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by Allan R. McDougall
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were last together in August 1970,
when they met to divide up the spoils. They parted millionaires.
And that was before any solo albums had been released. "After
the Goldrush" has since (atleast) doubled Young's earnings, and
the Stephen Stills will eventually bring him another few million.
The next band album, "Four Way Street", a live two-lp set recorded
80 percent in Chicago, ten percent at Fillmore East, and ten percent
at the Forum in Los Angeles, has seven figure advance sales. By
the time the Crosby and Nash solo albums are out, CSN&Y will be
among the richest rock and rollers in history.
Ask Graham "Willie" Nash about their future together and he's
noncommittal: "We were never a group in the accepted sense of
the word. We're just four lads who got together from time to time
to make records and stage show. And there will still come a time
when we'll call each other and say "I've got a neat song we could
do on stage", or 'Hey man, I've written something for our next
album.'" Stills shrugs the question aside. "First we'll get the
live album out. Then pretty soon we'll all probably get the urge
to go on the road or get into the studio."
Stills came over to London with Crosby, Nash and Young for their
Royal Albert Hall gig, and arranged to cut his first solo album
in London. He also handed over $250,000 to Ringo for his country
cottage in Surrey 90 minutes to London by train, 30 by Dino Ferrari.
Apart from a cabin 10,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies, Surrey
is his base of operations, and that's where the interview took
place. The cottage has 14 rooms in the main building. Across the
yard is a sauna. Further on is a house-sized pool room now being
converted into a recording studio. Close by are the stables which
house his second love; horses: A thoroughbred, Major Change, and
Crazy Horse. And there's his lake, stocked with ducks and other
aquarians. Inside the cottage, you look up and see rafters and
beams, courtesy of the Spanish Armada. Look against the walls
and you see guitars: Martins and Gretschs and Fenders. We sat
in the music room, which is dominated by a huge Bechstein grand
piano and an open log fire.
Allan McDougall.
* * *
What do you think of your album?
I'm quite satisfied with it, probably more satisfied than with
anything I've ever done. "Love the One You're With", came from
a party with Billy Preston and I asked him if I could pinch this
line he had written for a song, and he said "Sure," so I pinched
it and wrote a song. My favorite part is the steel drums. I'd
played them before a little but I just kept diddling around till
I found the right notes.
"Do For the Others" - I well, I wanted a folk song for the album.
Just a very simple song. Matter of fact, that's the original mix
from England. After I had done the whole thing with over dubbing
autoharps and stuff, we kept the original. On "Church," there's
five voices including mine. As it originally came out, it was
something I really believed in. That's what you sing about in
church. I've certainly spent my time in church, but I'm not particularly
religious. I believe in religion as an order form, but I don't
think you could call me an agnostic. Mother nature plays the best
music and makes the best paintings, it's certainly more powerful
than anything we got yet. Could just be that the body is the Temple
of the Lord.
"Old Times Good Times," with Jimi Hendrix. Just play your axe.
"Sit Yourself Down" was the last song written. That was when I
was working with Rita (Coolidge). I cut that at Wally Heider's.
"To A Flame" was cut here in England.
"Black Queen" - on the sleeve it says "Dedicated to Jose Cuervo
Gold label Tequila." Meaning you were drunk?
Yes. That's what it says, and that's what it means. I just walked
into the studio and did it. I mean before that Eric and I have
played "Tequila" for about an hour and a half, and then all of
a sudden he was gone. He disappeared. Right? Because I realized
that if he didn't go he was gonna pass out in the studio, so he
got someone to drive him home while he was still able to reach
the car. "Well I guesh I will go shing "Black Queen," and I stumbled
right into the studio and that's what came out. I had been out
to Eric's house the night before listening to Blind Willie Johnson
records, and so the vocal quality is like argggghhh. You know,
it sounds like a saw. It hurts physically, it hurts my throat
to sing like that, but it sure does sound neat.
"Cherokee" is in 7/4 and 4/4 and those horns are played by one
guy, all played by Sidney George. All of those horns.
