Stephen Stills - superb interview - Later with Bob Costas 11/29/91 + 11/30/91

in what is easily the definitive Stephen Stills interview from later with bio Costas aired in a two-parter October 29th and 30th 1990 Stephen is so open and honest and it goes through everything from his influences to Buffalo Springfield to telling the story of Neil bailing on the band on their way to go play on the Johnny Carson show to Crosby Stills and Nash and their new box set that Graham Nash compiled which Stephen talks about both proud of the content in Graham's Devotion to the band in the app the release dissecting every member of Crosby Stills Nash and Young talking at the end about Bob Dylan this is a phenomenal piece of Rock and Roll History Costas is amongst the best interviewers we've ever seen thanks Bob thanks Steven superb watch this thanks for staying up later we've had Graham Nash we've had David Crosby can Neil Young be far behind because now he got the hat trick here is Steven Stills this is his latest Stills alone which we'll talk about in just a bit this is a big week though because as we tape this the CSN box set comes out now this is a Four album or four Disc set and I you know I feel like Ed McMahon to Karnak everything you could possibly want about CSS I mean every great song that Crosby Stills and Nash absolutely ever did you know it's true though we uh there are 77 77 songs I believe and they're all on there I mean this is not one of those deals where like you buy it and you only get four of your favorite songs I mean they're all there Sweet Judy Blue Eyes and Marrakesh Express Deja Vu and they're all over there are 24 uh songs that version versions of songs and even new songs that haven't been heard before I mean we found alternate takes of an alternate mix of the sweet because we had taken out the drums and the drums are just barely there I mean it's just uh a sequel David and I looked at the stack of tapes which would fill this particular area and went Graham you're so good at this well I went to Mexico and Graham listened to all this stuff God blessed me he's got the patience for that I you know I can't quite do that but uh and he we found these gems he kept every every week every few days it was Stephen you've got to come down and listen to this it kind of brings me to something I think is is interesting about and it's so hard to keep track people honestly don't know even people that are fans of the group or groups they don't know for sure which one is a Crosby Stills and Nash song which one's a Crosby Stills Nash and Young song then they confuse Buffalo Springfield and there are components of each that there's all kinds of I kind of like that there's all kinds of overlap and the point I'm getting to is this stuff was successful at least for a concentrated period of time successful with very very different types of talents and types of attitudes coming together the variety just like America the the variety in that that stew is what makes it really interesting you know if associate makes things out of varying elements you know and I actually wanted to have I wanted to loved having you know a Confederate flag and a Canadian flag and a British flag and an American flag you know kind of you know because it's all these diverging influences with us and it just uh it's the same stew that this country is let me ask you to give you to give a scouting report on each of the four components strengths and weaknesses David Crosby David Crosby is one of the most generous intelligent and absolutely one of the funniest people alive and he has this he has wisdom and Grace and and style that's just amazing and and and great dignity as well and what he has done with his life and the message that he's bringing to people is first of all imperative and second of all paid for at Great cost you know and very heroic how about musically he is the he's the honey he's the honey between the razors and the gravel um and he's the glue that holds it together how about Graham Nash Graham Nash has a a Rapier intellect and a uh a possessed of great vision compassion he's guileless for a Machiavellian SOB but no he's guileless and just means that wants the best for everyone uh he's uh and his and he's got this pain he's got patience and he hears everything he's like the elephant's memory and he's got a marvelous voice and he writes those wonderfully accessible songs that everybody can relate to and say oh I felt that I'm not so alone Neil Young Neil Young is a genius he's an enigma never played a team sport in this life that's why it keeps you know he doesn't know what that is that's why he keeps going and you know yeah and no I have to go make a solo album and stuff so making that kind of a commitment is just not in its Universe he's got too much else to do and too many other roles to fill he's also one of my best friends I mean I can always talk to him about anything did you need him then to take the band to its best work because if Crosby and Nash tend more toward the sweet didn't you need a dash of the bitter what Neil brings to us I think we bring the best out of each other he's not quite so bitter you know not quite so tarp when he's with you guys when he's with us and I think it serves