Buffalo Springfield is my favorite band of all time. They had a very short existence, less than two full years. In that time, the drivers of the group, three young men barely into their twenties - Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Ritchie Furay, together with an adequate but not otherwise noteworthy rhythm section of bass and drums, moved rock music into a brand new direction. That many artists and bands followed at the time and even through to this day. I became a fan of Stills, Young, and Furay and have followed, enjoyed their work and seen all live numerous times over the years in all of the bands and incarnations their careers have taken.

I was lucky enough to see Buffalo Springfield their first period, 1966-1968. The group disbanded acrimoniously. Still and Young bobbed and weaved together over the years in different periods of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, while pursuing their own successful careers.

Young has two sons who were born with congenital disabilities. Each born to a different mother has cerebral palsy. Young and his wife Pegi helped found the Bridge School to deal with children with special needs. For a sequence of about 30 years, Young hosted Bridge School Concerts at our local outdoor amphitheater as its major fundraiser. In hosting, he would contact musicians he knew and ask them to perform. The two stipulations were that they needed to play acoustically (no amps, etc, to allow for quick changes through the show) and no compensation would be provided. I was lucky to be able to attend about half of them.

The list of performers who appeared is, in hindsight, more than amazing. Here's a link to more info.

Bridge School Benefit - Wikipedia

In advance of the Fall 2010 Bridge School Concerts (there were always two performances, consecutive nights), apparently the surviving members of Buffalo Springfield (Stills, Young, Furay) had been conversing about perhaps it would be fun to suddenly reappear as the old group and perform at the Bridge School Concert. Word got out this was going to happen, the first time they would be playing together in that form and just that material in over 40 years. Even more than normal, tickets were snatched up. You can believe I was at one of the shows and was pinching myself throughout a short set (I think it was about 6 songs).

Afterwards, it came out in the press that they'd had fun and missed being able to play with their electric guitars, so they would be embarking on a short tour. I think it was announced in March of 2011 - 7 shows. Two in Oakland, two in LA, two in Santa Barbara, and then as a headlining act at Bonnaroo. I was at the Oakland show. It was a completely surreal experience. There are a few audience captured videos I will link to. The videos aren't great but the audio parts are passable. I hope you'll enjoy these. The songs chosen weren't all necessarily their best know but all appeared on one of their three albums. I got the hint that some perhaps some weren't as popular as others among the general public but were songs they personally liked.

(Funny note - during the 66-68 days, Young's standard attire was to wear a leather fringed jacket. At both the Bridge School Concert and at this one in Oakland, that's what he had on. Likely his joke to himself but one devoted fans like me immediately picked up on. )

Bluebird, from a better angle

From yesteryear, Buff Springfield days

They were going to continue touring that subsequent Fall but plans fell through. They haven't played together since and probably never will again.

Phew, need to take a break. The next two will be shorter.

This is a story I learned about mostly after the fact.

Little Stevie van Zandt is a man of multiple talents. First and best known as Bruce Springsteen's longtime collaborator and right hand man, he's also shown his chops as an actor (The Sopranos) ,as a Screenwriter/Actor/Series developer (Lilyhammer), as a composer and as an author.

van Zandt credits a group that started as the Young Rascals, later changed to Rascals, as the the first true rock and roll BAND (as opposed to just performers) and as trailblazers.

They were known for songs like Groovin, It's a Beautiful Morning, People Got To Be Free, How Can I Be Sure, Good Lovin', Been Lonely Too Long, I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore. That group.

He waged a one-man campaign, ultimately successful, to get them inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame. He introduced them at the ceremony and pulled off a cute costume gag

The common story, the Rascals broke up in the early 1970s with a lot of bad feelings among the band members. Van Zandt waged an effort in the subsequent years to get them back performing together. His motivation was simple - he regarded them as one of the greatest bands ever and that they owed it to themselves and to their fans to continue working together. It took a long and and also Van Zandts personal investment, but a show entitled "Once Upon A Dream" was put together that ultimately led to a national tour. This was in the 2012 time frame, plus or minus. Van Zandt and the band members have all lived in the NYC/NJ area (but for one who moved to Nashville) and if there had been any press coverage in my area about what was going on, I missed it.

I was home late one afternoon and flipping through a stack of papers that had piled up. In the entertainment section of one, I saw mention that The Rascals would be performing THAT NIGHT at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. To me, this was as plausible as learning that John Wilkes Booth would be opening the next week in Phantom of the Opera. I looked at it, tried to figure out what was going on, and ultimately called the theater for more information.

Me: "The Rascals are performing tonight?"

Them: "Yes. Tickets are nearly all sold"

Me: "The Rascals, like from the 1960s?"

