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Stephen Stills: ‘Part of me misses David Crosby dreadfully. Part of me thinks he got out of here just in time’

The 78-year-old folk rock icon talks to kevin e g perry about woodstock and the sixties, the death of david crosby and his new live album from 1971, article bookmarked.

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‘Part of me misses David Crosby dreadfully. Part of me thinks he got out of here just in time’

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I n August 1971, Stephen Stills arrived in Berkeley for the final dates of his first ever solo tour to be greeted by a surprise visitor: David Crosby . Just a year earlier their pioneering folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had imploded in a blizzard of booze, cocaine, rampant egos and lopsided love triangles. That night, however, there were no hard feelings. “He came to see me in the dressing room before the show,” remembers Stills, who promptly invited his old friend to join him on stage. “I said: ‘Let’s do “The Lee Shore”’ and he said: ‘Alright!’ We didn’t run through it that many times – and it shows! But that’s the way we rolled back then. It was marvellous.”

Their heartfelt duet appears early on Stills’s new album Live at Berkeley 1971, which is drawn from recordings the former Buffalo Springfield guitarist recently unearthed during a deep dive into his archival vault. Now 78, Stills is speaking to me over a video call from his airy home in the hills above Los Angeles. The snowy white beard sprouting in a tuft from his chin may give him the appearance of a medieval friar but in conversation he’s mischievous and puckish, with an irreverent attitude towards his own music.

“There are some rather strange vocals,” he says of the live album, which features a solo-acoustic set followed by a full-throated electric performance backed by legendary Stax musicians the Memphis Horns. “I remind myself of… well, the term ‘barking mad’ comes to mind. We were very enthusiastic, and by the end of the shows I was literally barking because I couldn’t make the notes and everything was too fast!”

The appearance of Crosby on the album is rendered particularly poignant by the singer-songwriter’s death in January this year, at the age of 81. Stills says the news took him by surprise. “He was on his way to a last tour, and my son [Christopher] was going to play with him,” says Stills. “He just went to take a nap and didn’t wake up. Not a bad way to go, actually. There’s part of me that misses him dreadfully, and there’s part of me that thinks he got out of here just in time, if you look at the world.”

As well as Crosby’s “The Lee Shore”, on Live at Berkeley 1971 the pair also perform Stills’ composition “You Don’t Have to Cry”. The song has a special place in the mythos of Crosby, Stills and Nash as it was the first song they ever sang as a trio, although in keeping with the group’s fractious reputation there is some dispute over the details. Graham Nash says the fateful meeting happened at Joni Mitchell’s bungalow in Laurel Canyon , but Stills maintains it was actually The Mamas & the Papas’ singer Cass Elliot who gave CSN their first audience in 1968. “I remember this vividly,” he says. “She had these big fluffy pillows and couches that I sank into, so I couldn’t find a place to play guitar. The kitchen turned out to be wonderful. I sat in the corner with David on one side and Graham kind of standing around. We sang it once and he said: ‘Do that again.’ The third time he chimed in and we knew that we were done for.”

As Stills remembers things, it was the following night they repeated the trick at Joni Mitchell’s place. “I suppose because the story’s more glamorous, [Crosby and Nash] decided to superimpose that as the first time we sang it,” chuckles Stills. “That’s the story of our lives! The story of that group.” He slips into a good-natured impersonation of himself and his bickering bandmates: “‘No, I remember!’ ‘No, I remember!’”

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“Watching those boys discover their blend was exciting. It was boys in love,” Mitchell recalled later. Wherever it was they first met, it didn’t take Crosby, Stills and Nash long to cement their place in musical history. They helped define the “California Sound” with the release of their self-titled debut album in 1969, with Stills contributing classic songs including “You Don’t Have to Cry”, “Helplessly Hoping” and epic opener “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, which was written about his imminent breakup with folk singer Judy Collins. The record has since gone platinum many times over.

Later that year, the band added Stills’s former Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young to the line-up for a string of live shows, including Woodstock, before the quartet put out Déjà Vu in 1970. Cracks soon started to appear on a subsequent tour. The band who had started out in sun-kissed Laurel Canyon, wreathed in an air of pot-smoking hippy optimism, were now descending rapidly into cocaine-fuelled competitiveness and internecine squabbling. Stills, in particular, was accused of excessive control freak tendencies, and was briefly sacked from the group after playing an unscheduled extended solo set at New York’s Fillmore East when he heard Bob Dylan was in the audience.

When the group splintered, all four members released solo albums but Stills had the distinction of outselling the rest with Stephen Stills , helped by hit single “Love the One You’re With”. During the recording of the song Stills met and began a relationship with backing singer Rita Coolidge, who then left him for Nash – only compounding romantic rivalries in a group that had already seen both Crosby and Nash date Mitchell. The song’s free-love-advocating title and chorus (“If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with”) was inspired by a line Stills heard keyboardist and Beatles collaborator Billy Preston say at a party. “He threw it off on the fly and I said: ‘That’d be a great song,’” remembers Stills with a nostalgic laugh. “He said: ‘Do it!’ So I did.”

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Stills’s first solo album is well known among guitar aficionados for being the only record to feature both Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. That piece of trivia reflects both the high esteem Stills was held in by his virtuoso peers, and his ability to ignore meddling record executives. “I was rather sneaky about it,” recalls Stills. “When their people found out they all complained. Jimi’s producer was particularly adamant about it: ‘Don’t play guitar for that son of a b**** again!’ But we had the attitude of jazz guys. There was a community of us, a potpourri of everybody intermingling all the time like the jazz guys back in the Fifties used to do.”

Less than a year after releasing his first solo album, the ever-productive Stills returned with Stephen Stills 2 in 1971. That summer he set out on a debaucherous run of shows that, thanks in part to the involvement of the Memphis Horns, was soon dubbed “The Drunken Horns Tour”. While Live at Berkeley 1971 was recorded in the intimate confines of the 3,500-capacity Berkeley Community Theatre, earlier stops had seen Stills play to 20,000-strong audiences in arenas like New York’s Madison Square Garden and The Forum in LA. “That’s why it came off as loose as it did,” reasons Stills. “At Madison Square Garden I got the crowd going so much that we put three cracks in the wall. I know because the engineer came directly to me to complain: ‘You’ve got to be careful, this thing might come down!’ He put a fright into everybody because the whole building was bobbing, which the Albert Hall can take but not one of these glass and steel things that they build over here!”

Along with the CSN tunes and solo material on Live at Berkeley 1971, Stills also plays a solo piano version of perhaps his best-known creation: Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”. One of the definitive protest songs of the Sixties, it’s become a soundtrack staple in everything from Vietnam documentaries to films Lord of War and Tropic Thunder. Stills picks out Forrest Gump as his own favourite needle-drop, although he’s typically self-effacing about the song itself. “I can’t listen to it that many times in a row before I start to cringe,” he says, “But it’s good for the fans and for the audience because it takes you back to that time.”

He adds that the song reminds him of what he now sees as the strident atmosphere of the era. “The other night I ran across the director’s cut of Woodstock ,” he says. “It’s the funniest movie I’ve ever seen, because we were so wrong about so many things! We were all searching for enlightenment, but it turned into a lot of rants. Watching all the American kids lolling around in the mud, I remembered that there were peace talks trying to go on at the time. I thought: ‘Oh, the North Vietnamese must be quaking in their f***ing boots looking at this!’ Those ironies struck me, here at age 78.”

While “For What It’s Worth” is often associated with the anti-war protests, Stills actually wrote it about the Sunset Strip riots of 1966. That November, young hippie demonstrators – including Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda – faced off with police over plans to enforce a 10pm curfew for under-18s and close down a nightclub called Pandora’s Box. “It was a funeral for a bar,” recalls Stills. “[The police] had just been issued this riot gear, and they all fell out in a full Macedonian battle array: ‘Let’s do it! Let’s test this stuff out on these defenceless drunken kids!’ The rest, as they say, is history.”

Live at Berkeley 1971 concludes with another Stills protest anthem, that year’s thrilling “Ecology Song”, which marries upbeat horns with pointed lyrics about corporate greed and America’s shameful involvement in the death of the planet. It could have been written yesterday. “I was rather early!” says Stills. “It wasn’t something people were writing about, because it’s kind of difficult to write about things that directly. There are some bad rhymes in there! It’s a bit preachy. You can get trapped into very ordinary proselytising, so it’s something one does with a certain amount of discretion. You can’t overdo it or you run the risk of becoming a crushing bore, but for its time it was rather forward-looking.”

