Today’s post continues our CSN focus with a great 1972 TV show about Stephen Stills. This provides some great insight into Stephen at the height of his musical power. As always, let me know what you think…….
Here’s a an interesting TV profile of Crosby, Stills, and Nash from 1987. It’s brutal but very interesting at the same time. You might want to look away but I suggest you watch………
This Crosby, Stills & Nash’s The Acoustic Concert was taped at a 1991 show in San Francisco that was done as a memorial for Bill Graham. The boys were still in good voice……I think you will enjoy this one!
If you like CSN, you need to come back often this week. We will feature the group, collectively and individually, throughout the week.
So…..we talked about The Lovin Spoonful last week. As it turns out, John Sebastian was also quite successful after his time with the group achieving solo success and having memorable performances at many of the great rock festivals in the late 1960s. Here is a great interview with John where he talks about the influence that the great Richie Havens had on his early career and how he ended up on stage at Woodstock as an unscheduled performer.
After listening to John’s interview, I bet you are ready to hear some music. Here are a couple of great videes of John from the Celebration at Big Sur and Woodstock rock festivals.
Celebration at Big Sur (1968) – with Stephen Stills
This is a great BBC documentary that makes a nice companion piece for our Southern California series from last year. Here is what the BBC website has to say about it….
Documentary looking at the music and mythology of a golden era in Californian culture, and telling the story of how Los Angeles changed from a kooky backwater in the early 1960s to become the artistic and industrial hub of the American music industry by the end of the 1970s.
Alongside extensive and never before seen archive footage, the programme features comprehensive first-hand accounts of the key figures including musicians (David Crosby, Graham Nash, J. D. Souther, Bernie Leadon and Bonnie Raitt, music industry bosses (David Geffen, Jac Holzman, Ron Stone and Peter Asher) and legendary LA scenesters including Henry Diltz, Pamela Des Barres and Ned Doheny.
The film explores how the socially-conscious folk rock of young hippies with acoustic guitars was transformed into the coked-out stadium excess of the late 1970s and the biggest selling album of all time.
I think you will like this one! Let me know what you think………
I have been reading Neil Young’s new book, Waging Heavy Peace, over the past several weeks. I got the book for Christmas and have really been enjoying it. I would highly recommend it for Neil Young fans but I doubt that others will find the it to be enjoyable. It rambles a lot, making significant leaps across Neil’s career as he tells his story and that alone is probably enough to put off all but hardcore fans.
I like it for the little insights that it provides about Neil and his music. As one example, the love and respect that Neil has for Stephen Stills comes through loud and clear in the book. This information helps me to understand how they have continued coming back together to make such great music over the last 40-50 years after having many rough patches in-between. The end of the Stills-Young band was one of those rough patches and I posted last year about the abrupt end of that tour. Speaking of the Stills-Young band, the book also helped me understand Long May You Run, a song that was recorded the band.
I noted in last year’s post that song was written about a car but I didn’t have the details until I read the book. Neil talk at length about Mort, a 1948 Buick Hearse that his mother bought for him. The demise of Mort is described as part of a discussion of Neil’s decision to leave Fort Williams where he and his first band, The Squires, had been playing.
Late one night I was hanging out with a bunch of guys from local bands, some guys from the Bonnevilles and Terry Erickson, a bass player who also played good guitar. We were thinking of him becoming a Squire and had even taken some pictures together. I decided to drive Terry to Sault Set. Marie in Mort. We jumped in the hearse and left. Just like that. Ken was back at the YMCA, so he missed the trip and was left behind. Bob Clark and the Bonnevilles came along with us. We took Terry’s motorbike with us in the back of Mort.
We were about halfway there, near a town called Blind River, when we broke down. Mort’s transmission was toast. We got towed to Bill’s Garage, a harrowing experience with the hearse being towed backward, the rear tires in the air and me steering in reverse. After holding on for dear life at high speed and terrified, we finally got to Bill’s Garage in Blind River, Ontario. Bill said he could find us a part to fix the hearse and get us going. Several days later, we were still there and running out of money; we were living on roasted potatoes from the market . We hung out in an old junkyard/dump near the edge of town.
