Here’s the second part of my Steve
Stills interview from 1976.
The tracks on the
Stills/Young album suggested they had been written while in Florida. “Yeah... Neil
is a pretty immediate sort of a cat. My songs on that album were written
somewhat before but Neil’s were mostly done there. My ‘water’ song, the one
about diving (‘Black Coral’) was actually written after I’d gotten into some
very deep diving. I have been down 288 feet.
“For Neil it was a
departure from some of his darker moments, mainly because we had a great time
and looked forward so much to going in the studio. I think it was very
educational for me and him both because we picked up on what was right about
the way we each recorded and also corrected some of the things we had been
doing wrong.
“Neil had me going
for the guitar parts at the same time as we recorded the backing track... the
way we used to have to do it. We did that album live in the studio with very
little overdubbing at all.”
When his throat
healed, Young began rehearsing for another tour with Crazy Horse – scheduled to
begin midway through November – and Stills found himself alone. It was the
time, he decided, to try out a solo tour.
“I didn’t plan to do
it this year. It was something that I kept saying I’d do later on, something I
kept putting off because I thought I could always do at one stage. When Neil
split – he’d been planning all along to do a tour with Crazy Horse later this
year – I had to do something, so... well, it was right for my own acoustic
thing.
“I did three shows,
two in theatres and one at a college, and after the college show I thought... not
quite. If they want to boogie I can’t stop them. So I’m getting a bass player
and drummer for the bigger shows. They’ll only do five or six songs at the end
so it’ll still be basically me.
“I’ve gotta walk out
on the stage and get myself going all by myself. So long as I know what the
first three songs are, I’m OK. After that... well, so long as I’ve made it that
far the show will be all right. I don’t think I want a band, a big band any
longer.”
Earlier this year
Stills had agreed to do a European tour that would include a date at Cardiff
Castle – a date that was advertised in the press but cancelled at relatively
short notice. According to Stills, it was the opportunity to record with Young in
Miami that caused the cancellation.
I told him he was
advertised to play a big outdoor show in Cardiff. “That’s news to me,” he
replied, seemingly ignorant of whatever was planned in England. “I know I have
to go over there because that time, when I cancelled, it was really a little
close to the recording date to cancel, but it wasn’t right at the last minute.
“But look... if Neil
was ready to record, I had to go for it. Before we did that album he had a
whole tour of the States planned with Crazy Horse and he ditched that. We just
decided to go for it because we were excited about it... we all were excited
about it... David and Graham, too.
“We’re all too
sensible to give up thoughts of getting together again. We’re like brothers and
we have tiffs. It’s always been like that with me and Graham and David and
Neil. Sometimes we’ll get mad at one or the other and blah blah away, but six
months later we’ll meet and... hey, you know, we’ll say ‘good to see you... what’s
going on’... but that’s all ancient history.
“In any band, a lot
of the internal bickering is directly proportional to the pressure. We never
competed with each other as much as people thought. We used that energy in an
entirely different way. What we wanted to do was please the others and many
times when we failed, we’d fight. It wasn’t a rivalry so much as wanting to
please each other, so everybody got super-critical of themselves.”
Stills admits that
he is currently taking a look at his career and taking stock. “I’m not as good
at being a star as I am at being a guitar player,” he said after some thought. “There
are certain things about my career, my job if you like, that I don’t like at
all. I recognise the other part of this job, the part that isn’t the music, and
some of it is a little distasteful to me. Some people can pull that off
perfectly, but I... well, I don’t look on myself as that sort of person.
“I just... I wanna
play my axe for people and that’s it. That’s the bottom line, appearing in
front of people, doing your job like that, which is what I’m doing on this
tour.”
Last year Stills
moved from Atlantic Records to CBS, a surprising move considering his long
relationship with Ahmet Ertegun’s legendary record label and what he describes
as a deep personal friendship with Ertegun.
“With Atlantic it
was always... when are you going to do another CSN&Y album? Columbia has me
as a solo act so there’s a little different attitude in the company. They let
me record with Neil... they said ‘fine’.
“You can’t deny a
great record,” he went on, raising criticism of his albums without being
prompted. “If the public like a record they’ll buy it no matter what the
critics say. A critic can cause trouble because if distributors read a review
that’s bad they won’t pick it up. Maybe distributors will order one hundred
thousand instead of two or whatever, but what happens is that those are sold in
a week and they have to re-order. That happens to me every time.”
The interview
concluded, I motioned towards a Martin guitar on the bed and asked Stephen to
show me how he played ‘4 + 20’. He picked it up and retuned it – took him about
ten seconds flat – and picked out the intro. He’d lowered all the strings bar
the A and D, the bottom E to D but I wasn’t sure of the rest. Either way, the guitar
was now in a D tuning and it sounded wonderful, ringing out as clear as day in
his room. Steve didn’t sing for me, just finger-picked the accompaniment
exactly as it is on Déjà Vu. It was at moments
like this that I realised I really did have the best job in the world.
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