Does he wish the powers-that-be had paid a little more heed to his warnings about the emerging climate catastrophe? Stills shrugs off the idea with a laugh. “The people in power are never going to pay attention to musicians and artists,” he says. “We’re fruitcakes!”

‘Stephen Stills’s Live at Berkeley 1971’ is out now

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Stephen Stills to tour the UK this autumn

Legendary guitarist heads to Britain this October

Stephen Stills has announced details of a UK tour.

Perhaps best known for his role in supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young , the guitarist will hit the road in October.

He plays the following dates:

Brighton Centre (October 10)

London Shepherds Bush Empire (11)

Manchester Apollo (13)

Birmingham Symphony Hall (15)

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"If I was young now, I'd probably be stalking Taylor Swift. We have affairs, we make it dramatic and write hit songs about it" - Stephen Stills on the romance that drove a classic and the making of his first solo album

Growing tired of the tensions in CSN&Y, Stephen Stills moved to the UK to record his debut album, with a little help from Jimi, Ringo and Eric

January 1970. Stephen Stills is about to become of the highest paid rock stars on the planet. Thanks to his contract with Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records, Stills and his superstar kings of harmony mates – David Crosby , Graham Nash and Neil Young – are on a $1 million per album guarantee. Each. Once the quartet’s Déjà Vu tops the charts two months later, they can renegotiate.

It all seems so easy. Stills bossed the critically acclaimed Buffalo Springfield and was architect of the CSN phenomenon. Next thing, he finds himself in London feted as a rock messiah. Bumping into Paul McCartney at Apple Records’ Savile Row HQ, he is told laughingly: “Leave some room for the rest of us! Don’t get too successful – this is only a small island.”

Even for a sophisticated southern man like Stills, born in Texas, raised and schooled in the finest private establishments that Florida, Louisiana, Panama and Costa Rica have to offer a military brat, this is surreal. “Going to Apple while The Beatles were breaking up was heavy for a kid from Tallahassee. Also life-affirming: ‘Huh? I’m in a studio with the fucking Beatles?’

“I wanted to escape all that American madness,” says Stills today. “The whole Californian/Troubadour scene was driving me nuts.”

An example: the Rolling Stones had stayed in Stills’s LA home on 3615 Shady Oak Road in Laurel Canyon during the autumn of 1969, base camp for the Let It Bleed tour, culminating in the Altamont Speedway fiasco where Stills and co. also played, though in the end they refused to allow their performance to be included in the film Gimme Shelter .

Taking a break from a CSNY road trip, Stills returned one afternoon to find Keith Richards zonked out in his favourite hammock, while Mick Jagger was lying by the pool with a slew of famous groupies, Miss Pamela and Angel included. The fact that they’re naked is par for the course, but their pharmaceutical activities make the guitarist nervous.

He’s used to strange visitors – Jim Morrison was a regular acquaintance; indeed, CSN drummer Dallas Taylor would give Jim Morrison his first-ever bag of cocaine at 3615 – but the patrol cars parked out front scare Stills. He tells the Stones to “take it easy, guys”. The last thing he needs is another high-profile bust.

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Things are also tense in CSN&Y, and during some time off, Stills decided to stay in England with his new Fab mates, renting Ringo Starr’s Tudor mansion Brookfield House, a 350-year-old year sprawl in Elstead, Surrey.

“I wanted a break from the West Coast,” he says. “The Summer of Love can fuck right orf, know what I mean?”

In February, Stills met up with old friend Jimi Hendrix – “We were like two lonely Americans in England, no different to the English in Los Angeles who sit round all day talkin’ about bloody Arsenal” – and the pair started jamming at Brookfield. On other wild nights, when the guitarists used to jam together at the Scene club in New York, Stills was offered the role of bass player in a revamped Experience.

Now there was talk of another trio with Hendrix and drummer Buddy Miles. Why not? Stills was desperate to record away from the frustrating confines of Crosby, Nash and Young, where everything was filtered down a hippie four-way street. Despite all the love and peace, there was lots of misunderstanding, and the quartet would split up in dramatic fashion after a backstage row in Chicago.

Stills and Young had a rivalry based on friendship and friction. So while Neil went back to America to finish his After The Gold Rush sessions, Stephen stayed in his English pad, or slummed it in a suite at The Dorchester. He had just participated in the making of an album for soul/gospel singer Doris Troy, one of Apple Records’ many vanity projects (Doris will cover his Buffalo Springfield tune Special Care ), as well as his collaborations with George Harrison and Ringo – Gonna Get My Baby Back and You Give Me Joy, Joy – and he was loving his life in good ole England.

“I’m relaxing at the Bag O’ Nails and Ronnie Scott’s in Soho. I’m a happy man finally. So I started on my first solo album. People said I was a taskmaster – well, I was. This was my gig. I locked the gates of Ringo’s old mansion, I had a cook come in, and I rehearsed my boys to death. I was an insomniac. I’d wake them in the middle of the night and make them play. Chances are they were, er, awake already.”

Stills took to stockbroker belt Surrey like a duck to water. “I loved all of it,” he says. “The fresh-mown grass, the spring air. I even played cricket; I learnt the rules. I was driving my Bentley and my Rolls and your roads were empty.”

With near neighbours including Ron Wood and Eric Clapton , Stills embraced the life of an English gent. He dug into his pocket and gave Ringo £100,000 in old money. Brookfield was his. England was his. He was on a roll. By late February he’d written more than 20 new songs.

In early March Stills decided he was ready to record his magnum opus. Dallas Traylor, drummer for CSNY, was flown in to join a core band including bassist Calvin ‘Fuzzy’ Samuels and percussionist Conrad Isidore, already living in London. Island Records’ tiny Basing Street studio was chosen for the sessions. The old church won out over Trident Studios, where Stills recalls a bad night of tape mangling with Crosby, Nash and Neil “and brown shit all over the place. They couldn’t handle the crappy Scotch tape we’d recorded on.”

Besides, he knew the area: Notting Hill’s Basing Street was close to the old Moscow Road W10 flat in Bayswater that Steve used to share with Dave and Graham in 1968. The flat, adorned like a psychedelic knocking shop, was next to a butcher’s, where a sign on the counter read: “All joints must be re-weighed before purchase.” Ho ho, they think. A fiver changed hands, and the sign was nailed to the boys’ front door.

Stills’s affection for England grew apace. Months before Neil Young stepped up, he’d tracked down Steve Winwood to the Traffic house in Berkshire and implored him to join forces with the Byrd, the Buffalo and the Holly. Winwood wasn’t convinced. “He was too shy,” claims Stills.

Slightly put out, he began to write for his solo album. First things in the bag were 4 + 20 , which Crosby insisted had to go on Déjà Vu , and a rough version of Find The Cost Of Freedom that Stills punted to Dennis Hopper for the soundtrack to Easy Rider . “I wrote it for the final scene, where the dude gets blown away as his motorcycle burns. I played it for Dennis but he was in a fog and just didn’t get it. I was depressed about that for years.”

Again Crosby intervened, and the song was saved for the B-side of CSN&Y’s Ohio single. As tit-for-tat, Stills withdrew his song Do For The Others , written on the rebound from his dalliance with lover Judy Collins, and kept it for his own album as an acoustic number without the original assistance of legendary fellow swordsman Graham Nash .

Trouble was, at this rate, Stills was never going to win the foot race with Neil Young to get his record out. Young was working on his third project and Stills only had the worthy but unexciting Super Session (’68) collaboration with Al Kooper , Mike Bloomfield and various Electric Flag alumni to add to his post-Buffalo Springfield CV. Even then, he only played on Side Two, and got third billing. Tsch.

Itching to make his mark, Stills enlisted trusted CSN engineer Bill Halverson. Before Halverson’s arrival, Stills and Hendrix tried a demo called Old Times, Good Times , a nostalgic piece about lost youth, though Stills had only just turned 25 and Jimi was 26. This song would be used; another Jimi jam, known as White Ni**** , won’t be. Oddly, Old Times shuffles neatly along but Hendrix’s contribution is straightforward, no pyrotechnics at all, just a tasty bluesy rhythm captured by engineer Andy Johns. Blink and you miss it.

Next in the can is the basic version of Love The One You’re With , minus the backing vocals that, when added later at Wally Heider Studio 111 in LA, give the song its irresistible commercial quality. Stills’s Anglophile immersion is heard in the opening line of the chorus: ‘And there’s a rose in a fisted glove, and the eagle flies with the dove.’

“That’s an allusion to something iconically English,” he says. “The Battle of Hastings and all that. The fisted glove is chainmail. That had struck me deeply as a kid, and it’s one of the reasons I moved to England, because Britain meant so much.”

