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"Buffalo Springfield Again" (1967)
(Review first published in July 2008' revised edition published August 28th 2014)
Track Listing: Mr Soul/ A Child’s Claim To Fame/ Everydays/ Expecting To Fly/ Bluebird// Hung Upside Down/ Sad Memory/ Good Time Boy/ Rock and Roll Woman/ Broken Arrow (UK and US
Well here we are,
with the Buffalo Springfield again - but so much has changed since the first
record that at times this barely seems like the same group. It all seemed so
simple when they started: Richie was the all-American kid next door that all
the girls wanted to marry and who was a natural commercial lead vocalist.
Stephen Stills was the writer of catchy hits who could write pop hooks in his
sleep. Neil Young was the shadowy, dark Indian figure who stayed at the back
pealing off lead guitar licks like no tomorrow. But even by the time of the
first album the lines were becoming blurred: Richie wanted to write. Stephen
wanted to solo. Neil shocked many by wanting to sing his own songs in a voice
that couldn't be less like the commercial all-American tones of Richie. During
the making of this second album Neil had left and returned once (on the eve of
the biggest TV break of their careers), then returned and left a second time
(of the eve of the Monterey Pop Festival - the biggest concert of their careers).
Bassist Bruce Palmer had been forced to leave the band (after being deported
back to Canada for cannabis possession - a drugs bust that hit him and Richie
and a visiting Eric Clapton - Stills, who was present, managed to slip out of a
window and get help without the policeman finding him!) and the band never
stopped trying to find a replacement for pushy drummer Dewey Martin. Even the
front cover had to be put together using a cut-and-paste technique because the
band were never together on the same day! After being disappointed with the
sound and feel of the first album, the band reluctantly fired their managers
and first album engineers Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, cutting themselves
off from the only people who'd ever had control over them. With no less than
three guitarists in the band, this album contains more textures than most
multi-artist compilation CDs do and sound all the better for it, even though a
slightly different emphasis on each player on each recording means even that
establishing sound from the first album isn't here (one minute Stills and Young
are competing, the next they're mirroring, the next Neil is reduced to a single
hummed note, the next neither man is playing and it's all done by Richie). No
two songs on this second album have exactly the same line-up, leading to
lengthy sleeve-notes that detail just who on what (a first, as far as I can
tell, in rock and roll circles when a band tended to stick together). No wonder
this record sounds so different and goes in so many different directions at
once.
With all of that
going on, you'd understand it if this album was awful. Instead it's fabulous:
until you get to know this album really really well (as surely you will) you're
never quite sure what's going to happen next: a sideways lurch into blues, a
side-step into soul or the six minute prog rock template collage that takes
place at the end. The fact that there are now three very different visions of
what the band are (heck, scrap that - Neil alone has three different visions of
what the band are - add in Dewey's cameo and Stills' schizophrenic choices and
that's more like seven) and none of them sound anything like the places the
first album went in (which nearly all fits around the same pop-rock-country
hybrid gene) ought to make this album fragmented and difficult to get a hold
of. In fact it's this album's greatest strength: the magical year of 1967 was
all about stretching boundaries and few albums stretch boundaries to breaking
point more than 'Buffalo Springfield Again'. What's more, nearly all these
performances are near definitive: there are few hard rockers in my collection
more powerful than 'Mr Soul', few country-rock pieces more charming than 'A
Child's Claim To Fame', few twinkly jazz bluesy piano songs greater than
'Everydays', few orchestral ballads more beautiful than 'Expecting To Fly', few
hybrids of riff rock and Appalachian mountain ballad than 'Bluebird, few songs
that use dynamics better than the quiet-to-shouting 'Hung Upside Down', few
gentler acoustic ballads than 'Sad Memory', few soul pastiches than 'Good Time
Boy', fewer pop songs more perfect than 'Rock and Roll Woman' and few songs
weirder than whatever the hell 'Broken Arrow' (which is at least half a dozen
songs in one anyway). The brilliance of an album like 'Again' is its
consistency in the face of so many obstacles. Even by 1967 standards few albums
offer as much or take you to as many places as 'Buffalo Springfield Again'.
