Stephen Stills, a.k.a. "The First Two-Fer"

Author: Willie G. Moseley
Source: Vintage Guitar Online
Date: June 10th 1997

Legendary guitarist/singer/songwriter Stephen Stills has been in "double-dipping" situations before. Crosby, Stills and Nash played at both Woodstock music festivals (in 1969 and 1994), and more than one of his group efforts since he first entered into musical prominence has achieved gold and platinum success.

And around the time this interview is slated to run in Vintage Guitar, Stills is due to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ... twice in the same evening, which is why Stills' pun ended up as the subtitle of this on-the-record conversation with the affable veteran.

Casually, the guitarist reminisced about his three decades at the forefront of the popular music business. It shouldn't come as a surprise that what might have seemed to be a disproportionate number of questions were about the first band with which Stills achieved national success, since the Buffalo Springfield was noted for its unique guitars (and guitar sounds):

VG: What kind of music influenced you in your pre-Buffalo Springfield days, and what kinds of instruments did you play?

SS: I listened to Elmore James and Jimmy Reed -- the good stuff! I got hooked into folk music by accident, because that's what white college kids liked when I was a child (chuckles). I had a Kay guitar, an Epiphone and a knock-around, dreadnought-bodied Guild. I always had a feel for bass; I played bass in my high school band. I was surrounded by the orchestra, and I could hear everything, so I paid attention.

A friend of mine had a Fender Stratocaster, but it was too tough for me, so I learned how to play fretted instruments on a baritone ukulele, like the guy in the Kingston Trio had.

I used to see blind men on the street in Louisiana and Florida. I remember one guy called The Night Man, who played around Gainesville, Tampa and Tallahassee. God Almighty, he was a bear! He played bottleneck using the handle part of a kitchen knife!

VG: The blues influences in your formative years may surprise some readers.

SS: Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records. There were times I thought I was going to turn to the blues, but then I'd hear better blues players. One time, I was going to concentrate on that style, then I heard Eric Clapton at the Whiskey, and I said: "Well ****, never mind" (laughs). But I can still get there, it's just odd that at the age of 50 I'm finally getting good at it!

VG: There's a legend about the formation of the Buffalo Springfield that supposedly involved you chasing down a hearse driven by Neil Young.

SS: That's a true story. I'd met Neil in Thunder Bay, Ontario; I'd been up there working with a Cambridge, Massachusetts folk group. He came through with his band; he had a bass player and a drummer, and was playing folk music on a Gretsch guitar. I heard what he was doing, and said: "That is it," because the other big influence on my guitar playing had been Chet Atkins. I'd gone to see Chet Atkins doing a demonstration at a guitar store in the late '50s, and of course, I fell in love with his playing, and I began Travis-picking all over the South.

I arranged for Neil to get into the States on a working visa, but he decided to be "...the Bob Dylan of Toronto," broke up his band, and started playing acoustic music in small clubs.

After about a year or so, I was in L.A.; I'd decided to try to get a band together out there. Richie Furay had been in that Cambridge folk group with me, and I'd hustled him into coming out to L.A. too, but up to that point all there was to our "band" was just him and me, and Richie was about to get disgusted and go home. We'd been searching for musicians all over town.

I was on Sunset Boulevard, and I pulled up behind a hearse that had Ontario plates on it; I knew exactly who it was before I even saw who was driving. Neil had another hearse that had died in Thunder Bay, but this one was a Pontiac he'd driven all the way to California, and when I pulled behind him, he was actually looking for 77 Sunset Strip (laughs)! Bruce Palmer was with him; Bruce became the Buffalo Springfield's bass player.

VG: I always thought the band had some great guitar tones on certain songs. What did the Buffalo Springfield use, instrument-wise?

SS: Neil had a fondness for Gretsch guitars, which rubbed off on me, so the original Buffalo Springfield sound was comprised primarily of Gretsches. Richie got an Epiphone to saw on; Bruce played a Fender bass.

VG: Another interesting facet was what might have been called an "aggressive" acoustic sound; those guitars were way up front in the mix on songs like "Bluebird" and "Mr. Soul."

SS: When we got into our first recording session, the producer said: "This is not what I want; play it faster," so Neil and I more or less learned how to make records ourselves. When you're that young, you find yourself saying things like: "Let's see what this particular machine does; let's turn all of the knobs up and down, and see what it sounds like when it's really 'scrunchy';" it was sort of an Elmore James tradition!

We did that to some old Fairchild and UA limiters, which would make the guitars sustain in a unique way. So a lot of that was due to what I'd call "perverse, unnatural, and immoral use of a limiter" (chuckles).

VG: There were also some lower-end, almost Duane Eddy-ish twangs on tunes such as "Rock and Roll Woman" and again, "Mr. Soul."

SS: I actually had a Guild Duane Eddy guitar, and I had a black Gibson that was one of the first models with humbuckings; it was my first old guitar. Then I ran across a Gibson Super 400, so there were a lot of good guitars used on those recordings.

VG: The introduction to "Rock and Roll Woman" has always been fascinating; it almost sounds like a 12-string guitar with a harmony tuning.

SS: That was a Gretsch acoustic put through the board, using a limiter; we overdubbed it with its own self.

VG: How valid is it to pronounce the Buffalo Springfield progenitors of country rock? The band came along before the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and there were instruments like a banjo on "Bluebird," and a gospel piano on "Kind Woman."

SS: Well, call it a potpourri of a lot of things. We thought one of the crimes of music back then was pigeonholing -- making songs so someone could put them in the right "box." We certainly weren't a country band; we would take all kinds of influences from all over and blend them together. I spent my last year of high school in Latin America, and there's a edge of salsa under all of my rhythms.