He’d end up commuting from LA to England for seven years, and in conversation he actually sounds more English than American now.

Stills loved “the English studio method. You stuffed the union rules we had in America, and the way you recorded was very inventive. Andrew Loog Oldham started all that. Plus it’s not just a joke from Spinal Tap , because you guys really did want to know what happens when you turn it up to eleven – and then use an acoustic guitar with a Fairchild Limiter and really fucking smash it so it sounds electric. Plus, all the equipment in England was ex-government or from the BBC, and everyone was adventurous – y’know, all the tricks that mother hen George Martin used on The Beatles? ‘As long as you don’t set the studio on fire!’”

Another reason for Stills’s creative burst related to his love life – or lack thereof. Having split from former blue-eyed muse and lover Judy Collins during the making of the CSN album (Collins falling for Stacy Keach while she was acting with him in a production of Peer Gynt), that troubled relationship would be replaced by a long-distance liaison with Rita Coolidge, who Stills had had his eye on ever since he’d seen the young singer doing back-ups on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour .

A naïve Native American Cherokee squaw, fresh out of Florida State University, Coolidge suddenly became the most wanted woman in Hollywood. Leon Russell courted and wrote Delta Lady for her. Joe Cocker dragged her to bed for some Yorkshire pudding. Nothing was sweeter than Rita. Yet she had no idea why she drove these blue-balled rock stars nuts.

“Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what was in front of me,” Coolidge recalled. “From Joe Cocker I got a degree from Rock And Roll University, in two months.”

Stills was “obsessed”, and doesn’t deny that now, the rogue. “Was Rita my muse?” he says today. “How shall I put this… If I was young now, I’d probably be stalking Taylor Swift. It’s the same thing, innit? We have these affairs of the heart, and when it’s over we make it as dramatic as possible and write hit songs about it. Me and Rita were an item. We remained friends, and there’s always a little twinkle when we see each other and remember ‘back in the day’. I’m looking at a picture of her right now and she’s gorgeous, just gorgeous. And her voice was like honey.”

Rita has been heard to say of her old flame: “Oh, Stephen! He is such a stinker!” Even so, she was delighted to catch up with Stills when the tongue-tied lothario happened to meet her in London, recording backing vocals for Doris Troy’s album with his pals Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett.

Careening round town with new friends and without a girlfriend, the sentiment of Love The One You’re With rang true for the writer, though he’d copped the title from hanging round with Doris and Billy Preston, who used to jive each other Afro-American style: love the one you’re with, sugar.

“It isn’t the paean to promiscuity that snotty ones would have you believe – it’s very straightforward,” Stills insists. “Feminists have criticised it but that’s bollocks. It works both ways. Girls today have figured it out. Men aren’t in charge any more. Don’t care what you think. They go to the bathroom and say [does commendably accurate chavette impression, suggesting he watches TOWIE on cable]: ‘I’m ’avin’ ’im.’”

Stills reckons Love The One You’re With was “always good to me but it was a bit of a jingle. Musically it has layers of meaning. There’s a second line New Orleans thing and a fuzzy Caribbean feel. Of course, everyone I knew had to be on it.”

Taking the basic cut back to LA, Stills had Halverson multi-track the chorus. “Half of ’em couldn’t sing it properly, not surprising since I had Nash, Crosby, Mama Cass, John Sebastian, Rita and Peter Tork on it [the uncredited Monkee was renting Stills’s Shady Oak home and would later buy it], and they immediately cocked up the phrasing. Eventually it came out like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir so it had some crack. My original was crisper.”

Halverson recalls, “They warmed up eventually, Stills made sure they did. We added extra percussion to the steel drums Stephen learned in London. He amazed me how he’d pick up a new instrument and teach himself as he went along.” He wasn’t called Captain Manyhands for nothing.

The debut’s second most famous track is Go Back Home , featuring Eric Clapton. The Englishman had been working on his own solo debut in LA with Halverson when he got the call from Stills: come to Basing Street!

“Eric finished his record there,” says Halverson. “He used the one and only studio when Stephen was off. Clapton turned up and on one degenerate evening the two guys jammed on an endless version of The Champs’ Tequila [the drink of choice at this time].

Halverson adds: “I played Eric the Go Back Home track and he said, ‘Oh, that’s great, it’s so easy,’ plugged into a tiny Fender Champ amp, ran through it once and ripped his solo out. Stephen wasn’t even there! Immediately afterwards Clapton recorded the Let It Rain solo for his own record – maybe the two best solos he’s ever played were done within an hour of each other.”

Halverson would later cut the 14-minute version into something practical.

Stills says they also attempted an electric version of the album song Black Queen , a poker player’s allegory to a dark female card that appears in your hand and fucks it up. “We tried to emulate Robert Johnson’s off-kilter Crossroads, but my own version worked better for some reason.”

Black Queen dated back to ’69. Stills had played it with the Grateful Dead in December at the Thelma Theatre, LA, growling it à la Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan. “Can’t remember that, but if you were round the Grateful Dead you don’t remember anything,” he says now. He also made it an acoustic staple on the CSN&Y tour.

In London, Stills got Halverson to turn all the lights off while he walked round the darkened studio searching for Black Queen ’s mood. He’d sunk two pints of tequila (hence the eventual credit for Jose Cuervo Gold) but he nailed it. Pissed as the proverbial. “I was really drunk when I did that, as you can hear,” he laughs.

Halverson adds: “It’s recorded live, with Stephen working the mics as if he’s giving a performance. My task was to be ready for him. We never slated a take. It’s like when he did Suite: Judy Blue Eyes [on Déjà Vu ], he played acoustic in the dark, and that’s another piece of pure magic. My job was simple: know when to press ‘Play’.”

Halverson says the sessions were a doddle. His only problem came when recording Church (Part Of Someone) with London backing singers – the heavily pregnant Judith Powell, Larry Steele and fiancée Lisa Strike, and Tony Wilson from Hot Chocolate. “I couldn’t understand this cockney choir,” Bill says. “Sounded like a foreign language when they were talking to Stephen. But once they opened their mouths and sang, it was fine. They spoke perfect American English.”

The end result was perfect: Harlesden meets Hollywood.

Ahmet Ertegun turned up in London to check on his artist and found Stills having trouble with a complex song called To A Flame . He suggested that his Turkish-American colleague Arif Mardin guide him through an orchestral arrangement. This was duly accomplished using the London Symphony Orchestra’s string section and members of Canadian ex-pat Maynard Ferguson’s orchestra (again, all uncredited on the album).

“He sat me down at the Dorchester Hotel and forced me to approach it as if I’d gone back to music school and learnt composition,” Stills says. “When we were ready to record I played the vibraphone and assumed Arif would take the baton but he gave it to me and I ended up conducting – celli, bassoons, violins, French horn, oboes, trombones – and I was in a full body sweat. Arif [who arranged Church too] dragged that out of me note by note. It was an extraordinary journey and I was as thrilled with that as anything I ever did. Oh yeah, and Ringo played the tom-toms.”

Gawd bless ’im. The arrival of Stills’s landlord, accompanied by Beatles road manager Mal Evans, coincided with a remarkable week in which Ringo had been told to “fuck off out of my house” by McCartney, and received the test pressing of his own solo venture, the standards LP, Sentimental Journey . All things considered, Ringo was in fine fettle. He knew the Beatles were on the verge of announcing their split and he felt like a free man.

Halverson: “I’d met Mal while recording Badge for Cream but meeting Ringo was a thrill. He added so much presence to To A Flame, and I was glad he was so incredible; I’d read all those stories about how he didn’t play on Beatles tracks, that Hal Blaine or Bernard Purdie did his parts. His contributions to that song, and to We Are Not Helpless , were so orchestral, his timing was impeccable and his feel exemplary. I don’t know if he ever played any better.”

Meanwhile, if Stills’s unrequited infatuation with Coolidge inspired To A Flame – it was his favourite song – Cherokee was a love letter to the raven-haired lovely Rita, personified here as his ‘Southern girl’ with ‘ The secret she keeps, like her soul so deep .’

The most blatantly biographical song he’d written, Stills played the chivalrous suitor. He’d loved, he’d shone, he had a fortune and he had fame – or so he said – but he only wanted to ‘ get next to the lady from Tennessee ’. He almost did, when she sang choir on Go Back Home and We Are Not Helpless . And her name was always first on all the credits. Shucks.

