Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills Live (1975)

Stephen Stills is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Stephen Stills had signed a new deal with Columbia Records in 1975, but the same year a final album was put out by his old label Atlantic (where he had been for CSNY, his first two solo albums and Manassas). Stephen Stills Live had been recorded in Chicago back in 1974, and saw Stills backed by his own band consisting of Donnie Dacus (guitar), Jerry Aiello (organ), Kenny Passarelli (bass), Russ Kunkel (drums) and Joe Lala (percussion). Both Passarelli and Lala had been members of Manassas. Stills himself played both guitar and piano.

The album was split into an electric side and an acoustic side. The acoustic side saw him go through some solo performances which showcased his talented fingerpicking. Alongside some of his own songs it also had covers of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me" and Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'". The electric side, with the band, proved that he could really rock, the highlight being the great version of the old CSN classic "Wooden Ships" which opened the album. It also featured a cover of Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way".

The album turned out great, and was proof of Still's immense talent as a musican, singer and bandleader, arguably being much better than the new records he was then recording for Columbia.

Stills (1975) <|> Illegal Stills (1976)
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Stephen Stills - Stills (1975)

Stephen Stills is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

With the dissolution of his fantastic band Manassas in late 1973, Stephen Stills started work on his next solo album. However work on it was delayed by a reunion of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, who went on tour in 1974. When the tour ended Stills signed a new contract with Columbia Records, and got back to finishing the shelved album. Stills was completed and released in 1975, showcasing a smooth rock sound with flavours of blues, jazz & latin. Among the musicians credited were many high profile session players and rock star associates, including guitarists Donnie Dacus and George Terry, percussionsit Joe LaLa, keyboardist Jerry Aeillo, bassist Leland Sklar, drummers Dallas Taylor, Russ Kunkel and Ringo Starr, and singer-songwriter Rick Roberts. Crosby and Nash also made cameos. Stills himself played guitar, bass and keyboards. The songs were all originals (some co-authored with other musicians), with the one exception being a cover of Neil Young's "New Mama".

The album was strong, but arguably paled in comparison to his brilliant first two albums. Much had changed since then, and Stills was soon to find an increasing lack of both sales and critical interest in his solo work.

Stephen Stills 2 (1971) <|> Stephen Stills Live (1975)
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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Four Way Street (1971)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

After the success of their chart-topping Deja Vu album, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young went on tour together for a second time, accompanied by Fuzzy Samuels on bass and Johnny Barbata on drums. Recordings were made form the concerts, and a live album was produced. Shortly after the tour all four members released high-profile solo albums, the debuts of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and the third for Young. Many of the songs they had debuted on the tour appeared on record for the first time on these albums.
In 1971 the live album taken from the tour was released. Four Way Street was a two-LP set, divided between an acoustic disc and an electric disc. The acoustic segment featured all four members performing both by themselves and in various configurations, all of them getting to take the spotlight in turn. A notable inclusion was Neil Young's "On The Way Home", an old song he had originally written when with Buffalo Springfield (their version featured Richie Furay on vocals). He had been performing it in his solo set for years (usually as the opening song), but this was the first time his version had been released on record (the other three helping out with extra guitar and vocals). Crosby also sang "Triad", a song he had written and recorded when with The Byrds, but never released (Jefferson Airplane instead had released the first version of it), and "The Lee Shore", a number he performed with Nash for years, but did not see its studio version released until their 1991 box set (also available here). The electric half let Stills and Young resume the extensive electric guitar workouts they had originally performed with Buffalo Springfield, in particular on the long jams of "Southern Man" and "Carry On".
The album got to #1. However behind the scenes, tensions between the four members were high, and eventually they were stretched to breaking point. By the time of the album's release, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had officially broken up, and they all went back to work on their respective solo careers (though Crosby & Nash continued to work as a duo). There would be various attempted reunions over the years, and they did tour again in 1974, but attempts to record together again took a long time to see any results. Crosby, Stills & Nash managed to release albums in 1977 and 1982, but another album credited to all four of them had to wait until 1988.

This version of Four Way Street is actually the 1992 expanded edition, which features four bonus acoustic tracks.

