Buffalo Springfield: The Beginning, the End and the Epilogue
A consideration of the ultimate exemplar of the mid-sixites pop explosion
Hello music lovers!
For this edition of ‘Listening Sessions,’ I have written an essay about one of the most fascinating bands of the late sixties: Buffalo Springfield. I say fascinating because it was a group that was dominated by its three primary personalities: Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay. It’s hard to say, perhaps beyond the group’s dynamic debut recording, exactly what constituted the Buffalo Springfield sound; so forceful were the contributions by its three singer-songwriters. It doesn’t dilute the group’s music—it’s some of the best of the period—but makes for an interesting viewpoint to pursue. It’s one that I hope you will find interesting too. Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Instead of the usual 10 days between editions of my Substack, I will next be in touch in two weeks (September 10) as my wife and I will be away for some long-needed rest and relaxation. I hope you all have had a chance at some point this summer for some good r & r too!
Until next time, may good listening be with you all!
Before there were supergroups, there was Buffalo Springfield. That from the group came Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay—three musicians whose distinct personalities transcended the group soon after ‘For What It’s Worth’ was recorded and released in response to the Sunset Strip riots of the fall of 1966—certainly creates that impression. Only Furay would continue to make music within the group concept after Buffalo Springfield disintegrated in the spring of 1968. When Stills and Young would work together afterwards, it would be as a collective, most often in the on-again, off-again partnership of (David) Crosby, Stills, (Graham) Nash & Young.
Indeed, Buffalo Springfield remains defined by the individuals in it rather than how the band defined its individual members. In this way, there is not much difference between Buffalo Springfield and a group like the Monkees.
The music of the Monkees was highly dependent on which group member was singing or leading a particular song. If it was Davy Jones, the group was synonymous with bubble-gum pop. Mickey Dolenz? The group was firmly in the mainstream of pop. Michael Nesmith? The group became a melting pot of country and rock. The few times Peter Tork was in the driver’s seat? The band might go bluegrass or folk or full-on psychedelia.
When Buffalo Springfield played the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, it was Tork who introduced them.
“I’m here to fulfil a function this particular time ’round, one which I revel in and glory in, that of introducing the next group, who are my favourites, because of long-standing friendships with individuals as well as, I like the music—ha ha! I’d like you to welcome now with a great big fat round of applause, my favourite group, the Buffalo Springfield.”
The connections between Buffalo Springfield and the Monkees ran deep. It’s said that Stills who, after auditioning for the Monkees and getting a no because his hair and teeth were deemed not sufficiently camera-friendly, recommended Tork, whom Stills had met in the early sixties in Greenwich Village, when asked if he knew anyone who looked Nordic like him. Stills was enlisted to play lead on Tork’s ‘Lady’s Baby,’ which was recorded early in 1968 during the sessions for The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees but remained unreleased for twenty years. For his ‘Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again,’ a musical and cinematic highlight of Head, it’s Stills playing the scorching lead with Dewey Martin, Buffalo Springfield’s drummer, behind the kit. On the Dolenz-led ‘As We Go Along,’ Young contributed a guitar part.
After Tork ceded the stage at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, Stills, Furay, Doug Hastings, David Crosby, Bruce Palmer and Martin began to play. Stills and Furay had first worked together in 1964 as part of the folk aggregation the Au Go-Go Singers. Hastings was filling in for Young who had temporarily left the group just before Monterey. Crosby was sitting in, one of several things he did to antagonize his bandmates in the Byrds during the festival. The enigmatic Palmer had rode shotgun in April 1966 in the fabled hearse with Young waiting in traffic on Sunset Boulevard and on the lookout for Stills to see if they could join the new band he was forming when they saw Stills and Furay in a car on the opposite side of the road. Martin was the country, folk and garage-rock veteran recruited to join the band Stills had formed with Furay, Young and Palmer.
That the band sported at Monterey a lineup that was missing one of its key members and included a member of another well-established band speaks to the nebulous nature of Buffalo Springfield. Part of it had to do, as already noted, with the outsized role its principals—Stills and Young especially—would play in the new music of the end of the sixties into the seventies. Part of it also had to do with the tensions and difficulties that defined the arc of the group’s history.
Palmer, a Canadian like Young and Martin, was arrested and deported twice from the States for drug possession. Once Furay began writing material, the competition to get songs onto an album became fierce and unsustainable.
In this, the group may well be the ultimate exemplar of the onrush of talent that swelled after the Beatles set foot in America in February 1964 and how opportunity awaited the inspired multitude. It was undeniably inevitable that Buffalo Springfield could not hold on for long but before the dam broke, so to speak, the group created a body of work that crystalized the promise of the time during which it was made and continues to be staggering in its inventiveness. The group released three albums—35 tracks in all. Each album affixed the band at a particular point: Buffalo Springfield at its beginning, at its end and concluding with an epilogue for what was.