One of the
things I love most about 'Again' - one of my favourite albums - is the back
sleeve where the Springfield pay tribute to all their many influences. And
there's a lot of them: some 80 in all. In a nice piece of AAA
inter-connectivity, many of them you'll know: Stills presumably nominated the
band he was once in the running for, The Monkees (listed here as 'Mickey Mikey
Davey Peter'); Dewey surely nominated his hero Otis Redding (who came very
close to recording a soulful version of this album's 'Mr Soul' before Neil
refused to let him - soul fan Dewey refused to speak to him for weeks!);
lifelong fan Neil presumably picked Pentangle guitarist Bert Jansch mere months
before that band were formed; the band's friendship with David Crosby presumably
led to the listing of 'The Five Byrds' (interesting given that Gene Clark had
left the band a year earlier and there were just four at the time this album
came out!); others include 'Jefferson Airplane' 'The Stones' and 'The Nurk
Twins plus George, Ringo' (full marks if you understood that obscure Beatles
reference from the days when John and Paul were an Everly Brothers-style
acoustic duo). There are some lovely nominations to the people who'd helped
individual members of the band on their way to fame and fortune too: Neil's
friend and fellow Squire Ken Koblun (who filled in for Bruce for all of a
month before the band realised it wasn't working), Neil's new friend and Phil
Spector's number two Jack Nitzche, Stills' childhood friend Jimi Hendrix,
future Springfield member and occasional engineer Jim Messina and most sweetly
'Mort', the name of Neil's hearse which started it all (Stephen and Richie,
stuck in a traffic jam and needing a guitarist for their band, recognised mutual
friend Neil's hearse going the other way and flagged him down - had Neil had a more 'normal' type of car the
Springfield might never have met!) The result is one of the greatest and
sweetest of all AAA back covers, paying tribute to friends and inspirers back
when that sort of thing just wasn't done, whole at the same time showing off
just what a wide and eclectic mixture of styles was thrown into the Springfield
melting pot (the line 'spelling by the Buffalo Springfield' reveals their
humour too, although all bands and names are spelt correctly, even Jack Nitzche
who has an impossible name to spell!)
The one problem
with this record - and the reason that, ultimately, it didn't quite sell as
well as the debut - is that the band have thrown out the buffalo with the
bathwater. While the first album is patchy, at its best it offers at least two
great new voices to rock and roll that never really get used again. Neil Young
is a folkie protest songwriter in Bob Dylan mould, full of obtuse lines that
poetically make the most perfect sense even if no other writer had ever quite
put it like that ('Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing' and 'Flying On The Ground
Is Wrong' are the two best examples). Stephen Stills, meanwhile, seems
determined to write about anything other than the social protest the band had
scored their one and only big hit with, 'For What It's Worth'. The band's last
release up until this album (and only added to the first album on the re-issue),
fans must have been expecting for a whole record on this theme - and Stills
could have delivered it too (just look at the early CSN albums). Richie,
meanwhile, has been shunted from singing his colleagues' songs and is now
writing his own, giving the band a third, gentler, folkier voice that isn't
represented on the first album at all. The biggest selling point of the first
album - Stills and Furay singing in harmony - doesn't happen once on this
album; the pair overlap lines on 'Hung Upside Down' but that's about as close
as they come - and Richie doesn't sing even a harmony part to Young's three
songs (I still think that's Stills singing falsetto on 'Expecting To Fly', by
the way, but the official line is it's
Neil singing double-tracked so I won't argue that here). No wonder fans weren't
quite sure what to think of all this: there's just no continuity here, with the
Springfield effectively a whole new band (while Bruce is missing from a lot of
the record due to his legal troubles, Neil overdubs on what little he wasn't
present for anyway so there shouldn't be this many changes to the sound). The
fact that the various problems and sticking points within the band meant that
the Springfield waited a whole six months before following up 'For What It's
Worth' and then came up with 'Bluebird' (a great song but not a great single in
the same way 'Rock and Roll Woman' would have been) also meant that they lost
any momentum and continuity amongst fans. The Springfield blew it, then, but blew
it most marvelously - luckily retrospective collectors like me, who know what eclectic
tastes all three main writers are going to have in the future, can appreciate
'Again' much more than fans in 1967.