Are you going to keep him in your own band?
Yeh. I can say that the Memphis Horns will be the basis of it,
and myself and Conrad and Fuzz - my dear Bahamian Rhythm Section.
You should hear some of the drum ride-outs, just - I can't wait
to unleash those on the road. Here, my friends, is a drummer.
I found Conrad in a club and he found Fuzz for me.
"We Are Not Helpless" is not an answer or put-down to Neil's "Helpless."
The line "We Are Not Helpless/We are Men" comes from Failsafe,
the book.
Spiro Agnew took out after us, actually attacked us personally,
the song writers, when he said, "Those guys damaging the minds
of our kids blah blah blah." "Insidious forces on and on." An
FCC man slapped him right in the face and said, "Well I guess
that's because they're not writing campaign songs for him." So
I mean the American people have a few instincts that let's hope
we can continue to use. A lot of people will rationalize that
the Jerry Rubins are necessary and I don't buy it. What I saw
awakened by Jerry Rubin I don't wanna see awakened. And now in
front of the British people, I mean - wow I mean in Britain of
all places!
Anyway, I find when I get in this house I can sit at this piano
and write and not be hassled by anybody. Not be hassled. That's
all I'm, looking for.
Do you feel like Willie does, that you have to help out? You know,
make all those people smile when you go on stage?
I do, but I don't feel like I have this great mission in life.
I can sit and write about it and put this in print and that in
print and talk here and talk there without putting my ass on the
line too bad. Unless it really got down to the nitty gritty. And
when it gets down to the nitty gritty, all of our asses are on
the line.
George Harrison wrote the summation of the entire thing and it
will stand in my mind for many, many years. Nobody will touch
that song - "We're all one and life goes on Within You and Without
You." I want to chisel that song in granite on a statue in some
big park so it would be there and people would read it. "We were
talking about the space between us all." Exquisite. That was the
whole album.
I have similar feelings about Crosby's "Deja Vu." To me "Deja
Vu" was the whole second album. That song was the whole album.
Its kinda the summation of what "Carry On" said and what "Teach
Your Children" said and all of those songs. "Deja Vu" said it
all.
You really concentrated on that song.
Well as much as I could, considering how Crosby felt about recording
it. He got very uptight. Because he realized that it was very
important too. Then it got too important. He wouldn't give in
and let Willie and I help to get it together. It was like ......
I mean it's difficult, it puts me in a difficult position. There's
so many things, ridiculous things we've gone through, but if you
tell someone about it and David, who's 3000 miles away, reads
it in print - it just doesn't seem right. But for me that song
was the summation of the album.
Now you are in England; is it really Stephen Arthur Stills, country
squire?
Squire, schmire, but what's it for? It's what I like. I got stables
right down here and I'm gonna pick up that 50 acres over there.
I'm gonna build myself a six furlong track, maybe a flat mile.
You better watch out for me then. I'm likely to fall and break
my head the rest of the way. I go through terrible agonies getting
myself to the racetrack, getting myself fit. It takes three weeks
to get yourself fit enough to ride and exercise racehorses. Getting
up at four o'clock and all that. But it gets me off. Gotta have
other things besides music to get me off.
I know enough to recognize that I ain't gonna find enough things
to get me off at the Whiskey a Go Go or the Speakeasy. That's
another thing. I'm really sick of rock and roll. Can't stand clubs
and there's not that many people I'd go to see in concert.
Who would you go to see?
Well. Bonnie and Delaney on a good night are really groovy, and
Aretha still. And of all people, I really dig Tom Jones. I mean
he's got incredible chops. His chops are incredible. And I love
to listen to Joan Baez. I'd go to see Joan Baez. And the better
country bands. The Grateful Dead have an offshoot called The New
Riders of the Purple Sage and they're really beautiful. They're
really good, they sing just good old funky country music. The
Grateful Dead I'll go see any time I'm free. That sort of stuff,
I like to see. Eric's band is probably quite good. There are more
but I don't want to make a list. I'd probably go see Cass and
Dave Mason. I really love to play with Dave Mason. He's really
a fine guitarist, fine musician, good writer and everything.
