graham left, he left everything, and that was that. He started Crosby, Stills and Nash. And it was an instant hit, it couldn’t miss, could it. When you think about it, it couldn’t go wrong. So I sat myself down, I thought, well ‘Come on, Al. You’re the lead singer for crying out loud. You’ve got a sound which everybody loves. You got to try and find somebody to replace Graham. And Terry Sylvester came along, I liked him immediately. Good looking guy, he had a great voice, and he could play rhythm guitar, which was what Graham did. He had all three in spades. And we recorded ‘Sorry Susanne’ and it went straight to number two. So that’s when my worrying about Graham stopped, but I did worry for quite a while about whether we would make it without him. But we did. And he famously says on a DVD that we did back in 2010, ‘The British Invasion’, he said “How did they have the audacity to actually record two number ones without me.” He said he said it, not me. But there you go. So we both followed a different path and we were both successful.

Over the years, obviously, I’ve seen him in airports and hotels and things like that and we have done other things together by making an album, we had a hit called ‘Holliedaze’, one of those handclap things. I think Tony and Bobby had put together, got into charts. Top of the Pops wanted us to do it and said, “What we need from you is the original people to play it on these records. Graham said “Yeah, I’ll do it. Send me some tickets I’ll come over.”, which he did. And after the show he came to the studio where we were recording, and said, “Oh, I like this, I love what you’re doing”. I was thinking, “Hang on a minute. You’ve left the group. What’s happening here?” It turned out that, okay, he got into the group. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, he’d left the group and that was it. But Tony and Bobby thought it was a good idea. So we went ahead with it. And we toured America, and we made an album in America called ‘What Goes Around’. We were with Graham for about three weeks finishing the album in LA, and then going on to tour then when the tour ended, I don’t think I saw Graham ever for a couple of years after that. So that wasn’t a part of the plan that I had, but as I said, right at the beginning, things are offered to you in the right place, sometimes you think it’s the wrong thing to do. But I learned a lot from that. I think that I gained more confidence, as well. At the beginning at all this time, I didn’t really have all that much confidence or ambition. Ambition was never one of my things I wanted to do. I wanted to enjoy what I was doing, well be The Hollies. So my life changes every day. I live a day at a time.So I don’t worry about what’s gonna happen tomorrow, I just let that happen. You have to make some plans, obviously. But it’s been good. Until somebody says I’ll give you a contract. BMG, and yes, I love your album. We’ll put it out. What?! [laughs] For 16 years, I’d not done anything. Out of the blue. Again, amazing. I’ve even learned to do 40 tracks on GarageBand. And actually play some of the instruments as well, because you can do that. Before when I was songwriting, I had to have someone who could play the guitar with more than four chords. So they would strum the guitar and I would sing my part of the song and ask to go to another because I think they know presumably, where can you find that chord where that is, I think it’d be good. That’s the way I used to write songs for the boys. I never had a guitar to do it. Now I can.

A very exciting period. You’ve got your forthcoming album coming out I’ll Never Forget. Is the plan to maybe release another single and then keep songwriting?

Sure. There’s vinyl out, CD. It’s all going out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all those things. I’m doing interviews, some TV. It’s possible, you’re never state it as fact because when you do that things don’t turn out that right. What I’m trying now is to maybe Graham and I could do a video. Like what we’ve done on the album and piece it together. So it looks like we’re together. I don’t think that he’ll be coming over here for quite a while. And I don’t think I’ll be going over there for quite a while. So that might not be possible. But you never know. People say, “Come on, just the two of you. Why don’t you come on this special show? We’ll make it all comfortable and easy for you. Then you think ‘Ah, yeah”. This is what happened with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I said “I don’t think I can do that Graham”. He said “Come on. It will be the two of us, we’ll have a great time”. And all the time I was worried even when I got off the plane was stood outside The Waldorf. I thought “What am I doing? You’re crazy.” Then I walked into the ballroom, and there was this band on stage. Graham was saying “Hey man, come along”, and when I walked in everyone applauded.

I thought “This is pretty good.” He said “You’ve got your own microphone there. We’re just gonna do a rehearsal of ‘Bus Stop’ and ‘Long Cool Woman’. I thought, “Oh, well that’s great”. And he said “Shall we do ‘Long Cool Woman’ first?” I said “I haven’t played that for years”. He said “I know that Al, but the two guitarists that are in the crew don’t know how to do your riff. [laughs] I said, “What do you mean, you don’t know how to do it?” They said “There’s a note missing. We don’t know how you do that note.” So I said “Well, okay.” So I got the guitar and I played it. And what a lot of people don’t know what they do know, because these tabs now on videos of people playing it and they say, “There’s that note, that’s missing”. What I do on the second string, as I’m going up there, I click it twice instead of doing it once, twice like that and it has that one note. It’s like the invisible note which is there. When I showed them it, they went, “Oh, it’s that easy is it”. And I said “There you go. You wouldn’t have been able to play that if I hadn’t shown you”. Then I felt at home, and it turned out that when I went on he was the lead singer of Train, and the lead singer of Maroon Five, who I’d never heard of. They said “We’re here to make it more comfortable for you now. So just go out and enjoy yourself and sing the songs”. Which when you think about it, you are actually singing live to about a billion people around the world. But apparently it went really well. Some sort of miracle happened I think. So I’m glad that I did it. Because if I hadn’t done it, I’d have been kicking myself. Tony and Bobby couldn’t make it because they were working.

Carry on playing live whatever.

Yeah, so whatever, even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nevermind, I enjoyed it.

Maybe one of the final threads is that we were mentioning Buddy Holly at the start, but your lifelong friendship with Graham and the partnership there and how you bounce off each other is that continuous thread.

Yeah, there’s times when I meet Graham and it depends on what environment we’re in. If there’s a lot of Americans about, Graham is an American. When I sat down at a table with people from his homeland, a very, very good friend of mine died recently. And he was a big part in my life, a big part in Graham’s life. And we sat down with our wives and we were discussing this particular person. His name was Ron Stratton, a great influence in our lives. We got to telling stories about the past and bringing him back memories of when we weren’t famous and things like that. And the more that I spoke to him, and he spoke back to me, because we were talking about the past, his voice changed. And he started talking the way that I’m talking now. And I said, “There you are. I can see you. You’re still there”. That was a good thing to see under the circumstances. So get him in the right mood and the right time. It goes right back to the Graham that I know.

Further information

Allan Clarke’s new album I’ll Never Forget is released on April 7 2023.
Pre-order album: https://allanclarke.lnk.to/IllNeverForgetID
Listen to Buddy’s Back here: https://allanclarke.lnk.to/BuddysBackID

This is a written version of a forthcoming podcast interview. The full written interview can be found here: Allan Clarke 2023

See also Strange Brew 2014 Allan Clarke interview