VG: There were some interesting covers of Springfield songs; a Texas band called Fever Tree did a version of "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" and even the Yes covered "Everydays." Do you remember who did the hit version of "Sit Down, I Think I Love You?"

SS: I should, because of the royalties (chuckles), but things were going so fast back then I didn't really notice when we got covered; we were always heading towards the next project. I haven't heard the cover of "Everydays;" I've got to look that up.

VG: There was even sort of a "conceptual song" called "Broken Arrow" that was fairly interesting for its time.

SS: That was when Neil discovered Jack Nietzsche. They went off and pretty much came up with that by themselves, but I thought it was a great song, and I was more than happy to do my harmony parts on it.

VG: Last Time Around's title and cover photo were somewhat unique, in that it was an acknowledgment the band was breaking up, and there was a rip in the photo by Young.

SS: Neil had quit the band just before we were going to do "The Tonight Show," which would have been a big break for us. He left the night before we were supposed to go to New York; he saw himself being trapped in a band and had solo stuff he wanted to do. The Youngbloods went on "The Tonight Show" instead of us, and they were so much trouble Johnny Carson didn't book another rock and roll band for years (laughs).

VG: In my opinion, it's always seemed like CSN has had more of an emphasis on songwriting and vocal harmony instead of instrumentation.

SS: I'm afraid you're right, although I played all of the instruments on the first album. Basically, they were sort of like Springfield tracks with new vocals. I used a standard array of Gretsches and Martins, plus a Dobro, a banjo, and pianos. I still have an old '60s Precision Bass I used back then; I call it "Grandma." The secret to its sound is old, flatwound strings that have been left on it for years, and it works! I'm down to my last set of pre-CBS Fender flatwounds.

But the band also featured David Crosby's remarkable songs, and Graham Nash's record-making ability; he knew all of those English "tricks."

VG: In the early '70s, you formed a band called Manassas. How was that supposed to have differed from your previous efforts?

SS: That was actually supposed to have gone back to more of a Springfield sound, but to me it's all been kind of seamless. Manassas had a pedal steel guitar player, as well as Chris Hillman, who could play the **** out of a mandolin, so the band did have a bit more of a traditional country approach, but the pedal steel guy could also play rock and roll on his instrument, which scared me to death (chuckles)! I recorded that album in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, down in your neck of the woods; I worked with Barry Beckett.

VG: When I saw Manassas on the old "In Concert" TV show, you were playing a Gibson Firebird.

SS: I used a Firebird III and a single-pickup Firebird I back then, and I've still got 'em.

VG: Then there was a 1983 CSN concert video, recorded at the New Universal Amphitheater. Why wasn't that released as a live album?

SS: I don't know; it may have had something to do with David, who was "on his way to 'the home'." He needed to go to rehab then, and if he had gone then, he would have saved himself a lot of trials and tribulations later. I thought that video was pretty damn good, however.

VG: So what's the status of your career at this point in time?

SS: I've just built a studio in my mama's old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We've recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we're sort of just chipping away.

VG: "We" meaning CSN?

SS: There's some Stills solo blues stuff, some Nash songs, and some material that's obviously all of us, so we're going to keep on going at it like this.

VG: If I remember correctly, you were one of the first rock stars to ever have a feature article in Guitar Player about your collection of vintage instruments. There was a photo of you standing in a field with some of them, including your Firebirds and a Gibson doubleneck.

SS: And I still have most of those guitars. The D'Angelico disappeared, thanks to some dope-crazed roadies, God bless 'em, as did a sunburst J-200 with an Alpine spruce top and a rosewood body. The J-200 had "A1-11" written inside the soundhole in magic marker. It was stolen in Cleveland.

VG: How many instruments do you currently own?

SS: Seventy-three, but that includes my Sho-Bud pedal steel, which I can't play (laughs). I've tried for years, and I just can't make it go.

VG: Tell me about some of your favorite pieces.

SS: My favorite piece is my '53 Esquire; I've always liked one pickup and two knobs. I also have a 1954 Stratocaster, serial number 0281, and I still like my Firebirds. I have a German-made guitar that's fairly new, but it's made out of aged wood. It's desperately cool, but it weighs a ton. I also like my '58 Flying V.

VG: What about acoustics?

SS: My younger D-45, which is a '42; I also have a '39. I have a whole series of "45" instruments I really like.

VG: Are there any modern builders you admire, or would you prefer to go for the old stuff?

SS: Quite frankly, I'd rather go for the old stuff, but I've got an iron in the fire about getting Martin to build me a guitar like my old ones. They're going to try to reproduce the specs, including the size of the bracing. They're even going to find wood that has the right density. There are some other projects in the works, as well.

VG: Any instruments you're still seeking?

SS: A rosewood J-200.

VG: With "A1-ll" in the soundhole?

SS: That would help, but another like it would be okay, as long as it had the sound.

VG: Is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction the second time around for you?

SS: Actually, both are happening on the same night, for the Buffalo Springfield and CSN. There have been some other inductions where someone got in for a second time, like the Beatles and John Lennon, but those were done in separate years. As far as I know, I'm going to be the first two-fer inducted twice on the same night.

VG: There'll probably be a big jam session.

SS: It should be interesting to see who turns up. All I know is I've got to be on my best behavior, so both bands will get the proper amount of respect (laughs)!

Spoken like a true veteran, not just of the popular music scene, but as a veteran of the vintage guitar phenomenon, as well. When it comes to either subject, Stephen Stills is knowledgeable and eloquent, and he's earned his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Even though he'd had to "double-up" on the accolades!

And what's wrong with that???