Them: Yes

Me: A cover band?

Them: No, all the original members together.

I ended the call, dazed and confused (Thanks LZ). I went in to talk to my wife. She had plans that night to do something with friends. I checked if she minded my going up to SF alone to see the Rascals. She had the same reaction I did, I told her I checked it out, she was fine with it. I called Ticketmaster, bought 1 ticket (it was a good seat, a lone singleton), jumped in my car, and drove up there.

Oh my. Oh my. It was one of the best concerts ever, and I've been to very many over the years. I called my wife at the intermission because I had to tell someone what I was experiencing.

Here's a lousy partial video but you'll get the idea. Jump forward in it to hear some of the songs and pass over the multimedia. I apologize for the quality, there used to be more on Youtube but they've been taken down:

Here's one song, It's A Beautiful Morning

Here's the whole show. You can click forward to get just the songs. The video is muted, click the X on the speaker image. The next lines are a link, I promise, it just looks odd.

SEE LINK IN THE NEXT FOLLOWING LINES:

The Rascals - Once Upon a Dream - The Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY - December 2012 | The Rascals - Once Upon a Dream - The Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY - December 2012 00:30 Once Upon A Dream Intro 01:49 It's Wonderful (Felix... | By Jukebox | Facebook

I got home late but woke my wife to tell her about it. My adrenaline was still running. I got up the next morning and checked their site. We were going to be busy for a few weeks but the tour continued and their show in Chicago caught my attention. We discussed it, decided to go and made the trip! We had an enjoyable few days visiting Chicago, my wife got to see the Rascals, and I got to see them again!

Similar story, plans to do another tour fell through. They started throwing rocks at one another. No further touring together, that was it. It was another fish or cut bait moment.

Felix Cavaliere, the keyboard player, continues to tour, calling himself The New Rascals. I went to one of the shows, it was a shadow of the magic that happened when the original four play together.

It was then or never. I acted and am so glad I did.

Edit to add:

Audience video clip of two segments from their reunion tour - Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore and then into Good Lovin'

Last one, I'll keep it short: I think I've mentioned before that the LA-based band Love is also one of my all time favorites. Its popularity in the US was limited a bit because, in a story I've heard from a few sources, it was a band with both Caucasian and African American members and the group's leader, Arthur Lee, was reluctant to go out on the road to visit regions where he thought (whether it was justified or not) some trouble could be encountered. They did tour Europe a number of times and developed more of a following in the UK and Scandinavia than they had in parts of the US.

Love was an interesting band, one whose style is hard to categorize. There were two African American band members but none of their songs had much in the way of Blues or R+B influences. Perhaps some could be called folk rock, or soft rock, or psychedelic, or who knows what. Many songs were played using acoustic guitars and not electric ones.

The album Forever Changes, released I think around 1967, is considered the high water mark of Love's career. The album is not thematic but there are many beautiful songs in it. Forever Changes ranks highly in lists of the very best albums of its era. If you're unfamiliar with the group, songs that got a fair bit of airplay from the album were Alone Again Or and Andmoreagain. (not a typo)

The band fell apart as so many did and Lee continued to perform off and on. He was in and out of trouble with the law. In the 1990s, he was convicted of a gun offense and sentenced to an extended prison term. There were technical errors in the conviction and he was released after a handful of years. In the early 2000s, he was out and broke. He formed a band with younger musicians and went out touring as Arthur Lee and Love. The tour was named The Forever Changes show, and featured playing the album from start to finish and then also other of its well known songs, Little Red Book and others.

Not unlike the Rascals story but many years earlier, I was looking at the paper one day and saw a notice of an upcoming Love concert in San Francisco. I think the year was 2004. It took me by surprised. I did some checking, also made a few phone calls, and learned what was going on. We went, it was held at the Fillmore, the historic music venue in San Francisco.

Another Oh My, what a show. Lee was in good voice and the band and accompanying orchestral instruments were in good form. He continued to tour in the US and then in Europe. I hoped to be able to see him again.

Alas, Lee knew he was dying of leukemia. He didn't tell his band. A tour was cancelled, at first just an unspecified illness was announced for which he would be undergoing treatment. He died in his early 60s a few years later.

Do we need to see him this time, or can we wait until next time? There was no next time. I'm so glad we went.

A video from a performance as the end of his life and career were approaching, Forever Changes live. Click on the Youtube link to see it full size. There's an index in the description so that you can scroll forward to other songs.

Performance at the 2003 Glastonbury festival

LOVE it! Thanks so much!

The last thing I'm going to spend money on is a bunch of old men and women hoping around on a stage singing with a raspy old voice trying to look cool. It's hard to watch and even harder to think I spent $150.00 to watch it.