Interestingly
the making of this second LP is when people concerned with the Springfield stop
talking about each other as a band of
brothers and start referring to themselves as a family with everything that
word implies: not just unconditional love and concern but arguments, riots,
power-plays, sulks and moving boundaries. Like the steamroller they were named
after, the individual components of Buffalo Springfield start working together
and without quite meaning to flatten everything in their path. 'A Child's Claim
To Fame' is directly inspired by the anger in the room: Richie wearily
wondering what games Neil was playing when he quit the band a second time (a
sheepish Neil first adds a lovely guitar and harmony part to say 'sorry' and
then writes his own self-deprecating sequel for the next record, 'I Am A
Child').Even the rest of the record seems to have lost that kind of laidback
warm rosy glow of creativity heard in that first album though: this album is a
tightly coiled spring, leaping out of the blocks with the power riffs of 'Mr
Soul' and never quite getting back in its box until the pulsating stressed
heartbeat on the fade-out of 'Broken Arrow' finally fades away. Recorded in
chaos, with more than a few inter-band feuds going on and most of the band not
speaking to each other for extended periods (to break this down Stills appears on
just five tracks, Young on eight, Furay on nine, Dewey on six and Bruce on five).
it's amazing that Buffalo Springfield
Again got released at all. Richie's excellent book 'For What It's Worth'
reveals that this period saw a lot of whispering going on - a lot of 'let's not
tell Dewey we're recording' and 'where's Neil?' So much so that this album's
credits include a wonderful array of extra-curricular musicians who come and go
one song at a time: country legend James Burton appears on dobro on 'Child's
Claim', Jim Fielder plays bass on 'Everydays', Bobby West plays bass on
'Bluebird', Doin Randl plays piano on 'Expecting To Fly' and 'Broken Arrow' and,
presumably jokingly, actor Charlie Chin
is credited for 'banjo' on 'Bluebird' (an in-joke that seems to have been lost
in the mists of time - most likely Stills played it himself! Another joke is
that Neil's new trick of using reverberating echo on his guitar parts mean his
guitar tone sounds big and distant - the band joke it was 'recorded across
town' on 'Sad Memory'). In all seven
separate producers are credited on just the ten tracks on this album: that's
surely some sort of AAA record; talk about a loss of continuity! Amazingly,
though, the record holds together well - despite the change of locations,
producers, musicians, writers, singers and goodness knows what else, offering a
much wider palette of colours than on the first record. 'Buffalo Springfield'
was about love good and bad. 'Again' is a rollercoaster ride full of highs and
lows, not about love's hellos and goodbyes but infatuation and heartbreak. The
first album is ready to have fun. The second is spoiling for a fight (although
'Child's Claim, the most laidback sounding track on the album, is the only
piece that has one).
Well, sort of.