Once the album was finished, Graham Nash finally got the long-distance lovebirds together – by mistake – when he invited Coolidge to a CSN&Y concert in June 1970. Nash gave Rita Stills’s house number, where he was staying, but when Stephen answered, he told Coolidge, “Graham’s not available but I’ll be happy to have you as my guest.”

A stormy two months later, Nash persuaded Rita to try him for size, which she did, breaking the bad news to Stephen as they sat by the Sherman Oaks pool. Stills was not amused, but since Coolidge would shortly elope with Kris Kristofferson, they were both dumped. A ‘ wearisome vigil… was I misled? ’ was how the singer saw it a year later on It Doesn’t Matter .

In September, the album cover was shot at Stills’s cabin spread in Colorado.

“I had this place in Gold Hill because I couldn’t breathe in the smoggy San Fernando Valley,” Stills recalls. “Judy Collins introduced me to Colorado. I loved it ’cos it’s air-conditioned outside, innit? Photographer Henry Diltz came to see me. We hiked off to the creek and did the shots as the first snow fell in the mountains. The front cover was apropos of nothing. I sat on a chair and strummed guitar and I had a papier-mâché pink giraffe, a present from Rita, perched next to me.”

On the back cover, Stills can be seen riding a horse called Reno. “A Hollywood wrangler loaned him to me. He was a movie star horse, just my type. The football shirt I’m wearing is a Number 41 from Gainesville High School, my alma mater, where I pretended to play football, linebacker. But I was too wee. I only weighed eight stone.”

Diltz came bearing bad news with his Nikon. Jimi Hendrix had just been found dead at the Samarkand Hotel, Notting Hill. “We sat up the whole night talking, telling stories and remembering Jimi. When dawn came up, everything was blanketed in white. I grabbed my camera and Stephen grabbed his guitar. The cover was shot within hours of Jimi’s death.” [Actually photographer Diltz dates it as four days later.] Fittingly, Stills dedicated the album to Hendrix, a man whose death shook him cold. “Assholes would keep on giving him things, and he’d forget what he’d taken,” he says. “I loved that guy. He was a god.”

In the end, Stills lost his race with Neil Young, their love-hate relationship exemplified by the fact that while Stephen sang on the After The Gold Rush LP, he didn’t ask Neil to reciprocate. The reviews for After The Gold Rush were uniformly celebratory – quite right too – but those for Stills’s November debut were utterly scathing, almost as if “the 1960s are over. And it’s your fault.”

In America, initial DJ copies of the record credited it to Stephen Stills, Graham Nash & David Crosby, and were heavily stickered by Atlantic with a list of the star guests, implying the artist wasn’t big enough to carry the project unaided.

Having been busted in August 1970 for cocaine and barbiturate possession in La Jolla, California (cops crawling along a motel hallway found him incoherent and “combative”), Stills found himself ostracised. Rolling Stone slammed his solo effort, saying all the songs sounded the same, the reviewer admitting: “I didn’t even bother listening for Eric Clapton’s lead on Go Back Home.

Robert Christgau, ‘Dean of American Rock Critics’, gave it an academic C+ and would soon describe Stills as “the ultimate rich hippie – arrogant, self-pitying, sexist, shallow”.

Never one to bear a grudge, Stills now says, “That guy’s a cunt. A fucking right cunt. Fuck him. Am I supposed to stop my fucking career because some asshole that doesn’t know what the fuck to listen to because it isn’t popular enough is off down the hall and his mate is buggering him in the shower? Fuck him! I don’t even care that Lester Bangs and all that bunch of cunts can’t find their way to their bathroom. They can’t play the guitar to save their fucking lives. So FUCK THEM! Is that vicious enough?” He laughs. “I particularly hate Rolling Stone .”

Small wonder, really, since they’d call his second solo effort “a fifth-rate album by a solid second-rate artist who so many lower-middlebrows insist on believing is actually first-rate.”

One burst of Anglo Saxon later, the admirable Stills concludes: “If you let reviews stop you, mate, you’d never have had the Sex Pistols or The Clash .”

By way of a softener to our breed, he adds: “I’m glad you like the record and that you’re talking to the man who made it. And also the producer. Who else could have produced it but me? How could anyone else have achieved that divergence with that much of an arc? That’s my favourite album. I love the whole thing.”

God bless Stephen Stills and his fisted glove. Still feisty as fuck. Long may he carry on, and not lose his head.

Stephen Stills Live At Berkeley 1971 is out now. This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 187, published in August 2013 .

Max Bell worked for the NME during the golden 70s era before running up and down London’s Fleet Street for The Times and all the other hot-metal dailies. A long stint at the Standard and mags like The Face and GQ kept him honest. Later, Record Collector and Classic Rock called.

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Stephen Stills on His ‘Enduring’ Friendship With Neil Young and Butting Heads With Crosby

The rock legend discusses his all-star autism benefit, becoming an empty nester, and writing all those classic songs.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty

Save for perhaps “Ohio,” when you think of the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young , it’s probably Stephen Stills’ songs you think of. And even if he didn’t write them himself, they sure have his fingerprints all over them.

“Stephen was the most talented guy in CSNY,” the late David Crosby once told me. “He was the one who made those records happen. He was a force of nature. We fought a lot, but he usually won because he really knew how to make great records.”

At 78, Stills is, by his own admission, mellower and more thoughtful these days. But while he has slowed down considerably, the fire to make new music still burns hot, as he tells The Daily Beast below.

The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is one of rock’s most enduring figures, having influenced generations with his songwriting and guitar playing, both as a solo artist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, and Manassas. In fact, his innovative approach to both acoustic and electric guitar, combined with distinctive harmonies, helped create the iconic “California sound” via classic compositions like “For What It’s Worth,” “Love the One You’re With,” “Helplessly Hoping,” “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and “Carry On.” A true musician’s musician, Stills’ first solo LP is the only album to have ever featured both Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.

Below, Stills talks about his Autism Speaks/Light Up The Blues benefit concert happening this weekend, the glory days of Buffalo Springfield and CSNY, his enduring friendship with Neil Young , and his new live album, Live At Berkeley 1971 , taken from his legendary ’71 tour.

The Autism Speaks/Light Up The Blues shows have really grown over the last decade or so that you and Kristen [Stills, his wife] have been doing them. Tell me a little bit about how they started and why, and how you go about choosing the artists you ask to do them.

That’s three questions.

It is three. [ Laughter. ]

Yes, I can count like a horse. Well, my son Henry has Asperger’s [syndrome, a form of autism spectrum disorder], and that brought us into the world of the spectrum. And what I’ve discovered about the spectrum is that all the best people are on it, including me and most of my friends. So there’s a fine line between dysfunctional and interesting. And that’s not to make light of it. It was a brand-new thing, and just becoming a little epidemic, when he was first diagnosed. There was a lot of mystery and false assumptions about it. And so we’ve tried to lay those to rest. For instance, there is no cure—but there’s coping. And there’s lots that you can do to get to a normal life. There are varying degrees of it, of course, but like I said, if you’re not on the spectrum, well, all the best people are.

All the cool kids.

Yeah. Exactly.

And it seems in the decade you’ve been doing this, the perception has really changed, hasn’t it?

Yes, of course. But we can’t go to sleep. That’s one of the reasons we keep doing the shows. God knows it eats up half my year. My wife Kristen’s the producer, of course, and she’s gotten very adept at it, and she has a really good staff and everything. But getting artists this year was difficult because once the pandemic broke, everybody was like, “Oh, I want to work, I want to work, I want to work.” So a lot of people were booked. But a lot of people were playing fairly close to the gig [in Los Angeles], so we were able to nab them. So I guess it worked out.

Oh, any hints?

Willie Nelson, for one. And of course Neil Young, who sort of handed this off to me, the big charity thing. He wrapped up his Bridge School Benefit and said, “OK, Stephen, it’s your turn.” It really is a labor of love, but it’s a labor. It’s just a lot. And I’d especially like to reassure everybody that we’re raising money for the right organization and the right cause. But the place is small, so the thing sold out quick. We’ll have to do it again, but not till next year. But Willie has a show at the Hollywood Bowl, like, two weeks later, and Neil and I are going to drop in on his show, or so the Soviet commies would have us believe.

The disinformation campaign.

Yes, well, God help us if Neil Young became predictable. [ Laughter. ]

Well, let’s talk about that. That is an enduring partnership. Through all the ups and downs of Buffalo Springfield, and all the ups and downs of CSNY, you guys have always seemed to be able to work together in a musical partnership that really endures. Talk a little about why that partnership works so well from your point of view.

While we were children, we were mad . [ Laughter. ]

Hotheaded kids.

