Song of the Day 10/23: The Hollies, “King Midas in Reverse”
It’s long been noted that everything Donald Trump touches turns to shit, and the past few days supplied more evidence for the theory: Trump pretended to work at a McDonald’s as a campaign stunt, and days later the fast-food chain is hit with a deadly E. coli outbreak.
Graham Nash wrote this single for the Hollies in 1967, after a visit to America exposed him to the psychedelic music craze. It was a commercial flop for the pop-oriented band, reaching only No. 18 in the UK and missing the Top 40 entirely in the U.S., and marked the creative differences that led to Nash’s departure for the greener pastures of Los Angeles.
As everyone knows, in America Nash hooked up with Stephen Stills and David Crosby (and later Neil Young) to form rock’s most successful supergroup. During their 1970 tour, recorded for the live double LP “4 Way Street,” Nash played a solo acoustic version of the song that didn’t surface until the expanded 3-CD edition of the album was released in 1991.
