Meanwhile, Gram Parsons was beginning to wear out his welcome at Villa Nellcôte, the French mansion that Keith Richards rented while The Rolling Stones recorded sessions for their Exile on Main Street album. He and Gretchen had been living and traveling with the Stones for almost a year when Keith’s wife Anita politely asked them to leave. They packed up and flew back to the US where Gram would try to kickstart his career. He came to our show in Baltimore, and we made peace with one another—yet again. After joining me for a couple of songs on stage, we stayed up most of the night catching up with one another. Gram had stopped taking drugs, and I was reminded that when he was sober and somewhat coherent, he could be a wonderful friend and confidant.
At some point during our conversation, Gram mentioned that he wanted to make a solo album and was looking for a girl singer to work with. Emmylou popped into my mind since she was nearby in Washington DC. I encouraged him to call her up, but he wasn’t convinced. I revisited the topic several times that evening, telling Gram how great she was. He finally gave in and picked up the phone. They arranged to meet in DC the next day, so Gram booked a train ticket. The rest, as they say, is history. The two hit it off, and Gram flew Emmy out to LA for rehearsals and recording. Coming from a folk background, she wasn’t quite the country music devotee that Gram was, but Emmylou Harris was getting ready to embark on a great adventure that would change her life forever.
Gram wasn’t the only old friend I ran into out on the road. We had a night off in Cleveland during a string of shows and heard that Stephen Stills was playing in town. After achieving huge success with my old bandmate in Crosby, Stills & Nash (and, later, Young), he decided to take some time away from CSN and strike out on his own. After scoring with radio hits like “Love the One You’re With” and “Change Partners” he was touring with his own band.
Stephen and I went way back to the mid-1960s when he formed Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, and Bruce Palmer. I got to know Dewey when he was playing drums for The Dillards when they briefly experimented with going electric during a three-week tour of the States opening for The Byrds. After the tour ended, I ran into Dewey again, and he invited me down to hear this new band he was playing with. I met the Springfield guys and heard them rehearse. They had the goods: great songs and great vocals. They were being managed by Barry Friedman and Dickie Davis, two old friends of mine. When Barry and Dickie approached Whisky a Go Go co-owner Elmer Valentine about hiring them, he passed. He just wasn’t interested. I stepped in and talked to Elmer about giving them a couple of nights to play the club in the summer of 1966. Elmer and his partner Mario Maglieri did hire them for a weekend on my word, and they were a hit. Elmer held them over for another week. They then became the de facto house band there for nearly two months—which ultimately led to their landing a record deal.
Now here I was in Cleveland, Ohio, watching Stills on stage. I hadn’t seen him since CSN had become world famous, so it was great to spend a nice evening catching up after the show. It was only a month or two later when I ran into him again while playing a Burritos show at a club called Tulagi’s in Boulder, Colorado. Stephen was living in the area at the time. That night I was playing a 1950s Gibson F-5 mandolin that I’d bought in Virginia during a Byrds tour in 1968. Although I’d played mandolin in the Squirrel Barkers and The Golden State Boys, I didn’t even own a mandolin during my first few years with The Byrds. After finding that Gibson, I began making up for lost time with a daily practice regimen. It wasn’t a great instrument, and after I had it for a couple of months, Ed Douglas stripped off the finish and left it natural, hoping to get some more tone out of it. The first thing out of Stills’s mouth when we saw each other after my show was, “The band sounds great, but I think you need a better mandolin.” I laughed it off and we headed out to his cabin in Gold Hill, just outside Boulder, where we spent the evening continuing to catch up.
After that tour, I was hanging out at home one day at the house I shared with Bernie Leadon. We were still roommates even though we weren’t bandmates, and we lived in a place on the canals in Venice Beach. Built in the 1920s, the Venice Canals were intended to recreate the romantic vibe of its Italian sister city. By the time we lived there, however, the neighborhood had lost its luster and was jokingly called “the slum by the sea.” There were certainly no singing gondoliers passing by on the waters outside my window. An occasional used piece of furniture might float past, and once I happened to glance outside to see a duck riding on top of a mattress. The free show was interrupted by a phone call. It was someone from Stephen Stills’s camp calling to ask if I was available to come down to Criteria Studios in Miami and play some sessions for a new solo album he was starting to work on. Stephen had some material that was leaning toward a bluegrass/country feel and he needed mandolin, fiddle, and steel guitar. They wanted Al Perkins and Byron Berline to come down with me. I was completely up for it and, since the Flying Burrito Brothers already had shows booked on the east coast during the weekends, the three of us would be able to travel down to Miami during the week for the sessions. It would be great to work with Stills, and besides, I hadn’t been to Miami since The Byrds appeared at the Columbia Records Convention there in 1965.
Arriving the day before the session, we were picked up at the airport and driven to a large mansion on the bay that Stills and the band were leasing. I met the other musicians: Dallas Taylor, Fuzzy Samuel, Paul Harris, and Joe Lala. I had actually met Joe before when his band Pacific Gas & Electric opened for The Flying Burrito Brothers in San Diego. They were all very nice guys, but I was still a bit shy, so I was feeling a little apprehensive about what to expect at the following day’s session.