Deja Vu (1970) <|> CSN (1977)
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The Stills-Young Band - Long May You Run (1976)

The Stills-Young Band was a short-lived collaboration between Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

In 1976, Stephen Stills and Neil Young hadn't recorded togethether since 1970, with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Deja Vu and the live album Four Way Street. Since then, Stephen Stills had recorded five solo albums, and two with his band Manassas. Neil Young had seen much greater success with his critically-acclaimed solo career, releasing his most famous work between 1970 and 1975. There had also been a CSNY reunion tour in 1974, but attempts to record an album with the quartet had failed.
In 1976 they began work on an album together. They used Stills' session musician friends as their backing group, all of whom had appeared on his recent solo albums - Jerry Aiello (organ/piano), George Perry (bass), Joe Lala (percussion) and Joe Vitale (drums). Both Stills and Young handled the guitars. David Crosby and Graham Nash joined in with the recording, adding their vocals to many songs, and at one point it looked likely to transform into the long-awaited CSNY reunion album. However they at the time were busy with an album of their own (Whistling Down The Wire), and Stills and Young wiped their vocals from the finished album. This led to a big fall-out between the four of them.
The album was released in September 1976, and the Stills-Young Band embarked on a tour to promote it. However after nine dates Young dropped out, and Stills was forced to complete the tour by himself. The brief experiment was over. Retrospectively, the album can't really be seen as a highlight of either of their careers, but it does contain some good material, in particular the title track, which has endured as part of Young's set-list to the present day. The song is actually about his car.

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Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills 2 (1971)

Stephen Stills is an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

1971 saw Stephen Stills release the follow-up to his fantastic debut album. Although it did not fare as well on the charts, it was arguably just as good as its predecessor, featuring a similar mix of rock, folk and more. Its strength lied in the splendid production, the arrangements, and its use of brilliant musicians. These included Fuzzy Samuels on bass, Dallas Taylor on drums, and Paul Harris, Dr John and Billy Preston on keyboards. Stills himself played guitar, keyboards and bass, and the album really showcased him as a very talented and versatile singer. There were also brief guitar cameos from Eric Clapton, Nils Lofgren and Jerry Garcia (who also played pedal steel).

Stephen Stills (1970) <|> Stills (1975)
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Crosby, Stils, Nash & Young - Find The Cost Of Freedom (1969-1973)

Compilation
Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

Shortly after the massive success of their Deja Vu album, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly followed it by the fantastic single "Ohio". The song was written by Neil Young as a reaction to the Kent State shootings of May 1970, and it quickly made it to #14 on the singles charts. It is today both one of the band's and Young's best-known songs.
However the song and its fantastic Stills-written b-side ("Find The Cost Of Freedom") were never actually released on an album, barring greatest hits packages and live albums. Therefore I've put this ten-song compilation together, both songs bookending a selection of outtakes. Four of these songs were released on the band's 1991 box set, whilst the other four are rarities.
The best song here is surely David Crosby's "The Lee Shore". A live solo version of this song was released on Four Way Street, but this studio outtake (with full band arrangement) is really something else, and perhaps even one of the best ever CSNY recordings. There's also a fantastic version of Joni Mitchell's "Urge For Going", and acoustic readings of The Beatles' "Blackbird" and Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" (the latter performed solo by Stills). For Neil Young fans, there is an early group version of "Human Highway", and a fantastic rocking studio cut of "Sea Of Madness" (a song which has never been released except the live version on the Woodstock soundtrack).

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Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills (1970)

