David Roberts - Stephen Stills: Change Partners: The Definitive Biography

CONTENTS

For Janet, Andy, who first introduced me to the music of Stephen Stills, my brother in music Neil, who convinced me I must write this book, and Kendalls alcoholic nut farm dream that reinforced the notion that I was destined to do it.

If the yardstick of a successful career is leaving an enduring musical legacy, then Stephen Stills is right up there. Thats certainly true if the 2012 sci-fi movie Prometheus is anything to go by. The year is 2093, when a scene in director Ridley Scotts prequel to Alien has off-duty spaceship captain Janek (played by Idris Elba) startling Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) by playing a tiny accordion. When Vickers compares the sound of the thing to a dying cat, an affronted Janek responds by revealing that this thing once belonged to Stephen Stills.

Am I supposed to know who that is? responds Vickers. As she walks seductively away, Janek lifts up the prized squeezebox and accompanies himself singing Stills biggest solo hit single, Love The One Youre With.

And it was that earworm of a song that rekindled my own personal obsession with music, an obsession that had diluted to a mere passing interest after the demise of The Beatles a year earlier. To this British teenager, Love The One Youre With sounded cool, sexually confident, and very American. It was a breath of fresh air in 1971. Not since the gorgeous harmonies of the then fading Beach Boys had I got so excited about what was coming out of the USA.

And Stills was clearly not just a one-hit wonder. I immediately bought as much of his music as I could afford and read every word that British music papers Sounds, New Musical Express, and Melody Maker would print about him. Here in the dark, austere bleak British winter was a personality to aspire to. He appeared to have confidence in bucket loads, had a blonde, rugged, hippie sensibility, spoke with measured arrogance, and could play the guitar like a veteran blues man.

Having immersed myself in the music of my first two Stills records (CSN&Ys Dj Vu and his debut solo album), I was also fascinated by every detail of the LP packaging. No one looked more cocksure or confident than Stephen Stills. There he was, nonchalantly gazing out from the cover of Dj Vu in a confederate (naturally) American Civil War soldiers uniform, then seated picking at a guitar in the Colorado snow, cigarette wedged in his little finger while seemingly playing to a pink toy giraffe on the front of his first solo LP. Cool!

Like first love, first albums always left an indelible impression on my baby boomer generation. When Dj Vu and Stephen Stills made their debut on my parents single-speaker Russian-made record player, they soon vied for attention with offerings around that time by Bowie and solo Beatles and, of course, retrospective purchases of the CSN debut and Buffalo Springfield releases. If The Beatles had once, imperiously, meant everything to me, now, aged 17, I was captivated by what was happening across the Atlantic. The musical differences seemed clear. If the British offered up invention and an in-your-face grittiness, the new wave of singer-songwriter artists and bands across the Atlantic had absorbed all that and were exuding a worldly-wise, exciting assurance. The West Coast music scene, in particular, was reflecting the political temperature of the early 70s and delving back into the American folk movement for inspiration. Stills, though, wasnt your archetypal singer-songwriter. His songs had great emotional stories and he could clearly write biting protest lyrics, but his ability to play a whole range of instruments and master a whole range of different genres was just as impressive and exciting. That said, my devotion to Stills wasnt slavish and I wasnt overly enamored with his second solo album, my head increasingly turned by the Eagles, Little Feat and his old compadre Neil Young. What he did next however, was to create what is still today my favourite album of all time. Handpicking a bunch of extraordinarily gifted musicians, he assembled Stephen Stills Manassas and released a double album featuring music genres from all over the Americas. Country, bluegrass, rock, blues, and Latin genres showcased some of his best songs in what everyone calls Americana today. And all of a sudden Stills was in England promoting the album. The family reel-to-reel tape recorder was pressed into action to capture his appearances on the BBC and a ticket was duly acquired for what turned out to be a stunning Manassas concert at north Londons Rainbow Theatre. My devotion as a fan increased further when I discovered that the formation and rehearsals for Manassas had taken place in England and some of Stills best studio recordings had been made in London. All the British music papers and, when trips to London enabled me to buy it, Rolling Stone, were championing Stills and feeding my fix and filling my scrapbooks.

I would certainly lap up a ton of great music from him after 1972, but Manassas that year was the peak of my devotion. It was a devotion that ebbed and flowed but never really vanished completely in later life.

But in my career in the book business I regularly pondered, where was the Stills biography or autobiography I craved? Crosby tick, Nash tick, and Young tick, tick, tick! Dare I attempt to fill that void, I often wondered. Stephen Stills is clearly not a man who spends too much time daydreaming about the past. The prospect of interviews doesnt excite him there was a polite but firm no when he was approached about this book via his manager Elliot Roberts and he wasnt even much involved in the creation of his own recent box set, curated by Joel Bernstein and Graham Nash.

The release of the four-disc anthology, Carry On, in 2013 prompted Stills to admit to Rolling Stone magazine that it was probably his equivalent of an autobiography, explaining that although he had enjoyed reading Keith Richards Life (2011), other rock-star memoirs bore the shit out of me. Music writer Jeff Tamarkin provoked an equally damning response that same year when Stills revealed, I find interviews and talking about myself the most loathsome activity in the world. So no, Ill never write one of those stupid autobiographies.

But hes far from being the curmudgeon all this might indicate. The enormous ego and intensity of his 1970s self has long since evaporated, replaced by the self-deprecating and relaxed (and often downright funny) self in his seventies.

Despite his protestations, he has tried to write his own story. But you sense the staying power and slog of hunching over a typewriter on the tour bus appeals less than picking up a guitar and doing what comes effortlessly with his 21st-century blues project, The Rides.

This, then, is an unauthorized biography of several different people, all of them Stephen Stills. At various times he has been band leader, guitarist, workaholic, egomaniac, blues man, poetic songwriter, and laid-back, carefree family man and father of seven. The steely, blue-eyed blonde kid with the big white guitar has evolved into a gravel-voiced LA blues man who, you feel, would make the perfect voice-over candidate for the next Disney blockbuster.

So, the most complicated and hard to pin down member of the CSN&Y conglomerate finally gets his story told. The satisfaction and responsibility of writing it have been huge. Stills career has not been without its problems, but the unconditional love, protection, and support of his fans tells me that I better have got the facts right! As for the man himself: If you read this Stephen, I hope you will look kindly on my efforts and perhaps find my order of events helpful in finally writing your memoirs one day. Over to you