Buffalo Springfield

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and in this podcast episode I will review the brief, but very influential, career of the band named after a Springfield, Ohio road roller company:  Buffalo Springfield!

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott. The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John. It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then.
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Rock On!

Transcript

Thank you for that introduction and welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and in this podcast episode I will review the brief, but very influential, career of the band named after a Springfield, Ohio road roller company:  Buffalo Springfield!

The interesting back story about the formation of the Buffalo Springfield band ironically involves a 1953 Pontiac hearse driving on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip.  But before I get into that, we must flash back to three musical connections that formed back in the mid-1960's.

The First Connection:  Stills and Furay in 1964 New York City.  Stephen Stills moved to the Big Apple from Florida and joined a nine-member vocal harmony ensemble called the Au Go Go Singers.  They were the house band at the Cafe au Go Go in New York City.  One of Stills' fellow band members there was Richie Furay.  This ensemble did some touring and released one album in 1964, before breaking up in 1965.  An interesting side note:  Prior to 1964, while Stills was in Florida, he played in a band called the Continentals along with future Eagles guitarist Don Felder.

The Second Connection:  Stills and Young in 1965 Thunder Bay, Ontario.  After the Au Go Go Singers broke up, Stills formed a folk-rock band called the Company.  The Company embarked on a six-week tour of Canada, where Stephen Stills met Neil Young in a club called the Fourth Dimension in Thunder Bay.  Young was there with the Squires, a Winnipeg group he had been leading since February 1963.  Stills has since said that Young was doing what he always wanted to do, playing folk music in a rock band. 

The Third Connection:  Young and Palmer in 1966 Toronto, Ontario.  While in Toronto in early 1966, Neil Young met Bruce Palmer, who was playing bass for the Mynah Birds.  In need of a lead guitarist, Palmer invited Young to join the group, and Young accepted.

With those three background connections, we now travel to Los Angeles, California.  The Company broke up in New York in early 1966, and Stephen Stills convinced Richie Furay to move with him to California.  Also, the Mynah Birds record deal fell through, so Neil Young and Bruce Palmer bought a 1953 Pontiac hearse, which they drove to Los Angeles in late March 1966.

Young and Palmer arrived in L.A. hoping to meet Stephen Stills.  However, after almost a week of searching clubs and coffeehouses, the pair had been unable to find Stills.  Consequently, on April 6th, 1966, Young and Palmer decided to leave Los Angeles and drive north to San Francisco.  While the two were stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard, they were spotted by Stills and Richie Furay, who were heading the other direction down Sunset.  Reportedly, Stills and Furay somehow switched lanes and squeezed in behind Young's hearse.  The four musicians pulled off the road and the rest - as they say - is history! 

So the foursome decided to form a band.  Stills, Furay, and Young would sing and play guitar, Palmer would play bass, and they quickly added journeyman Canadian Dewey Martin to play drums.  The band's name was taken from a brand of steamroller made by the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company.  The Buffalo Springfield band debuted on April 11th, 1966, at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, just five days after that chance encounter on Sunset Boulevard.  Then they began a short tour of California as the opening act for the Dillards and the Byrds.  Chris Hillman of the Byrds persuaded the owners of the Whisky a Go Go to give Buffalo Springfield an audition.  Buffalo Springfield ended up playing at the Whisky for seven weeks, from May 2nd to June 18th, 1966.  

Their work at the Whisky a Go Go attracted interest from a number of record labels.  Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, who managed Sonny & Cher, became the Buffalo Springfield's new managers.  They made a deal with Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, and the band began recording in July 1986 at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood.  The first Buffalo Springfield single, Neil Young's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", was released in August 1968.  The B side was Stephen Still's "Go and Say Goodbye."  The single reached the top 25 in the Los Angeles area, but failed to chart nationally.

The band's first album, called Buffalo Springfield, was recorded in the summer of 1966 at Gold Star Studios.  Band members Stephen Stills and Neil Young wrote all of the material on the album.  Young sang lead on only two of his five compositions, and Furay sang lead on the other three.  Atlantic subsidiary Atco released the LP in both mono and in stereo in October 1966.  The album would eventually reach #80 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart.  In November 1966 Neil Young's song "Burned," backed with Stephen Still's "Everybody's Wrong," was released as the band's second single, but it failed to chart. 

