Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 102

Record label: Atco

Produced: Buffalo Springfield

Recorded: Sunset Sound, Gold Star, Los Angeles; March–June and August–Ocotober 1967

Released: November 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) 44 (US)

Personnel: Neil Young (v, g); Stephen Stills (v, g); Richie Furay (v, g); Bruce Palmer, Jim Fielder and Bobby West (b); Dewey Martin (d); Don Randi (p); Jack Nitzsche (electric piano, ar); James Burton (dobro, g); David Crosby (v); Charlie Chin (banjo); Norris Badeaux (bs); Jim Messina, Ross Meyering, Bruce Botnick, William Brittan, Bill Lazarus (e)

Track listing: Mr Soul; A Child’s Claim To Fame; Everydays; Expecting To Fly; Bluebird; Hung Upside Down; Sad Memory; Good Time Boy; Rock And Roll Woman; Broken Arrow

Running time: 33.56

Current CD: WEA ATL332262

Further listening: Buffalo Springfield (1967)

Further reading: The Story Of Buffalo Springfield: For What It’s Worth (John Einarson and Richie Furay, 1997); www.thebuffalospringfield.com

Download: Not currently legally available

‘A great group,’ said Neil Young. ‘Everybody was a fucking genius at what they did – but we just didn’t get it on record.’ For such a short-lived outfit, Buffalo Springfield would have a huge influence: much of the ’70s West Coast rock movement, from The Eagles on down, could trace its ancestry back to the stormy combo founded when Young, his folk-singing career in Canada going nowhere, jumped the border in a hearse with his friend Bruce Palmer and headed for Los Angeles in search of old acquaintance Stephen Stills.

Buffalo Springfield – named after the steamroller tearing up the road outside their house – found themselves in quick succession endorsed by The Byrds, made house band at the Whisky A Go Go and given a major label deal. Just as quickly, its members were busy falling out. Even during the recording of their eponymous debut there were arguments over whose songs would be included. It gave them their first hit single – the Stills-penned Sunset Strip protest song For What It’s Worth – and was critically acclaimed.

Tracks were recorded in New York and Los Angeles – several under the supervision of label boss Ahmet Ertegun – for an album to be called Stampede. But the record was abandoned amid squabbles over songs, arrangements and band leadership (the latter role increasingly nabbed by Stills, who had been to military school as a kid). Outside pressures didn’t help: Bruce Palmer had been arrested on a dope charge and deported to Canada. Ken Koblun, Young’s old friend from The Squires, came down to help out but went back to Canada when the tense atmosphere became too much. A summer single was released – two new songs, Steve’s Bluebird backed with Neil’s Mr Soul. Stills on one side, Young on the other, just as they were in reality – they were rarely in the studio at the same time, and Young was torn between quitting the band (which he did twice, over their decisions to appear on Johnny Carson’s mainstream Tonight Show and at the Monterey Pop Festival) and asking to rejoin. Differences aside, the music they were coming up with in the rescheduled sessions (some of it reworked Stampede material) was often superb.

‘We were just really discovering a lot of new things and experimenting,’ said Young, but in May 1968 – barely four months after the second album’s release – the band broke up. A third album appeared posthumously.