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Their debut release, which hit stores at the tail end of 1966 and was titled simply Buffalo Springfield, remains an audacious and assured introduction. One reason is that the group’s fusion of folk with rock, along with the occasional country flourish, was one achieved without an overt debt to Bob Dylan. Another is that the album consists of all original material—seven of the songs written by Stills, the other five by Young.
Most of them are fueled by the vocal blend of Stills and Furay. It’s a tight harmony based on how their voices merged together rather than how they complemented each other. ‘Go and Say Goodbye,’ which opens the album, is a prime example of its potency. Written by Stills, the song is one of several on the LP that takes a mature, clear-headed view of romance. Here, it is in the insistence to man up and to do the right thing in ending a relationship. As Stills and Furay proclaim, “brother, you know you can’t run away and hide / is it you don’t want to see her cry / is that way you won’t go and say goodbye.” The song’s hopped-up country beat declares Stills’ allegiance with the nascent move towards country-rock, moving in the same direction as Nesmith of the Monkees, another progenitor of country-rock.
Stills’ ‘Hot Dusty Roads,’ laid-back and carefree, is refreshing in its rejection of artifice. Its opening lines are particularly memorable: “I don’t tell no tales about no hot dusty roads / I’m a city boy and I stay at home.” He sings with a refined sense of soul; a little bit sly and a little bit seductive. A song like this was one side of Buffalo Springfield at the beginning—unhurried, keen to explore the touches of pop craft that were beyond run of the mill. On ‘Hot Dusty Roads,’ it was in the contrast of the languidness of its A section with the switch to the top of the beat on the bridge.
When they moved to something more overtly rock, the band sounded a tad callow as on ‘Leave’ or derivative as on ‘Baby Don’t Scold Me’ which its direct quote of the riff from the Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ (no surprise the song was cut when the band’s debut was quickly re-released to accommodate ‘For What It’s Worth’ once it hit big). Yet, this muscularity of sound was integral to giving Buffalo Springfield’s music a real bite.
Young’s ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,’ one of three compositions of his on the album on which Furay sang lead, ping-pongs from an aching country shuffle in 2/4 to a whirling waltz before returning to the shuffle with Young’s harmonica adding to the song’s deep and profound sadness.
The other Furay-led Young compositions return the group to a refined polish. He locks in to the yearning of ‘Flying on the Ground is Wrong.’ The lines: “city lights at a country fair / never shine but always glare” are particularly resonant at this time of year. He also adriotly negotiates the inner turmoil of ‘Do I Have Come Right Out and Say It,’ another song about the moral obligations of romance.
Furay was the most technically gifted singer in Buffalo Springfield. He had the roundest tone and the strongest timbre. Stills’ voice was a bit thinner but with great dynamic range. Young’s was darker and different. He can be heard layered behind Stills and Furay on ‘Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It’—the most extensive example of the three harmonizing together.
Young takes the lead on his ‘Burned’ and ‘Out of My Mind.’ Hearing them reminds of just how startling his voice was and remains, especially as ‘Burned’ is preceded on the album by seven straight features for Stills and/or Furay. Young’s astringent, stabbing guitar lines on ‘Leave’ illustrate how his playing was a foil for Stills’ cleaner, more melodic playing. Indeed, among the many reasons why the group’s debut release continues to be so interesting is that it is the most comprehensive example of Young’s contributions within the group.
The best example, however, would have to be ‘Mr. Soul,’ recorded by Buffalo Springfield mere weeks before ‘For What It’s Worth’ began to soar on the Billboard charts. With its jagged guitar asides and a snarling Young vocal, the song is like witnessing the birth of the cantankerous side of Young. It’s also a song to appreciate the group’s rhythm section. Palmer and Martin are in lockstep to create a sophisticated garage-rock bedrock for the interweaving guitar lines of Young, Stills and Furay. Palmer’s booming walking bass line is of particular note. It adds a toughness that makes ‘Mr. Soul’ super hip.
First released as a single in June 1967, it would also lead off the group’s second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, released four months later. The album has a painstaking exactness. It took eight months to record, contrasting with what was acknowledged as a rush job on the group’s debut.
After the cohesiveness of ‘Mr. Soul,’ the album’s focus begins to widen. Competing for space on the album was Furay in addition to Stills and Young. Each was writing at a high and distinctive level. Second on the album was Furay’s ‘A Child’s Claim to Fame,’ a country and bluegrass number with James Burton guesting on dobro. Following that was Stills’ ‘Everydays,’ a jazzy fantasia with a fuzz-guitar part that infused a light psychedelic haze. It was recorded during the time when future Blood, Sweat & Tears’ bassist Jim Fielder was in the band in the aftermath of Palmer’s first deportation from the States. Stylistic variety was au courant in the late sixties and Buffalo Springfield Again stretched the concept about as far as it could be stretched. The album is eclectic but in a way that denotes separateness.
