Buffalo Springfield Arcania
by James Dusewicz
Rust List October-November 1998
| 4/18/65 | Neil Young meets Stephen Stills for the first time at the Fourth Dimension coffee house in Ft. William, where Young and the Squires share a bill with Still's group The Company. Stills and Young strike up an immediate friendship, and agree to keep in touch. |
|---|---|
| 6/12&16/65 | Squires final gig, an afternoon performance at the Fourth Dimension. Koblun and Young briefly consider traveling to England in the hope of becoming pop stars, but settle their sights nearer to home, at Toronto. On the weekend of June 15/18 Young and his friends are on their way to Sudbury when Neil's beloved hearse Mort(aka Mortimer Hearseburg) breaks down in Blind River, the hearse is the inspiration for "Long May You Run". |
| 8/1965 | Neil moves into Toronto's nearest equivalent to a Bohemian Quarter, Yorkville. Carrying his guitar one afternoon on the street, he meets bass player Bruce Palmer. Around this time he writes "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing". |
| 9/1965 | Young and Koblun journey to New York where they search in vain for Richie Furay. Young is offered the opportunity to record his first demos at Electra Studios, taping solo acoustic renditions of seven songs: "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", "Sugar Mountain", "The Rent Is Always Due", "Runaround Babe", "Don't Pity Me Babe", "Ain't Got The Blues" and "When It Falls It Falls On You". |
| 10/30/65 | Young, Ken Koblun and George McDonald journey from Toronto to Killington, Vermont, for a gig at the Wobbly Barn ski resort that falls through after one night, whereupon Neil and Ken head for New York for three days. Neil Meets Richie Furay who was also in Stephen Stills's band The Company, and teaches him "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing". Richie later takes the song to Stills in Los Angeles. |
| late Feb 66 | Young and Bruce Palmer drive towards California, once again in search of their friends from The Company. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay are trying to contact Young to persuade him him to join their band. |
| 3/2/66 | On a Los Angeles highway Young and Palmer are leaving town in Neil's hearse, when they are spotted by Stills and Furay driving in the opposite direction. The four men establish on-the-road contact, and agree to meet for a rehearsal the following day. |
| 3/3/66 | Drummer Dewey Martin joins Young, Stills, Palmer and Furay for the first rehearsal of The Buffalo Springfield. |
| 7/18/66 | The Buffalo Springfield record "Go And Say Goodbye" and Young's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" in Los Angeles. |
| 10/66 | The Buffalo Springfield record their debut album in Los Angeles, adding:
"Sit Down I Think I Love You", "Leave", "Hot Dusty Roads",
"Everybody's Wrong", "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong".
"Burned", "Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It", " Baby Don't
Scold Me", "Out Of My Mind", and "Pay The Price" to the two songs
taped previously in July. Three songs are left over from the sessions: "My Kind Of Love", "Neighbor Don't You Worry" and "Down Down Down". |
| 12/5/66 | The Buffalo Springfield record "For What It's Worth" at Columbia Studios in Los Angeles. |
| 1/1967 | 'Buffalo Springfield' the group's debut lp is released by Atlantic, at the same time as the single "For What It's Worth". As the latter becomes a hit, Atlantic withdraws the lp, and reissues it with "For What It's Worth" installed as the first track, replacing Still's lackluster "Baby Don't Scold Me". |
| 1/9/67 | Tentative first version of "Mr. Soul" is recorded by Buffalo Springfield at Atlantic Studios in New York. The track is only released by mistake on an Atlantic oldies single in the 1970's. At the same session the band record "We'll See" and "My Kind Of Love". |
| 1/25/67 | Buffalo Springfield: The Tempo, San Francisco, California. First show with Ken Koblun replacing Bruce Palmer, who had been arrested on drug charges and deported home to Canada. |
| 2/17/67 | "For What It's Worth" replaces "Baby Don't Scold Me" on Buffalo Springfield's debut album. |
| 2/20/67 | Buffalo Springfield record a second version of "Baby Don't Scold Me" to improve on the version dropped from their debut album. |