Yeah. It was Fort William, Ontario, which is now known as Thunder Bay. I was there with another little folk group. We were headliners and we did two shows on Saturdays, and this guy Gordy, who was the head of the thing, said, “Oh, I’ve got this pal I want to put in between you.” And it was Neil. He was doing exactly what I was doing in New York City, which was write folk songs with an electric guitar. [What] Neil was doing—it was fabulous. It was an eye-opener, and the band was sort of at loose ends, so we spent a week together, being introduced to each other and Neil introducing me to Canada, and we’ve been pals ever since. And that is an enduring thing. I mean, whatever happened, we were always pals.

Why do you think that relationship works so well?

Well, because when we met, we were children. We were too young to hold grudges and all that stuff. And we were never that competitive, because we were so different. Although there were a few moments on lead guitar, but… I don’t know. We don’t misunderstand each other. With everything else, Neil and I always knew who we were together. We’re brothers. And brothers, you know, disagree, and get back with each other. Crosby used to talk about how we butted heads, and I call them glancing blows, but we ended up numb-skulled due to them. And anyway, we didn’t spend enough time together! You know, I just saw, last night, for the first time in years, the director’s cut of Woodstock . And that’s the funniest fucking movie I’ve ever seen. At 78, looking back on that, I was rolling. I was howling at how naïve and how earnest we all were.

Baby-faced.

Yeah. Well, I miss that chin. [ Laughter. ] And I was also very, very liquid. And I had more hair. And could sing higher and lower. Actually, I guess I can sing lower now. But it was hilarious because I was thinking about [how], you know, they were trying to force negotiations with the Vietnamese, and I kept thinking to myself, “Well, they were quaking in their boots watching this shit.” [ Laughter. ] Just, you know, ironies abounded. It was at once startling, embarrassing, and exhilarating at the same time, to see all of us and what we were about back then. We were certainly earnest in our search for enlightenment.

Yeah. The beginning of the journey. It’s a beautiful thing. You’ve obviously performed as a duo with Neil many times, and although Graham will be in Pittsburgh on the night of the show, I have to imagine David’s spirit is going to loom large. Your son Chris, who was going to tour with David, will be there, and David’s son James Raymond will be performing. Talk about all the legacy that’s going to be on stage at this show.

We don’t have time.

Moving on! [ Laughter. ]

Because everybody booked themselves, we didn’t have a time to rehearse. But I’ve got Promise of the Real backing me, and those kids, I can’t say enough about them. They’re just great. They’ve got the one thing you can’t teach, which is attitude. They’re wide open and just positive. And nothing’s personal. So I can go through the nitpicking that it takes to put together some of my arrangements, and they don’t think twice about it, and they keep trying until we get it. It’s been real refreshing for me, because we’re all rusty. Neil and I spent the first two weeks of rehearsing, just the two of us, trying to remember all the Buffalo Springfield songs and then playing the records and going, “Oh my God. That wasn’t even close!” [ Laughter. ] So we’ll be doing a couple of those. It’s going to be neat. Of course, Neil’s more interested in acoustic stuff, and I’m committed to the band. I really like playing in electric music, as you know.

Henry Diltz

You brought up working with a band. I want to talk about the new live album . I’ve always loved your 1975 live album, which was actually taken from the same ’71 tour, but this album is much longer, and it’s warts and all. The performances are just as they were, so the feel and the vibe of it is amazing. Talk a little bit about that ’71 tour and why it took so long for this particular show to see the light of day.

Well, I’d forgotten about it. [ Laughter. ] Actually, we found it during a deep dive in the vault. And the first thing that struck us was that the recording is just great. The horn players, The Memphis Horns, were great. And Steve Fromholz, even though he was far too big to have as a partner for me—he was, like, [Mike] Finnigan-sized—he and I were a great blend on guitar. So this is the rest of that era, and yeah, some of the singing is like, I don’t know, I think I closely resemble an irritated dog. [ Laughter. ] And everything is real fast and it has a lot of energy. But it’s real powerful, too. Dallas Taylor [the drummer] had a lot to do with that feel. I would design the arrangements and then I would go back up in the balcony of the theater where we rehearsed and I’d watch while Dallas put the band through their paces. It was just fabulous. What a great ensemble.

I want to talk about your playing. I’m not sure younger musicians, or even younger fans, realize how highly regarded you were among your peers at the time. You were playing with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. You were in that league, as far as they were concerned. But does it bother you that younger fans may know you for the songs but might not think of you as a first-class guitarist first?

What do you mean, “were?” [ Laughter. ]

Well, you’re still here, so you get to tell the tale.

Well, I just spoke to Eric last week, so those relationships and that respect is still there. Now, I’m stealing from Jeff Beck—things like front tension and using the volume knob and really intricate stuff. Though I’ll never be as good as Jeff Beck. Ever.

Well, that’s a whole other…

We lost the greatest one of all, I think, this year.

He was fabulous, although he was very hard to track down and play with because he was the original “I quit the band to work on my car.” He literally did that. “Where’s Jeff?” “He went home.” “Why?” “Well, he got the new small box Chevy and he wanted to build it and put it in the 32.” He was like that, meticulous and mercurial, but a great guy. We’re going to miss him. So anyway, there’s a lot of that in my playing now. I was pretty good back then, but I’m better now, and have some sober time under my belt, so I’m playing with a lot more clarity. I’ve picked up the banjo again. And I don’t get to play bass on stage, but I play a lot on the records. I love playing bass.

Talk a little bit about your songwriting process. There are some amazing songs on this record, songs from the Springfield records and CSNY, but your first couple of solo records and Manassas were really amazing achievements. Do you even remember your writing process from that time?

No. [ Laughter. ] I went on a tear. I mean, I had a decade of just nonstop productivity and then started running out of gas. Now, they come a little slower, but they’re a little more thoughtful and much better lyrically. Although some of those lyrics are pretty good, there’s some bad rhymes in there. Oof. There’s some stinkers. But that’s just me. I had a great time doing it, when the songs would just fall out. Some of them would happen in 15 minutes and some of them would happen in five months, as I was crafting them and trying to nail that illusive third verse.

I’d love to know what we might expect from you after this. Will you be working with Neil? Will you maybe be making another record? Maybe with Judy Collins again?

I have no idea. Honestly. I’m waiting for the next thing to appear. I mean, you can’t get me away from here, now that I’ve gotten used to being a homebody and sitting down with my children at night for dinner. But once the youngest finally goes away to college, then I’ll be an empty nester and I’ll probably be out there more. But travel just sucks these days. And the thought of a 14-hour bus ride is… frightening. But we’ll see what happens.

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Stephen Stills interview: 'We’re still here, haha haha ha!'