Let's go back to your roots. You were born in Texas, but you are
not from Texas.
Oh I spent about three weeks there, all told, and we moved back
up north to Illinois and then we moved to Louisiana and stayed
there three or four years, five years, something like that. Then
we moved to Florida and then to Central America, me and my family.
We lived in Central America for about four years off and on, going
back and forth to various schools. I graduated in Costa Rica.
Then I tried the University of Florida and lasted four days, I
think; my head was geared to a different place than one of those
"fine Southern institutions," so I went to New Orleans and started
singing. Age 17, singing in folk clubs. Then I hit New York right
after my 18th birthday and stayed there for a couple of years.
The only real ambition I had there was, for a brief time, a fantasy
of playing bass for John Sebastian's band, the Spoonful, 'cause
I thought I could play, but I didn't really get on so well with
Eric Jacobsen, who was in control of the situation at the time,
so I tried to form my own band, which was a dismal flop.
Who was that?
Oh, they were just a bunch of friends from here and there and
everywhere. Just before then I went across Canada with a folk
group playing these little bitty clubs for hardly any money. It
was an opportunity to go see Canada, you know and that's where
I met Neil who was 17 at the time and I was 18 and he was playing
folk-rock before anybody else. He had his Gretsch, a rock and
roll band that had just recently turned from playing "Louie Louie"
to playing popular folk songs of the day with electric guitars,
drums, and bass. It was a funny band 'cause they would go right
from "Cotton Fields" to "Farmer John."
Neil Young and his Squires?
That's the one. And they'd just come back from Churchill, Ontario,
and Neil had written, I think, his first song. "Let me tell you
'bout a thing called snow where it's 45 below," and we had a great
time running around in his hearse and drinking good strong Canadian
beer and being young and having a good time. Being young. At first
I thought, "Well, I'm gonna quit this idiot group and go play
with him right now." And then I thought, "No, I'll finish this
tour and then I'll go back to New York and set it all up so he
can get visas," 'cause you know, having lived abroad I knew how
hard it was for foreigners to get working papers for America.
You had to have an actual job lined up so I went back to the club
that I worked at in New York City and Joe Marra, sponsor of such
greats as Timmy Hardin. Joe Marra was probably responsible for
the care and feedin' of about half of this year's top ten. He
fed and kept working Timmy Hardin, Freddy Neil, John Sebastian
and Tim Rose, Cass and the Big Three Jim and Jean; Richard and
Mimi, they all played there; oh Peter Tork was there also, and
Richie Havens. I used to really love Timmy Hardin, and Freddy
Neil taught me an incredible amount about playing rhythm guitar,
about playing guitar at all, you know, a lot of the stuff I do
with insinuating arrangements with my guitar, all that came from
Fred. I could never sing that low so I could never sing his songs
that well, but boy! I mean Freddy is probably responsible, Freddy
and Timmy Hardin and Richie Havens are probably more responsible
for my style, along with Chet Atkins, than anybody else, and then
later Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.Those are the people who've
had the most effect on me as a musician. Jim Friedman, who did
the vocal arranging for the big group, was probably my biggest
influence over-all. He's incredible.
So you'd gone back to New York and you were setting up Neil....
Right, I was trying to set up for Neil and in the meantime Neil
went to Toronto, fell in with this chick, Vicky Taylor, I think
her name was, who was a folk singer who convinced Neil that he
was Bob Dylan. So Neil broke up the band and decided to be Bob
Dylan, and was playing rhythm guitar, you know, he would just
go in and play acoustic guitar in coffeehouses. So he started
doing what I had been doing for three years and which I decided
I didn't want to do anymore. He wanted to be Bob Dylan and I wanted
to be the Beatles. We were, as I said, very young. All of a sudden
he decided he was gonna break up his band an' go play coffeehouses
and so I just threw up my hands in disgust and went to California.
He was, however, writing incredible songs. Which I hadn't heard.
