| Songs for Beginners | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | Graham Nash |
| Cover: | Songsforbeginnersgn.jpg |
| Released: | 28 May 1971 |
| Recorded: | 1970–1971 Wally Heiders Studio III, Los Angeles and Studio "C", San Francisco |
| Genre: | Folk rock, country rock, rock |
| Length: | 32:13 |
| Label: | Atlantic |
| Producer: | Graham Nash |
| Next Title: | Wild Tales |
| Next Year: | 1974 |
Songs for Beginners is the debut solo studio album by English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. Released in May 1971, it was one of four high-profile albums (all charting within the top fifteen) released by each member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the wake of their chart-topping Déjà Vu album of 1970, along with After the Gold Rush (Neil Young, September 1970), Stephen Stills (Stephen Stills, November 1970) and If I Could Only Remember My Name (David Crosby, February 1971). Songs for Beginners peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, and the single "Chicago" made it to No. 35 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has been certified a gold record by the RIAA.[1]
Nash brought in an impressive group of guests to assist in the recording, including David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Dave Mason, David Lindley, Rita Coolidge, and Neil Young (under Young's early 1970s pseudonym Joe Yankee). The making of this album directly followed Nash's break-up with longtime girlfriend Joni Mitchell. Many of the songs are about their time together. The Top 40 track "Chicago" concerned both the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the trial of the Chicago Eight, articulating the outrage Nash felt concerning those proceedings.
"Wounded Bird" was written for Stephen Stills, about the pains he was going through in his relationship with Judy Collins. "Better Days" was also written for Stills, after Rita Coolidge left him for Nash.[2]
A first-generation compact disc was released in the late 1980s, and reissued in 2011. A remixed version supervised by Nash was issued on 180-gram vinyl only by Classic Records in 2001. A deluxe edition of Songs for Beginners was released on 23 September 2008 as a CD+DVD-Audio pack, featuring a bonus multichannel high resolution audio, all new 2008 video interview with Nash, plus a photo gallery and complete lyrics along with the 11-track CD album remastered.[3]
The song "Simple Man" features in the opening sequence of the 2007 film Reign Over Me, and a copy of the album appears in it. The same song was also used in the final minutes of the finale of the HBO series Looking. The song "Better Days" appears in episode 2 of Fox TV's The Passage, released in 2019.[4] A demo version of "Be Yourself" plays during the closing credits of the film Up in the Air. "Military Madness" has been covered live by Death Cab For Cutie, and was covered by indie-rock band Woods on their 2009 album Songs of Shame. "I Used to be a King" was covered by Shawn Colvin on her 2015 album Uncovered.
In 2018, the song "Better Days" was used as the closing credit song in the Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora, Episode 7.[5] In 2021, "Better Days" was played over the closing credits of the HBO Max series Hacks, Episode 6.[6]
Additional Personnel
| Chart (1971) | Peakposition | |
|---|---|---|
| US Billboard Top LPs[7] | 15 | |
| UK Album Charts[8] | 13 | |
| Canadian RPM 100 Albums | 11 | |
| Dutch MegaCharts Albums[9] | 4 | |
| Australian Go-Set Top 20 Albums[10] | 11 | |
| Norwegian VG-Lista Album Charts[11] | 13 | |
| Swedish Kvällstoppen Chart[12] | 10 | |
| US Cash Box Top 100 Albums[13] | 10 | |
| US Record World Album Chart[14] | 11 |
| 1971 | "Chicago" | US Billboard Hot 100 | 35 |
| Canada Top Singles (RPM)[15] | 19 | ||
| Australia (Go Set Charts)[16] | 32 | ||
| US Top Singles (Cash Box)[17] | 29 | ||
| US Top Singles (Record World)[18] | 29 | ||
| German (GFK Charts)[19] | 45 | ||
| Belgium Charts | 29 | ||
| "Military Madness" | US Billboard Hot 100 | 73 | |
| Canada Top Singles (RPM) | 57 | ||
| Australia (Go Set Charts)[20] | 20 | ||
| US Top Singles (Cash Box) | 66 | ||
| US Top Singles (Record World) | 73 | ||
| "I Used To Be A King" | US Billboard Hot 100 | 111 | |
| US Top Singles (Record World) | 117 |