Photo of Stephen STILLS; Stephen Stills, Manassas, Sept. 1972 - Copenhagen, Denmark
“After #BuffaloSpringfield, before @CSNofficial #Hawaii”
Our 10 Essential Stephen Stills Songs list examines Stephen Stills's career and attempts to pick out a few chestnuts from all aspects of it. Like our
Neil Young CSN
Stephen Stills at home, 1979
Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performs during the Laughter, Love & Music concert dedicated to rock promoter Bill Graham at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park on November 3, 1991 in...
David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills & Nash
Stills may be hobbled by arthritis—backstage he bumps fists rather than shakes hands with fans; he has carpal tunnel and residual pain from a long-ago broken hand, which affects his playing—and he is nearly deaf, but his performance life has continued. Drugs and alcohol may have dented him somewhat, forming a kind of carapace over the youthful sensitivity and cockiness one often saw in the face of the young Stills. Some might infer by looking at the spry James Taylor or Mick Jagger that heroin is less hard on the body than cocaine and booze, which perhaps tear down the infrastructure. (“Stills doesn’t know how to do drugs properly,” Keith Richards once said.) But one has to hand it to a rock veteran who still wants to get on stage and make music even when his youthful beauty and once-tender, husky baritone have dimmed. It shows allegiance to the craft, to the life, to the music. It risks a derisive sort of criticism as well as an assault on nostalgia.
With the Burberry blanket coat practically ubiquitous this fall, now is the right time for a retrospective of ponchos past.
Manassas perform on BBC In Concert series Stephen Stills.
