Shakey

by Jimmy McDonough

  The band was just about to start happening when we lost Bruce. That was real tough. That was the end of the real thing—the real dream of what it was gonna be like as Buffalo Springfield.

  But before Palmer slipped into the ozone, the band slipped into Atlantic’s New York studios and cut “Mr. Soul” on January 9, 1967. It was a fitting choice for such a demented time: The paranoia of the lyrics seemed to mirror everything the band was going through.

  The session was directed by a forgotten red-haired engineer smart enough to record the band live. Young wrenched wild sounds out of his Gretsch; Palmer whipped out a frantic, punishing bass line; Martin chugged along like a diesel puffing uphill; Stills’s and Furay’s ghostly high harmonies gave the lyrics a disquieting edge. Stephen finished it off with an odd backward twelve-string-guitar overdub. Unlike other Springfield records, it was recorded and mixed all at once.

  “Mr. Soul” is the Springfield’s Rashomon; no two people recall the session the same way. Charlie Greene remembered that his relationship with Stills finally exploded. “I hit him in the mouth. Stephen just got me so fuckin’ pissed I finally whacked him. Y’know, in my eyes I’m doing my best—I took the Springfield from street urchins to a point where the entire industry thought they were devastating. But Stephen was such an irritating piece of shit I couldn’t believe it. Stephen thought he invented the notes.” Greene was furious. “We had to give Charlie one of Neil’s pills to calm him down,” recalled Dewey Martin. *

  Some involved say Otis Redding, who had sat in with the band at Ondine’s, was present at the recording, and Dewey Martin claimed that Redding wanted to cut the song, feeling it was a natural follow-up to his version of “Satisfaction.” “I gotsta have that song, man,” Redding told Martin, who then relayed the message to Young. His terse reply, according to Dewey: “Tell him I’m cutting the song.”

  I don’t remember Otis ever sayin’ to me he wanted to cut it. I remember Atlantic wanted him to cut it. Greene and Stone weren’t there—just this red-haired guy who was the producer. I can’t remember his fuckin’ name. One night’s work—the definitive take of the song. That’s the real Buffalo Springfield. Creative production, everybody a part of it. Really a unified trip—everybody had their idea, and we all did ’em, and it worked. And it sounded good—you listened to it and it sounded good. But no one said, “Next song.” There was no continuity. That guy was gone after that night. We never had him back.

  That record is so fuckin’ much better than the ones that are out with Buffalo Springfield, it scares me. It’s better than all the other versions of it combined. The tones, the guitar groove … We got a good sound with that red-haired guy.

  Engineer Bruce Tergesen—“the red-haired guy,” whom I finally tracked down after five years of searching—has his own version of “Mr. Soul” events. He doesn’t remember Redding being present, nor does he recall a physical fight between Stills and Charlie Greene. But the friction between Stills and Young that night made an impression. “Stephen wanted to be productive and go ahead,” said Tergesen. “Neil was being very moody—he had misgivings about what was going on and his cautions were not being heeded. It left him looking at the floor.” *

  Although Greene and Stone would be credited with the production of “Mr. Soul,” they would never be involved in another Buffalo Springfield recording session. Back at Ondine’s, everyone gathered to hear the song over the sound system, but “nobody was talking,” said Greene. “It was grim. Grim. I went back to the Plaza and got drunk outta my tits. I knew that was it. That was the last time I ever talked to Stephen Stills.” Greene and Stone would continue to be involved with the band off and on until late 1967, when the acrimony became so great it had to be settled legally. The Springfield—and its future publishing—were free to go as long as their managers were repaid expenses. Greene and Stone would remain villains in Springfield mythology for years. “Manager!” Young hissed to Jean-Charles Costa in 1971. “What kind of cat is a manager, anyway? … They legally stole $60,000.”

  “I never really thought of them as producers,” said Ahmet Ertegun. “Look, don’t get me wrong—I like Greene and Stone. They were funny. They were also hustlers. And y’know—you don’t want to have a hustler hustle you.”

