If You Can't Be With the One You Love...

 STEPHEN STILLS

“STEPHEN STILLS”
Original released as LP Atlantic SD 7202, US November 16

Side one 

                   A1. Love the One You Are With (3:03)

                A2. Do For the Others (2:52)

                 A3. Church (Part of Someone) (4:05)

                 A4. Old Times Good Times (3:38)

                 A5. Go Back Home (5:56) 

Side two 

                       B1. Sit Yourself Down (3:05)

                   B2. To a Flame (3:10)

                   B3. Black Queen (5:28)

                   B4. Cherokee (3:24)

                   B5. We Are Not Helpless (4:17)

All tracks written by Stephen Stills

 CREDITS: 

Stephen Stills: producer, writer, vocals, lead guitar, guitar, piano, organ, steel drums, percussion, keyboards, bass, arranger

Henry Diltz: backing vocals, photography

Andy Johns: engineer

Bill Halverson: producer, mixer, engineer

Al Brown: mastering engineer

Gary Burden: art direction, design, photography

Charles John Quarto: sleeve poem

 and

Jimi Hendrix: electric guitar on "Old Times Good Times"

Eric Clapton: electric guitar on "Go Back Home"

Booker T. Jones: organ on "Cherokee"; backing vocal on "We Are Not Helpless"

Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuel: bass on "Love the One You're With," "Church," "Old Times Good Times," "Go Back Home," and "Sit Yourself Down"

Conrad Isidore:  drums on "Church" and "Old Times Good Times"

John Barbata: drums on "Go Back Home" and "Sit Yourself Down"

Ringo Starr: drums on "To a Flame" and "We Are Not Helpless"

Dallas Taylor: drums on "Cherokee"

Jeff Whittaker: congas on "Love the One You're With" and "Old Times Good Times"

Sidney George: flute, alto saxophone on "Cherokee"

Rita Coolidge, David Crosby, Priscilla Jones, John Sebastian: backing vocals on "Love the One You're With," "Go Back Home," "Sit Yourself Down," and "We Are Not Helpless"

Cass Elliott, Claudia Lennear: backing vocals on "Go Back Home," "Sit Yourself Down," and "We Are Not Helpless"

Graham Nash: backing vocals on "Love the One You're With," "Sit Yourself Down," and "We Are Not Helpless"

Judith Powell, Larry Steele, Liza Strike, Tony Wilson: backing vocals on "Church"

Sherlie Matthews: backing vocals on "We Are Not Helpless"

Arif Mardin: string arrangements on "Church" and "To a Flame"

Dois anos após a gravação de “Super Session” (Março de 1968), com Al Kooper e Mike Bloomfield, Stephen Stills reúne uma mão cheia de amigos famosos e parte para Londres para a concretização do seu primeiro album a solo. A sua rivalidade artística com Neil Young, que já durava desde os tempos dos Buffalo Springfield está cada vez mais acesa e Stills parece querer demonstrar ao mundo que é um músico e compositor da mesma estirpe do companheiro. Em Londres juntam-se ainda ao projecto Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr e tantos outros. Atente-se na lista impressionante dos nomes desses músicos e intérpretes. Aliás, este album ficaria na história como sendo o único a reunir Hendrix e Clapton num mesmo trabalho. O LP seria um dos mais brilhantes começos de uma carreira a solo. São dez temas muito bons, onde há a destacar a faixa de abertura, “Love the One You Are With”, que se tornaria o hit mais famoso de Stills, chegando ao 14º lugar da Billboard, ou as contribuições de Clapton e Hendrix em, respectivamente, “Go Back Home” (que fecha em beleza o lado 1) e “Old Times Good Times”.

Depois de concluídas as gravações é o regresso aos Estados Unidos, onde, no Colorado, é tirada em Setembro a fotografia que seria usada na capa do disco. Stills recorda: «I had this place in Gold Hill because I couldn’t breathe in the smoggy San Fernando Valley. Judy Collins introduced me to Colorado. I loved it ’cos it’s air-conditioned outside, innit? Photographer Henry Diltz came to see me. We hiked off to the creek and did the shots as the first snow fell in the mountains. The front cover was apropos of nothing. I sat on a chair and strummed guitar and I had a papier-mâché pink giraffe, a present from Rita, perched next to me.» No verso do album Stills pode ser visto em cima de um cavalo chamado Reno: «A Hollywood wrangler loaned him to me. He was a movie star horse, just my type. The football shirt I’m wearing is a Number 41 from Gainesville High School, my alma mater, where I pretended to play football, linebacker. But I was too wee. I only weighed eight stone.»

