Legendary singer-songwriter Stephen Stills is in a jovial mood as he gets on a Zoom video call to discuss Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971, which gathers fourteen previously-unreleased tracks from his solo shows on August 20 and 21, 1971 at the Berkeley Community Theater. The album is set for release on April 28 via Iconic Artists Group and Omnivore Recordings.
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Stills is releasing this collection of songs more than fifty years after it was recorded “because we found it in our archives. [The songs] were appealing immediately. The thing is fantastically recorded. It never has any distortions. There’s so many things that are right about it, besides a few awful songs and some of the singing that’s a stretch of imagination to call it singing,” he says, amused. “Sounds like barking to me, but I was told to leave it alone. But then, we were barking men.”
These shows occurred during his first solo tour after he departed the iconic band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY); before that, he’d been in the equally celebrated Buffalo Springfield. With his 1970 self-titled solo album, he scored a major hit with “Love the One You’re With.”
Given his impressive discography, it might’ve been a challenge for Stills to choose songs to include in his concert setlists—but with a laugh, he explains his decision-making methodology: “Mouse races. See, you get a cardboard box. You number the songs. You get a bunch of white mice and you put those numbers [on them]. Then you put them all in [the box], and a little door in one corner, and the order in which they escape is the order of songs.”
Then he gives a more serious account. “It’s fully dependent on the mode and the key and the subject matter and how it fits together,” he says. “You write it down and you sort of do a little puzzle, and then you go, ‘Eureka! Don’t touch it—we’re doing it this way; I’m done fussing with this.’”
Two of the tracks that made the cut for the Berkeley shows, and for this live album in turn, are “You Don’t Have to Cry” and “The Lee Shore.” These are especially noteworthy inclusions because they feature guest vocals by David Crosby, who had been in CSNY with Stills, and who passed away earlier this year.
“He came to the concert, and we decided on the spur of the moment to do it right before the show,” Stills says. “One little run through in the dressing room, [then] we walked out and did it cold, and it was great. Croz was the first one of my [previous] bandmates to show up at one of my solo shows.”
While he was happy to have his ex-bandmate join him onstage, Stills also recalls that he felt comfortable as a solo artist by then. “Bands are great places to hide—and I didn’t feel like hiding anymore. And I had too many songs for the group. And it was just time.”
Stephen Stills Live at Berkeley 1971 vividly captures that moment, with Stills leading off with acoustic numbers for the first half before having his full band join him for the rest of the songs. He arranged his set this way “because the inverse would completely suck. Can you imagine it? Acoustic following a really loud electric band. It just wouldn’t work. So, simple logic.” With a grin, he adds that he decided which songs should be played each way via the method of “the aforesaid mouse races.” He shrugs. “I mean, it’s all instinct.”
He explains that this is the same approach he uses for his songwriting: “It’s a constant and ever-changing process, but basically, it’s just instinct,” he says. “There are times when it comes fully formed into your head and you really have to get to an instrument quick so you can remember it. I have to have a pen and paper around, and a guitar close by.”
This has certainly proven successful for Stills, who has written some of the best-known songs in rock, including “For What It’s Worth” (for Buffalo Springfield) and “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (for CSNY), among many others. He says he doesn’t think about how or when the next song will come to him. “I don’t worry about it. They’ll show up when they do,” he says.
He knows from experience what happens if he tries to force it. “I’ve been asked to write things for movies, and I watch deadlines fly by like exits on the freeways,” he says. “My mind turns to cement. Any kind of pressure, I will immediately blow it just to do it in my own good time. I mean, I am an alcoholic. Pressure is my enemy. And being in recovery, you learn to eliminate stress. And it’s working: I’m very happy for it, by the way.”
Stills estimates he was seventeen or eighteen years old when he started writing songs, inspired to write poetic lyrics by his own family members. “My father wrote really well, and my aunt was a history professor at Southern Illinois University,” he says. “Reading and books and history and literature was all over our family.” He also drew inspiration from the varied places his family lived as his father’s job in the military brought the family across the Southeastern U.S. and Central America.
He had started off as a drummer, making his parents crazy by banging on furniture with drumsticks until they finally bought him a drum set. He played in his high school band, but then made a pivotal switch: “The drums were too difficult to carry around, so I learned the guitar,” he says.
After high school, a series of bad jobs, such as bagging groceries, further convinced him that he was destined for a career in music instead. “I decided, ‘I don’t want a fuckin’ job—I’m going to do something that’s fun and interesting,’” he recalls. And this, he says, is still true: “Every time I think, ‘Oh, God—the road is so tiring, and this is such a cutthroat business, and you have to do interviews and you never know what they’ll make of what you said’—every time I get to that [point], I go, ‘But then I’ll have to get a fuckin’ job. I don’t want a fuckin’ job.’”
This was clearly the correct choice for Stills, who is widely credited as one of the pioneers of the folk rock and country rock genres. He has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY. He credits his success to staying true to his own distinctive artistic vision, and advises aspiring musicians to do the same.
“The only thing you’ve got going for you is the uniqueness of your sound, and that’s genetics and what you like, and how it affects you, and if that’s satisfying to you. And, above all, if it transports you. I know what transports me as a listener,” he says. “[The music business] is shark infested waters, and you just have to be mindful of that. But otherwise, go, go, go, go, go!”
Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images