A graveyard was just across a gravel road from that dump. We were a funky lot. The Bonnevilles hitched back to Fort Williams for a gig they had that weekend. Bob went with them. Realizing that Mort was gone, I thought that being in Fort William without the hearse would be nowhere. It was a feeling. The hearse was just part of the whole thing. The picture the image. There is an intangible to a group and a persona. You can’t lose that. If you do, you have to start again. I felt that Mort was a large part of my identify, so I took off with Terry to North Bay…..
So that was the end of Mort! Here is the song that Neil wrote many years later about Mort…..
This sequence of events ended up being a big turning point in Neil’s career. It’s funny how fate, in this case the death of Mort, can have such a huge impact a person’s life! In case you are interested, here is a picture of The Squires with Mort.
See how many references to the events described above you can find in the lyrics to Long May You Run.
We’ve been through
Some things together
With trunks of memories
Still to come
We found things to do
In stormy weather
Long may you run.Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you run.Well, it was
Back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift
On the long decline
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you run.
Maybe The Beach Boys
Have got you now
With those waves
Singing “Caroline No”
Rollin’ down
That empty ocean road
Gettin’ to the surf on time.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come
With your chrome heart shining
In the sun
Long may you run.
Let me leave you with another great Neil song from the Sills-Young band album. Neil wrote this one about the hotel in Miami that the band was staying at during the recoding of the album.
In 1987 Dan Fogelberg released, Exiles, his tenth album. He was in the process of going through a divorce (not one that he initiated) and coping with a seriously broken heart. The album is all about grief with songs that touch on all of its stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Today we are focused on Anger.
Dan wrote all of the songs on Exiles with the exception of It Doesn’t Matter which was written by Stephen Stills and Chris HIllman and originally released by Manassas. We featured the Manassas version our Southern California Sound #13 post but let’s listen again to refresh our memory of what the original sounded like…..
I love this song and, while the lyrics are sad, I never considered it to be angry. If I had to categorize the tone of the Manassas performance it was resigned…..definitely not angry.
Back to Dan and his cover version of the song. Believe it or not, his version is not on YouTube so I put it on my private channel just for you guys. Let’s listen and then we will talk.
Angry, Angry, Angry….the last 90 seconds of this song are amazing. Although I have huge respect for Dan’s guitar skills, I never imagined that he had that solo in him. I don’t know if Dan had screaming matches as part of his divorce but if he didn’t that guitar solo definitely got it out of his system. It was a musical, one sided, all out screaming match and I am willing to bet that he was emotionally spent after recording it. I am seldom surprised by musical performances but this one was an exception.
All I can say is well done Dan……..we miss you very much!
If you haven’t done it already, go back to yesterday’s post and sign the petition to get Dan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!
Stephen Stills had been a man on a mission since the mid-1960. He wanted a band! Not just any band but a band that was his and his alone. He wanted to be in control.
Buffalo Springfield held promise but it could never really be his band with that pesky Neil Young competing with him and refusing to take his direction, or anyone else’s direction for that matter. He thought he had it made with Crosby, Stills, and Nash but they were more of a vocal group than a band. Hell, he had to play almost all of the damn instruments himself on their first album. In his desperation for a real band he somehow allowed Neil Young to re-enter the picture with CSNY. It was great having Neil as a foil, and someone that was his equal for extended guitar solos, but just like with Buffalo Springfield, Neil refused to cooperate with Stephen’s ambitions. In the end, Neil treated CSN like an alternative backup band to Crazy Horse which was not to Stephen’s liking at all!
