11/07/2019
Love me a good love story, and was stoked to find out the story behind the song "Our House", written by British singer-songwriter Graham Nash and recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on their album Déjà Vu (1970). The song, "an ode to counter cultural domestic bliss", was written while Nash was living with Joni Mitchell, recording both Crosby, Stills & Nash and Déjà Vu... The song originates in a domestic event that took place while Graham Nash was living with Joni Mitchell (and her two cats) in her house in Laurel Canyon (Los Angeles), after they had gone out for breakfast and had bought an inexpensive vase on Ventura Boulevard. Nash wrote the song in an hour, on Mitchell's piano.
In October 2013, in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, Nash elaborated: 'Well, it's an ordinary moment. What happened is that Joni (Mitchell) and I – I don't know whether you know anything about Los Angeles, but on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley, there's a very famous deli called Art's Deli. And we'd been to breakfast there. We're going to get into Joan's car, and we pass an antique store. And we're looking in the window, and she saw a very beautiful vase that she wanted to buy ... I persuaded her to buy this vase. It wasn't very expensive, and we took it home. It was a very grey, kind of sleety, drizzly L.A. morning. And we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, and I said – got through the front door and I said, you know what? I'll light a fire. Why don't you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought? Well, she was in the garden getting flowers. That meant she was not at her piano, but I was ... And an hour later 'Our House' was born, out of an incredibly ordinary moment that many, many people have experienced."