The biggest theme across this album - and perhaps the reason it all slots into
place as well as it does - is the ongoing fight between war and peace. While 'Mr Soul' is an angry snarl at the restrictions
and trappings of fame (a moodier update of the first album's 'Out Of My Mind',
written before Neil had really experienced what fame was), the very title of
'Broken Arrow' suggests he wants to make peace (in Neil's words 'a broken arrow
means a truce, usually after one side has lost a lot'). 'Mr Soul' was recorded
before Neil left the band - 'Broken Arrow' on his return. 'Expecting To Fly',
the one cut in the middle, is effectively Neil's first solo song, a gorgeous
epiphany of beauty and certainty after hopelessness and helplessness cut
completely alone with the help of arranger Jack Nitzche. Stills' 'Everydays'
tried to be laidback and casual about a romance, but keeps finding itself
growing in infatuation with each loud chorus and with Neil's insistent hum
throughout suggesting a tension that won't let go. 'Bluebird' is the first
Stills love song for Judy Collins but it's a frenetic, whirlwind, hold-on-tight
ride where either or both could fall off at any time, with Stills and Young
finally scoring their first guitar duel on record many times over thanks to the
wonders of overdubbing (although the liner notes credit that are a1,386 guitar
parts on this record seems a little over-estimated). 'Hung Upside Down' starts
off lethargically with a weary sigh about not wanting to fight any more, but
raises itself to a fierce battle with each soulful grunt from Stills, sounding
as if he's inflating the song to sound bigger with every breath he takes. Richie
makes peace with the lovely 'Sad Memory', a song written and recorded before
Neil walked out the band but which cleverly reflects on how some goodbyes
aren't meant to be and why memories can be revived again in the present. And
then there's 'Child's Claim', an uncharacteristically nasty song where 'too
much fame' spoils what might have once been a promising career. The
country-rock backing is fooling no one - this piece has more guitar stings than
any Stills or Young solo-ing with amplifiers turned way up high. That just
leaves 'Good Time Boy', a song Richie wrote for Dewey that simply proves how
unlike the rest of the band he is: out for fun and adventure and not caring
about art.
The gulf between
the two albums is huge - so much so that, together with the lengthy drawn out
recording sessions, fans have often wondered if there was a 'missing' album in
between the two. Officially there wasn't, but for reasons best known to
themselves Atlantic 'accidentally' fanned the flames of this idea by printing
up their own mock-up sleeve of what they wanted the second album to look like, titled
'Stampede' and with Dickie Davis (Bruce's replacement) sat in front with a hat
pulled down low over his eyes. There was not rack listing given, but that
didn't stop fans drawing one up - especially when demo recordings began to
circulate first on bootleg and then officially as part of the eponymous Buffalo
Springfield box set in 2001. The Springfield seem to have recorded a lot more
demos than they ever had space to record - unusual for the period (there are
very few Byrds or Hollies demos around, to nominate the two other 'feeder'
bands for CSNY) and even more unusual that so many of them should have been
kept intact all those years (you wonder how many more were accidentally 'lost'
along the way). I'm not sure the 'Stampede' album as fans compiled it would
have been quite up to 'Buffalo Springfield' or 'Again' but there are several
great songs that deserved to have been finished: Stills' rocking 'We'll See'
and Beatley 'Neighbour Don't You Worry', Richie's neat 'My Kind Of Love' and
'Words I Must Say' and the two most 'finished' songs, a driving Lovin' Spoonful
Furay song with Stills on lead titled
'No Sun Today' and the most famous unreleased Springfield song, Young's 'Down
To The Wire' (finally released on solo compilation 'Decade' in 1977). I'm less
keen on the two jam sessions (known to bootleggers as 'Raga #1' and 'Raga #2'
but now to box-setters as 'Buffalo Stomp' and 'Kahuna Sunset') but it would
have been an interesting album - and you can hear it as a sort of stepping
stone between the two, with more daring ideas and experimentation but with the
Stills-Furay harmonies still firmly in place. In retrospect the Springfield
might have been better off releasing this record as an interim release anyway -
even though technically it didn't exist - making it low-key just to keep their
name in the public eye and to help their fans latch onto what they were doing
with this record a bit more. Certainly 'Again' deserved a better roll of the
dice than what it did get - a US high of #44 and no chart appearance at all in
most of Europe.
