Stephen Stills - Manassas

After their summer 1970 tour, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young imploded. With 20/20 hindsight, it seemed inevitable. As if having four highly opinionated musicians with titanic egos to match wasn’t enough, Stills’ girlfriend Rita Coolidge decided dump him and run off with Graham Nash. David Crosby wrote the coolest song of his career about the entire saga, Cowboy Movie. She was the little Indian girl in the story [Raven], Stills was the fast gunslinger from the South [Eli], and Nash was the group’s dynamite expert [The Duke]. Stills’ subsequent album after CSNY’s implosion [Stephen Stills (1970)] was a very fine album that mixed folk, rock, blues, and gospel. It is the only album to feature both Eric Clapton [Go Back Home] and Jimi Hendrix [Old Times Good Times]. Stills dedicated his album to “James Marshall Hendrix,” who died two months before its November 1970 release. The second album incorporated horns, and this is where things began to slip. Stephen Stills 2 was ok, but not as good as the first album. The Memphis Horns were just NOT a good fit.

The beginnings of Stills’ third album after CSNY started with a 1971 chance meeting Stills had with Chris Hillman in Cleveland. Stills was on tour with bassist Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels, drummer Dallas Taylor, and the Memphis Horns, promoting his first two solo albums. Hillman later opined that Stills and his band sounded really shitty that night in Cleveland. I’ve heard the Live at Berkeley 1971 release – he wasn’t wrong. Hillman’s Flying Burrito Brothers were having their own problems with losing money and continuous turnover in personnel [most notably Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon]. Stills and Hillman had known each other since the mid-1960s. Stills was with Buffalo Springfield while Hillman was in the Byrds. But in 1971 both men were at somewhat of a career crossroads. Hillman was weary of the chaos that was the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Stills wanted a foil with whom he could collaborate. Stills jettisoned the horn section, and went to Miami to record with Samuels, Taylor and two other musicians from his band – keyboardist Paul Harris and percussionist Joe Lala. He also invited Hillman and fellow Burrito Brother Al Perkins to join them. Magic ensued and Manassas was born.

Stills earned the nickname “Captain Many Hands” because he can not only play guitar, he also plays bass, assorted keyboards, and percussion. He handled most of the instrumental work on Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut album as well as his first two solo albums. But Manassas is a different animal. It is the work of a band. Stills still played lots of parts, but he didn’t have to do all the work this time. Hillman played rhythm guitar [as opposed to his usual bass as he did in the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers] and mandolin. Al Perkins is not only proficient on guitar but is also an excellent steel guitarist. Paul Harris can play piano in any style. Stills, Hillman, Samuels and Lala sang four-part harmonies that sound better to my ears than those sung by CSN.

How does Manassas sound? The debut solo album effortlessly mixed folk, blues (acoustic and electric), hard rock, R&B and gospel. Manassas does that and more, adding country, bluegrass, and Latin textures to the mix. The songs of the album’s four sides are thematically grouped. Side One is The Raven [three guesses what the theme here is]. Latin-influenced blues rock, the sides five songs are arranged such that there are no gaps between the songs, like the medley on the second side of Abbey Road. The band would play these songs as-is from start to finish in concert. Side Two [The Wilderness] is the country/bluegrass side of the band. Chris Hillman and Al Perkins show of their talents here, bringing the Burrito Brothers vibe. There are steel guitars, fiddles, mandolins, acoustic guitars, and lush vocal harmonies that would make David Crosby and Graham Nash jealous. The Wilderness is the contemplative, back-to-nature side. One can experience the healing power of the Rockies [Colorado], lick his wounds and lament a lost love [So Begins the Task], then try to recover from it [Jesus Gave Love Away for Free]. Conversely, Fallen Eagle is a bluegrass protest song about helicopter-flying ranchers who kill endangered golden eagles for fun. Don't Look At My Shadow takes a detour to Bakersfield.

Side Three is Consider. This is the folk/folk rock side of Stephen Stills, Chris Hillman and Al Perkins. It Doesn’t Matter [which would appear with different lyrics on Firefall’s debut album in 1976] is my favorite song on Manassas. I first heard it in Fort Collins and it always reminds me of Carol. Johnny’s Garden is Stills’ tribute to the gardener who worked at the English house he bought from Ringo Starr. Bound to Fall is a Stills/Hillman duet that again strays into Burrito Brothers territory. The Love Gangster is a co-write with Bill Wyman that goes back to rock territory. It doesn’t fit with the rest of Side Three, but because of the constraints of vinyl it had to go somewhere. It is a good segue to Side Four - Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay. Right Now addresses Rita Coolidge running off with Graham Nash. Stills didn’t drop any names, but… What to Do is a commentary on CSNY. The Treasure [Take One] is “jam city.” There’s a better, shorter version to be found on Stills’ box set Carry On. Manassas ends with Blues Man, a solo acoustic blues dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Al Wilson [of Canned Heat]. It’s a companion piece to Black Queen from Stills’ first album.

Manassas is for Stephen Stills what Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is for Eric Clapton – it is both a masterpiece and a career high water mark. And like Derek and the Dominos, the band that made Manassas didn’t last long. Chris Hillman was distracted by an ill-fated Byrds reunion in 1973, while Atlantic Records [and Ahmet Ertegun in particular] were more interested in a CSNY reunion, which happened in 1974. What a shame. Manassas is better than anything he did with CSN [and sometimes Y].