Tendo sido preso em Agosto, num motel em La Jolla, California, por posse de cocaína e diversos barbitúricos, Stills sente-se ostracizado. E quando o LP é editado em 16 de Novembro, a revista Rolling Stone afirma que todas as canções soam ao mesmo, chegando o escriba a admitir que nem se preocupou em ouvir a prestação de Clapton em “Go Back Home”. Outro crítico, Robert Christgau dos American Rock Critics atribui um académico C+, descrevendo Stills como o derradeiro hippie rico: arrogante, sexista e amador. Stills devolve a cortesia: «That guy’s a cunt. A fucking right cunt. Fuck him. Am I supposed to stop my fucking career because some asshole that doesn’t know what the fuck to listen to because it isn’t popular enough is off down the hall and his mate is buggering him in the shower? Fuck him! I don’t even care that Lester Bangs and all that bunch of cunts can’t find their way to their bathroom. They can’t play the guitar to save their fucking lives. So FUCK THEM! Is that vicious enough?»

Críticas à parte o album ganhou na altura um disco de ouro (chegando ao 3º lugar das tabelas americanas) e aí está, 54 anos depois, para quem o quiser ouvir de mente aberta. Talvez que muito jovenzinho que o desconhece tenha uma bela surpresa quando o puser no prato do gira-discos ou no leitor de CDs. É que este primeiro trabalho de Stephen Stills atravessou incólume cinco décadas e continua a ser o que sempre foi: um trabalho inovador e impressionante, onde musicalmente se faz sentir toda a classe e mestria dos elementos participantes.

STEPHEN STILLS & JUDY COLLINS

Original released on CD Wildflower CLO 0691

(US 2017, September 22)

Judy Collins provided Stephen Stills with the inspiration for "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a song he composed in 1969 as their relationship was coming to an end. Lovers no more, the two remained friends over the years and decided to strike up a musical partnership nearly 50 years later, releasing "Everybody Knows" in September of 2017. The album deliberately plays off their past, with the duo reviving songs from their individual albums - "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" from Collins; "So Begins the Task" from Stills - and selecting covers from their peers, including the Traveling Wilburys' "Handle with Care," Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country," and Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows," which also lends its name to the album title. It's a clean and crisp production, so much so that its transparency reveals the disparity between Collins' sweet voice and Stills' scraggly singing, a pairing that can sound as smooth as sandpaper. Nevertheless, there's an inherent warmth to "Everybody Knows". Stills and Collins have a gentle, easy chemistry and the studio-slick supporting performances provide a nice bed for a project that is less nostalgia than a reassuring reminder of the comfort of growing old together. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

AL KOOPER With STILLS & BLOOMFIELD

Original released on LP Columbia CS 9701

(US, August 1968)

As the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967) had done a year earlier, "Super Session" initially ushered in several new phases in rock & roll's concurrent transformation. In the space of months, the soundscape of rock shifted radically from short, danceable pop songs to comparatively longer works with more attention to technical and musical subtleties. Enter the unlikely all-star triumvirate of Al Kooper (piano/organ/ondioline/vocals/guitars), Mike Bloomfield (guitar), and Stephen Stills (guitar) - all of whom were concurrently "on hiatus" from their most recent engagements. Kooper had just split after masterminding the groundbreaking "Child Is Father to the Man" (1968) version of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Bloomfield was fresh from a stint with the likewise brass-driven Electric Flag, while Stills was late of Buffalo Springfield and still a few weeks away from a full-time commitment to David Crosby and Graham Nash. Although the trio never actually performed together, the long-player was notable for idiosyncratically featuring one side led by the team of Kooper/Bloomfield and the other by Kooper/Stills. The band is fleshed out with the powerful rhythm section of Harvey Brooks (bass) and Eddie Hoh (drums) as well as Barry Goldberg (electric piano) on "Albert's Shuffle" and "Stop." The Chicago blues contingency of Bloomfield, Brooks, and Goldberg provide a perfect outlet for the three Kooper/Bloomfield originals - the first of which commences the project with the languid and groovy "Albert's Shuffle." The guitarist's thin tone cascades with empathetic fluidity over the propelling rhythms. Kooper's frisky organ solo alternately bops and scats along as he nudges the melody forward. 