In a just world
everyone should have heard of the Buffalo Springfield, not just curious Neil
Young fans or people who know For What It’s Worth from its countless
appearances on film soundtracks and compilation CDs. Stills and Young would
only find true success after they became CSNY and Richie Furay found greater
commercial success with under-rated soft-rockers Poco, yet despite their later
fame all three members still rate this band very highly and its easy to see why
at one time they were tipped as the next big thing for the top, heavily
championed by acts of the time like the Byrds. By rights they should have been
the next big thing - 'Again' is more than a match for other great period
recordings like (to quote the 'other' CSN feeder bands again) 'Younger Than
Yesterday' and 'Butterfly' (and I say that as a fan who rates these as amongst
the best albums made by The Byrds and The Hollies respectively). If only the
band had been 'together' for their appearances on the Carson show (the most
prestigious music show after Ed Sullivan, taped at a time when Neil left the
band the first time) and at the Monterey Pop Festival (which took place just
four months before this album's release, during the second time Neil had left
the band). Young's need to go out alone and do things he couldn't do even
within the elastic framework of the band is understandable on the one hand ('Expecting
To Fly' is a staggering break-through in his songwriting, kindly donated to the
band even though Neil must have known a solo career was on the cards) and not
on the other (had the band got it together to follow-up 'For What It's Worth'
properly they could have been the single biggest band of the mid-1960s, but by
the time 'Bluebird' came out the fans had got bored of waiting and moved onto
the next big thing - which in AAA terms means Jefferson Airplane or Pink Floyd depending on what side of the
pond you lived).
But then the
Springfield were always coming apart from day one. Some bands thrive on that
kind of friction - the Buffalos more than most. Whose to say we would have had
a band at all without those clashes and that uncertainty hanging over
everything? While ultimately the Springfield are seen as a bit of a
disappointment who never quite lived up to their amazing potential, the fire
that was lit underneath them raged fiercely enough to drive at least five
'normal' bands and it never raged stronger than on this album, where the band
is hanging together by a string and seems to be kept together by sheer
willpower. Great as the first Springfield albums is (and greater still as it
would have been if it had been recorded properly) and wonderful and under-rated
as the third album 'Last Time Around' is (and greater still as it would have
been with more involvement from Neil), it's here, right in the middle, with the
band pulling in so many different directions at once that you can really get a
sense of just how important this band was - and how many different places they
could have gone. This is the Buffalo Springfield again, but they might not be
here for much longer says that title, while the band already spell out their
future in that curious cover, Bruce Palmer - already long gone for the second
time by the time this album came out - reaching up to the hand of an angel
whose looking the other way, as if bored and moving on to something else, while
the rest of the band perch uncomfortably on top of a mountain they've outgrown.
The members of the Springfield were simply too 'big' to belong in a single
band; this album proves it beyond a doubt, a magic carpet ride to new places
every single song - sometimes going to several different places within the same
song! That a record this splintered and this difficult to make ended up being
as magnificent as it is says much for the talent in the group and the fact that
this relatively obscure album still grants a high placing in other ‘top album’
lists besides my own shows what an important and influential album 'Buffalo
Springfield Again' was, despite the lack of sales. Would that other albums
covered a hundredth of the ground of this eclectic, exotic and elastic album.
The
Songs:
Richie Furay,
meanwhile, was still struggling to get his first song on an album, despite a
claim made in his excellent book For What
It’s Worth that he had all three of this album’s Furay-composed songs
written and perhaps even recorded a full year earlier. A Child’s Claim To Fame is a
clever, half-sarcastic half-straight song, following on well from the theme of Mr Soul with its tale of facades and
lies. The song is far more like a conventional pop song, however, with a pretty
tune and a steel guitar riff that seems to have wondered in off a television
commercial. Allegedly, the song is a dig at Neil for acting like a spoilt brat
and nearly ending the group prematurely – Neil will go on to write his own
self-deprecating reply with I Am A Child on
the group’s next album. Ironically its Neil who shines out most on this album’s
rare example of a group performance – his harmony vocal is the perfect antidote
for Richie’s smiling charm and his already easily identifiable guitar work adds
another dimension to the song.
