Stephen Stills
USA | Folk Rock / Blues Rock | 1945
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young). In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Stills #28 in its list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
Stephen Stills was born in Dallas, Texas on January 3, 1945 to a military family. Moving around as a child, he developed an interest in blues and folk music. He was also influenced by Latin music after spending his youth in Gainesville and Tampa, Florida, Costa Rica and the Panama Canal Zone, where he graduated from high school.
Stills dropped out of the University of Florida to pursue a music career in the early 1960s. He played in a series of unsuccessful bands including The Continentals, which featured future Eagles guitarist Don Felder. Stills could also be seen singing solo in Gerde's Folk City, a well-known coffee house in Greenwich Village. Stills eventually ended up in a nine-member vocal harmony group, the house act at the famous Cafe Au Go Go in NYC, called the Au Go Go Singers (Rick Geiger, Roy Michaels, Michael Scott, Jean Gurney, Kathy King, Nels Gustafson, Bob Harmelink, Richie Furay & Stills) where and when he met Richie Furay. This group also did some touring in the Catskills, and in the South, released one album in 1964, then broke up in 1965. Afterwards, Stills, along with four other former members of the Au Go Go Singers: Geiger, Michaels, Gurney & Scott, formed The Company, a folk/rock group. The Company embarked on a 6-week tour of Canada where Stills met a young guitarist named Neil Young. On the VH1 CSNY Legends special, Stills would say that at that time, Young was doing what he always wanted to do, "play folk music in a rock band." The Company broke up in New York within four months, opening up the way for Geiger to join a light opera company in Los Angeles; Michaels to link up with Jimi Hendrix, Gurney to go on to college while doing TV commercials, and Scott to tour with a retro-Highwaymen. Stills did session work and went to various auditions (including an unsuccessful one for The Monkees). In 1966 he convinced a reluctant former Au Go Go Singer, Richie Furay, then living in Massachusetts, to move with him to California.
Stills, Furay, and Young reunited in Los Angeles and formed the core of Buffalo Springfield. Legend has it that Stills and Furay recognized Young's converted hearse on the streets of LA and flagged him down, a meeting described in the recent solo track "Round the Bend". The band would release three albums (Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again, and Last Time Around) and one hit single (Stills' "For What It's Worth") before breaking up.
Stills' guitar playing continually evolved. Early on, it displayed sources in generic rock 'n' roll, blues, and country music, as well as the chordings familiar in the acoustic-folk music scene. Soon Stills' playing showed the influence of his friend Jimi Hendrix and also sometimes the rhythms and riffs of various kinds of Latin music. Stills is notorious for experimenting with the guitar itself. This includes such things as soaking strings in barbecue sauce or flipping pickups to mimic Hendrix playing a right-handed guitar left-handed. He is also known for using unconventional tunings, particularly on acoustic. He is also adept at piano, organ and bass and plays some drums. "'Stephen had a vision,' [Graham] Nash says. 'David [Crosby] and I let him run with it.' Stills played nearly every instrument on Crosby, Stills and Nash, earning the nickname Captain Manyhands." (from RollingStone.com)
During the disintegration of Buffalo Springfield, Stills joined up with ex-Byrd David Crosby and ex-Hollie Graham Nash to form the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Cass Elliot invited Graham Nash over to meet Stills and David Crosby at the home of well known folk artist and painter Joni Mitchell, who painted several artworks of the three. Mitchell also contributed the artwork seen on the cover of the CSNY collection album "So Far", released in 1974. The cover photo pictured on the trio's first self-titled album in 1969 was taken on the back porch of a house in West Hollywood which was torn down the next day. Stills overdubbed much of the musical backing himself for the first CSN album with only Dallas Taylor's drums and some rhythm guitar from Crosby and Nash. Neil Young was added for their second album, and the group became Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, CSN and CSNY was one of the few North American groups to rival the Beatles in popularity.
In the wake of CSNY's success, all four members recorded solo albums. In 1970, Stills released his self-titled debut, which featured guests Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix (on what was possibly his last recording before he died), "Mama" Cass Elliot, Booker T Jones and Ringo Starr (credited only as "Richie") as well as contributions from various members of the CSNY band. It provided Stills with the hit single "Love The One You're With" as well as the concert favorite "Black Queen." Stills followed this with Stephen Stills 2, which featured "Change Partners." Even though it was written before CSN formed, Nash saw this song as a metaphor for the many relationships in CSNY, while Stills viewed the band as something much less bland and repetitive.
The next year, Stills teamed up with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman and several CSNY sidemen to form the band Manassas. With Manassas Stills recorded the self-titled double album Manassas. The album was a mixture of blues, folk and Latin music divided into different sections, and is considered by many to be one of Stills' best albums.