The same can be said of the interpretation of "Stop," which had originally been a minor R&B hit for Howard Tate. Curtis Mayfield's "Man's Temptation" is given a soulful reading that might have worked equally well as a Blood, Sweat & Tears cover. At over nine minutes, "His Holy Modal Majesty" is a fun trippy waltz and includes one of the most extended jams on the Kooper/Bloomfield side. The track also features the hurdy-gurdy and Eastern-influenced sound of Kooper's electric ondioline, which has a slightly atonal and reedy timbre much like that of John Coltrane's tenor sax. Because of some health issues, Bloomfield was unable to complete the recording sessions and Kooper contacted Stills. Immediately his decidedly West Coast sound - which alternated from a chiming Rickenbacker intonation to a faux pedal steel - can be heard on the upbeat version of Bob Dylan's "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." One of the album's highlights is the scintillating cover of "Season of the Witch." There is an undeniable synergy between Kooper and Stills, whose energies seems to aurally drive the other into providing some inspired interaction. Updating the blues standard "You Don't Love Me" allows Stills to sport some heavily distorted licks, which come off sounding like Jimi Hendrix. This is one of those albums that seems to get better with age and that gets the full reissue treatment every time a new audio format comes out. This is a super session indeed. (Lindsay Planer in AllMusic)

STILLS & YOUNG: "LONG MAY YOU RUN"

Original Released on LP Reprise, August 1976

UK: K 54081 / US: MS 2253

Na primavera de 1976, quando da gravação deste album, os caminhos de Stephen Stills e Neil Young continuavam em direcções opostas, desde de que os CSNY se tinham separado alguns anos antes – o primeiro em declínio, o segundo a manter intactas todas as suas qualidades musicais e de composição. Por isso não é de estranhar que esta “Stills-Young Band” tenha aparecido por sugestão de Stills, que procurava uma tábua de salvação para a sua carreira a solo. Ao contrário das críticas negativistas saídas na altura da edição do album, em Agosto de 76, julgo que o tempo se encarregou de colocar as coisas nos seus devidos lugares e “Long May You Run” é ainda hoje um album muito agradável de se ouvir. São cinco faixas assinadas por Young e as restantes quatro por Stills, que repartem assim as interpretações dos temas.

Cerca de dois meses antes do album ver a luz do dia, o recém-criado grupo iniciaria uma série de concertos nos Estados Unidos, a qual seria no entanto abruptamente interrompida logo um mês depois, e de uma maneira algo deselegante por parte de Young, que practicamente desapareceu de circulação após o concerto de 18 de Julho no Coliseu de Charlotte, em Virginia. Stills, que entretanto já se encontrava em Atlanta à espera do companheiro para uma nova actuação, teve apenas “direito” a receber um lacónico telegrama de Neil: «Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil.» Stills limitou-se a responder: «I have no future.»

STEPHEN STILLS' MANASSAS

Original released on Double LP Atlantic SD-2-903

(US 1972, April 12)

A sprawling masterpiece, akin to the Beatles' "White Album", the Stones' "Exile on Main St.", or Wilco's "Being There" in its makeup, if not its sound. Rock, folk, blues, country, Latin, and bluegrass have all been styles touched on in Stephen Stills' career, and the skilled, energetic musicians he had gathered in Manassas played them all on this album. What could have been a disorganized mess in other hands, though, here all gelled together and formed a cohesive musical statement. The songs are thematically grouped: part one (side one on the original vinyl release) is titled "The Raven," and is a composite of rock and Latin sounds that the group would often perform in full live. "The Wilderness" mainly centers on country and bluegrass (Chris Hillman's and Al Perkins' talents coming to the forefront), with the track "So Begins the Task" later covered by Stills' old flame Judy Collins. Part three, "Consider" is largely folk and folk-rock. "Johnny's Garden," reportedly for the caretaker at Stills' English manor house and not for John Lennon as is often thought, is a particular highlight.

Two other notables from the "Consider" section are "It Doesn't Matter" (later redone with different lyrics by the song's uncredited co-writer Rick Roberts on the first Firefall album) and "Move Around," which features some of the first synthesizer used in a rock context. The closing section, titled "Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay," is a rock and blues set with one of the landmarks of Manassas' short life, the epic "The Treasure." A sort of Zen-like meditation on love and "oneness," enlivened by the band's most inspired recorded playing it evolves into a bluesy groove washed in Stills' fierce electric slide playing. The delineation lines of the four themed song groupings aren't cut in stone, though, and one of the strengths of the album is that there is a lot of overlap in styles throughout. The CD reissue's remastered sound is excellent, though missed is the foldout poster and handwritten lyrics from the original vinyl release. Unfortunately, the album has been somewhat overlooked over the years, even though Stills considers it some of the best work he has done. Bill Wyman (who guested on "The Love Gangster") has said he would have quit the Rolling Stones to join Manassas.