To celebrate Graham Nash’s birthday today, here is the story—in his own words—behind the classic “Our House,” one of the sweetest love songs ever written. Happy birthday, Graham!

“I came to live in America in 1969 and stayed with David [Crosby] for a couple of nights. He threw me a party and invited Joni [Mitchell] whom I hadn’t seen since meeting her when I played with the Hollies. After that party I went home with Joni and spent a couple of years with her in her home in Laurel Canyon.

“One day Joan and I got up and went to breakfast at a delicatessen on Ventura Boulevard, and a few doors away there was a little antique store, and in the window Joan saw this vase, went inside, fell in love with it, bought it and brought it back to the house.

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After attending almost 40 NAMM shows over the past 22 years, this most recent one—held from January 19-22 in Anaheim, Calif.—somehow turned into my favorite. It had been three years since my last visit, and this time I just got to have fun visiting with old friends and take my time seeing all the new products. And as an overall take on the trade show this year, it seemed like everyone felt really good. There was renewed energy and a positive vibe in the air as the more than 95,000 attendees filtered through the exhibit halls.

For those of you who don’t know, NAMM stand for National Association of Music Merchants and is a trade show for all of the new instrument and gear manufacturers to show off their new products for all of the retailers and media. So it’s basically a 4-day ticket to Candyland for musicians and gear geeks.

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Every once in a while an artist like Sarah McLachlan comes along who not only creates great and lasting music, but also great and lasting change. It’s the kind of change that happens with an inordinate amount of personal investment, sacrifice, good will and the ability to lead.

When Sarah founded Lilith Fair in 1997, she nurtured and paved the way for female artists and songwriters at a time when men dominated the music festivals and radio waves. During it’s initial three-year run it not only raised $10 million for women’s charities throughout North America, it set a new tone in the industry that was more embracing of female artists after it became the top-grossing touring festival in history.

For her birthday today, I decided to go back to her first interview with us in 1994 when she was only 26. It was when Fumbling Towards Ecstasy—her first album to break outside of her homeland of Canada—was released, and she had gone to a mountain retreat to write the songs. It was before international acclaim, Lilith Fair, the sale of over 40 million albums and multiple Grammy awards. It was before marriage, the loss of her mother to cancer, the birth of two children and the end of a marriage. It was at a time when life was held just a little at bay and the road ahead was wide open with possibility and wonder.

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Songwriting is a sanctuary for Neil Diamond, just as it was when he first put pen to paper as an intense, sensitive teenager at Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. Scarcely had he learned his first chords on the guitar his parents gave him as a 16th birthday present than the songs began to pour out of him.

By the time he was in attending New York University, he started spending free hours shopping his songs at the Manhattan music-publishing businesses known collectively as Tin Pan Alley. By the spring of 1962 he had dropped out of college, six months shy of graduation, to seriously pursue songwriting.

The great husband-and-wife songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich (the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron”) heard artist potential in the young man and helped him land a record deal. His major radio breakthrough came in 1966 with “Cherry, Cherry,” the same year his song “I’m a Believer” became a chart-topper for the Monkees. “I’ve been working full-time and making a living at it ever since,” he notes with typical understatement.

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