Hotel California: Singer-songwriters and Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons 1967–1976. Barney Hoskyns

Чтение книги онлайн.

       III: So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star

      ‘I’m sitting in Barney’s Beanery,’ says Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas, ‘and in walks Stephen Stills. He looks kinda down, so I ask him what he’s doing. He says, “Fuck all, man, I ain’t doin’ nothin’.” Two or three weeks later I walk into the Whisky and Bam! – there he is onstage with a band. I said to him, “What the fuck? Did you add water and get an instant band?!”’

      Early in April 1966, Stills and Richie Furay were stuck in a Sunset Strip traffic jam in Barry Friedman’s Bentley. As they sat in the car, Stephen spotted a 1953 Pontiac hearse with Ontario plates on the other side of the street. ‘I’ll be damned if that ain’t Neil Young,’ Stills said. Friedman executed an illegal U-turn and pulled up behind the hearse. One of rock’s great serendipities had just occurred.

      Young, a lanky Canadian with bad teeth, had just driven all the way from Detroit in the company of bassist Bruce Palmer. They’d caught the bug that was drawing hundreds of other pop wannabes to the West Coast. ‘I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing,’ Young said. ‘We were just going like lemmings.’ A week later Stills had the band he’d fantasised about for months. With drummer Dewey Martin recruited from bluegrass group the Dillards, the lineup was complete: three singer-guitarists (Stills, Young, Furay) and a better rhythm section than the Byrds. Van Dyke Parks spotted a steamroller with the name ‘Buffalo Springfield’ and everyone loved it. It was perfect, conjuring a sense of American history and landscape that interested all of them – Neil Young in particular.

      Young was skinny and quiet and more than a little freaked out by the bright automotive sprawl of Los Angeles. His intense dark eyes, framed by long sideburns, mesmerised women. ‘Neil was a very sweet fellow,’ says Nurit Wilde, who’d known him in Toronto. ‘He was sick and he was vulnerable. Women wanted to feed him and take care of him.’ At least Young and Palmer didn’t have to sleep in the hearse any more. When Stephen and Richie took them over to Barry Friedman’s house on Fountain Avenue, a floor and mattresses were proffered. ‘The whole thing was…a tremendous relief,’ Young told his father Scott. ‘Barry gave us a dollar a day each for food. All we had to do was keep practising.’

      ‘People thought Neil was moody, but he didn’t seem moody to me,’ says Friedman. ‘He seemed like just another guy with good songs, though he did have a funny voice.’ To Young, the affable Richie Furay was ‘the easiest to like’ of the Springfield members, though he told World Countdown News that Richie’s ‘hair should be longer’. Furay had a small room in a Laurel Canyon pad belonging to Mark Volman of successful LA pop group the Turtles. ‘Our living room was the frequent meeting place for Stephen, Neil and Richie,’ Volman recalls. ‘Dickie Davis was always coming by. With the Springfield, a lot of it was created around the energy of Dickie.’

      Between Davis and Friedman, the Springfield’s career took off with a flying start. Their first performance was at the Troubadour on 11 April, barely a week after their formation. Little more than a public rehearsal, the set was the prelude to a mini-tour in support of the Byrds, whose Chris Hillman was an early and ardent champion. To the other Byrds, the Springfield came as a galvanising shock. Within a space of weeks the group had developed a fearsome live sound that was rooted in the twin-engine guitar blitz of Stills and Young. ‘ The Springfield live was very obviously a guitar duel,’ says Henry Diltz, who took the group’s first publicity shots on Venice Beach. ‘They’d talk back and forth to each other with their guitars and it would escalate from there.’

      Friedman wanted to sign the Springfield to Elektra, but Jac Holzman wasn’t the only record executive interested in the band. Nor was Friedman the only person keen to manage them. When the Springfield returned from their tour, Dickie Davis introduced them to a pair of Hollywood hustlers named Charlie Greene and Brian Stone. The duo had hit town five years before, ambitious publicists who set up a phoney office on a studio lot. With Greene as the frontman schmoozer, Stone hovered in the background and controlled the cash flow. Inspired by flamboyant svengalis like Phil Spector, Charlie and Brian rode around in limos and played pop tycoons.

      For Van Dyke Parks, schemers like Greene and Stone changed LA’s innocent folk-rock vibe. ‘There was a severe competitive atmosphere in this scene,’ Parks recalled. ‘The Beatles had exploded and the youth market had defined itself.’ Greene and Stone set about wowing the Springfield, fuelling Stephen Stills’s fantasies of stardom. And they were ruthless in cutting Barry Friedman out of the picture. Taking him for a limo ride, the duo sat Friedman between them. Minutes into the journey, Greene quietly placed a pistol on Friedman’s thigh. By the end of the trip Barry had signed over his rights to Buffalo Springfield on a hot dog napkin. ‘People like that do what they do,’ Friedman says. ‘I don’t, though I’m still waiting for a cheque. I read in Neil’s book that he owes me money, but he must have lost my address.’

      When Lenny Waronker saw the Springfield live they were wearing cowboy hats, with Neil Young positioned to one side in a fringed Comanche shirt. He went berserk: ‘I thought, “Oh my God, this is it!”’ Waronker got Jack Nitzsche interested early on: ‘I needed weight behind me, and Jack had that weight. I talked to him about co-producing the group.’ Nitzsche instantly bonded with Neil Young, intuitively recognising a fellow СКАЧАТЬ