Stephen Stills - Just Roll Tape: April 26, 1968 on CD

Description

Review Unearthed after 40 years this recording of songs that were to pepper Stephen Stills' subsequent career twists and turns are a revelation. For a generation who now regard Stills and his compadres as coke-dimmed irrelevancies, living on past glories of some mythic West Coast idealism, it shows us how goddam talented this man once was. While the quality may be a trifle ragged in places, these demos could stand tall against most modern so-called acoustic troubadors. After all it was Stills, Young, Crosby and their ilk who started this stuff. As his first major band, Buffalo Springfield, fell to pieces around him he bribed a session in a studio following a Judy Collins session. Anyone who's heard the Springfield box set will know that Stills' demos were always almost as good as the finished article. Featuring Stills alone with an acoustic, he runs through songs which were to appear on the first Crosby Stlls and Nash album ('Suite Judy Blue Eyes', 'Wooden Ships' and 'Helplessly Hoping') as well as other gems such as 'Change Partners', 'So Begins The Task' and 'Black Queen' that appeared on his solo work or with Manassas. Filled with the peculiarly Southern grace that he brought to his lyric writing and delivered in his signature high bluesy tone, he displays the confidence that so often tipped over into misplaced arrogance, but made him such a dynamic group member as well. His playing is no less beautiful, showing how in those halcyon days his picking was more than a match for bandmates like Neil Young. Of course this is all made the more poignant by the fact that this is from a man who was once famously called 'Old Steel Nose' by Elvis Costello and fell so far from grace. He'll never regain this level of inspiration again, but we should be grateful that we have another reason to go back and treasure him as he was at his peak. --Chris Jones Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window Product Description In April of 1968, after leaving Buffalo Springfield, but before joining CSN, Stephen Stills found himself in a New York recording session with then girlfriend Judy Collins. Stills wandered down the hall with an engineer and an acoustic guitar, and laying down a couple hundred-dollar bills told the engineer "Just roll tape". What he recorded in the ensuing hours was the first ever versions of what would become classics for Stephen Stills, CSN, CSNY and Manassas. Almost 40 years later the tapes, rescued decades ago from a garbage bin, are finally remastered and released to the public. Review "Post-springfield, Pre-CSN Stills in magisterial solo mood" 4/5 -- Uncut - September 2007