When you get into the Wooden Ship made by
the Crosby Stills, Nash and Young Company and set out to meet Guinnevere, you know you're
headin' in the right direction with your back to Altamont and the confused land of the
Stones, where storms often hit. The sea is calm, with an intonation of a deep-seated folk
legend. And when you open the cover, there are the original natives from the front porch
to the eskimo scene. And you might ask yourself, Who did win? But putting it all together
for us is a member of the company; a member whose latest claims to fame have been with
Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Supersession, and in the archaic era, the Cafe-a-Go-Go Singers,
then the original Buffalo Springfield.
Steve Stills, now 25, was born in Dallas,
Texas, and spent most of his youth moving around, somewhat like Zappa. In high school, he
pumped the drums as a means to an end: student director of the orchestra. The fulfilment
of this ambition was cut short by another move. Simple joys of child-hood to Steve, meant
being the student director of the orchestra.
At one time there was a "real
neat" group called the Radars, tune in, "In the early stages, I was mostly
influenced by . . well], there was a kid who played lead guitar in the band I was in,
called the Radars (big laugh), his name was Chuck Schwin in Tampa. Florida. He was a very
fine guitar player, he played a Fender. And then there was Chet Atkins, you know. There
was a whole little bunch of us who were into kind of a com-bination of all the blues guys
and others including Chet Atkins, Dick Dale (ed. note--Lefty Surfer of the Deltones) and
Hank;. Marvin. A very weird cross section of far-out guitar players." Then he laid
down the blues influence. "As you know, BB and Jimmy Reed and that kind of style,
and, of course Robert Johnson ... there was a friend of mine who had some of the old
Library of Congress Records." Today, Steve is following the pack in group favorites,
which is of course, the Beeee-at-tils (Kaieli!). And under favorite guitar players, he
sticks pretty much to "him," Foxey Jimi (Hendrix, of course).
Getting around to the stringed beast,
Steve raps about how he got tuned into the "axe" and what he did with it.
"Well, I played piano and I don't know, but the percussion just didn't satisfy me.
And my roommate at this time ... at this boy's school . . . had a guitar, so I glombed it
from him. When I was younger and first started playing the guitar, around 14, I used to
come home from school and head for it right away.
"My very first guitar was a Kay,
mahogany, sunburst acoustic thing . . . it was very tinny. In the rock and roll band, when
I switched from drums to guitar, I borrowed it . . . it was their version of a jazz
guitar, acoustic electric and I played rhythm on that. Today it varies. I have a
collection of about 18 guitars, but mostly I play the 'White Falcon.' I have a variety of
elderly guitars. Most of the guitars that the band uses are mine. David's (Crosby) two
guitars, and the custom-built 12-string is one that I modified myself. Yeah. I cut the
neck. I didn't finish it, but there's this fellow in San Francisco (Bernardo) who does
work for the various guitar shops. I cut it the way I wanted it. It's a three-piece neck,
curly maple, and I did the sanding. Then he finished it. When we started, it was a Duane
Eddy 500 they gave me when I was with the Buffalo Springfield. It was too heavy for me. It
just wasn't the right six-string, so I took the body and filed it in a little bit on the
inside because the twelve-string will feed back if you don't have something solid under
the bridge. Bernardo built the fret board for me . . . it's ebony and there were some old
pieces of inlay that Harmon Satterlee had sitting in a drawer that I used on the front and
the back of the head. We just kind of all put it together. David uses it most of the time,
but I won't give it to him officially, 'cause I want him to go build his own. We need
another one anyway."
This paragraph will be entitled: Steve
Stills, the White Falcon, and others.
"Neil and I are going to go to
Gretsch next couple of weeks; I think they were really amazed at the pure White Falcons we
had, 'cause they're kind of old, both of them. So they offered to let us design one for
them and you know what the design is? (laugh) There is no new design, just build the old
one, man. And I hope I'm going to get them to build a 12-string for me. They built one for
Michael Nesmith that is the only electric 12 that I know of that is better than mine. I
haven't experimented with how it sounds. On the one I built, it had Gibson stereo pickups.
David uses a cut-down L5, as his six-string is mine that I have had for a few years. I
have several old Telecasters and a Broadcaster. I also have a black Gibson, that used to
have three pickups so I had the center one removed. But it's tried. I have got like three
of them, but the black one is the best. I have kind of worked it ... I pulled the pickups
out and kind of rewound it and like it's the hottest, you know, there's a lot of gain on
it. It'll tear up an amp if you're not careful. I use it on some of the blues, kind of
when the mood prevails. It really works best through a big Marshall."
And into amps. "The amplifiers we use
are all Fenders from the 50's. All the old blond ones. They're old Bassmans ... which are
kind of like having a governor, you know, we're not going to get over a certain volume
level or they'll blow and we have managed to establish a pretty nice balance that way. I
use two Bassmans and Tremoluxs in series and we have a little box that Neil designed and
had built. You plug the guitar into the front of the box and it carries the signal to
three separate amps so that rather than running the amps in series, you run them straight.
It's like having a guitar chord with three ends. We get pretty good distribution of sound
that way. Neil, for instance, uses two of the old, really old Bassmans, the little one,
about the size of a concert (with four tens) . . . and I use the others with twelves and
have two tens in the Tremolux cabinet. We blew out the old speakers a long time ago, but
those amps have a peculiar sound. And the only real criterion is the color and the old
blond ones sound like the old brown . . . but the ones with the brown grille cloth are
even funkier than the blond ones. I use an old Fender reverb unit with a Sho Bud volume
pedal all the time. I can duplicate some of the backward sounds. I'm planning on reworking
my Sho Bud pedal before I use it. I want to put a little pre-amp into it, because the line
pedal will eat up some of the gain and take the top end off of it. It's kind of like an
automobile using a two-barrel, when it really needs a four. Jerry Garcia has one."
