Stills Songs

A sprawling masterpiece, akin to the Beatles' White Album, the Stones' Exile on Main St., or Wilco's Being There in its makeup, if not its sound. Rock, folk, blues, country, Latin, and bluegrass have all been styles touched on in Stephen Stills' career, and the skilled, energetic musicians he had gathered in Manassas played them all on this album. What could have been a disorganized mess in other hands, though, here all gelled together and formed a cohesive musical statement.

Manassas were the first band Stephen Stills involved himself with after the breakup of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. He'd recorded a pair of solo albums, but forming this group with ex- and future Byrd and former Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman, pedal steel guitarist Al Perkins, Joe Lala from Blues Image, the CSNY rhythm section of Dallas Taylor and Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, and session man Paul Harris turned out to be a dream band, for a time. The unit released two albums on Atlantic: its self-titled debut in 1971 (which is widely regarded as a classic) and a less successful follow-up entitled Down the Road in 1972. Stills' and Rhino's Pieces assemblage of Manassas tracks includes outtakes and unreleased numbers from both recordings. This is the first in a series of retrospective recordings that Stills plans to issue, among them a box set, a live set, and (in association with Experience Hendrix) an album of studio session demos he recorded with Jimi Hendrix, his then guitar teacher (Hendrix appeared on Stills' debut solo effort), as well as a live compilation.

The times had certainly changed since Déjà Vu's release in 1970. Nevertheless, there was a hunger in audiences for a return to the harmony-soaked idealism with which the trio had been catapulted to popularity, and CSN consequently reached number two on the charts, behind Fleetwood Mac's megasuccessful Rumours. The music here is very good, though probably not up to the hard-to-match level of Crosby, Stills & Nash or Déjà Vu. Still, the songs showed a great deal of lyrical maturity and compositional complexity compared to those earlier albums (from a far more innocent time). "Just a Song Before I Go" was the latest of Graham Nash's radio-friendly acoustic numbers, and a Top Ten single. "See the Changes" and "Dark Star" ranked with the best of Stephen Stills' work, while David Crosby contributed three classics from his distinctive oeuvre: "Shadow Captain," "Anything at All," and the beautiful "In My Dreams"…

The times had certainly changed since Déjà Vu's release in 1970. Nevertheless, there was a hunger in audiences for a return to the harmony-soaked idealism with which the trio had been catapulted to popularity, and CSN consequently reached number two on the charts, behind Fleetwood Mac's megasuccessful Rumours. The music here is very good, though probably not up to the hard-to-match level of Crosby, Stills & Nash or Déjà Vu. Still, the songs showed a great deal of lyrical maturity and compositional complexity compared to those earlier albums (from a far more innocent time). "Just a Song Before I Go" was the latest of Graham Nash's radio-friendly acoustic numbers, and a Top Ten single. "See the Changes" and "Dark Star" ranked with the best of Stephen Stills' work, while David Crosby contributed three classics from his distinctive oeuvre: "Shadow Captain," "Anything at All," and the beautiful "In My Dreams"…

The times had certainly changed since Déjà Vu's release in 1970. Nevertheless, there was a hunger in audiences for a return to the harmony-soaked idealism with which the trio had been catapulted to popularity, and CSN consequently reached number two on the charts, behind Fleetwood Mac's megasuccessful Rumours. The music here is very good, though probably not up to the hard-to-match level of Crosby, Stills & Nash or Déjà Vu. Still, the songs showed a great deal of lyrical maturity and compositional complexity compared to those earlier albums (from a far more innocent time). "Just a Song Before I Go" was the latest of Graham Nash's radio-friendly acoustic numbers, and a Top Ten single. "See the Changes" and "Dark Star" ranked with the best of Stephen Stills' work, while David Crosby contributed three classics from his distinctive oeuvre: "Shadow Captain," "Anything at All," and the beautiful "In My Dreams"…

As the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) had done a year earlier, Super Session (1968) initially ushered in several new phases in rock & roll's concurrent transformation. In the space of months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from short, danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties. Enter the unlikely all-star triumvirate of Al Kooper (piano/organ/ondioline/vocals/guitars), Mike Bloomfield (guitar), and Stephen Stills (guitar) - all of whom were concurrently "on hiatus" from their most recent engagements. Kooper had just split after masterminding the groundbreaking Child Is Father to the Man (1968) version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bloomfield was fresh from a stint with the likewise brass-driven Electric Flag, while Stills was late of Buffalo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash…

Unbeknown to most fans, So Far was a stopgap release, undertaken by Atlantic Records in the absence of a new Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album to accompany the reunited quartet's summer 1974 tour. At the time, the members thought it was ridiculous to release a greatest-hits/best-of compilation distilled down from two in-print LPs plus the single sides "Ohio" and "Find the Cost of Freedom"; but propelled by the publicity surrounding the group's massive stadium tour (the first exclusive stadium tour ever done in rock), So Far topped the charts and sold hundreds of thousands of copies, all without containing so much as a single new note of music. Ironically, the quartet had been working on what would have been, by all accounts, the best album in their history; as with so many other projects attempted by the four-man lineup, however, that album fell apart halfway through, amid clashes of egos and creative differences, and so there was So Far…