At that time my mom broke up with my dad and so I went back to
New Orleans and picked up the girls, my mom and my sister, and
I said, "Well, if you guys want a nice place to live, you should
go and live in San Francisco and I'll go to LA and try to make
some money." When we first got to San Francisco I walked into
a little club called the Matrix and there was this group playing
and they were fair. The drummer was good, he had a lot of spirit
(Skip Spence) and the guy singing tenor was really good (Marty
Balin) and the other guy was pretty good too (Kantner). The lead
guitar player wasn't much then, but you should've heard me when
I started (that was Jorma) and the bass player was obviously just
getting into the axe after having come from guitar or somethin'
(Casady) - it turned out to be the Jefferson Airplane.
We were staying in a motel like two blocks away and I didn't have
enough nerve to go home and get my 12-string guitar and come and
sit in, 'cause they just looked like they were very into the scene.
It was just the week before Ralph Gleason had done his first story
on this group, the Jefferson Airplane. That was when Signe was
still singing with the group and then about two weeks later I
went down to Broadway where all the stripper clubs are but they
had a coupla music clubs there, like the Purple Onion was just
down the way. And this one place called Mothers was playing this
horrible group, I mean absolutely incredibly horrible group, but
with this one chick who I immediately fell madly in love with
and it turned out to be The Great Society. I even went up to.
I went up to Gracie - I don't think she remembers, but I went
up to Gracie and I said, wow, you really play good. She played
flute, she played piano, she played guitar, she played bass, she
played everything she could get her hand on and she sang beautifully.
But this horrible group - and I said, "Wow, man," and I sat there.
See, back then I was really very neurotic. I would always think
of things to do, then not do it, because I had a very isolated
existence before this. Face it, I was very crazy. I wanted to
get Gracie and take her to LA and find some good musicians and
form a band 'cause she was really so good. Now, we're all good
friends. This whole little circle keeps expanding and it's very
incestuous. The good musicians seem to prevail. Freddy hasn't
made it, because he hasn't had the luck or the PR man.
Did Freddy ever want to make it?
Freddy Neil never wanted to make it really, although he really
tried. With Freddy it was a whole self destructive thing. Freddy
goes all the way back to the days of the Big Bopper and Buddy
Holly. As a matter of fact, I think he played in Buddy Holly's
band, with the gold lame suits and everythin'. He ended up in
Miami being very carefully fed and cared for by his old lady.
He would come to New York really looking fit and it would take
about three weeks for him to string himself out completely.
As I understand it, I missed Dylan by about a week, about a week
before he was playing at Gerde's and then his album made it, or
it like his album had already made it and he was doing a farewell
gig at Gerde's Folk City. In those days he was into things. I
heard a story about Bobby where he ran this great number.
This is just a story that I heard so it might not be true, but
he put on a huge cape, a big black cape, and a black top hat and
he went roaring through Greenwich Village with about one hundred
dollars in single dollar bills. And he found some wino crashed
in a doorway and he walked up, came swooping up with this cape.
He goes "whoosh" and hundreds of bills go flying over the street
and he turns around and splits and this wino is standing there....it
must've been a scream. Eccentricity is probably the best escape
valve there is for the pressures of success. I hope that story's
true.
And the Grateful Dead. They were the first people, I don't know
whether it was the acid or what, to come to that realization where
they really didn't give a shit whether they made it or not. All
they every want to do is make good records and that's pretty much
where I'm at. It's like, OK I like my house and I like having
a thoroughbred horse in the stable but when it really gets down
to the bottom of it, I just want to make my art and find an ol'
lady and just be happy. Art for arts sake. We all have our own
criterion for happiness, and to me that's it. I mean it's hard
to find your true love in the Whisky A Go Go, as Mr. Crosby so
aptly puts it but, you know I am sure one will come from somewhere
else.
Are you very sensitive about ladies?
Well, I think it's pretty obvious.
So many of your songs seem to be about Judy Collins.
Well there are three things men can do with women: love them,
suffer for them or turn them into literature. I've had my share
of success and failure at all three.
We're up to San Francisco now.
