posted 09-26-2005 11:24 PM         

As Neil Young recalled to Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone: "Stephen Stills had met me before and remembered I had a hearse. As soon as he saw the Ontario plates, he knew it was me. So they stopped us. I was happy to see f***ing anybody I knew! And it seemed very logical to us that we form a band. We picked up Dewey Martin for the drums, which was my idea, four or five days later." With Young was fellow Canadian folkie Bruce Palmer, who would become the band's bassist; like Stills and Furay, the two of them were just "tooling around... taking in California. The promised land."

Within a few days of forming, the five-piece christened itself Buffalo Springfield, taking the name from a steamroller they noticed on a West Hollywood street. They had found one another in West Hollywood, and it was there, on the Sunset Strip, that they would move into the fast lane. They quickly built their reputation on the hip local scene with their now legendary gigs at the Whiskey a Go Go and generated a mighty buzz in the freewheeling record industry of the time. Atlantic Records, still a groovy indie then, landed the band for it's Atco label and sent it into the studio with managers Charles Greene and Brian Stone. Fans deemed the debut, Buffalo Springfield, staid in comparison to their routinely electrifying gigs; the album arrangements leaned more toward folk than rock, with an emphasis on the harmonies of Stills and Furay. But the stylistic blend was more forward-thinking than it may have seemed: The surprisingly contemporary-sounding "Go and Say Goodbye" veers well past folk into the kind of country that's called Americana these days.

Stills dominated the album with seven out of twelve songs; in the liner notes he is referred as to as "the leader, but we all are" an unconscious hint perhaps at the uneasy alliance these strong willed talents had forged. Young composed the other five, although he left most of the lead vocal chores to Furay. Young's "Do I Have Come Right Out and Say It," featured a plaintive Furay vocal, is beautiful simple pop songwriting of a kind Young wasn't known for in those days. As the owner of a hearse, he generally displayed the sort of prenatural melancholy that marked another album's songs, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing."

Buffalo Springfield's sole pop hit, "For What It's Worth," wasn't even on their debut when it was first released in late '66. The song was yet another by-product of life on the Sunset Strip, where the club scene was devolving into violent clashes between kids and cops, after long-haired patrons started being turned away from bars. "For What It's Worth," was Stills reaction to the escalating craziness around him, and it soon took on meaning and a life far beyond the Strip, the clubs, and the LAPD. Atco released "For What It's Worth," as a single and, once it took off, yanked the first track from the debut album, slapped on the hit and re-released the lp. The single went to number seven (#7), the album to number eighty (#80).

For the world at large, "For What It's Worth," was Buffalo Springfield. As a suburban New Jersey kid circa '67, I went to see Buffalo Springfield, expecting one hit wonders. Until then my view of the group had been restricted to Stills, blond and dapper in a Beatlesque kind of way, backed by befringed L.A. hippies, earnestly rendering his hits on TV. That afternoon, at a college gym gig sponsored by New York City's WMCA-AM Good Guys, the band was there to deliver the Top Ten goods. They were second-billed to the Beach Boys, who were in their Smiley Smile phase.

But the cavalcade of hits took a left turn somewhere. Buffalo Springfield did their most famous tune, and it was utterly thrilling - ominous, prescient and a great pop song, too. What I remember most, though, was the rest of the loud and hard driving set; here was the Whiskey-seasoned rock band, with Neil Young wrestling out of his guitar all those twisted sounds that would become his signature. The band obliterated the Top Forty tenor of the afternoon and left the audience's ear's ringing before the arrival of the loopy headliners. I was stunned, confused, inspired and I managed, as an unobtrusive almost-thirteen-year-old, to hang around after the show to collect autographs and can still recall the way Young sat in the first rows of chairs, looking off into the distance.

Buffalo Springfield Again, released later in '67, contained some of the group's most enduring work, including "Mr Soul" and "Bluebird." It also featured Young's most ambitious productions, "Expecting to Fly"and "Broken Arrow." By then, Young was singing his own tunes. Most significantly, the band was producing it's own sessions, an unusual setup at a time when a record company rarely left a band alone in the studio. Stills, Young, and Furay each took turns in the producer's chair, with a little help from friends like arranger Jack Nitzsche, Atlantic honcho Ahmet Ertegun and engineer Jim Messina, who later joined the band as bassist.

By mid-'67, Young was already having clashes with the group and left for a time, missing the band's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, where most of rock's ascending royalty had gathered. "I just couldn't handle it toward the end," Young later said. "My nerves couldn't handle the trip ..... everything started to go too ****ing fast, I can tell that now."

While Young slipped in and out of the group at will, bassist Palmer was deported to Canada, following a series of pot-possession charges. Bassist Jim Fielder filled in, before Messina signed on for what would be the bands last months. In mid-'68, after a Topanga Canyon pot bust that resulted in misdemeanor charges for Eric Clapton along with Young, Furay and Messina, the band officially called it quits, a scant eighteen months after forming. Rolling Stone announced: The Buffalo Springfield, one of the most outstanding Los Angeles rock groups, disbanded on May 5th because of a combination of internal hassle, extreme fatigue coupled with absence of National success, and run-ins with the fuzz.

"Last Time Around", the final Buffalo Springfield album, was pieced together by Messina and released after the breakup. Much of it feels like a prelude to Stills' work with David Crosby and Graham Nash, and the album concludes with "Kind Woman," a lovely Furay tune that anticipates the pastoral country rock he and Messina would create with Poco. Young was missing in action for most of these sessions, but he left the group with two of his most affecting tunes, "I Am a Child" and "On the Way Home," which opens the album and serves as Young's farewell: "Now I won't be back till later on/If I do come back at all/But you know me and I miss you now."

It's a look at fame and friendship and how the one can keep the other apart. It's about the moment after a band becomes the biggest buzz on pop culture's most famous boulevard. It's about life going on. And this is how it went on: Buffalo Springfield begat CSN, Poco, Loggins and Messina, Crazy Horse, CSNY; inspired the Eagles and the early-Seventies Southern California scene; and, if you look at the roots of bands ranging from Sonic Youth to Son Volt, atleast a part of them will stretch back to Buffalo Springfield.