  Charlie and Brian were good managers. They were bad record producers. It’s like if Elliot wanted to produce my records, I’d fuckin’ kill him. But these guys went in and mixed the stereo version of Buffalo Springfield—without telling us. So that’s where they made their big mistake, as far as I’m concerned. Not in ripping off our publishing. Hey—how are the poor fuckin’ guys gonna make any money? They’re makin’ us into big megastars, connecting us with all these fuckin’ heavies, getting us a recording contract … so they’re entitled to their part of the publishing until we get smart enough to figure out it’s ours and have enough energy to fight and get it back.

  Greene and Stone were good guys. They really were. They wanted us to make it. They were into it a hundred percent. Unfortunately, that didn’t leave anything for us—they had the hundred percent. But that’s okay. If we’d made it big, we woulda made some money and it woulda been okay. But we didn’t make it big. Sour grapes. We blame everybody else. That’s my viewpoint now.

  Charlie and Brian were sincere. They wanted to do the right thing. They were jive, but that was part of their personality—that didn’t mean that they didn’t have soul.

  Young took the tapes of “Mr. Soul” back to Los Angeles and started tinkering, replacing the guitar parts with overdubs of his own. When Stills heard the finished track, he told Neil he preferred the original. This apparently haunted Young, because in the late eighties he enlisted Ken Viola to track down a copy of the only existing acetate of the original. Upon hearing it, Young immediately picked up the phone, called Stills and told him, over twenty years later, “Ya know that version of ‘Mr. Soul’ with the backwards guitar? You were right. I put out the wrong one.”

  Stills didn’t like the “Mr. Soul” that came out as much as the original, and he was RIGHT. The way we did it in New York was the best recording Buffalo Springfield ever made—because it was done by somebody who knew what the fuck they were doing. Then I did overdubs in L.A. and ruined it. Some stupid dickhead with too much time on his hands got a chance to do something, and I had to play the role. I completely fucked it up.

  I can’t find the original tape. The only copy I have of the original session is a scratchy fuckin’ acetate—you can barely hear it—but it’s still the one. So that’s that. Either I find it or I don’t. And if it’s the only one I can find, I’m gonna put it out. I don’t give a shit how fucked up it is.

  —What do you think about when you hear that demo?

  I think about how you can lose it when you already got it.

  I worked all night on “Mr. Soul.” We did it all in one day. What did I do after that? I fucked it up—so what did that teach me? It teaches me that WHAT YOU DO FIRST IS THE RIGHT FUCKin’ THING AND JUST MOVE ON.

  Don’t start until you’re sure you can finish. Whatever it is you wanna do makin’ a record, DO IT. Stay right on it. Don’t change your head. That’s what comes from “Mr. Soul.”

  Hiring Ken Koblun to replace Bruce Palmer, the Springfield embarked on its first real tour and this, too, was a disaster. Headlining a package show featuring a weird assortment of stale fifties groups and current novelty acts, the Springfield would alternate closing the show with IQ-challenged trash-rockers the Seeds. After a few dismal Los Angeles-area dates in early February 1967, the tour moved through New Mexico, then Texas, where the band jumped ship over a money dispute.

  Although “For What It’s Worth” would get as high as number seven on the pop charts, “the record never seemed to get any national push,” said Richard Davis. “It was really big in some places, other places wouldn’t know who we were.” Charlie Greene’s theory is that “For What It’s Worth” was like “Kate Smith singing ‘God Bless America’—it was one of those things everybod
y heard and loved but nobody bought.” It was frustrating to all involved. Said Ertegun, “I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t selling more records, because we were working that group very hard.”

  Broke again, the band returned to Los Angeles. Neil holed up in his little house on Utica Drive. He started missing rehearsals and gigs. “Neil was going through a real weird period,” said Ken Koblun. “He’d sleep all day and stay over at Kiyo’s place instead of staying at his own house. She had some influence over Neil, but I think he wanted to have it under control.”

  I was pretty sick. Got real sick for a while. There was somethin’ really fucking wrong with me. Couldn’t get up. Kiyo took me to this herbologist, Dr. Kanower. I could hardly walk, I was so weak. I went in there in a robe and pajamas—I didn’t have the strength to get dressed.