Then I went up to LA to seek my fortune, and let's see. I sold
a bunch of songs for $250. I borrowed a tape recorder from one
guy, a tape recorder that you could have three things going on.
I could have Stephen Stills, Channel 1, Stephen Stills Channel
2, and Stephen Stills live, and the whole idea was if anybody
came by to give them an idea of what I wanted to do with real
people. Well, Barry Friedman came by, who is known as Frazie Mohawk
. He's a producer for Columbia or somebody, and he was resonsible
for the care and feeding of Buffalo Springfield.
We were driving down the street, me and Richie, because I had
sent for Richie. Barry told me I needed another singer and so
I went for Richie who was from my old folk group. I told him there
was a whole group but there wasn't anybody but me. So we were
looking pretty hard. And so, we were drivin' down the street and
then there's the famous story of me, Neil Young and the hearse
with Ontario license plates and I said, I betcha I know who that
is. And there was Neil. So we went back to Barry's house and smoked
alot of dope and started playin' and it turned out everybody was
good. Bruce Palmer the bass player was incredible and we sorta
latched on to each other immediately. Then we got a drummer and
hired Dewey.
Neil and Bruce had gotten a group called the Mynah Birds in Toronto
and gone to Detroit playing with this guy named Ricky James Mathews
who was into being a black Mick Jagger, right? They went to Motown
and Neil and Bruce were probably the first white musicians ever
signed to Motown Records. But Motown really didn't take too much
to Neil and Bruce. Because they would go into the studio, and
being only 18 years old, they would make mistakes and Berry Gordy
didn't dig them too much. And so anyway, we had this band and
the first gigs we got were with the Byrds, playing second bill
to a bunch of concerts that they booked before they had made it,
in Southern California, and we got $125. a concert for the whole
band. Which was first of all illegal according to the musicians'
union but it's ok, because to this day I wish that someone had
been recording those concerts live. Because by the fourth or fifth
concert we were so good it was absolutely astounding and the first
week at the Whiskey was absolutely incredible.
We were just incredible, man, that's when we peaked, just like
Clapton's band, the Cream, peaked at the Fillmore the first gigs
that they played, and from then it was downhill. We peaked at
the Whiskey and after then it was downhill. Our producer didn't
know how to record such a thing, and that virtually destroyed
the band. From then it was one division after another and then
Neil flipping out. Neil flipped out in the Whiskey a Go Go and
so did I and so did Bruce, because immediately there were all
these chicks hanging out and feeding us more and better dope and
everybody got really high, and yet just down the street were the
MFQ (Modern Folk Quartet) who never made it and that was really
a shame because they were better than us in some ways.
Did you really beat each other up on stage, like the legend has
it?
I punched Bruce once. We went to New York as a band with a reputation,
and we ended up in this pretty small club for a rock and roll
band to play in. We were all playin' litle bitty amplifiers to
try to make it tolerable. Bruce was playin' so loud that nobody
could hear themselves and like my hearing is bad anyway and there's
certain wave-length where everything cancel out. Bruce struck
it with his bass that night. I said "Bruce, turn down, I can't
hear myself, nobody can hear themselves, you're playin too loud,"
and he slapped me across the face. So I went completely purple
with rage and put him through the drums, right in the middle of
a club in New York and everyone was very shocked, but like I said
this was in the middle when we were all really, really, flipped
out. We all just flipped right out man, Neil, Bruce, me, the lot
of us. Richie and Dewey were sane; they were the only sane ones
in the bunch and then we went back to California figuring it was
all over and then the prices were from $3500. to $5000. and $7000,
and then we got a $10,000 gig at the Fillmore.
By then I had given up hope because everybody in the band was
so crazy and I was beginning to want out. I was beginning to wake
up a little and realize that the pressures of really getting big
and making alot of money, which it looked like was gonna happen,
would destroy the band. Which was eventually what happened. We
were supposed to go back to New York to do the Johnny Carson show
for a whole bunch of money and that would have led to a spot on
Sullivan's show which was at the time the big thing to do. This
was 1966 and Neil flipped out and quit and wouldn't come, and
went off and hid in the San Fernando Valley at some chicks house,
so we couldn't do the Johnny Carson show.