Stephen Stills is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Stephen Stills began his music career as one of the three singer-songwriters in the folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield, where his composition "For What It's Worth" gave them their only chart hit. After their dissolution, he formed folk-rock's first supergroup, Crosby, Stills & Nash, who released two massively successful albums (the second with Neil Young as a fourth member). By 1970, he had earned himself a repuation as a brilliant singer, songwriter, guitarist and all-round musician.
After the success of Deja Vu, all four members of CSNY were offered the chance to record solo albums on Atlantic records. Stills' self-titled solo debut showed the full range of his musical talent, fusing rock, folk, blues and more into a cohesive whole. Always a multi-instrumentalist, Stills himself contributed guitar, bass, piano, organ and percussion, and was backed by a roster of famous musicians including bassist Fuzzy Samuels, drummers Dallas Taylor and Johnny Barbata (all three had been or would be part of the CSNY rhythm section), organist Booker T. Jones... plus appearances from Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. In fact this is the only instance of Clapton and Hendrix performing on the same album (Clapton plays on "Go Back Home", and Hendrix on "Old Time Good Times"). Backing vocals came from a large chorus including Graham Nash, David Crosby, John Sebastian, Rita Coolidge, Cass Elliott and others.
The album was successful. The single "Love The One You're With" reached #14 on the charts, and the album itself got to #3. As well as this commercial success, it proved Stills as the most talented overall musician in CSNY (as guitarist, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer), and revealed the true scope of his musical vision away from his bandmates.

|> Stephen Stills 2 (1971)

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu (1970)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

After the success of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the trio had to think about going on tour. However to perform as a full electric band they needed extra members. In the end they chose to bring in Neil Young, who had played with Stills in Buffalo Springfield, and had recently started out on his own solo career. Now a quartet, they became Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Stills and Young gave them a formidable double lead guitar attack, and between the four of them they could handle all acoustic and electric guitars as well as keyboard duties. And with four practicing singer-songwriters on board, they already had a huge repertoire of material. They kept drummer Dallas Taylor on board, who had played on their debut album, and brought in 19-year-old Motown bassist Greg Reeves to complete the touring outfit. Young's contract allowed him to continue with his solo career whilst he performed with the group. They went on tour in summer 1969 - their second ever gig together was at the Woodstock Festival. The folk-rock supergroup were becoming a huge success, and expectations were high when they came to record their next album.
Deja Vu proved to differ somewhat from the first album. The group broadened their pallette, resulting in a more diverse collection of songs (and perhaps a less consistent record for that reason). More so than the first album it sounded like a coalition of four singer-songwriters rather than a band. Crosby and Nash's signature songwriting styles become even more apparent. Crosby contributed the hippie blues lament "Almost Cut My Hair" and the surreal, dream-like title track, whilst Nash came up with the radio-friendly country-rock of "Teach Your Children" and the whimsical ode to domesticity of "Our House". Stills contributed the opening song "Carry On", which defined the archetypal CSNY sound, and the quiet solo number "4+20". Young wrote two songs, the slow, aching "Helpless" (which became one of his best-loved songs) and the three-part suite "Country Girl". They also recorded a rocking version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock", and "Everybody I Love You" was a collaboration between Young and Stills. Most of the instruments were played by the four of them with Taylor and Reeves, but there were also guest appearances from Jerry Garcia on pedal steel and John Sebastian on harmonica.
However, was the album actually the perfect coalition that the record sleeve would have you believe? Crosby & Nash added their superb vocal harmonies to all the songs except Stills' solo number, and Stills himself is on every song playing some instrument or another even if he's not singing. But what of Young? Apart from his own two songs he doesn't sing anywhere else, and just adds guitar to three others. He was always the outsider in the foursome (perhaps because he didn't rely on the others - he had by far the most successful solo career), and his presence on Deja Vu is really as a guest guitarist who gets to sing two of his own songs. Various personality clashes and power struggles meant the group eventually imploded after their 1970 tour, and despite numerous sporadic reunions over the years that continue to the present day, they have never come close to the quality of their first two classic albums, upon which their whole reputation as folk-rock's first and foremost supergroup rests.
Because despite the group's hidden flaws, Deja Vu was a commerical success. It reached #1 on the pop album charts, and "Woodstock", "Our House" and "Teach Your Children" all reached the Top 40 on the singles charts.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) <|> Four Way Street (1971)
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Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield & Stephen Stills - Super Session (1968)

Al Kooper is an American singer-songwriter, producer and musician. Mike Bloomfield was an American guitarist, one of the most highly regarded white blues musicians of the 1960s. Stephen Stills is an American singer-songwriter and musician.

By 1968 Al Kooper had played with Bob Dylan both on stage and in the studio, been a member of The Blues Project, and formed Blood, Sweat & Tears with Steve Katz (subsequently leaving after their first album). He was then working for Columbia Records as an A&R man.