him he's so much fun to work with and he's so fast and a lot of these the devices as far as record making go Neil and I invented during the Springfield I mean we just sit there and wow what's that box do well what does it do when you do that you know and uh I heard you say one time or maybe I read it that Buffalo Springfield as successful as they were has never really been heard on record the way they really sounded oh yeah we were as bad as the Rolling Stones I mean we were a dangerous band a dangerously cooking band we never that's why we learned to become engineers Neil and I because we were searching we didn't finish until after the Springfield long since broke up but we never got to where we could get him to sound we could didn't discover any of the tricks that uh to make them sound like Motown records if we could have gotten the Rhythm Section to sound like a motion Rhythm Section just the sound those guys should certainly play like that then that would a frame the the whole thing and it would have sounded more like we did live why wasn't there a concert album made then I mean at least you could have if it was that raw and had that much of an edge even if it was imperfect we could hear it in a concert album to some extent right well um for all of the noise that Buffalo Springfield made at the time that we were together we didn't so that we didn't sell that many records you know well I don't know what what it was it was just there was not a big Mass Appeal it was very uh it was on its way it was about to break when I think we were on the way to New York to do the Carson Show when when Neil decided to do something else and it was about to pop and actually make enough money but you have to be somewhat successful to get somebody to go ahead and send the truck as I understand it you were going to be on the Carson show this would have been around 1966 or 67 when it was still in New York and wasn't Otis Redding going to be on the same night I mean this would have been a hell of a Tonight Show and Neil Young bolted at almost literally the last minute literally the 11th Hour why I have no idea you have to ask him how angry were you uh I was more hurt than angry uh you know I understood you know because he put sorry he saw the he saw himself walking into the group trap and I think that the idea became so offensive to him that he bolted I asked you about everybody except yourself what do you think you brought as strengths and weaknesses to all these various combinations I had the car [Music] uh I tell you I'll tell you something the one thing about my whole job that makes me the most uncomfortable is this whole Fame business and this whole talking about yourself and everything there's something about it that's vaguely indecent to me so I have a hard time with that question I can talk about the other guys and Rave about them and give you all this stuff but as far as it's not that I don't haven't got the sense to look inside myself it's just I don't wanna those are not my definitions to make I know I've got a I've got a real good sense of black history and black music and all my roots are in the South and growing up with you know uh with music sung on back porches and in churches down the road from what the place that where my father was trying to build this development in the middle of the floor and the lady who is married to our the head plumber of the whole place that was doing all the plumbing in these houses she had this guitar stuck in this beautiful Gibson j200 stuck in her closet and wrote country songs sentimentaica froze and she was incredible I mean just incredible a flat picker of like Lester flat you know I mean just you know and so I've got all of those wonderful influences that weren't available to that that were different they were so pure natural that they were uh I mean they're the real thing like um Eric Clapton was talking about uh when he talks about Jimmy and you know he says I was sort of second hand Jimi Hendrix yeah because he said I was sort of secondhand and Jimmy was like the real thing and I was in awe of him you know I was right next to the to the real thing too I was a white kid living in this in the middle of the south in way out in the country and there was this incredible music floating out of these orange groups you know so I guess I bring that sense of Earth you mentioned Jimi Hendrix it's hard it's hard to make hard to overstate how important this guy is in your life right really it is uh he was in he was a natural like I am he grew up learning music the way I did and we looked at each other and saw each other play once and went oh and he just looked at me and said oh you just haven't done this enough here's how that where you can do this and I said Jimmy I don't have a thumb that's six inches long I cannot rot my so we have to think of another way for me to do that and he said oh right right so and and he would you know and it was sort of like looking in America as he was South you know and it just he had this he had this strength that I mean he he knew I had it in me but it just you know I hadn't worked out enough the way he looked at it and he'd show me all kinds of positions and stuff but he was like Satchel Paige throwing a fastball