Ever the rebel, Stills takes on the recording industry
August 16, 2001
By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Photograph: © Leni Ventura (Chicago 2001)

It's a gravely voice, ripped to shreds from years of cigarettes and sound checks. The hint of a Texas drawl is long since masked by the smart yet sloppy air of a '60s college dropout. It's the broken voice of a vibrant, unbroken spirit -- vocals that, in their prime, cooed some of the best love songs of a generation.

Now, in conversation, Stephen Stills rasps like wet sandpaper. "I'm old enough and smart enough to figure out the entire [music] industry, and it's pretty ugly," he says, on the phone.

He's somewhere on the road with this year's Young-less extension of 2000's blockbuster Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young world tour. Without Neil Young on the bill, the crowds are thinner and some critics have taken note that he can't hit the high notes anymore. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," where are ya?

Nevertheless, Stills is excited about several new projects and seems to have settled into his role as an elder patriarch of the music business. He doesn't mind giving it a spanking when it needs one.

"Nobody writes songs anymore," he says. "They're more interested in bustin' a move than making a record. The business is just overrun by lawyers, bean counters and marketing experts. There's no record people anymore. They don't have anyone out on the street to find someone new to sing."

In Stills' day, young songwriters kept their noses in the air, sniffing the wind for the fresh scent of cultural change. A few months after the 1966 release of the first Buffalo Springfield album, co-founder Stills reflected in song the ominous undertones of increasing clashes between hippies and police. The single was slapped onto the top of "Buffalo Springfield," the album was reissued and "For What It's Worth" raced straight to the Top 40.

Other classics followed, and though Buffalo Springfield was together barely 18 months, Stills, Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer and Jim Messina are credited -- at least by the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll -- with "breaking ground" for what became the country-rock genre. The seminal band's 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inspired Young to dust off the old reel-to-reels and compile an ambitious 90-song boxed set of Buffalo Springfield archives, half of which had never been released.

"Listening to it all with Neil, it was really overwhelming," says Stills. "I had sent all of my stuff to [Young's] ranch years ago ... so that nobody would buy the studio, find it and say it was theirs. But I hadn't listened to it for a long, long time. I was absolutely overwhelmed. There was so much talent in that band. For an old guy like me, getting a little long in the tooth, it really kicked up my confidence."

When the CSN tour ends in September, Stills says he has an album's worth of new solo stuff that's nearly ready for release. Despite soaring tickets sales and intense media interest in last year's CSNY tour and the explosive sales of the Springfield box, Stills says the recording industry is showing little interest in a new Stills disc.

"I recorded it at my own expense and I'll probably skip the label and go right to the 'Net," he says. "I haven't even shopped it. I don't want to be told that it doesn't fit into someone's plans.

"It's that whole industry thing again. Like I said, they don't release songs anymore, just dance stuff. They don't want to go my direction, so I'll do it myself."