I spent averaged $8 a ticket back then with some good performers and many not so good with out mixing equipment to help them out. Got stoned, chased women, played the games young people played back then and not about to do it again.

I am really enjoying this.

I particularly LOVED the Young Rascals. I didn't have a huge collection of albums but I so remember that one . They were NYC boys (DH always claimed them from Queens but I don't know).

I did really like Buffalo Springfield ( and of course, CSN and Y as well) but the Rascals really resonated and I loved listening to that clip.

Two points -- I never heard of Richie Furay and

I didn't understand what you said about Neil Young and the fringed jacket ?

One last anecdote.

I mentioned in one of the other threads my encounter with Chris Hillman of the Byrds, reminding him in a conversation after his show of a song of his that I love (and it turned out, he did too), that he'd forgotten about. And I'm going to take credit that he put it into his performance set lists after my reminding him about it, as I heard him perform it about 6 months later at a different venue.

The different venue I went to out of town was Humphrey's in San Diego. A very cool place, it's a stage set up with folding chairs on a small grassy field at the edge of a marina in SD Harbor. A beautiful setting.

I actually abbreviated the nature of the show as I described in the other thread in which I talked about seeing Hillman again. He was touring with Richie Furay, who you see performing with the Buffalo Springfield just above, He was one of the founding members. Furay called his group the Richie Furay Band, and his set included Buffalo Springfield songs, Poco songs (the group he started after BS) and then some more recent stuff he'd done in the intervening years.

My son and I were running errands in San Diego the afternoon of the show and as I hadn't been to Humphrey's before, I thought it might be a good idea to drive by there so that if I made a wrong turn or got lost, it wouldn't be when I was trying to get there for the show. A dry run, so to speak.

We found it easily and pulled into the parking lot of the hotel Humphrey's is part of. My son said he had to visit a restroom so I parked and stood up to stretch my legs. I looked around and just a few cars away I saw a familiar face unloading some stuff from the back of an SUV. It was Richie Furay! I walked up to him in a friendly way, smiling, and stopped some feet back and said "Hi, Richie?". He turned, mirrored my smile, and stuck his hand out to shake. I started with about the same sentiments as I'd said months earlier to Hillman, how I'd loved his music for 30 years or more and appreciated that he was still performing. He asked me about myself, we talked about the Buffalo Springfield a bit and various things, and after about 10 minutes my son returned and I introduced them to one another. We continued to talk (my son knew who he was). Glancing at my watch, I said "Oh sorry, I don't want to take up your time. I'm sure you have better things to do than to yap with me" and he said "I've got plenty of time and I enjoy when I can meet and talk to people who know my work."

I thanked him again and wished him the best. He's not the world's biggest star but my goodness, he's known and has a fan base, is respected by other musicians, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a very humble, down to earth nice guy.

It's a wonderful memory, I was so lucky to run into him, to talk to him and to learn what a very nice human being he is.

salonva, the beginning lineup of the Buffalo Springfield when it formed in 1966 was Stills and Young, both nominally on Lead Guitar though they traded off depending on the song or played together complimentary parts. Furay on rhythm guitar. Bruce Palmer (Young's buddy from Canada) on bass and Dewey Martin (another man of Canadian origin they ran into) playing the drums.

Palmer got arrested a few too many times on drug charges and was deported. The bass part was a bit of a revolving door though ultimately Jim Messina (later of Loggins and Messina) took the part and also produced some of their songs. That was the lineup when the band broke up in 1968, never playing again until 40 years later at the Bridge Concert. Both Palmer and Martin had passed away before then.

Richie Furay had been in a folk group and met Stills back east. He sang a number of the Buffalo songs that Young wrote because their managers thought he had a better voice.

In the Oakland video up top, Furay's in the middle most of the time, Stills on the left and Young on the right as you look at it. Furay is singing the lead for the opening song, On The Way Home.

The fringe jacket had been more or less Young's "uniform" in the 66-68 original era of the Buffalo Springfield. If you look at photos of the group from that era, he was wearing it much of the time. The black and white photo I posted above is one of Young from that time.

I've seen Young perform both solo/with Crazy Horse and with CSNY more than two dozen times. I've never seen him wear a leather jacket with fringes on it. Through he did the one time I saw BS in the 60s, and he also did both at the Buffalo Springfield first "reunion" at the Bridge Concert I mentioned, and then again at Oakland 8 months later when BS was on their 7 show tour. His BS "uniform", I speculate, and a joke to himself that he can't do those songs unless "dressed properly"

thank you Elmer. When I picture Neil Young, the fringe jacket is on him.

Links to related threads:

Tidbits Part 1

Tidbits Part 2