in addition to his Artistry and his passion and whatever physical Talent yeah actual Anatomy is a big part of it he had hands that no one else had he had hands about that big but that one and a thumb that could wrap very easily all the way around you know without having to do like that like most of he could rap from there to there around the guitar they're going to show you what I mean we I mean it's like anybody doing that you know that's about how far his thumb would reach all the way to there and I mean he had the strength the only person I've seen like that is uh the Stevie Ray Vaughan he had that same power and he used and Stevie Ray used these cables he used these huge medium gauge strings which is like ow and he's pulling them four and five frets Hendricks and Johnny Winter had a guitar duel someplace some basement club or something yeah Jimmy thought it was so stupid he thought it was really silly kind of went down there because everybody insisted on it but he thought the whole idea of guitar duels was really dumb but you were there right I played bass you and all three of you were smashed or not or well I was playing in the wrong key and it's really hard when you have your hand right on the wrong side that little silver thing and Jimmy kicked me in the butt anyway oh whoops what do you suppose if Jimi Hendrix were around today what do you suppose he would have evolved into or could he have just played that supersonic guitar forever and there would have been an audience we'll never know I think he was gonna he was going back to he was going to go back and do some simple you know and he he and Buddy Guy would have made a great uh heating Buddy Guy would have made some record together or something like that Buddy Guy's the greatest living guitar players for us right now did anybody see and Eric at the time that uh that some people bit the dust Morrison Joplin Hendricks did anybody see clearly what was going on or was everybody involved to one extent or another to the point where nobody could advise anybody else and say hey wait a minute come on for your own good I can't recall how I specifically I I tried but I did try with Jimmy a little bit but it just you know I'm as guilty as the next guy I didn't say nothing you know I just I would catch myself and go up too far and I didn't say nothing and I must say that I feel I don't feel good about that so a little say enough was there a little bit of a glass houses kind of thing that affected not just you but everybody sure of course they would back after this couldn't you have been a member of the love and spoonful oh I wanted to be desperately I was here in New York living in in a hovel in the Lower East Side and and I was watching this group get put together and nobody knew that I played electric guitar and bass and drums I wanted to be the bass player for this base so bad couldn't get the time of day so I was just a kid wandering around the village passing the hat like everybody else right and couldn't get the time of day so um that you know and then watching it happen and then listening to them I said I've got to get to California and start something and so you went off on your own or yeah I uh I took a job with uh with this uh folk group and did this little circuit up through Canada and in Thunder Bay in Fort William Ontario now known as Thunder Bay this guy in a hearse rolls up to do a guest spot and it's the you know Local Hero Neil Young from Winnipeg and his band there you know and they were great they were doing just what I knew would work at doing folk songs with the with an electric guitar particularly a Gretch electric guitar now here comes the real shocker there was a chance I don't know how great a chance but at least you were talked about as a possible member of the monkeys well that's not so much a shock when you hear when you hear my end of the story I heard this open call go out around La and you didn't have to be a genius to figure out what happens to people that go on TV to do this stuff you know and not in the 60s right um but I figured what a great way to get a great deal and write a bunch of songs and make a bunch of money I wanted to write the song so I went down there and basically you know just sort of shut up and asked answered the questions you know waiting for my opportunity to say well actually I just assumed write the songs I asked that question it turns out they had a deal all made with a with a publishing company and had all their writers lined up so I kind of went well after all that doesn't happen they didn't want me anyway what do you think would have happened and so I said I Got a Friend by the way though that you might like to see and that was Peter Court oh really yeah and he obviously did become one of the monkeys what do you think would have happened to you in your career had you been one of them I can assure you I would not have done it no way I was there to be a songwriter you know I went down and played the game I would have I would have warmed my way out of it because it just would have put me in a stereotypal position and that just wasn't me how close would you come to be becoming the lead singer of Blood Sweat and Tears not very close uh Jimmy fielder who was playing