Everydays adds some light jazz to the album, with a great piano
lick and a low humming guitar note from Neil to match. Stills is well known for
dipping his fingers in several musical pies, but only on his last album Man Alive (2005) does he ever attempt to
pull off this song’s jazz trappings again. And that’s a shame because Stills
obviously has a great feel for the genre – his arrangement of twinkling
unpredictable piano set against Neil’s one-note drone and some rhythmic bass
murmurs is spot-on. The song doesn’t take fire quite as it should, however, due
to the subdued production that lets the song slowly grumble along rather than
soar out of the speakers, a hangover from the last album’s problems sadly,
despite the fact the group are producing the album themselves this time in the
believe that they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than their managers Greene
and Stone (who mixed their first effort despite having no experience
whatsoever). The sleevenote’s comment that Neil recorded his guitar part
‘across town’, by the way, isn’t true – its an in-joke about how loud Neil’s
amp made him sound and how that one particular guitar note seemed to
reverberate round the studio.
Beauty isn’t a
word often associated with Neil Young’s songs but there is no better word to
describe Expecting To Fly than beautiful – fragile,
aching, orchestral and otherworldly, this is another early style that its
composer sadly largely abandoned after this track. The song, as discussed
above, was really recorded by Neil during his time away from the group and
there is still speculation over whether or not Neil added any overdubs on his
return to the group (I’ve read in various articles that the harmony vocal on
this track is Stills or Furay or even Neil double-tracked – several hundred
playings of this track over the years and I’m still not sure which of them it
is. A small point to get excited about I know, and yet it’s the vocals that
really do make this track).Carefully sung by Neil (and his possible fellow
harmonisers) line by line, its so exact and spot-on that performance-wise as
well as musically it doesn’t sound like a Neil Young song at all, going right
against the grain of Neil’s later ‘no overdubs’ philosophy. The first note is
interesting too because its actually the last note played backwards. Many
people of the time compared this song to the Beatles’ similar ‘swelling
orchestra’ trick at the end of A Day In
The Life, but actually Expecting To
Fly was recorded long before that track was ever released. Much of the praise for this song must go to
arranger Jack Nitzsche, a colourful figure in the Young universe who ended up
being a part-time member of Crazy Horse and was blamed for being the brains
behind several of Neil’s bad career decisions over the years, from leaving the
Springfield to creating havoc and stirring up trouble on Neil’s ‘doom tour’ of
1973. On this track, however, he’s unquestionably a force for good: this
lovely, fragile song is more than matched by its string arrangement and the
false-ending when a choir fade back in to end the song by singing its chord
note is a masterful piece of work. The words, too, are incredible on this song
and really are Neil Young like – hazy and slightly surreal, they tell us of
their narrator’s attempts to better himself despite knowing his aims will
always be frustrated. Caught dreaming of the future, ‘expecting to fly’ but in
truth unable to make the first move, he frustratingly watches the girl he
fancies walk out of his life without saying a word, cursing his failure and bad
luck before addressing us, the listener, as his magic girl and telling us that
‘ if I never said I loved you now you know I tried. Stunning stuff. Graham Nash
was so taken with this song he recorded an almost equally gorgeous copy, Wings,
with the Hollies (as heard on their Rarities
album), little knowing that he was about to cross paths two of the men who
had recorded it.