  Dr. Kanower said there had been several radiation tests and that several people had come in feeling down and he thought it had something to do with Los Alamos. Then he gave me this shot of green stuff, right under my rib cage, and I got a hot rush. He said, “This is not gonna hurt you at all.” And he said, “Just lie here awhile and you’ll feel yourself getting better right away.” I came out walking, not all hunched over. The next day I was up. There was something really wrong with me and he fixed it. I have no idea what it was. But I still feel it every once in awhile when I get tired.

  For the fourth Springfield single, Stills wanted the A-side for his new song “Bluebird”; Young wanted “Mr. Soul.” Neil would lose this battle. “Clancy” had bombed and so had the follow-up, Young singing “Burned.” Stills now had the edge—he had provided the band with their first hit in “For What It’s Worth.” His tracks were everything Neil’s weren’t: accessible, commercial and sung by a voice radio could understand. “The sound of the Buffalo Springfield was really Stephen Stills’s voice,” the Turtles’ Mark Volman told John Einarson. “Neil was kind of like Frankenstein’s monster.”

  Tensions continued to mount. Robin Lane, staying with Young at the time, remembers Stills showing up, enraged over Neil’s increasing belligerence. He picked up Lane’s Epiphone acoustic guitar and threatened to smash it over Young’s head, screaming, “You’re ruining my career!”

  The more Stills demanded control, the more the elusive Young withdrew, a pattern familiar to those close to him. “Neil is very passive/aggressive,” said Donna Port. “He sees conflict and hides under a chair. And when there’s aggression, believe me, it’s passive. It’s called hide. It’s ‘Okay, I won’t come to your party.’” Young could be contentious about being himself, sometimes humorously so. When Furay got married, he implored Young not to wear his fringe jacket. Young acquiesced, showing up in a Confederate uniform instead. “That’s just the kinda guy he was,” said Furay. But nobody was laughing in the spring of 1967, when Young suddenly quit Buffalo Springfield.

  Following the success of “For What It’s Worth,” the Springfield’s booking price had climbed to $1,000 a night; they were scheduled to play at the landmark Monterey Pop Festival in June, and the Newport Folk Festival wanted them as well. Even Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show offered a spot. “That’s when the Carson show meant something big,” said Dewey Martin. “Do his show and you would’ve made it.” A little before June 1, Young set up a meeting with his bandmates.

  “Now, we never called meetings,” Richard Davis told writer Jerry Hopkins. “Sometimes maybe we’d run into each other. But Neil called a meeting. So we walk into Greene and Stone’s office and Neil said, ‘I’m leaving the group.’”

  “The reason Neil quit was, he wanted to release ‘Mr. Soul,’” recalls roadie Chris Sarns. “Stephen didn’t, because he thought it sounded too much like ‘Satisfaction.’ It broke up the group.” Young had also begun to work on his own with Jack Nitzsche. Whatever the particulars, Young wanted out. * Stunned, the band talked him into staying through Monterey Pop.

  Arrangements were made for some East Coast dates before the Tonight Show appearance, but just before they were supposed to leave, Young vanished. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Davis. “He just stopped taking our calls and disappeared.”

  His bandmates felt shafted. “I think Neil always wanted to be a solo artist, and I can’t hold it against him,” Richie Furay told writer Dave Zimmer. “It just seems there may have been a different way to make the point clear rather than not show up.”

  Forced to carry on without him, the band played Boston, enduring screams of “Where’s Neil?” from the fans. Arriving at New York’s JFK airport, Dewey Martin, stoned on two hits of Purple Haze, got on the pay phone and made a last-ditch attempt to save their appearance on The Tonight Show by inviting Otis Redding to sit in. Unfortunately, Redding had a gig at the Apollo Theater, and once again all momentum was lost. “That’s when Neil had to quit,” Stills told writer Allen McDougall, “exactly at the time when it meant the most.”

  I fucked everything up, no doubt about it. I was takin’ a lot of Valium for the seizures ’cause I was so high-strung. I would go off—real easy. But y’know—if I hadn’t fucked it up, somebody else would’ve. Bruce did, too. I was only a ripple in a pond.