bass for them called me and uh and said uh would you like to think about this kick and I was in the middle of something else and uh I said yeah let me I've got to finish this though I'm committed to finish this or something like that and then by the time by the time I got available to even go work out with them it uh they had to uh had they made some they'd done something else I don't know how that would have worked I'm not exactly sure where we left off but we'll pick it up someplace with Steven Stills tomorrow nights are staying up later this is night two with Stephen Stills and starting just wherever it occurs to me because I'm not sure what our agenda here is you watch the shows when Graham Nash was was here and when David Crosby was I didn't see the grand show I saw part of it well you saw the Crosby shows and he said something like at his best Stephen Stills is a tremendous friend great musician we had Great Moments together at his worst he put us kind of in the background called us his background singers and his ego got too large how did that make you feel when you heard him say it well at first I went that's not true and then I sort of uh I actually back when I was accused of it originally I wasn't aware that I was doing that but then but then when I think about it I probably was I didn't mean to and it uh and it was just I'm you know it's that part of that first flush of success you know it it just comes with itch to fear and he walked out two [ __ ] days in a row you a hypocrite pissed me off I mean you're 24 years old and they give you all the money you need and tell you that everything that you do is absolutely fantastic and want to know what you think about everything and you know it's not a question of if you lose your poison talk quickly and how quickly you get it back you know and I said some things I'm sure and behaved in a fashion that seemed to uh that were probably quite hurtful and I and was unable to sufficiently apologize even to date you know I feel I kind of want to do one of those uh like in that wonderful uh film with the The Fish Called Wanda where you're taking upside down I am utterly and completely sorry profoundly so and but I mean you know it's just you know I that was my way of Behaving stupidly with the first flush of of success if I asked you to pick one or maybe two songs from each of these combinations that you think pretty much exemplifies the best work they did what would you pick from Buffalo Springfield hmm boy that's is this a quiz it's a quiz but there's no wrong answers though I think Mr soul uh was one of the better Buffalo Springfield songs sit down I think I love you as a real good buffalo you know like I said our performances of the Springfield didn't quite get to record but boy you know everything was just a little up you know because we're oh we're in the studio you know okay yeah and you said last night that you really thought the really the really down performances that had the edge and captured what the band was about those who got close to the studio see now if someone who was a fan had to pick one they'd probably pick for what it's worth because that's the one that kind of captured the time it seemed and actually though it's a real good performance too yeah there was a pretty good although I sang it very weird and I seldom done it that way since so it was very tenuous about it because I'd just written it the night before if I had in mind for the previous few days before I wrote that song it was back there to write a song for the guys on the line who you know didn't know why they were they were trying to deal with in Vietnam in Vietnam right and then I drove by this you know this police caused Riot and you know it all came together so that song is about both and I'm not sure that for what it's worth still doesn't apply to me now if I ask you to pick a couple from Crosby Stills and Nash minus young what would you pick this sweet sweet Judy Blue Eyes yours and mine David song off this new album which is absolutely one of the most brilliant things he ever wrote and teach your children [Music] and how about csny carry on down by the river deja vu let me hit you with something that I sort of ran by David Crosby when he was here I went back in the research and saw a couple of things from Rolling Stone now in one article they said CSN was close to a beatles-like phenomenon from an American group in the late 60s early 70s now some people might say overstatement but certainly that was a flattering thing then there were reviews of CSN or in some cases with Neil Young Crosby Stills Nash and Young and the general tone of those reviews were kind of bubble gum for slightly older people not enough oomph overrated oh yes well I went the term journalistic clap trap comes to mind sometimes I wonder what show they went to or did they just stay home and listen to the records and decide that or or it and a lot of it was affected by who they saw last week and who's their current their current fave and particularly back in those times the the Rolling Stone reviewers were very very trendy yeah and I mean Ralph Gleason would be rolling in his grave with some of these guys and I have Ralph Gleason to thank for my career I mean he wrote