Stephen Stills was one of the first rockers to be labelled a “superstar” on the basis of his stints in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and in 1970 he got his chance to live up to the title with his 1970 solo debut Stephen Stills.
Superstar my ass.
Stephen Stills has its moments, and a few of them are thrilling indeed, thanks in large part to the playing and singing of such notable drop-ins as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, and just about every folk-rocker in Laurel Canyon. C. and N. (if not Y.) make cameos, as do Cass Elliott and John Sebastian. Hell, even Booker T. Jones shows up to say hi.
But the good times are relegated to side one, and what I take away from Stephen Stills isn’t the memory of good songs (I can only remember one of them, and that’s because I’ve heard it a million times) so much as good performances. As a songwriter, Stills just isn’t up to superstar scratch. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau put his finger on the problem when he wrote, “[Stills] seems too damn skillful to put down. Yet there’s something terribly undefined about this record. Hmm–maybe it’s the songs.”
Perhaps you can adduce as much from the cover, which features Stills sitting next to a ceramic giraffe who looks paralyzed by boredom. I’ll bet you that giraffe has a soft spot for free-love anthem “Love the One You’re With,” but who doesn’t, what with its rumbling congas and steel drums and that very groovy organ. It’s the apotheosis of the easy-going sexual mores of 1970 California, and I’ve been known to play it just for laughs.
But I’ll wager you that giraffe turns to plaster when the stultifyingly boring “Do for the Others” comes on. Alternative title: “Hum Along with Stephen.” The gospel-tinged “Church (Part of Someone)” may cause our long-necked friend to shout hallelujah, but then again he may just snicker at Stills’ clay-eating fervor. Me, I kinda dig the S.S.’s Holly Roller shtick, but that’s not to say I’ll ever listen to this one again. Churches are where I go whenever I feel the need to escape God.
The boogie-friendly “Old Times Good Times” features J. Hendrix on guitar and literally percolates; Jimi may not perform any pyrotechnics but everybody plays like their lives are hanging in the balance. Good stuff. But why is it, I wonder, that I can never remember the damn melody? And the same goes for “Go Back Home,” which sorta plods along like a lazy-eyed bloodhound with its nose to the ground until WHAM! Clapton comes wailing in and the two geetar giants proceed to engage in an ax duel for the ages. It makes for a couple of fiery minutes and is without a doubt the best take-away on Stephen Stills.
As for side two, you’re on your own. “Sit Yourself Down” isn’t bad, but it certainly won’t make you stand up and dance. The choruses have some get up and go–they’re rousing hippie shouters–but they remind me of the Doobie Brothers, and can that possibly be good? “To a Flame” is forgettable folkie shlock and features a crooning Stills and lots of lardy strings arranged by Arif “I’ve worked with Bette Midler” Mardin. “Black Queen” is an acoustic blues paean to a playing card; an impassioned Stills does a lot of grunting, goes “Oh yeah,” commences to sing like a bird, and in general does his best old black blues guy impression. Not to be mistaken for the real thing.
“Cherokee” is a horror of strings, flute, alto saxophone, and electric sitar–in short, all of your traditional Native American instrumentation. It’s Chicago meets CSN&Y and when Stills sings “My fortunes mean nothing/I never cared about fame” I don’t believe him. As for “We Are Not Helpless,” it’s just another risible example of wooly-brained Woodstock idealism; when Stills sings “All are strangers, all are friends, all are brothers” I have to wonder whether he’s ever heard of Charles Manson. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a mite bit enchanted by the song’s ecstatic close, but as rousing as it is all the shouts of “Right on!” and words like “The new order is upon us now it is the children/They have the wisdom to be free” can’t disguise the fact that this shit was past its sell-by date when Stills committed it to vinyl. Call it 20/20 hindsight, but a whole lot of America’s “new order” went on to vote for Ronald Reagan.
In short, Stephen Stills is a comedown, man; it’s hard to believe that all that hype led to this. A few stunning performances do not an album make, especially when said performances are entombed in a bunch of forgettable songs with even more forgettable lyrics. All four of the bloated egos in CSN&Y cut solo albums in the wake of the success of Déjà Vu; that Stephen Stills is not the worst of them can only be ascribed to the fact that D. Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is a chaotic mess. I’ve never cared much for what these frozen noses did collectively, but it’s a helluva lot less scary (except in N. Young’s case) than what they were capable of left to their own devices.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C+