Taking a break form equipment talk, we
went into a bit about practice, music, etc.... "I played the piano, like I said, but
it didn't carry over to the guitar. I try to sit down and write a chart now and I can't; I
really needed those two years in high school orchestra and I wished that we had stayed in
the states so I could have gotten them. Now I play strictly by ear. I played and now play
at least two hours a day without fail. It makes me crazy if I don't. If I don't at least
fiddle with it, you know, if I don't play with it, at least I want to work on the guitar.
I recently bought a D-45, a new Martin. Incidentally, it might be good to put it in the
magazine that I am searching frantically for an old D-45." (Hear that gang?)
"Anyway, I bought this and shaved the braces down which is a little trick I learned
from a guitar maker in New York by the name of Mark Silber. When Martin moved the factory,
and went into a kind of production business, the braces on the inside ... it's like we do
the best we can ... but now they even use a different kind of wood. Martin has a few
strange practices, but they're still the best in this country."
Wrapping up the equipment scene, so we
could get into technique, Steve uses D'Angelico light gauge bronze on his acoustics and
Fender light gauge rock and roll on the electrics.
As far as picking goes, Steve uses bare
fingers. "I started to play flat pick a little bit when I began to play lead
guitar." Then he found he was less encumbered without the plectrum and could
approximate that sound with the front part of his first finger. Now the callous is
building up. "I just put my thumb up against my index finger and strum and pick that
way and it works the same as a flat pick. Then I can just open up my hands and play a
little finger-picking pattern. I just worked a lot on developing the touch for bare finger
picking ... and I sort of worked on translating it from acoustic to electric. I use the
flesh part of my finger, but I also keep my right thumbnail rather long and use that a
lot. So my loudest sound is to simply use my thumb and get a little guts out of that
thumbnail."
Playing the guitarist muscle game, he
rapped a little on weaknesses. "Well, actually my third finger is the one I find
weakest, second to the little finger. I can do things with my little finger that . ..
well, it got smashed in an accident when I was fifteen or sixteen and the sensitivity of
it isn't so much. But the one I have always had trouble with is my ring finger . . . the
one thing that I want to be able to do and can't is . . . being able to bend and then get
a vibrato going at the top of the bend. Like Foxey Jimi does it a lot, that's sort of the
basis for the way that he plays . . . he'll sort of bend two and three steps and then
wobble it when he gets to the top. It takes a very strong finger."
Under the heading of evaluation of trends
in rock and blues, Steve said that " there's not enough music happening. There's a
lot of cats out just making noise. There are very few bands in this country that are
trying to play music, but a lot of them go to the extent of hiding their music behind some
kind of little game they play . . . you know, it's some kind of a shuck they're running
and the music gets lost in it. Maybe in about like ten years somebody will get hip and
release all the Frank Zappa tracks without voices and the people will start callin' it
Stravinsky. I mean the guy's a genius but some kind of basic insecurity makes him hide
that behind this number that he is running. And the number has its validity, but the music
to me is so much more important. I happen to be fortunate enough to have heard those
tracks without the voices and they're incredible. And Jimi Hendrix has let his music get
hidden behind his game. A lot of people let that happen and it's just a shame because
there are a lot of talented musicians that are varying their true talent."
Steve commented that today, the rock and
roll bands are replacing the roles of the old Hollywood stars. "What movie stars used
to have in the way of public appeal, the rock and roll bands have taken over. It isn't so
much what the rock musicians are doing, it's what the kids are doing with the pop
musicians. The larger-than life thing. It's like John Lennon is much more important than
Vanessa Redgrave; whereas Paul Whiteman was never more important than Gary Cooper. And
therefore, the more all the little pieces of BS that go on with the superstar, the less
important your music becomes and the less people seem to realize what you are doing
musically."
Steve describes the style he is putting
across today as "Contemporary American Music.' He admits that now he is finally
beginning to achieve his ultimate goal ... to do something new, do something different ...
create a new style ... a new form." He claims his music isn't rock, folk, pop, but
yet ... 'it is all those things ... there's a lot of influence from legitimate music from
back into the forms that band marches take, you know and symphonic."
The plans for 1970 include finishing off
their tour schedule in London and then a film for Warner Brothers, based on one of their
songs. Then, "we're going to do a summer tour against pop festivals. We're not going
to work any pop festivals, 'cause they're really a burn."
We talked a little about the Stones
Concert (FREE) at Altamont. It seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth concerning the
Stones' Karma so we dropped it and spoke about the album. "Well, we just finished the
second Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young Album but that first one is on the verge of a
million items ... so I'll be seeing a platinum album for the end of January, which is kind
of nice." A platinum album, for those unknowing, is an R.I.A.A. award which means
that the album has created $2,000,000 in sales. The Gold Album is $1,000,000 dollars worth
of business that the artist has created, which breaks down to about 480,000 albums. But
the Crosby, Stills and Nash first album is into about 900,000 albums. The second album
will be titled Deja Vu. which in French means "I have been there before . . . Sort of
the feeling you get when you get a little flash that I've done this before ... that'll be
on the Atlantic label."
Steve has a far-out mind, geared to
creativity and science fiction. He's got a lot of heavy thoughts about Moog Synthesizers
and computer playbacks and plug ins . . . and I wish we had the space ... sometime ... man
... Sometime we'll bring it all home to you. Nevertheless, Steve is solid and I hope he
came across that way. His head's pointed in the right direction and although he's on top
now ... wait a few years and you'll really find out how high the top can go. Later.