a piece in the San Francisco chronic one time that was like the first guy that understood what I was trying to do and it just it thrilled me to death but I don't know it's it's so easy to write a bad review if you're a writer you got to know this if you're a writer you can sit down and write a scorcher and it's so much fun because there's all these great phrases like you know dated and just you know writing a put down it's just such a piece of cake writing an actual thought review about something that was thought for booking you know it was a little like work so I don't tend to read reviews seriously your best stuff when I say you I mean whatever combination csny or just Crosby Stills and Nash or Buffalo Springfield's best stuff it was accessible and sometimes I'm not trying to make a blanket statement sometimes the more accessible and commercially successful something is the more critics tend to sneer at it well of course you know uh a it's it's it's true so much of the time that uh it's kind of you can almost depend on it you know they do the same thing with uh with McCartney they do the same thing with a lot of people they're just marvelous you know great musicians and great art and you know and they just go oh that right like I said it's easy to write I suppose somebody wrote a song and recorded a song like Marrakesh Express right now my question is this would there be an audience for it besides your old audience and would there be a radio station that would give it the kind of play that it needs or would it just get lost I got a big surprise for you and it was a big surprise for us when we play that song we never play that song for 20 years right because we always thought now that's just bubble gum right and that's just kidding oh it's just bubble gum the first time we did that song on stage we did it in Australia and they went nuts and then well okay well that's an older crowd we went to the next place it's all kids they went nuts we went to Japan it's all kids they went nuts [Music] I'm sorry it's one of those Classics and you can't get away from it it may not mean anything but it's just a neat song that everybody remembers and it would get played and it would be hit today the second gig that you guys ever played together was Woodstock right there had been a stop in Chicago then you go to Woodstock this is what's known as stepping right up to the big time whether you realize it at that point or not well everybody got very nervous because everyone that we liked was standing around the back of the stage and it had a particular effect on David uh I was just trying to get my guitar in tune so and that's virtually all I remember it's like the temperature dropped about 10 degrees right before we went on I had an acoustic guitar got it in tune and the guy sat it down and I saw it sit there while I was on the other side of the stage because I was going to walk out and they were going to hand it to me which was a dumb thing to do they hand it to me and exploring and so it's getting to the point where you know I'm trying not to you know I'm trying to like keep the groove and that's all I remember really about that moment is is amazing that I was able to get it you mentioned Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is one of the songs you'd kind of put in the time capsule is there anything to add to people's General understanding that it was written for Judy Collins is there some aspect to this that we don't know or no and as a matter of fact I've never again allowed the name of who the song was to be written about used because it gets to be too much you know the poor thing uh she was so very gracious about it though someone asked her if she understood that that was written for her and she said one could only hope which was very very nice of her to do because those kinds of things can get annoying I know actually it's a uh no there's that was written for her and it just sort of it evolved uh and by way of basically an inspired moment where I said I had these incompleted songs and I said wait let's put them together and see how they fit and all the transitions seemed to work and then we went oh yeah you think rock and roll in general gets overanalyzed critiqued down to the last minute detail and all kinds of scholarly analyzes of what this means and that means as opposed to real ongoing history which gets trivialized yeah sometimes the overview is lost yeah yeah uh no it just seems to me that the the analysis of uh of uh some of this stuff gets a little overdone and really important events get trivialized is it better in every case if the mystery then is maintained in the case of Sweet Judy Blue Eyes people know that it was originally written for Judy Collins but is it best not to talk about it best just to let anybody interpret any song they want any way they want well basically that's what it's for it's for uh it's it's it whatever it was about my life that motivated me to write these things if you relate to it there's something about your life that motivates you in a similar way otherwise that's what creates the initial attraction Graham Nash was here I told him and this is really the truth I wasn't saying it to make him feel good when I was at Syracuse