In May 1968 he called up his old friend guitarist Mike Bloomfield and asked him to come to the studio to jam. Kooper and Bloomfield had worked together in 1965 on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album. Bloomfield was curently working with his group The Electric Flag, but he was about to leave them. With Kooper on keyboards and Bloomfield on electric guitar, together with bassist Harvey Brooks (who had also worked with them on Highway 61 Revisited) and drummer Eddie Hoh they recorded a series of blues-based jams. Barry Goldberg also played electric piano on two of the numbers.
However Bloomfield was struggling with imsomnia and a heroin addiction - the next day, with more studio time booked, he failed to turn up. So Kooper called up Stephen Stills (who was then leaving Buffalo Springfield) to replace him on guitar.
The resultant album, Super Session, was credited on the cover to all three of them, the first side with Bloomfield and the second with Stills. Horn arrangements were afterwards added to some of the songs. The first side is firmly rooted in blues and is mostly instrumental, driven by Bloomfield's fantastic guitar playing. It's also notable for the nine-minute modal jazz-fusion number "His Holy Modal Majesty". The second side has more focus on Kooper's vocals, with renditions of Dylan's "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" (where Kooper plays 12-string guitar), Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" (which is drawn out into a fantastic 11 minute jam) and Willie Cobbs' "You Don't Love Me". Stills plays some brilliant lead guitar throughout.
Though it was initially conceived as just Al Kooper jamming with some of his famous musician pals, Super Session actually ended up becoming one of his best-known and most successful releases, and also known as featuring some of Bloomfield's best guitar playing.

|> The Live Adventures Of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper (1969)

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Crosby, Stills & Nash - Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969)

Crosby, Stills & Nash are a folk-rock 'supergroup', made up of David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They are sometimes joined by occasional fourth member Neil Young.

The roots of folk-rock's first supergroup goes back to the genre's first popular group - The Byrds. David Crosby had been a founding member of The Byrds, where he sang harmony and played rhythm guitar. However as he began to develop as a songwriter and artistic force in his own right he started to fall out with the rest of the group. After five albums, he was dismissed from the band in Autumn 1967. Buffalo Springfield, another top folk-rock group from L.A., had fallen apart by 1968, leaving guitarist/singer/songwriter Stephen Stills at a loose end. Stills and Crosby were already friends, as both their bands had toured together, and they began to jam in '68. They decided to form a group together, and the trio was filled out by Englishman Graham Nash. Nash was a member of British group The Hollies, but he had begun to grow creatively frustrated, and was eager to embrace the changing musical directions happening in America. He left the Hollies, and folk-rock's first supergroup was formed - Crosby, Stills & Nash (otherwise knows as CSN). They were not just a band, but a coalition of three already successful musicians, each a skilled songwriter and talented singer in his own right. As all three of them were already famous, expectations were high, and when their self-titled debut album came out it did not disappoint.
What made it so unique were the vocal harmonies - the sound of the three of them singing together made for something truly magical. Built on a bed-rock of acoustic folk-rock, their harmonies took the genre to places it hadn't been before. All three of them brought their own unique songwriting styles - Stills fused folk, country and blues together in a rock context and produced archetypal CSN songs ("Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", "You Don't Have To Cry", "Helplessly Hoping", "49 Bye-Byes"), whilst the other two contributed the polar extremes of this sound. Crosby wrote the surreal, dream-like "Guinnevere", whilst Nash produced the melodic radio-friendly "Marrakesh Express". "Wooden Ships" was authored by Stills, Crosby and Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner, and the Airplane recorded their own version the same year on their Volunteers album.
This debut album was very much dominated by Stills. He played almost all the instruments himself (acoustic and electric guitars, bass, organ and percussion), apart from the drums which were played by Dallas Taylor, and it is his songs which define the CSN sound best. However without Crosby & Nash it would never have been anywhere near as special. The album rocketed the three of them to the very top of the American rock & roll counter-culture, reaching #6 on the charts. In their long career together (on and off throughout the years, but still working together to this day), their classic first album has never been bettered.

|> Deja Vu (1970)
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