  For me, it was over when the Springfield wanted to do the Johnny Carson show. What the fuck were we doin’ the Johnny Carson show for? That was just another of Stephen Stills’s things, and he was right—if the Springfield was gonna make it, people had to see them—but I didn’t wanna be seen doin’ that. I didn’t wanna do it that way.

  Once the Buffalo Springfield were doin’ this lighthearted afternoon TV show—hosted by Woody Woodbury. We were trying to get exposure, the managers wanted us to do it. So we’re doin’ this stupid show, and we played a song, and we were gonna be back later to play another song. We were sittin’ in the back—all the other guests are in the front, and we were supposed to sit in the row behind ’em because they didn’t really want to talk to us other than say “Hello” and “Who are ya,” that sorta thing.

  So Rona Barrett comes out, she’s on the panel there and they’re talkin’ back and forth. She’s talkin’ about this person and that person and their private lives—and I said, “Now wait a minute. Just a minute here. Is it true that what you do—what you do—is expose other people’s private lives? And try to unearth their own personal secrets and try to share them with everybody else—that’s how you make a living, right?”

  That was a dark moment for TV. We weren’t invited back.

  The Smothers Brothers, Tom Jones, Hollywood Palace, all those shows I did when I was … crazy. These music shows were pretty cool, they were for kids, they were for our audience, but we weren’t there to be on The Tonight Show with all these fuckin’ stiff old farts that had nothin’ to do with anything. It wouldn’t be right. We’re not entertainment for the masses.

  —What’s your feeling about performing music on television?

  I hate it. It’s unnatural. Anything that you can turn off, turn up or adjust as it’s going down live I don’t like. Someone else is making the TV show, you’re just passing through. I’m not controlling the situation. Anything could happen. What I do shouldn’t be exposed to that.

  We screwed the BBC once. I was gonna do a couple of songs, and then when I got down there, they said the last song I would be doing would be while the credits were rolling at the end of the show. And I said, “No, I can’t do that.” They said, “You will do that.” And I said, “No, I’m leaving. Fuck you people. I’m outta here.” It was a live show, and I just left, heh heh.

  TV has an effect on you. I can’t just block it out or use it for background … I don’t have the talent to do that. If it’s on, I can be distracted by it. I can focus on anything, so the more things that are on, the harder time I have focusing on one given thing. I would be okay if there was no television, but I’m not the only one in my house … I wish I didn’t have to see it.

  I once asked Young if any musicians on the Los Angeles scene had influenced him at all. He remained silent for a long time—so long I thought the question had
been ignored or forgotten, and then he offered one name only: Jack Nitzsche.

  “Jack believed in my music, and his belief in my music was reinforcing enough to me to go out on my own—and leave Buffalo Springfield.”

  * For a brief period, Young’s mother relocated to California while he was in the Springfield. “Rassy always came after Neil,” said Elliot Roberts. “Even when Neil left, Rassy followed. She lived her life through Neil—to the point that she could.”

  * Around this time, Young reached toward his past, writing Pam Smith an eleven-page letter—since destroyed in a flood—describing his torment. “I think it was a plea for help,” said Smith. “Neil wasn’t coping well. In one part, I was almost worried he felt like throwing in the towel…. Neil sounded worn out. He wanted me to write him every day…. I told him I wouldn’t write back until I heard from him.” Neil never responded.

  * Robin Lane, who was around Young at the time, remembers “Mr. Soul” as somehow being inspired by the death of Lenny Bruce on August 3, 1966. Young didn’t recall any connection.

  * Complicating the matter is the fact that there are not that many live tapes of the Springfield and virtually none of any real quality that appear to document the original lineup with Bruce Palmer.

  * Longtime Atlantic engineer Tom Dowd maintained that he mixed “For “What It’s Worth” at Atlantic’s New York studios, a claim that Greene and Stone vigorously denied. “Not true,” said Greene. “And if I see Tommy, I’m gonna punch him in the nose.”

  * Brian Stone on Charlie Greene: “Everybody liked Charlie to start, but as time went on, he wore on people. Every time he got mad, he’d punch his fist through the wall. He was a very volatile character, kinda like the manager’s equivalent of Stephen Stills.”