There was no reason to feel nervous. The studio was fabulous, and the engineers were brothers Ron and Howard Albert, two wonderful guys and incredible talents who would figure prominently in my life for years to come. We’d only been there a few hours when we took a short break. “I have something you should see,” Stephen told me. One of his road guys handed him a small oblong case. He popped it open and pulled out what looked like an old Gibson F model mandolin. “Try this out and tell me what you think.” I carefully picked it up, realizing it was a 1924 Lloyd Loar F-5 “Master Model.” It was the very finest mandolin Gibson ever built—the rare mandolin equivalent to a Stradivarius violin. I played a little bit.
“This is outstanding,” I said. “Where did you get it?”
Stephen replied, “You like it?”
I said again, “This is an outstanding instrument.”
Stephen nodded. “Good,” he said. “It’s yours!”
I was in shock. I couldn’t believe he was offering me such a beautiful instrument. It was such an overwhelmingly kind gesture that I felt like I shouldn’t take it.
“Stephen,” I protested, “I can’t accept this gift. It’s far too generous and it’s too good of an instrument for me.”
Stills just shook his head and laughed before straightening up and looking me right in the eye. “I’ll never forget what you did for the Springfield,” he said with the deepest sincerity. “You got us our first real job at the Whisky, and that’s how all this began. I want you to have this mandolin to know how much I appreciate it.”
I fumbled around for an appropriate response and finally managed a simple “Thank you.” I wanted to throw my arms around him and give him a big bear hug, but I don’t think he would’ve been comfortable with that kind of display of affection.
After that, I was floating high above the ground playing my new mandolin. I was loving every minute of the sessions and spent about three days recording tracks and adding some harmony vocal overdubs to a few songs. When the weekend came around, Al, Byron, and I rendezvoused with the rest of The Flying Burrito Brothers for some shows before returning to Miami for some additional recording sessions that wrapped up over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
It was on the last day of recording when Stephen approached me with an unexpected offer. Stills wan
ted to start a new band with me, Al, Dallas, Joe, Fuzzy, and Paul. Of course, it sounded like a great idea, but what about CSN? How did they fit into the equation? Stephen assured me that he wanted to go in a different direction and do some exploring with a solid band that could handle any material from straight country and bluegrass, to rock and roll, to blues, and even a little Afro-Cuban flavor thrown into the mix. If I was going to do it, however, it would mean giving up The Flying Burrito Brothers.
The Burritos had gotten to the point where we were a great live act and had developed a real camaraderie onstage. No matter how great we sounded, however, what was the end game? We weren’t selling any records. I had put nearly three years into this, and as good as we were sounding on stage, it was time for me to move on. The hardest part would be breaking away from my pals, but they would all land on their feet. I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do. Game over. When Stephen made the offer to me “I said, let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.” It was just under three minutes when I turned around and looked him in the eye and said, “I’m in, when do we start rehearsing?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT DOESN’T MATTER
In December of 1971, Dallas Taylor, Joe Lala, and I spent Christmas Eve at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City with the Stills family: Stephen, his mother, and his two sisters, Hannah, and Taicita. Stephen was recovering from a knee operation, so we camped out there for a few days of shopping, going down to the Village to hear music, and hanging out. It was an unusual way to spend the holiday, but being in New York during Christmas is always a beautiful time.
On Christmas day, we all headed to JFK and boarded a flight to London. The rest of the band and crew soon joined us to begin rehearsals for a world tour promoting the upcoming album. Stephen leased Ringo Starr’s home in Surrey, near Elstead, which was a small town outside of London. The idea was to have everyone living together under the same roof for the next two months while we rehearsed. It was a beautiful Tudor-style English country manor complete with a house staff, a full-time gardener, and stables with two horses. We each had our own bedroom, and I lived at the end of the hallway on the second floor. My room was referred to as the “monk’s cell,” and it could easily have passed for a monastic cave. I was told that most of the heavy oak timbers in the ceiling were taken off the Spanish Armada, most likely after the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It was a comfortable temporary home with loads of English charm. The weather, however, was a different story. England in January and February isn’t paradise for an ex-surfer from California. The sun might have briefly popped out every now and then to taunt me, but I really just remember those damp overcast skies greeting me every day when I awoke.
The other band members and I were under the impression that we would rehearse each day in the manor’s adjoining garage studio. We did, but not according to any set schedule. Our rehearsals were sporadic and would start whenever Stephen was ready. Sometimes that meant the festivities didn’t get underway until midnight, or one or two in the morning. Having always followed a strictly-scheduled and structured rehearsal time in the other bands I had played in, this was a huge adjustment for me.
Despite the idyllic setting, Elstead could start to feel like a prison at times with the foul weather and crazy rehearsal schedule. It got to where there was an oppressive air when we were all confined to the house. One day, a few of us took a hike out into the pastures, wearing what looked like army jackets. Out of nowhere, two military jeeps full of soldiers, with guns drawn, pulled up and surrounded us. They were English army troops from nearby Guilford. This was in the days when the IRA was setting off bombs in and around London, and they thought we might be suspicious characters. When they realized there wasn’t an Irish accent among us, we were saved. So much for getting out for a little fresh air! When we knew we weren’t needed for rehearsal, we’d venture a little further and take the train from Guilford station into London just to have a little taste of freedom. Joe Lala, one of the funniest people I’ve ever known, used to say, “We’re going on a vacation from each other together!”
