Video of the Week: “Rock and Roll Woman”

A bit of history happened Saturday night in Mountain View, California, as the three surviving members of legendary rock band Buffalo Springfield reunited for the first time since 1968.  Playing to benefit the Bridge School for children with cerebral palsy, original Springfield members Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Neil Young ran through a loose set of classics including “Mr. Soul,” “Rock and Roll Woman,” “On The Way Home” and of course, “For What It’s Worth.”

Catch more videos from the Buffalo Springfield reunion at GuitarVibe.com

 

Lost Classics! Poco

In the late 1960s, country rock was still in its infancy.  And frankly, not a whole lot of people knew exactly what it was – even some of its better practitioners.  But in 1968, along came this band Poco, and they seemed to have a pretty good idea of what they were doing. 

The lineage of this band had great promise: Richie Furay came out of the fractured Buffalo Springfield, and Jim Messina was that band’s last bass player and producer.  Furay and Messina recruited multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young (who played on Furay’s “Kind Woman” for the Springfield), drummer George Grantham and bass player Randy Meisner. 

When the fledgling band went looking for a record label, they were helped out by Furay’s old Buffalo Springfield band mate Stephen Stills, who negotiated a baseball-like “trade”: Furay and Messina’s band would go to Columbia/Epic in exchange for David Crosby (Byrds) and Graham Nash (the Hollies).  Crosby-Nash joined Stills on Atlantic, the Buffalo Springfield’s old label, and you know what happened there.

Rock Moment: Buffalo Springfield Disintegrates

UPDATE: Go here for our post on the death of Dewey Martin.

Buffalo Springfield could’a been a contender.  Even though they were barely together for a year, the Springfield made incredible rock music that, for one moment, made them American rivals to the Beatles. 

Maybe two geniuses in one group are too much: Stephen Stills and Neil Young got their respective starts here, and the rivalry/partnership crystallizes on the band’s 1967 Buffalo Springfield Again.  This is a classic album – Stills contributes “Rock and Roll Woman” and “Bluebird,” two of his best songs ever, while Young points the way to his solo career with “Mr. Soul” and “Broken Arrow.”  And yet there was still room for guitarist Richie Furay to crank out a country-rock classic, “A Child’s Claim To Fame.”

Of course, you know about Stills’ protest song “For What It’s Worth,” which hit the Top 10 in ’67.  But by the fall of that year Young had split, forcing the Springfield to recruit then-current Byrds member David Crosby to play with them at the Monterey Pop Festival.