University in the early 70s you'd hear a lot of music some of it still has lasting resonance others was trendy garbage but you'd hear a lot of music all the time it was the life of almost every kid 18 19 years old there you could walk through the quad and you hear music blaring from every window and you heard you guys about as often as anybody this was 1970 1971 and songs like carry on in Ohio and teach your children whatever from the deja vu album and in that period of time those songs were close to Anthems for kids of that generation you ever get kind of Misty for that period of time for the for the effect you had on people for the fact that you were part of the soundtrack of their lives no I miss being that thin um no that's uh I don't I you know we were talking about about you know their comments on my behavior at the time and no I don't want to go back there not even because I I enjoy my wisdom basically right now I'm I am having I'm discovering how wonderful it is to be a new father at on this side of 40. you know I have three-year-old daughter and basically she don't care I don't care you know I care what she cares about you know yeah and my mom gave me the most wonderful compliment she walked up and we were going around on the floor one night and uh with uh my daughter and she said how come you're so much better of a father than yours was I said I don't know mother maybe I learned what not to do because it sure is easy you know what do you suppose you'll want your uh your daughter to know about that time what do you suppose how do you suppose you'll communicate to her what her father and his compatriots were part of sometimes I feel after we've done one of these three-day blitzkriegs of talking to everyone in the universe that everything she could possibly want to know is a matter of record yeah but what I wanted to know is that's only part of the story there's no way that they can get inside what that was all like it was just too strange and like the study of any history if she really wants to know about it she's going to have to look at the art and the military and the political and the Agricultural and scientific history of the time and put it all together and then get a sense of what it was like how much of that Spirit of rock and roll whatever you understood it to be how much is still out there oh man listen to the to the rap stuff I mean you know we might miss the sense of Melody but they're doing the same thing they're talking to each other in a language that they understand because they got to because nobody else will let them talk anywhere else I mean they're totally frustrated and uh and they you know it's if it missed it gets mystifying you know just like hip and groovy was to our moms and dads you know but uh I think it's uh it's some of it's brilliant you know do you know if it's excessive and and some of it's annoying and some of it's in bad taste but a lot of it is just plain brilliant do you miss the feeling of rock and roll as a unifying force no I don't mean to say that everybody else is ours rock and roll is ours that's our universe and Hip-Hop is the is the is the is the newest but hip-hop is the same thing to them that rock and roll was to us that I say more power to them before we go here what should people know besides just buy it and listen to it and that'd probably tell you what you need to know but what would you like to say about where you're going on the Stills alone album I formed my own little record company because I just couldn't bear the thought of going through uh going through another committee to find out if everybody liked what I did what I decided to do was just take my monitor system into the studio and sing for four or five days and pick out the best ones and you know and then see what happens and basically have an album that was completely by myself so basically this is the first effort of my little record company that I'm going to do my solo stuff on the next one I'm going to get the best little rock and roll band that I can find like three pieces and play a bunch of songs and basically I want to keep really do a real raw pure and simple everybody's talking and in my life a couple of standards that you covered although they don't sound anything like just knockoffs of the original popular versions they're uh those are two there's a there I once had an idea of I want to do an album songs I wish I'd written and that's two of them and Hollis Brown was the one that started it because that was one of the songs that I got that truly drove me into taking this up as a profession was that one song up again is that it certainly is worth it and I thank you very much for coming by these two nights that was awfully nice well thank you okay Steven Stills we're out of here see you later [Music] thank you for watching Cleveland live music I can't play a lick that's why I'm a taper thanks for watching the channel and making it grow if you want to subscribe that'd be appreciated patreon GoFundMe is be appreciated maybe I could get guitar lessons

Channel: Cleveland Live Music

Views: 324,388

Keywords: cleveland, live, music, archival footage

Id: C3QJhr58MGM

Length: 36min 2sec (2162 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2022