Sensing our restlessness, Stephen decided we should take a few days off and fly over to France for a little break. Stephen, Dallas, Paul, Joe, and I landed in Paris and stayed the night at Bill Wyman’s house. The Stones weren’t touring or recording at the time, and Bill had already popped into Stephen’s album sessions in Miami to play bass with us on “The Love Gangster.” Bill was a very nice man and a great musician. He opened his home to us and treated us to a wonderful dinner at a nearby restaurant that evening. Wyman supposedly once said that he would have left The Rolling Stones to join Stephen’s band if he’d been asked, which tells you something about the quality of that group of musicians. If he had, I would have enjoyed playing with him. Bill was always a lovely man and someone in the Stones whom I truly admired.
The next morning, we booked tickets on a train to Rome. It was a comfortable ride, and we all had our own private compartments. As we disembarked the train to make a change in Zurich the next morning, we discovered that Stephen must have stayed up a few too many nights. He was beginning to hallucinate. A porter was loading our luggage onto a large cart, and Stephen was sure the kid was stealing our stuff. He confronted the poor guy, pulled out a folding knife from his pocket, and threatened his life. The porter grew wide-eyed and took off running. Paul and I calmed Stephen down, got him to hand over the knife, and convinced him to go wait in the train station bar. We threw the knife in the bushes across the street from the station, found the porter, and managed to sooth his fears with some kind words and a generous tip.
When we boarded the next train to continue on to Rome, we all hid from Stephen in Joe’s compartment. Joe, never one for confrontation, hid out in the railroad station bar as soon as Stills started to get agitated about the porter. While there, he met a new friend who sold him some wonderful treats that did much to calm our anxiety in the wake of “the Zurich incident.” We kicked back, howling in laughter as we headed for Italy. We all had a great time sightseeing together in Rome before flying back to London a few days later. It was just the break we’d needed.
Refocused and reenergized, we put together a two-hour show that presented the entire album. Stephen settled on the name Manassas for both the band and the record. It was a reference to the Virginia town that was the site of the first major land battle of the Civil War. Well-trained and ready for battle ourselves, we moved out of Elstead and hit the road to go play our first show together. The venue for our debut performance was the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the same beautiful theater I had played with The Flying Burrito Brothers a couple of years earlier. We followed that up with some very good shows in England and around the European continent. That band was sounding so good.
After our European shows we were booked to headline Australia’s Rock Isle Mulwala Pop Festival over Easter weekend. We boarded a BEA jet for Melbourne with stops in Beirut, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Perth, and a plane change in Sydney. The second group on the festival’s bill was Canned Heat, who came in from the US. We all arrived at the Sydney airport at about the same time from opposite ends of the earth—Manassas from the west and Canned Heat from the east. We all went through Immigration and Customs and boarded our final flight for Melbourne. In an instant, five customs agents appeared and summoned us off the plane. We were accused of smuggling drugs into the country by hiding them in our amplifiers. After a complete search of everything, they realized they had the wrong band. The drugs belonged to Canned Heat.
We were finally allowed to fly on to Melbourne. I’m not sure what happened to Canned Heat, but they did show up for the festival the next day without the contraband they brought along. It was a very hot day and poor Bob Hite, their lead singer, passed out on stage in front of the crowd of 30,000 people. Being a rather large fellow whose nickname was “the Bear,” a fork-lift had to be brought in to move him off to the side of the stage.
Following the Australian festival, both bands flew to Hawaii. It wa
s my first time back to the United States in months, and I managed to avoid being grilled by the authorities. Stephen wasn’t so fortunate. He decided to wear a nice suit on the plane, while the rest of us wore our normal everyday wear. Upon landing in Honolulu and lining up to go through US customs, the head agent pointed to our group. “Okay, you people,” he said, “welcome home. You can come on through except for you in the suit. You need to go wait over there.” I guess Stephen stuck out like a sore thumb with his beautiful English suit, while the rest of us were in our typical gear. He ultimately managed to convince the agents there was nothing nefarious going on.
Our return to the States coincided with the release of the Manassas record. Thanks to the marathon recording sessions, there was plenty of material for a conceptually engaging double LP. It was divided into four distinct sections: “The Raven” was a rock section with some Latin influences; “The Wilderness” was country and bluegrass; “Consider” was folk-oriented; and “Rock & Roll is Here to Stay” was, well, what it sounds like. It was a wonderful album, the critics loved it, and the band was fantastic—both in the studio and on stage. In terms of songwriting, Stills and I worked together quite well, having written “It Doesn’t Matter” and “Bound to Lose.” The album hit the Billboard Top 5, and I just soaked up the experience of playing great shows in large venues all across America—including an unforgettable show at Carnegie Hall. That first year with the band was fantastic, and I loved working with those guys. At the conclusion of the tour, I moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Stephen and the band were based.
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