Then a major incident in Los Angeles led to the Buffalo Springfield's most famous song.   Crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Sunset Strip were causing late-night traffic congestion.  Local residents and businesses were becoming annoyed.  Los Angeles County passed local ordinances stopping loitering, and began enforcing a strict curfew on the Strip after 10 p.m.  On Saturday night, November 12th, 1966, at the Pandora's Box nightclub on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, as many as 1,000 young demonstrators protested the curfew's enforcement.  Even celebrities such as Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda were there in protest.  Trouble eventually broke out, and the unrest continued the next night.  Stephen Stills was inspired to write a song in response to the violent protests.  Stills' composition, entitled "For What It's Worth", was performed by the band on Thanksgiving night, November 24th, at the Whisky a Go Go.  Stills later said in an interview that the name of the song came about when he presented it to Atlantic executive Ahmet Ertegun.  Stills reportedly said [and I quote] "I have this song here, for what it's worth, if you want it" [end quote].

"For What It's Worth" was recorded on December 5th, 1966, at Columbia Studios, Hollywood and released as a single on Atco Records five days later.  The B side was Neil Young's "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It."  Local LA Top 40 radio station KHJ began heavy play of the single, followed by rival station KRLA.  On January 14th, 1967 Billboard magazine identified it as a regional breakout.   "For What It's Worth" took off nationwide, and by March 25th, 1967 the song peaked at #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and reached #5 in Canada.  The popularity of the single led to a March 1967 second pressing of their first album, Buffalo Springfield.  Atco replaced the song "Baby Don't Scold Me" with "For What It's Worth" and re-released the album.  The "For What It's Worth" single was on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks.  It eventually sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.  In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song at #63 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Unfortunately, things were turning sour for the band.  In January 1967, Palmer was deported from the United States for possession of marijuana.  The band tried out a few bassists, but couldn't settle on any one in particular.  In late May, Palmer returned illegally to the U.S., disguised as a businessman, and he rejoined the band in June.  However, the group had lost trust in Palmer and continued to rely on session players despite his return.  The internal competition between Stills and Young also led to further tensions within the band, and Young briefly left the band in June 1967.

Atco issued a two-minute version of "Bluebird" on June 15th, 1967 as a single.  The song entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at #78 and three weeks later it peaked at #58.  "Bluebird" was unique in that Stephen Stills wrote it as a multi-part song, featuring contrasting solos.  The solos in the song alternate between Stephen Stills's finger-picked acoustic and Neil Young's distorted electric guitars.  The B side of the single was Neil Young's song "Mr. Soul."  "Mr. Soul" was written after Neil had an epilepsy attack following a Buffalo Springfield show in San Francisco.  Young wrote the song while he was a patient at UCLA Medical Center during his recovery from the attack. 

Doug Hastings played guitar in Neil Young's absence.  In addition to Hastings, the Byrds' David Crosby played back up guitar when Buffalo Springfield played the Monterey Pop Festival on June 18th, 1967.  In August 1967 Young returned to the band.  They fired managers Greene and Stone and worked on finalizing their second album.  

In September 1967 Atco released Stephen Still's "Rock and Roll Woman" as a single, backed with Richie Furay's "A Child's Claim to Fame."  The song peaked at #39 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The lyrics to "Rock and Roll Woman" were inspired by Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick.  The idea for the music came from Stills jamming between D major and D modal chords over and over again with the Byrds' David Crosby.

The band's second LP was called Buffalo Springfield Again, and it featured the first recordings of three songs written by guitarist Richie Furay.  Also, unlike the previous record, which had been recorded in its entirety by the band proper, session musicians appeared on several tracks.  Recording took place over a nine-month span, with each member eventually producing his own material largely independent of one another.  Buffalo Springfield Again was released by Atco on October 30, 1967.  The album included the songs "Mr. Soul", a four and a half minute version of "Bluebird", Neil Young's "Expecting to Fly", "Rock & Roll Woman", and ended with Neil Young's "Broken Arrow."  The album peaked at #44 on the Billboard Top LPs chart.  In 2003 and again in 2012 the album was ranked #188 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Atco then released Neil Young's song "Expecting to Fly" as a single on December 16th, 1967.  The B side of the single was Stephen Still's song called "Everydays".  The single would only reach #98 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.  Interestingly, "Expecting to Fly" was recorded by Young without any of the other members of Buffalo Springfield.  He had booked the Sunset Sound studio in Hollywood on May 6th, 1967 to record the song with members of the Wrecking Crew session musicians.  The song would later appear in four films:  1978's Coming Home, 1982's Purple Haze, 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and 2015's Joy.  