Next month, Crosby Stills & Nash will perform their classic 1969 debut album in its entirety at the Royal Albert Hall. But before that, Stephen Stills is in town to talk about his new project The Rides. Happily for Simmy Richman, there are a few other matters still on his mind ... Interviews with living legends often come with limitations. In the case of Stephen Stills the instruction is clear and comes from various directions: "Stephen will only be talking about his new project The Rides." Mention anything else, I am gently informed, and Mr Stills will most likely be none too happy. Which is a shame, because here is a man who has played on some of my favourite music ever. From Buffalo Springfield to Crosby Stills & Nash via some still-special 1970s solo albums and a splinter group, Manassas, as good as anything in that main canon. None of which is to mention the many musicians Stills has played with and come into contact with over his six decades in music. He was there at the first pop festival, Monterey, which came about following a conversation between Stills and David Crosby. He was there, too, at Woodstock and Altamont. A guitarists’ guitarist, Stills is also the only man who has recorded an album to feature both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. So much to talk about then, if only we were permitted to, but first we have to coax Stills gently away from the television showing cricket in the corner of the hotel bar. He is 68 now, a tad hard of hearing, but otherwise a big bear of a man, dressed head to toe in black and still with the healthy hues of the California sun flecked through what’s left of his hair. To establish trust, I show him a cigarette card from the early 1970s I’d found in a San Francisco antiques shop with his boyish gaze printed on the front. “That looks like my son,” he says, before smiling and adding, “or like me without the lumpy bits.” Fearful of those pre-interview instructions, I kick off with a reassuring, “So we’re here to talk about The Rides…” “About the what,” he replies. “The Rides,” I say a little louder. “Oh, The Rides,” he says as the penny drops. “I thought you said the riots.” Right, I figure. If he’s thinking I’m going to kick off with a question about worldwide socio-political turmoil, I’m probably going to be safe to venture cautiously away from the agenda. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation that followed. So The Rides is essentially a blues band, though in your time you’ve been involved in folk, country, rock and all manner of musical genres. Why have you gone back to the blues now? When I was a kid, all my peers were studying the old blues songs – Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf and Lightnin’ Hopkins – so I’m just going back to where I started. Over the years I’ve had other people to please but now I’ve finally got to play in the way I always wanted to do in the first place. One of the reasons I stayed the second time CSN came to Britain [in 1970] was because of what British musicians were doing with blues music. The Surrey boys [Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck] were a big influence on me. I actually played with Lightnin’ Hopkins once in about 1960 at a party in Houston. We were in the bedroom sitting back to back and I was playing a sort of bass line to what he was playing. I put my guitar down and he said, “Why’d you stop?” Why did you? I was shy and overcome and feeling bashful. The Rides consists of you, the keyboardist Barry Goldberg and the 36-year-old guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd. How did it come about? Me and Barry missed each other by a day recording for Super Session [the 1968 album orchestrated by the Dylan and Blood Sweat & Tears guitarist Al Kooper]. And I’d met Kenny Wayne as we have a mutual friend who owns the Indianapolis Colts football team. When my manager first suggested him, I was like, “Who?” He said, “You know him, he’s really great.” And I said, “Sorry, I don’t know who you’re talking about.” I was at a casino, yelling into my phone and I turned around and there was literally a marquee with an eight-storey poster outside the window with his picture on it that said “Friday and Saturday: Kenny Wayne Shepherd.” I went, “Oh, the kid from the football.” It was one of those great human moments where grandad finally connected the fucking dots. The name comes from the fact that me and Kenny Wayne are both automobile nuts, of the Jeremy Clarkson persuasion. We’re not Prius people, let’s put it that way. I’ve got a 1990s Bentley, which I adore (it’s just a very fast living room) and an X5. They’re both pristine and get terrible gas mileage. Do you think Kenny Wayne feels a little bit playing with you like you did playing with Lightnin’ Hopkins? Might be. Sometimes, when we’re playing, I have to say to him, “Come on, you’ve got to bring it now,” and he’ll be like, “I was just being polite.” Which is what Clapton taught me when I first came to Britain: You have to take turns in being polite and not out-flash the other musicians and have good manners. I don’t think competition has that much of a place in music. If the audience want sport, they can go watch rugby. Ours is a collaborative art form. Kenny Wayne is younger than my kid who’s a musician. In many ways it’s like working with my kid only better cos when you work with your kids they tend to be more familiar. Less respectful? I guess. So is everything else on hold while The Rides is happening? Graham [Nash] has a book and wants to go out and play by himself and David [Crosby] wants to do the same with his son, so they’re very much rooting for me with this. All we’re doing together is the Albert Hall [on 8, 9, 11 October], where we’ll be playing the first album. We were astonished how easy that was. It just went, duuurrrr [when we started to rehearse]. A couple of things have changed but not much. And I can still make all my parts, which startles me as much as anyone. But the thing for me right now is The Rides, the three of us together is this magical force and the music just falls out. We wrote these songs with jaw-dropping ease and it’s not always like that. Particularly with [computer programs such as] Pro Tools around. Like Joe Walsh said, if The Eagles had had Pro Tools during [the making of] Hotel California , they’d still be working on it. [Laughs] Would I be right in thinking that you were the least hippie in the CSN collaboration? [Laughs] I abhorred hippies. That’s fair and accurate. I went to a military school and my mother tried to make my manners refined, except for when I was a drunken lout, so all that carrying on about something you’ll never have an answer for never quite worked for me. I went to San Francisco looking for musicians and I saw all these drummers, and I was like, man, back down South none of these people would get jobs ever. And so all that was pretty much lost on me. But yeah, I was there [at Woodstock, Monterey and Altamont]. David Crosby and I virtually thought of Monterey. We were just yakking about why not do a festival where they have the jazz festival in Monterey and someone overheard that and all of a sudden it was on and I had to talk myself on to the bill because Neil [Young] had quit the band. It was quite an interesting time, everything moved very very fast and that’s one of the stumbling blocks of my book… I realised that all this shit happened in 18 months and I couldn’t get a hold of it or the order or who was who or what was what. So I have to go back and check with people. I’m not a diarist really. But the stories are great and fun to write. You’ve met some incredible people along the way... My favourite was Cass Elliot [of the Mamas and the Papas]. We would sit on the street together in New York after earning the money for a slice of pizza and crack wise about the passers-by. We were hang-buddies. She was very well read, had great education and was one of the funniest people in the world. I was on the road when I heard she had died, and she was over here and I was furious cos my friend was gone and she was the one I always looked forward to coming home and going out for dinner with and just yakking endlessly. She also did this one clever thing of getting me up to her house when Graham was going to be there and not telling me. So it was her house! [For decades there have been various opinions as to whether Crosby Stills & Nash sang together for the first time at Elliot’s house, Joni Mitchell’s or somewhere else entirely] OK, so now everyone’s written their version I’m going to have the last word. Graham was head over heels in love with Joni Mitchell and they were smoking some stultifying weed so they’ve misremembered it. The fact is I would never have sung together for the first time in front of Joni Mitchell. I know myself well enough to know I would have been petrified. I would never have been able to function. We did it at Cass’s house and two days later we sang at Joni’s to show off. But the first time was at Cass’s house as I am sitting here. Graham’s book is coming out next so… Actually his book is quite charming and I don’t hold anything against anyone else’s memory but I have a smellophonic, stereophonic image of this thing and I can describe the house in vivid detail. What can you tell me about all the other musicians you’ve played with? It was sheer luck, though some of it was hustling. Hendrix was a wonderfully kind and generous man and he tried to show me lots of things on the guitar. But his hands were the size of an NBA basketball player’s. He’d be like, “See, you can do that.” And I’d be like, “Jimi, put your hand up next to mine.” We had some great times in Ireland just rambling about. I went this one time and we went in to this studio and I said just record everything. So I had a line of tapes the size of that couch but the tragedy is I went back to listen to them and it was just a bunch of people loitering - la la la la la la, clink clink clink. Then Jimi played one song, which was his song, and I gave it to the estate and then there’s another song he played with me. I couldn’t believe we didn’t get more than that, though, but the hangers-on kept showing up and it just never went anywhere. He was quite shy and I think for him being with me was as much about having an American voice to talk to, being a bit of a stranger in a strange land. I always felt very comfortable here and so did he to a point. But at that age in the music business, because this is a small and compact island. it was very competitive and there was a lot of gamesmanship. Sometimes I think he felt a bit like the ball in a ping-pong game. So he’d come and find me and my friend from Louisiana to sit and talk philosophy with and life and so on. Where were you when you heard he’d died? I’d just come back from the road and was on my way back here [to the UK] to find him because he called while I’d just broken my hand and the David Geffen office [at CSN’s record company] didn’t pass the message through to me. But he called and I didn’t find out until Mitch Mitchell put it in his book. He called asking me to come and play bass cos there was a war going on with Noel Redding and he wanted me to fill in and finish out the tour. I wouldn’t have been able to because my hand was broken at that time but if that hadn’t happened I would have dropped what I was doing. I think David Geffen was terrified I was going to run away, and I would have done, but I’d just got to my mother’s house in San Francisco and was coming back to England and I don’t know what I did for the next week… Me and Jimi had a little scheme going and it was very hush hush and shall remain so. I was heartbroken. Many of your early songs were about your former partner, the folk singer Judy Collins, right… She was a big influence in making me behave like a gentleman - for a short while. And we’ve gotten rather close again. She’s good friends with me and my wife. We are texting all the time and we’re threatening to do a little folky album together. You know, we were together at an age when romance was really romance. Back then when you fell you fell hard and you’d wear your heart on your sleeve and you write all these songs. It’s like Taylor Swift today: you know who she’s singing about and it doesn’t matter. Judy even gave her book the title Sweet Judy Blue Eyes [after Stills’ song “Suite Judy Blue Eyes”] and writes lovingly about the experience and I’m flattered beyond measure. She was very much nicer to me in prose than I was to her in song. How did the Ringo Starr collaboration come about? I asked [if he wanted to play on my album], and he said, “Sure, I’ll coom [Does passable Liverpool accent].” I bought his house [Brookfields, in Elstead, Surrey, which Starr had bought from Peter Sellers], actually. Maureen [Starr’s first wife] took me down there and I said, “I can’t believe you’re selling this,” and she was like, “Well, it’s too far and ner ner ner ner.” I said, “No. It’s perfect.” Do you still own it? I wish. I made the mistake of bringing my mother and sister and they spent so much money while I was on the road the accountant sold it. I cried a lot when I got back. It was my little spot of England. Is it true that you play percussion on the Bee Gees’ ‘You Should Be Dancing’? We were in the studio next door making a CSN album and David was all full of himself and saying this is going to be the album of the year. I went, “No it’s not, that’s being recorded across the hall,” cos I’d heard some of that Saturday Night Fever stuff and I knew it was totally unique and going to be a monster. So I played timbales and for a long time that was my only platinum single. If I’d got royalties from that I’d still be in that house in Surrey now. Maybe The Rides will give you the means to buy it back… Well, I’m an old fart now. I don’t give a fuck. If younger musicians want to elbow me out the way I’m happy to step aside. But they can’t seem to get rid of me. During the punk era, it was anything but 1960s people. They just spat on us. But we outlasted them. We’re still here. Hahahahaha. And what does Stephen Stills like to do when he’s not playing music? I’m a pretty private guy. I like having people over and having a meal at home. We’ve got a new big mummy crew cos I’ve got small children again. My children are aged from 42 to eight. Father’s Day was quite a day. I had the regiment check in, all seven of them. You have a reputation for sometimes being short with journalists… I had a torturous day in New York one time where someone had fed a writer this thing that I had tried out for the Monkees and failed. The truth was that I wanted to sell my songs to a hit TV show to make money. The thought of being a pretend Beatle on TV was so appalling that I couldn’t imagine it, but I went down and said I know a kid, and I sent them Peter Tork. This journalist kept saying, “But they turned you down right?” I was like, “You’re not getting the point.” So I ended up going fuck you! Often the journalist has already written the piece and all they’re looking for you to do is to confirm their obnoxious preconceptions. There’s a point where you just go, fuck fame, fuck being famous, fuck being a celebrity, fuck this. I’m a fucking musician. Take my picture and make it up. Thanks for not being like that with me. That was an absolute pleasure It was. I love that I talked about all the things you were warned not to talk to me about. High fives on that! The Rides release their debut album ‘Can’t Get Enough’ on Monday 26 August on Provogue Records ( theridesband.com )

