Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell’s romance and cohabitation in Mitchell’s bungalow in Laurel Canyon, through the songs “Our House” and “Ladies of the Canyon,” swiftly passed into legend for a generation which liked to think of itself at all times as young, talented, attractive and in love.

The times encouraged—demanded?—nothing less, and Nash and Mitchell were the king and queen of the countercultural prom. A lot of action centered on Mitchell’s house. As Nash told me in LAUREL CANYON:

“It was a small house. And it was a thing of who got to the piano first. She was in the middle of a record and was writing daily; and I was in the middle of record with David [Crosby] and Stephen [Stills] and I was writing daily, and it just got to be nuts….”

Their neighbor and friend Henry Diltz shot the photo, above, from the jump seat of a Cadillac limousine ferrying them—along with Crosby, Stills and album-cover designer Gary Burden—to Big Bear Lake, California, where the inside sleeve of the first CS&N album was photographed by Diltz.

Mitchell wrote throughout the trip on a pad of parchment paper; Diltz, curious, later blew up one of his photos and discovered she was penning the lyrics to “Willy,” her mash note to Nash cloaked in his nickname in CS&N, included on her landmark Ladies of the Canyon album, which Nash produced.

Click here to listen to my interview with Nash about his relationship with Mitchell. And check out Henry’s Galley to purchase a fine-art print of the photo above and hundreds of other of Diltz’s rock and roll photos from the ’60s and beyond.

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 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…”

For the rest of the story, click on AUDIO INTERVIEWS in the PAGES column at right and listen to my original interview with Nash, as well as his recollections about his first meeting with Mitchell in Canada; CSN’s first time singing together in the canyon; and what it was like to perform at Altamont.