During the Buffalo Springfield's January 1968 tour with the Beach Boys, Bruce Palmer was again arrested for drugs and deported.  Jim Messina, who had worked as engineer on the band's second album, was hired as a permanent replacement on bass.  Then more trouble arrived in April 1968.  The band was hanging out with Eric Clapton at a Topanga Canyon home in Los Angeles County.   Young, Messina, Furay, and Stills began an early evening guitar jam session with Clapton.  One of the neighbors made a noise complaint, and several police officers arrived.  During the encounter, the officers smelled marijuana.  Stills managed to crawl out of a window and escape.  Everyone else was arrested and taken to the Los Angeles County Jail.  Stills phoned attorneys for his friends, and all those arrested were only found guilty of disturbing the peace. 

Following a gig at the Long Beach Auditorium on May 5th, 1968, the Buffalo Springfield held a meeting with Ahmet Ertegun to arrange the band's breakup.  Stills and Furay stayed with Atlantic, while Young moved to Warner Brothers.  

Several unreleased songs had been recorded, usually with Jim Messina producing.  So Richie Furay and Messina compiled various tracks recorded between mid-1967 and early 1968 into the third and final studio album, Last Time Around.  Messina acted as both the album producer and mixing engineer.  The resulting LP was released on July 30th, 1968, thereby fulfilling the band's last contractual obligation to its label.  Even though the band was broken up by then, the line-up at the time officially consisted of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, and Jim Messina.

After the breakup of Buffalo Springfield the band members all pursued other musical endeavors.  In 1968, Stills went on to form Crosby, Stills & Nash with David Crosby of the Byrds and Graham Nash of the Hollies.  Meanwhile, Furay and Messina formed Poco, and Young launched his solo career.  Dewey Martin attempted to keep the brand alive by assembling New Buffalo Springfield, but that band dissolved in 1969.  In 1969, Young reunited with Stills in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  After Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, in 1971 Stills joined with another former Byrd, Chris Hillman, and others to form the group Manassas.  Later, Furay joined J.D. Souther and Chris Hillman to form the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and Messina teamed with Kenny Loggins in Loggins & Messina.  Bruce Palmer released an album in 1971 and later resurfaced in 1982 as a member of Young's touring band.  In 1984 Palmer started a band called Buffalo Springfield Revisited, adding Dewey Martin to the lineup.  Stills and Young not only gave Palmer their blessings for Buffalo Springfield Revisited, but they entertained reuniting the original lineup in 1986.  Unfortunately those plans fell apart after just two rehearsals.  In 1997, the five original members of Buffalo Springfield were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Four members showed up, but Neil Young did not appear at the induction ceremony.

Bruce Palmer died in 2004, and Dewey Martin died in 2009.  In October 2010 Young, Stills, and Furay reunited at the annual Bridge School Benefit concerts in Mountain View, California.   Then a band consisting of Furay, Stills, Young, Rick Rosas, and Joe Vitale got together for six concerts starting in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, California in June 2011.  That same group of musicians performed at the 2011 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.  

Buffalo Springfield were a key influence, along with the California band The Byrds, in the early development of folk rock.  They effectively mixed folk, country, and British Invasion influences to produce some of the most enduring rock of the 1960's.  With their talented singer-songwriters and their intricate harmonies, they were enormously influential for an act with a catalog of just three albums.

Thank you for traveling back in time with me in another episode of the Rock and Roll Flashback podcasts!  If you enjoyed this discussion of the influential rock career of Buffalo Springfield, I encourage you to check out some of our other podcasts.  I'm Jumpin' John McDermott, and until next time…Rock On!