If Expecting To Fly is Neil’s tour-de-force
then Bluebird is Stephen’s. A perfectly crafted pop
song, with a strong hook and a simple singalong chorus in his Springfield
tradition (‘She’s got soul! She’s got soul! She’s got so-o-o-o-o-ul!’), it
still packs in plenty of surprises, from the two-minute long guitar battle in
the middle to the banjo coda at the end. Another clever thematic link – this
song follows on from Neil’s imagery of ‘feathers’ and ‘perches’ – Bluebird is equally good at telling us
about the character of its author. Where Neil is so nervous he lets his
sweetheart walk away without her even knowing he existed, Stills is out
serenading his lady and is the one telling her not to be blue. Those ho-ho-ing
sleevenotes are back in business again on this track, claiming that 1,111
guitar parts were overdubbed onto this track – surely you’d never hear anything
else if all of those parts made it to the mix and this one is beautifully clear
– but it still sounds like a lot of guitar-work packed into this track, even
so. Stills’ acoustic work in particular is awe-inspiring – just when you think
he can’t possibly improvise any more notes around the song’s tricky chord
structure he spins off in some other, equally inspired direction. The perfect
pop song, with traditional sounding concepts played with such energy and power Bluebird would have been perfect for
radio airplay whilst also having enough musical innovations to keep critics and
fans happy. The band never quite recovered from this song’s failure as the
follow-up to For What It’s Worth and
its easy to see why they had such high hopes for the song - Bluebird soars throughout all of its tricky parts and rarely puts
a foot wrong, quite possibly being the album’s highlight.
However, Hung
Upside Down
– one of the least known tracks on the album or Stills’ career come to that –
is another strong contender for that accolade, a fantastic song full of
uncharacteristic self-doubt and worry that Stills only really begins to delve
into again on his mid-70s solo records. Characteristically, though, Stills
doesn’t want to be seen to be moping about so he gives the verses to Richie to sing
– and boy is he up to the task; his moody, sighing singing is one of the
greatest vocals in the band’s history, setting the scene superbly for Stephen’s
demented ravings that follow. The lyrics might express Stills’ worries about
not getting anywhere, but the strident chorus finds him trying to shout his way
out of his apathy, stirring the band up into such a crescendo that they
continue pounding out the song’s insistent riff until they get tired. This solo
repeats the main gist of the song all the way through again, with Stills’ tired
and head-bowing fuzz guitar riff set against his urgent guitar improvisations
and out-of-control shrieking. An intriguing song, quite unlike any other in
Stills’ canon.
In contrast to the last track’s complex backing, Sad Memory is just Richie and an acoustic guitar with a quiet
and sensitive electric guitar part from Neil over the top. This is Richie’s
show, though, giving him the chance to show off his warm tenor on his own
romantic song reflecting on memories past and girls he used to know. Most of
this song’s lyrics are stuff we’ve all heard several times over, but features
quite a sweet last verse. Letting the listener into the song, the narrator asks
us outright about whether we have ever had anyone walk out on us when we
thought we were made for each other and sighs with us in knowing despair, ‘then
you’ll know just how I feel’.
Good Time Boy, again written by Richie but sung here by drummer
Dewey Martin in a one-off vocal appearance, has always been the least-loved track
on this record. The trouble lies not with the song particularly or with Dewey’s
performance, which might not be subtle but does have quite a good bluesy groove
going on in his voice. It’s simply that this song doesn’t fit the rest of the
record at all well, having none of the themes of hiding behind facades or
worrying anxiety the rest of the album has and its headlong dive into soul
territory is perhaps one genre too far. It’s easy to see why this song went
down well live however (with Stills making a rare appearance on drums to cover
for Dewey prowling round the front of the stage belting out the song) as on its
own terms its got a great groove and the added horns give it plenty of pazzazz
and sparkle.