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Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Joe Walsh Share Stage at ‘Light Up the Blues’ Concert

Stephen Stills, Joe Walsh and Neil Young performing “Mr. Soul” at the Greek Theatre, April 22, 2023

Stephen Stills and Neil Young teamed once again on stage last night (April 22, 2023) at the sixth edition of Stills’ Light Up the Blues concert series at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. The three-time bandmates performed songs from each of their previous (and legendary) collaborations with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and closing with “Long May You Run,” a favorite they recorded as the Stills Young Band. Among the fellow music stars joining them for the event—organized by Stills and his wife, Kristen, to benefit Autism Speaks—were Willie Nelson and Joe Walsh. The concert marked Young’s return to the live concert stage for the first time since the pandemic. (He has previously been announced as one of the stars set to perform at Nelson’s pair of 90th birthday concerts. Those take place one week later, also in Los Angeles.)

During Young’s 11-song set, he and Stills were joined by Walsh for a sparkling version of Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul.”

The resumption of the Light Up the Blues show marked the first post-pandemic concert in the series; a May 30, 2020, edition was cancelled. The players were joined onstage by Young’s longtime touring band, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, plus Chris Stills, Oliver Stills, Sharon Von Etten, and many special guests. Jeff Garlin served as emcee. The event was an immediate sell-out.

Stills honored his longtime bandmate, David Crosby, with a performance of “Wooden Ships,” which they wrote with Paul Kantner. Stills was joined by his son, Chris, and Crosby’s son James Raymond.

Young has participated in the annual benefit concert several times. The 2023 edition was first revealed on Feb. 13. David Crosby’s son, James Raymond, also performed. “His singing voice sounds so much like David that it’s scary,” Stills told the Rolling Stone . Days after the benefit was announced, Stills shared news of a previously unreleased live album from 1971 that features two songs with Croz.

Watch Stills and Walsh perform “Helplessly Hoping at the 2023 benefit

The pair also teamed on Walsh’s classic rock favorite, “Rocky Mountain Way.”

Walsh also performed “Life’s Been Good.”

Related: Our recap of the 2016 edition

Watch Stills and Young perform Buffalo Springfield’s “Bluebird”

Over the years, the Light Up the Blues Concert has also featured such artists as Crosby, Stills & Nash, John Mayer, Patti Smith, Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, Beck, Burt Bacharach, Don Felder, Jakob Dylan, and more, and has raised millions of dollars in support of the work of Autism Speaks, helping to drive the organization’s mission.

Garlin introduced Nelson for his brief set.

Watch Stills and Young perform “Long May You Run”

Light Up the Blues 6 celebrates people with autism, while supporting Autism Speaks in its mission to promote solutions, across the spectrum and throughout the life span, for the needs of people with autism and their families. Proceeds from the Light Up the Blues concert will go toward Autism Speaks’ efforts, which include funding life-enhancing research, increasing early childhood screening and interventions, and improving the transition to adulthood.

Related: Our Album Rewind of the Stills-Young Band’s 1976 LP, Long May You Run

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Where’s Richie Furay ? Not here. Buffalo Springfield

Where in the article did it say that it was a Buffalo Springifeld reunion? Neil rocks with Lukas’s band!

Neil Young is and has always been one of the most overrated musicians on the planet. He’s a rough, ragged, abrasive guitarist and has an off-putting, whiny singing voice. I love Stephen Stills, but I can’t stand listening to Young. I guess opinions vary. If you like Neil Young, great. Have fun. As for me, I’ll avoid subjecting my ears to his cacophony.

Over rated? I was at the iconic Dylan 30th Anniversary show at MSG. A who’s who of the greatest classic tock artists of our time. And Neil Young with his unique voice absolutely stole the show. Not sure who you grew up listening to, but in bashing Neil Young you are certainly in the minority.

His voice is unique and quite original. My problem with Neil was his lack of discretion in his album releases. He is one of those prolific songwriter/artists who thinks every note he ever recorded was worthy of an album release. He was wrong. Maybe one in every three records he released was worth the effort. He needed an editor.

“worth the effort”? To who? Neil Young can and does release whatever he feels like. He doesn’t follow some marketing script that says only release records every three years and only if it is going to be platinum. He writes what he feels, records what he feels, and releases what he feels. That’s Neil Young.

Neil Young is one of the best artists still around. You have your opinions as does anyone but my opinion is Young is amazing. He’s truly a legend and one of my top idols of all time.

Before you go on about Neil, research his youth. He has probably overcome more problems others would never expect. I’m proud of him. We share one of those deficits. He didn’t want pity. He’s made it with class, strength, and talent.

I’m sorry. As much as I admire Stills and Young, and what they’re raising money for, that was just pathetic. Sadly, Stills just cannot sing anymore, which is tragic because he was once so vibrant vocally. And with Young lurking around the stage singing half the lyrics to “Mr. Soul” while not at a microphone just makes me wonder if these guys should just be in an old age home now. Musicians in their primes can’t just go out and do a major performance when they’ve been away from it for long periods of time without extensive rehearsals and warming their skillsets up. What makes these guys think they can just get together and play like it was yesterday? I understand the concept of fellowship doing this show, but there were just too many guitarists out there banging away on these song creating a bunch of noise overall. While you have to admire Joe Walsh’s spirit, as he seemingly wants to get in on every gig of this type that exists, he was not adding to the mix, and was unnecessary. It was all so painful, I couldn’t watch any of their songs all the way through. Every appearance I’ve seen of Stills lately on these 1-off gigs, he’s been the same. But, somehow, I was hoping for more from Neil Young who has been performing up until recent years. We still have their great records, but leave the legacy in peace.

On the other hand, Nash sounds as sublime as ever.

Amazingly, he still does, Jeff. How does he do it?

I actually asked him that in a recent interview and he said he doesn’t know! He said he doesn’t do anything special to take care of himself. Just good genes, I guess.

I was at this show at the Greek Theatre. I was thrilled to hear some Buffalo Springfield tunes and early CSN. It was also great to see Joe Walsh. I would have been happier with less Neil Young and more Stephen.

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Stephen Stills Announces Solo U.S. Tour Dates This Spring

Stills' career-spanning four-cd anthology "carry on" is available now.

The tour kicks off on May 8 at the Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz, CA, and concludes June 3 at the Fox Theater in Tucson, AZ. The show will feature two sets: one solo acoustic and one full electric band set of career-spanning favorites, including several new songs. Stills will be accompanied by longtime CSN bandmates Kevin McCormick (bass) and Todd Caldwell (organ), with a new addition on drums, Mario Calire.

