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(Background photo by RA "Neil's Old Tour Bus"- taken in NYC)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame "Program Book" 1997
Buffalo Springfield Bio.
by Michael Hill
Lots of bands got their start on the Sunset Strip, but none quite
so literally as Buffalo Springfield. The band was thrown together
on the Los Angeles boulevard in early 1966, when Stephen Stills
and Richie Furay, two folk refugees from New York City, were stuck
in traffic and spotted a hearse with Canadian plates that obviously
wasn't headed to a funeral .
As Neil Young recalled to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone: "Stephen
Stills had met me before and remembered I had a hearse. As soon
as he saw the Ontario plates, he knew it was me. So they stopped
us. I was happy to see fucking anybody I knew! And it seemed very
logical to us that we form a band. We picked up Dewey Martin for
the drums, which was my idea, four or five days later." With Young
was fellow Canadian folkie Bruce Palmer, who would become the
band's bassist; like Stills and Furay, the two of them were just
"tooling around... taking in California. The promised land."
Within a few days of forming, the five-piece christened itself
Buffalo Springfield, taking the name from a steamroller they noticed
on a West Hollywood street. They had found one another in West
Hollywood, and it was there, on the Sunset Strip, that they would
move into the fast lane. They quickly built their reputation on
the hip local scene with their now legendary gigs at the Whiskey
a Go Go and generated a mighty buzz in the freewheeling record
industry of the time. Atlantic Records, still a groovy indie then,
landed the band for it's Atco label and sent it into the studio
with managers Charles Greene and Brian Stone. Fans deemed the
debut, Buffalo Springfield, staid in comparison to their routinely
electrifying gigs; the album arrangements leaned more toward folk
than rock, with an emphasis on the harmonies of Stills and Furay.
But the stylistic blend was more forward-thinking than it may
have seemed: The surprisingly contemporary-sounding "Go and Say
Goodbye" veers well past folk into the kind of country that's
called Americana these days.
Stills dominated the album with seven out of twelve songs; in
the liner notes he is referred as to as "the leader, but we all
are" an unconscious hint perhaps at the uneasy alliance these
strong willed talents had forged. Young composed the other five,
although he left most of the lead vocal chores to Furay. Young's
"Do I Have Come Right Out and Say It," featured a plaintive Furay
vocal, is beautiful simple pop songwriting of a kind Young wasn't
known for in those days. As the owner of a hearse, he generally
displayed the sort of prenatural melancholy that marked another
album's songs, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing."
Buffalo Springfield's sole pop hit, "For What It's Worth," wasn't
even on their debut when it was first released in late '66. The
song was yet another by-product of life on the Sunset Strip, where
the club scene was devolving into violent clashes between kids
and cops, after long-haired patrons started being turned away
from bars. "For What It's Worth," was Stills reaction to the escalating
craziness around him, and it soon took on meaning and a life far
beyond the Strip, the clubs, and the LAPD. Atco released "For
What It's Worth," as a single and, once it took off, yanked the
first track from the debut album, slapped on the hit and re-released
the lp. The single went to number seven (#7), the album to number
eighty (#80).
For the world at large, "For What It's Worth," was Buffalo Springfield.
As a suburban New Jersey kid circa '67, I went to see Buffalo
Springfield, expecting one hit wonders. Until then my view of
the group had been restricted to Stills, blond and dapper in a
Beatlesque kind of way, backed by befringed L.A. hippies, earnestly
rendering his hits on TV. That afternoon, at a college gym gig
sponsored by New York City's WMCA-AM Good Guys, the band was there
to deliver the Top Ten goods. They were second-billed to the Beach
Boys, who were in their Smiley Smile phase.
But the cavalcade of hits took a left turn somewhere. Buffalo
Springfield did their most famous tune, and it was utterly thrilling
- ominous, prescient and a great pop song, too. What I remember
most, though, was the rest of the loud and hard driving set; here
was the Whiskey-seasoned rock band, with Neil Young wrestling
out of his guitar all those twisted sounds that would become his
signature. The band obliterated the Top Forty tenor of the afternoon
and left the audience's ear's ringing before the arrival of the
loopy headliners. I was stunned, confused, inspired and I managed,
as an unobtrusive almost-thirteen-year-old, to hang around after
the show to collect autographs and can still recall the way Young
sat in the first rows of chairs, looking off into the distance.
Buffalo Springfield Again, released later in '67, contained some
of the group's most enduring work, including "Mr Soul" and "Bluebird."
It also featured Young's most ambitious productions, "Expecting
to Fly"and "Broken Arrow." By then, Young was singing his own
tunes. Most significantly, the band was producing it's own sessions,
an unusual setup at a time when a record company rarely left a
band alone in the studio. Stills, Young, and Furay each took turns
in the producer's chair, with a little help from friends like
arranger Jack Nitzsche, Atlantic honcho Ahmet Ertegun and engineer
Jim Messina, who later joined the band as bassist.
By mid-'67, Young was already having clashes with the group and
left for a time, missing the band's performance at the Monterey
Pop Festival, where most of rock's ascending royalty had gathered.
"I just couldn't handle it toward the end," Young later said.
"My nerves couldn't handle the trip ..... everything started to
go too fucking fast, I can tell that now."
While Young slipped in and out of the group at will, bassist Palmer
was deported to Canada, following a series of pot-possession charges.
Bassist Jim Fielder filled in, before Messina signed on for what
would be the bands last months. In mid-'68, after a Topanga Canyon
pot bust that resulted in misdemeanor charges for Eric Clapton
along with Young, Furay and Messina, the band officially called
it quits, a scant eighteen months after forming. Rolling Stone
announced: The Buffalo Springfield, one of the most outstanding
Los Angeles rock groups, disbanded on May 5th because of a combination
of internal hassle, extreme fatigue coupled with absence of National
success, and run-ins with the fuzz.
"Last Time Around", the final Buffalo Springfield album, was pieced
together by Messina and released after the breakup. Much of it
feels like a prelude to Stills' work with David Crosby and Graham
Nash, and the album concludes with "Kind Woman," a lovely Furay
tune that anticipates the pastoral country rock he and Messina
would create with Poco. Young was missing in action for most of
these sessions, but he left the group with two of his most affecting
tunes, "I Am a Child" and "On the Way Home," which opens the album
and serves as Young's farewell: "Now I won't be back till later
on/If I do come back at all/But you know me and I miss you now."
It's a look at fame and friendship and how the one can keep the
other apart. It's about the moment after a band becomes the biggest
buzz on pop culture's most famous boulevard. It's about life going
on. And this is how it went on: Buffalo Springfield begat CSN,
Poco, Loggins and Messina, Crazy Horse, CSNY; inspired the Eagles
and the early-Seventies Southern California scene; and, if you
look at the roots of bands ranging from Sonic Youth to Son Volt,
atleast a part of them will stretch back to Buffalo Springfield.
_RIP BRUCE PALMER_
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