Furay’s other two contributions sound like they come from two different groups. The quiet ‘Sad Memory’ is haunting and tender with Furay in troubadour mode. A second guitar part dreaminly appears about half-way and adds to the song’s melancholy. As the last note of ‘Sad Memory’ fades away, Martin hammers out a drum fill and sings a soulful invocation to start ‘Good Time Boy.’ It’s straight out of Stax and includes a two-chorus solo on baritone saxophone. It is superb blue-eyed soul.
Stills stays more within the established guardrails of Buffalo Springfield while also reaching further, trying to grab a hold of something beyond the group. At least that’s how it sounds to me when listening to ‘Hung Upside Down’ and hearing him wail on its chorus, taking over from Furay who sings the verses with warmth.
‘Rock and Roll Woman,’ Stills’ ode to Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, is another illustration of the dynamic between him and Furay. Stills’ sly lead is balanced against Furay’s hooky doo-wop backgrounds. The song burns with hipster cool, taking the frost of ‘For What It’s Worth’ and caking it into the propulsive opening riff.
The multi-part ‘Bluebird’ is its opposite. Bursting out of the speakers with Stills on acoustic guitar and Young on electric, it is a song of momentum. The first section is the hardest driving, pushed along by shimmering Stills runs and scorching Young responses. The second section commences with a blistering Stills solo that alternates country picking with phrases that suddenly jump up and down the musical staff, and leads to an interlude that slows things down for a flamenco flourish. Banjoist Charlie Chin, whom Stills knew from his days in the Village, plays a pattern that begins ‘Bluebird’s final section—a bluegrass coda. The song, which was a showpiece of Buffalo Springfield's live show, is ultimately a succession of ideas that build one of Stills’ most enduring standards, a template for another suite-like song he would soon write to salute Judy Collins.
Buffalo Springfield Again was rounded out by Young’s ‘Expecting to Fly’ and ‘Broken Arrow,’ both as ambitiously daring as ‘Bluebird’ and both portending the band’s imminent breakup. If they can be considered songs by Buffalo Springfield, then almost anything could be. Of course, both were essentially solo efforts by Young in collaboration with Jack Nitzsche and tease at another side of Young: tender and ambitious. Both are masterful—the former reaches the heights of Pet Sounds and the latter is almost at the level of ‘A Day in the Life.’ Their inclusion on Buffalo Springfield Again completes the whiplash-inducing variety of the album. In a way, it’s a precursor to the Beatles’ The White Album which would be even more audacious in its stylistic variegation. For the Beatles, that recording telegraphed the beginning of the band’s end. For Buffalo Springfield, the end came much more swiftly.
The next time the band appeared on LP was in July 1968 with Last Time Around, two months after the band had broken up. The album was put together to fulfil the group’s contract with Atlantic Records. It had the diversity of its predecessor but without its riskiness.
‘On the Way Home,’ which starts Last Time Around, is the only track on which all five members of the group appear—it would be also the last time they would all record together. It’s a bittersweet Young number with striking harmonic movement throughout, particularly at the end of each verse. It is the only true band moment here.
Last Time Around offers a lot of interest, pointing to where Stills, Furay and Young would go after Buffalo Springfield. Stills’ ‘Questions’ would reappear as the second part of ‘Carry On’ from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Deja Vu. ‘Pretty Girl Why’ and ‘Uno Mundo’ offer how he often wrote unique twists to fairly standard pop songs. Furay’s ‘Kind Woman,’ part of the work he and Jim Messina, who joined Buffalo Springfield after Palmer was tossed from the States for the second time, did to complete the album is the kind of pristine country-rock that he would hone through Poco. Young’s ‘I Am a Child’ foreshadows Harvest. All of it individual, none that can really be said to be by Buffalo Springfield.
I suppose it may be a bit obtuse to keep harping at this but it’s hard to really think of another band whose identity seems as secondary—superfluous, really—to those who comprised its membership.
So many songs to choose from, so little space for them. Here’s to rock’s first supergroup.
I saw them in 1967 at West Point believe it or not, on a tour with the Beach Boys and the Soul Survivors. B. Springfield had to follow the Soul Survivors who had just blown the roof off the WP fieldhouse. Their chiming, charming country rock didn't go down well after the Philly soul of the Survivors.
Awesome history lesson, Robert. As usual, I learned plenty I didn't know before. Thanks for the enlightenment.