On April 5th, Stills and his wife Kristen hosted the 2nd Light Up The Blues Concert to benefit Autism Speaks in downtown Los Angeles at the newly restored Theatre @ the ACE. Proceeds from the sold out concert benefit Autism Speaks' research and advocacy efforts for families and individuals impacted by the disorder. Light Up the Blues, a documentary-style film recorded at last year's concert to benefit Autism Speaks is available now through iTunes

About STEPHEN STILLS: Stephen Stills is the only artist ever to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame two times in one night - in 1997, for Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, and Nash (CSN). One of rock music's most enduring figures, Stills is also a member of the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, a BMI Music Icon (with CSN), and has a career now spanning six decades, multiple solo works, and four hugely influential groups - Manassas and Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young (CSNY), in addition to Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash. As renowned for his instrumental virtuosity as for writing era-defining anthems including "For What It's Worth" and "Love The One You're With," Stills is ranked #28 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, calling his acoustic picking on "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" "a paragon of unplugged beauty." Three of Stills' albums are among Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Buffalo Springfield Again, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Déjà Vu. In 2013, Stills released Carry On, a four-CD anthology produced by Graham Nash and Joel Bernstein, capturing the remarkable scope of his career using 83 tracks (25 unreleased) to retrace the musical paths he's explored. Most recently, Stills toured with The Rides, his blues-rock trio with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Barry Goldberg behind their debut album Can't Get Enough. This year, he is on tour, solo and with Crosby, Stills & Nash.

THU - 5/08/14 - Santa Cruz, CA - Catalyst Club FRI - 5/09/14 - Redding, CA - Cascade Theater SUN - 5/11/14 - Portland, OR - Aladdin Theater TUE - 5/13/14 - Boise, ID - Knitting Factory WED - 5/14/14 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot FRI - 5/16/14 - Aspen, CO - Belly Up Aspen SAT - 5/17/14 - Boulder, CO - Boulder Theater MON - 5/19/14 - San Francisco, CA - Yoshi's TUE - 5/20/14 - Oakland, CA - Yoshi's THU - 5/22/14 - Napa, CA - City Winery SAT - 5/24/14 - Santa Barbara, CA - Granada Theatre SUN - 5/25/14 - Riverside, CA - Fox Theater TUE - 5/27/14 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up WED - 5/28/14 - Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up FRI - 5/30/14 - San Juan Capistrano, CA - Coach House TUE - 6/03/14 - Tucson, AZ - Fox Theater

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Discography. Tour Dates. ABOUT STEPHEN STILLS. An American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As both a solo act and seminal member of a number of successful bands. Stills has combined record sales of over 35 million albums.
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Stephen Stills: 'David Crosby got out of here just in time'
I n August 1971, Stephen Stills arrived in Berkeley for the final dates of his first ever solo tour to be greeted by a surprise visitor: David Crosby.Just a year earlier their pioneering folk rock ...
Stephen Stills Concerts & Live Tour Dates: 2024-2025 Tickets
Follow Stephen Stills and be the first to get notified about new concerts in your area, buy official tickets, and more. Find tickets for Stephen Stills concerts near you. Browse 2024 tour dates, venue details, concert reviews, photos, and more at Bandsintown.
Stephen Stills Tickets, 2024 Concert Tour Dates
Buy Stephen Stills tickets from the official Ticketmaster.com site. Find Stephen Stills tour schedule, concert details, reviews and photos.
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Follow Stephen Stills on Ents24 to receive updates on any new tour dates the moment they are announced... Follow. Be the first to know about new tour dates. Alerts are free and always will be. We hate spam and will never share your email address with anyone else. More than a million fans already rely on Ents24 to follow their favourite artists ...
The Rides
PIERCED ARROW TOUR DATES. March 29 - Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium. March 31 - New Orleans, LA Tipitina's. April 1 - Shreveport, LA Strand Theatre. April 3 - Pensacola, FL Saenger Theatre. April 5 - Melbourne, FL Maxwell C. King Center. April 6 - Pompano Beach, FL Pompano Beach Amphitheater. April 8 - St. Petersburg, FL Tampa Bay Blues Festival.
Stephen Stills to tour the UK this autumn
30th June 2008. Stephen Stills has announced details of a UK tour. Perhaps best known for his role in supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, the guitarist will hit the road in October. He ...
StephenStills
StephenStills. 110,184 likes · 733 talking about this. The official Facebook page for two time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Stephen Stills.
Stephen Stills And Manassas Tour Announcements 2022 & 2023 ...
London, UK. Rainbow Theatre. Apr 29 1972. Peoria, IL, US. Robertson Memorial Fieldhouse, Bradley University. Photos (1) See all photos (1) Find out more about Stephen Stills And Manassas tour dates & tickets 2022-2023. Want to see Stephen Stills And Manassas in concert? Find information on all of Stephen Stills And Manassas's upcoming ...
Stephen Stills: How he recorded his debut album, with a little help
Stephen Stills is about to become of the highest paid rock stars on the planet. ... Stephen Stills moved to the UK to record his debut album, with a little help from Jimi, Ringo and Eric ... He also made it an acoustic staple on the CSN&Y tour. In London, Stills got Halverson to turn all the lights off while he walked round the darkened studio ...
Stephen Stills Talks Neil Young, David Crosby, and New Live Album
Stephen Stills on His 'Enduring' Friendship With Neil Young and Butting Heads With Crosby ... Live At Berkeley 1971, taken from his legendary '71 tour. ...
Stephen Stills UK Tour
Legendary guitar player and songwriter Stephen Stills is set for a UK visit after announcing a series of live dates. The legendary figure underwent serious surgery late last year, before taking time out to recover. Stills was part of seminal US group Buffalo Springfield before hitting paydirt as one quarter of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Stephen Stills
Stephen Arthur Stills (born January 3, 1945) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Manassas.As both a solo act and member of three successful bands, Stills has combined record sales of over 35 million albums. He was ranked number 28 in Rolling Stone ' s 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time ...
Joni Mitchell Library
Next month, Crosby Stills & Nash will perform their classic 1969 debut album in its entirety at the Royal Albert Hall. But before that, Stephen Stills is in town to talk about his new project The Rides. Happily for Simmy Richman, there are a few other matters still on his mind ... Interviews with living legends often come with limitations.
Stephen Stills Concert & Tour History
Los Angeles, California, United States. Sep 08, 2023. Jim Irsay Band / Stephen Stills / Ann Wilson / Peter Wolf / John Mellencamp / Criss Angel. 2023 Indianapolis Colts Kickoff Concert. Photos Setlists. Lucas Oil Stadium. Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Apr 29, 2023 -.
Stephen Stills
Stephen Stills. Get Artist Updates. Events. Artist Info. There are no upcoming events. Find concert tickets for Stephen Stills upcoming 2024 shows. Explore Stephen Stills tour schedules, latest setlist, videos, and more on livenation.com.
Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Joe Walsh Share Stage at 'Light Up the
The resumption of the Light Up the Blues show marked the first post-pandemic concert in the series; a May 30, 2020, edition was cancelled. The players were joined onstage by Young's longtime touring band, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, plus Chris Stills, Oliver Stills, Sharon Von Etten, and many special guests.
British guitarist analyses Stephen Stills blending of ...
Tonight we're taking a look at Stephen Stills back in 1983 laying down some serious acoustic work! Original video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTZv-PZ...
Stephen Stills and Judy Collins Recording Collaborative Album
The tour begins in late July as Stills is also planning a jaunt with supergroup The Rides, and runs through September as the two will follow up a recording session that will result in a new collaborative album from both artists. Consult the full schedule below. Stephen Stills/Judy Collins Tour Dates: July 26 Highland Park, IL—Ravinia Festival.
Stephen Stills Announces Solo U.S. Tour Dates This Summer
Most recently, Stills recorded a new record with The Rides, his blues-rock trio with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Barry Goldberg, to follow up their debut album Can't Get Enough. This year, he is on tour, solo and with Crosby, Stills & Nash. STEPHEN STILLS U.S. SUMMER TOUR DATES. MON 7/6/15 - Alexandria, VA - The Birchmere.
Stephen Stills Announces Solo U.S. Tour Dates This Spring
Most recently, Stills toured with The Rides, his blues-rock trio with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Barry Goldberg behind their debut album Can't Get Enough. This year, he is on tour, solo and with Crosby, Stills & Nash. THU - 5/08/14 - Santa Cruz, CA - Catalyst Club. FRI - 5/09/14 - Redding, CA - Cascade Theater.

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