But by that time everybody was too crazy, just too crazy, and
that's when Neil had to quit, exactly at the time that it meant
the most. He decided that it wasn't worth it, probably he knew
the same thing, that Bruce wasn't gonna be able to handle it,
and he probably thought that I was just as crazy as he was.
I was trying to be Boss Cat and trying to keep the things in order.
You gotta dig that part of my upbringing in the south was very
militaristic. I was in this military school and was being taught
how to be an officer. Wow, I was like 11 and that stuff can't
help but stick. Anyway, alot of the ways I relate to situations
like that is to simple take command. Because someone has to, because
that is the only thing that will work and of course somebody like
Neil or Bruce is instantly going to rebel. So there was chaos.
And my way of thinking, I guess, is an older style, but yet in
the movie we had planned the Wooden ships, the character I picked
out for myself was a military man evolving into being a freak,
right, in a situation where it was the very basic survival situation.
I got thrown in with a bunch of freaks and the whole thing was
for me to come all the way from being a Marine Corps captain with
a swagger stick into being a freak. I was gonna try to play that,
I'd still like to try and play that.
Another thing I was readin' in Gracie's interview (Rolling Stone
November 12, 1970) about their story about hijacking the starship,
which sounds like Kanter's version of Wooden Ships, with a new
touch to it. So like between me and Crosby and Paul Kantner is
this movie floating around. "The Wooden Ships" story happened
on the boat when I came down from New York and finished the song
and immediately flashed, "Hey, wow, this is a science fiction
movie."When I first said that it could be a real story, David
thought I was crazy. It took three days of telling the story for
it to sink in, then we all started to make up bits. There never
was an ending to our little story right, but that other thing
of the space ship - from the wooden ships to the starship!
Anyway, let's make a statement for rock n roll, let's tell everybody
once and for final what we're trying to do and the only way you
can do it is to act it out on a screen. Easy Rider, to me was
just scratching the surface. They just, got a vague idea of the
whole, of what has evolved out of the Jefferson Airplane and the
Grateful Dead and the Buffalo Springfield and the old Byrds and
all of that, on back and forth, and Brandon de Wilde and Peter
Fonda, and this one and that. The whole life style that's evolved
from all of these people's needs to be set down once and for final.
And the best way to do that would be to act it on a screen, to
really put it on the screen.
So you would like this movie to be a pointer?
Well the kids are makin' their point. It's not a pointer. It's
simply what we've done is history, so let's put it down clearly
ourselves. We, the ones who invented it, the Grateful Dead, the
Jefferson Airplane, and the Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds and
Roger McGuinn and his mind, and Tim Leary and that mind and Owsley
and all those other people who had so much to do with this new
thing, this new order of things that's come out of rock and roll.
It's not rock and roll as much as the product of these minds.
A film can be shown anywhere. Maybe in 20 years time it will be
shown on television, because in 20 years it will be us who'll
be the government, which controls television. If there is going
to be a government, which I certainly hope. A lot of people don't
think there should be, but I think that by natural process they'll
come to the logical conclusion that a governing body is a necessity.
They're beginning to discover that in San Francisco. The rock
groups are starting to organize themselves in various ways to
carry out certain ends. It's basically fairly anarchistic, but
at the same time, the whole thing with the spin-off groups is
going to make them get it together, and the very way that they
organize themselves-road managers setting up their own tours and
then using the money to do something with and so on - that's the
basic process.
It's the same as the Treasury department, Judicial system and
the Executive branch of the government of the United States. It
all comes from the same basic instinct in the people which is
to try to be efficient in their efforts because we are basically
a gregarious species. Being so, we tend to organize. And so there
will always be a governing sort of something, particularly as
long as there are people within the society who can not control
themselves and have to go out and kill people, and go out and
rob people and go out an even tear up somebody's house or just
generally make a nuisance of themselves, with their fellow men.
It's a theory anyway.
   
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