Stills bows out
on the album with Rock
and Roll Woman, one of the most charming pop songs he ever wrote and
another surprise flop as a single. Despite its lack of sales, however, this
song is still tremendously important in terms of Stills’ career. Befriended by
the Byrds’ David Crosby sometime in 1967, this is the first song the pair of
songwriters came up with together, albeit Crosby had to settle for an
‘inspiration’ credit when Stills’ publishing company made it clear the two
wouldn’t be allowed to work together. Possessing a 50/50 mix of Crosby’s off-beat
guitar tunings and Stills’ talent for writing complex harmonies in a pop
setting, it may well be the only Crosby-Stills collaboration in the whole of
their history. The song was inspired by another album archive favourite – the
Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, who had only just joined the band at the time
this song was recorded but had already made a big impact with her first band
The Great Society. Hearing this song now, she must be pretty pleased that two
of the most respected writers of the day saw her in such a good light – the
rock and roll woman is a ‘joy to know’ (As a final piece of album archive
linking pieces, this song was also covered by the Beach Boys on their early
post-Brian tours circa 1968-1970 after the Springfield worked for a time as the
band’s support act. Their version of this song can be heard in the American Band video, but annoyingly they
never recorded this song for an album). Stills’ ear for a catchy hook was never
better, the guitars-and-organ duel at the end is incredibly exciting and the
harmonies (with a guesting Crosby complementing Furay’s usual great work very
well indeed) simply glimmer out of the speakers. More great stuff from Stills
and one of the Springfield’s better group performances.
With the dying
notes of Rock and Roll Woman disappearing
down a sudden black hole, in comes the album’s most ambitious track, Young’s Broken Arrow. Divided into several parts which are separated
by sound effects, recordings nicked from genres such as rock, jazz and even a
bit of ballroom dancing plus – on the opening – a Dewey Martin studio recording
of Mr Soul overdubbed with screams
from a Beatles concert; I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the hell it all
means. However, the verses all lead back to the same chorus which relates to
the idea of peace – that whatever troubled feelings each of the song’s many
narrators have during their life, they see the Indian message of a ‘broken
arrow’ as some defining moment in their lives and stop to think things over. A
strangely lumbering piano lick dominates the song and it’s with some relief
that we keep switching to the sound effects so often, to spare us this
repetitive sound. Having said all that, even if this song is ridiculously
over-ambitious – and again, it’s a style that Neil will only use on extremely
fleeting moments throughout the next 40 years of his career – some of the
lyrics are fascinating in a ‘modern poetry’ sort of way and Furay’s harmony
work is as splendid as ever. Neil’s mantra throughout his solo career has been
‘first thought best thought’ and as his records get increasingly rougher and
filled with ever-more mistakes, its quite a surprise to hear him attempting a
track of this epic stature again.
So much talent,
so much promise, it broke Ahmet Ertegun’s heart (the head of Atlantic) when the
Springfield broke up as he thought they were the best band he’d ever heard and,
well, I don’t blame him. The growth from the band’s
promising-but-heavily-flawed first album to the dynamite second is jaw-dropping
and its so so sad that there was only more LP after this one to enjoy. Once
acclaimed as ‘America’s greatest band’ in the 1960s, a ridiculous assertion at
face value considering both the Springfield’s long list of rivals and the fact
their reputation rests on only three albums and one hit single but with the
ring of truth to it, there’s no denying this record’s diverse strength or the
fondness with which so many remember it, members of the band included.
Dewey Martin Obituary and Tribute: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/dewey-martin-tribute-special.html
Non-Album Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/buffalo-springfield-non-album-songs.html
A Now Complete List Of Buffalo Springfield Articles Available
To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
‘Buffalo Springfield’ (1966)
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/buffalo-springfield-1966-album-review.html
'Again' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-17-buffalo-springfield-again.html
'Last Time Around' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/news-views-and-music-issue-43-buffalo.html
'Again' (1967) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-17-buffalo-springfield-again.html
'Last Time Around' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/news-views-and-music-issue-43-buffalo.html
Dewey Martin Obituary and Tribute: http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/dewey-martin-tribute-special.html
Non-Album Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/buffalo-springfield-non-album-songs.html
Surviving TV Appearances 1967-2010
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/buffalo-springfield-surviving-tv.html
Solo/Live/Compilation
albums (Including Poco!) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/buffalo-springfield-live-albumssolo.html
Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/buffalo-springfield-five-landmark.html
Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/buffalo-springfield-five-landmark.html
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