In 1971, Stephen took matters into his own hand and formed Manassas, the band of his dreams. Stephen was in charge and the band could really kick ass. This was a group that could comfortably play the country flavored rock that the California sound was famous for as well as the latin flavored music that was Stephen’s secret passion. Although Stephen was in charge, he had a pretty impressive right hand man in Chris Hillman who we have discussed at length as an original member of the Bryds and of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The other musicians were equally impressive in their own right and included Al Perkins (steel guitar), Fuzzy Samuels (bass), Paul Harris (keyboards), Dallas Taylor (drums), and Joe Lala (percussion – the foundation of the latin sound that I mentioned). It was a real band, a big band, and it would be the source of some of the best music of Stephen’s career (and Chris’ career as well). On most days I actually prefer listening to Manassas over CSN or CSNY and that says a lot. So today we are going to celebrate Manassas’ two studio albums with a lot of music….no I mean a whole lot of music. I hope you enjoy it, I am not going to bore you with a lot of my feelings. Quick introductions and then on to the music.
Manassas (double album release in 1972 – an absolute masterpiece)
First up is a song written by Stephen and Chris called Both of Us (Bound to Lose). Chris and Stephen trade of lead vocals and the harmonies are amazing. My favorite Manassas song….
Next up is my second favorite Manassas song, It Doesn’t Matter, which was also written by Stephen and Chris.
Finally, we have a beautiful song written by Stephen called Move Around. In addition to a great vocal by Stephen, this song has an extremely tasty synthesizer backing track.
So far we have highlighted some of my favorite tracks from the Manassas double album but you only have half the story. I mentioned early on that this band could kick ass and now it is time to prove it. We are lucky enough to have a full 35 minute Manassas performance from a German TV show in 1972. The set list from this show includes a number of songs from their double album: Bound to Fall, It Doesn’t Matter, Hide It So Deep, Song of Love, Rock ‘n Roll Crazies, Cuban Bluegrass, Jet Set, Jam, The Treasure. Let’s listen……
If you aren’t sold on Manassas I seriously have to question your musical taste but I am going to give you one more chance. Let’s sample some Manassas’s second (and last) studio album titled Down the Road. This album was pretty much panned by the critics but hopefully you have learned by now that I trust myself over any critic and I feel today like I did in 1973. Down the Road was a great album. Maybe not as good as their first but great in its own right.
So Many Times was easily the best song on Down the Road. Once again it was cowritten by Stephen and Chris. Chris takes the lead vocal with Stephen singing harmony and the result is amazing.
For a change of pace, let’s listen to Down the Road, the title song from the second album. Some wonderful slide guitar from Stephen on this one.
Can you tell I like Manassas??? I hope you enjoyed this extended post of their music.
To wrap things up I am sad to report that Manassas met it demise in 1973 soon after the release of their second album. The cause….Stephen was lured back to CSNY for one of their many short lived reunions. In my opinion Stephen had it all and threw it away. Maybe it was the money, maybe it was the fame, but whatever it was Stephen would never again have a band as good as Manassas or music with the same level of consistent quality. On the other hand, some of the other members of Manassas still had a role to play in the story of The Southern California Sound. We will hear about them in the final post in this long running series.
Jimi Hendrix. Jimi was playing the amazing lead guitar on the track while Stephen was on the Organ. Kudos to Gerard who once again posted a comment with the correct answer!
As Gerard pointed out in his answer, Jimi was not the only famous guitarist that sat in on Stephen’s first album. Eric Clapton played a second lead guitar part on an album track called G Back Home. Let’s listen….(Eric starts to show up around 3:40 as best I can tell and then all bets are off!)
There was a pretty interesting group of backup singers on this track as well. According the track notes on my original album from 1970 the backup singers included Rita Coolidge, Cass Elliot, John Sebastian, and David Crosby. Not bad
Getting back to Stephen and Jimi, there continue to be rumors of an album worth of material from the two of them but I have still not seen any official release. I have a couple of bootlegs that purport to from a recording session between the two of them, I have not way to verify their authenticity.
This is the third in a series of posts that highlight classic rock songs which feature someone interesting sitting in on the recording session. For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the following day. I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.
My selection for this post is a song called Old Times Good Times from Stephen Stills self titled first solo album released in 1970. Listen to the song and see if you can tell who was sitting in.
The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.
thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard 