Their House

Graham Nash on Domestic and Creative Bliss with his Lady of the Canyon

Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell’s cohabitation at her bungalow in Laurel Canyon has passed into legend as the inspiration for the Crosby Stills Nash & Young classic “Our House.” But, as Nash told me in LAUREL CANYON, the song came about in the aftermath of an otherwise prosaic morning in the San Fernando Valley.

“There’s a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard called Art’s Deli. And often Joan and I would go to breakfast—we’d just come over the hill and we were there. And we were walking back to the car one day, and there was this little antique store, and in the antique store was this beautiful vase. And Joni loved it, and I said, well, great, I’ll buy it for you. And she said, no, no I can buy it myself…

And so she bought the vase and we took it back. It was one of those L.A. mornings that are gray and not-quite rainy, you want to stay in ’cause it’s not sunny. We came back and I said to her, ‘Y’know, do me a favor, why don’t you put some flowers in the vase and I’ll light a fire, ’cause it’s getting a little chilly.’ And that’s what we did and then I started to think, Y’now, that’s an incredlby domestic….Here we are, Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash, and I’m, ‘Put the flowers in the vase and light the fire’ and stuff. And I thought, but I love this woman, and this moment is a very grounded moment in our relationship…”

Thus inspired, Nash beelined it to Mitchell’s standup piano in the living room; twenty minutes later “Our House” was complete.

Inevitably for the times, fame and, for Nash, constant touring with CS&N, took its toll on the relationship. Nash asked Mitchell to marry; her response, sent in a telegram from Greece: “IF YOU HOLD SAND TOO TIGHTLY IN YOUR HAND IT WILL SLIP THROUGH YOUR FINGERS.” Crestfallen, Nash left Laurel Canyon and bought “the first house I saw in Haight-Asbury”; Mitchell, meanwhile, moved to Bel-Air but always held on to the canyon bungalow on Lookout Mountain where she wrote Ladies of the Canyon (the view out the front window is depicted in her painting for the cover) and where the couple, stardusted and golden, got themselves back to the garden.