| 3/13/67 | Buffalo Springfield record "No Sun Today" and "Who's The Next Fool" at Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. |
| 4/8/67 | The band tape a second version of Young's "Mr. Soul", subsequently issued as a single. |
| 5/1/67 | Neil Young leaves Buffalo Springfield on the eve of their appearance on The Tonight Show. Doug Hastings is recruited as his replacement. |
| 5/6/67 | Young records two instrumentals "Whiskey Boot Hill" and "Slowly Burning", at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The tracks aren't issued at the time, but are delivered to Atlantic in 1971 as part of a batch of unissued Buffalo Springfield material. |
| 6/6/67 | Buffalo Springfield mix their new single "Bluebird"/"Mr. Soul". |
| 6/16/67 | Buffalo Springfield appear without Neil Young at the Monterey International Pop Festival. David Crosby is drafted in from The Byrds to take his place. |
| 6/30/67 | Young's "Down, Down, Down" and Richie Furay's "Nobody's Fool" are recorded by Buffalo Springfield--without Young's involvement. "Down,Down, Down" and "Whiskey Boot Hill"(see 5/6/67), are later incorporated into the 'Deja Vu' CSNY track "Country Girl". |
| 8/24/67 | "Expecting To Fly", effectively a Neil Young solo recording is completed in New York. |
| 8/30/67 | Young rejoins the Buffalo Springfield to record "Rock 'n' Roll Woman" and "A Child's Claim To Fame" at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. |
| 9/1/67 | Buffalo Springfield record an unused version of "Hung Upside Down" at Sunset Sound. Sunset engineer Jim Messina assists Young in re-mixing solo tapes he'd cut in his summer absence from the band. Messina is subsequently asked to replace Bruce Palmer in the Springfield. |
| 10/9/67 | Work is completed on a batch of songs for Buffalo Springfield's second lp. Including " Everydays", "Hung Upside Down", "Sad Memory", "Good Time Boy" and "Broken Arrow". |
| 11/4/67 | Initial recording of Young's "On The Way Home" is done for the third Buffalo Springfield lp. |
| 12/1967 | The second Springfield lp, 'Buffalo Springfield Again' is released. One perceptive reviewer comments on the band's lack of "blend; only a rather alienation among the compositions". The lp is rated as a vast improvement over their first lp. |
| 1/2/68 | A batch of Buffalo Springfield recordings are mixed for possible use on their third album, they include two instrumentals, "Raga No. 1" and "Raga No. 2", plus "Whatever Happened To Saturday Nite", and two song segments, "Theme Jazz" and "Ball Park". |
| 2/15/68 | Months of sporadic sessions result in the delivery to Atlantic of a collection of Buffalo Springfield tracks for the group's third album. Songs completed include two versions of "In The Hour Of Not Quite Rain", "Questions", "Four Days Gone", "Merry-Go-Round", "Pretty Girl Why", "I Am A Child", "Special Care", "Kind Woman", "Uno Mundo", and three songs that remain un-issued by the band, "Carefree Country Day"(two versions), "What A Day", and "Fa-Fa-Fa". |
| 2/26/68 | Buffalo Springfield record "Can't Keep Me Down" at Sunset Sound. |
| 3/9/68 | "Can't Seem To Get Moving" is submitted to Atlantic for consideration on the next Buffalo Springfield album. |
| mid March 68 | Young announces his intention to leave Buffalo Springfield at the end of their current touring schedule. "I just couldn't handle it towards the end," he explains later. "My nerves couldn't handle the trip, it wasn't me scheming for a solo career, it wasn't anything but my nerves". He contacts Joni Mitchell's manager Elliot Roberts, and asks him to become his manager. "Neil was resenting the fact that I was starting to play lead guitar", Stephen Stills mused later on the Springfield split. "I was the arranger, and all of a sudden I was treading on his territory, so he started getting into mine." |
| 5/1968 | Two further Buffalo Springfield songs are completed around the time of the split, "On The Way Home" and "It's So Hard To Wait". |
| 5/5/68 | Final Buffalo Springfield gig, at Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, California. |
| 8/1968 | The third and final Buffalo Springfield album 'Last Time Around' is released. |
| late 2/1969 | Atlantic issues 'Retrospective', a compilation of material by Buffalo Springfield. |
| 5/6/69 | Buffalo Springfield's recording of Young's "Down To The Wire" is belatedly mixed and delivered to Atlantic Records tape vault. |