Last Time Around by Buffalo Springfield Released July 30th, 1968 (Click photo to enlarge)
Buffalo Springfield's "Last Time Around" by Harvey Kubernik
Copyright 2022
Here is a comprehensive, in-depth look back at Buffalo Springfield's final album "Last Time Around" of this Buffalo Springfield box by Harvey Kubernik.
In 1966 and ’67 Harvey Kubernik saw Buffalo Springfield in two of their
Southern California concerts and attended debut Neil Young solo concerts in the
region.
Thrasher's Wheat just recently published several highly popular articles by Kubernik:
Thanks Harvey! enjoy.
Buffalo Springfield @ Hollywood Bowl on April 29, 1967Photo by Henry Diltz.
"Jack Nitzsche the arranger and keyboardist called me to play
keyboard on some dates in 1967 at Sunset Sound. Bruce Botnick was the
engineer," recalled keyboardist and arranger Don Randi to me in a 2015
interview.
"When
I walked into the studio I didn’t realize it was for Buffalo
Springfield. I thought it was for a Neil Young album, ’cause that is
what he was supposed to be breaking away from and going on his own. Hal
Blaine and Jim Horn are on the track. I played piano and organ.
"When Jack and Neil asked me to play on the end part of 'Broken
Arrow' they were both waving me on to keep playing. I kept lookin’ up at
them, ‘Are you ever gonna tell me to stop?’
"I’m on 'Expecting to Fly' with Russ Titelman, Carol Kaye and Jim
Gordon. I had some little head chart arrangement to work from and
another of the tunes might have been sketched. It was pretty wide open
with the chord changes. And all you had to do was hear Neil sing it down
with an acoustic guitar and you sat there, 'Oh my goodness.'
"Neil wrote cinematically and Jack arranged his own records
cinematically. He did movie scores with me as early as 1965. I loved
Neil’s music. This guy’s writing… I thought everybody and their mother
was gonna try and start doing his songs. I knew he was a songwriter.
Some of the tunes were movies. They were scripts.
You have to realize that as great as a musician and as great as a
songwriter he is, Neil would also realize talent himself. Neil liked to
experiment. Neil was smart enough to know what he wanted and knew how to
get it."
"When I did film scores and started to bring in exotic instruments,"
underlined Jack Nitzsche in a 1998 interview we did for "Goldmine,"
magazine, "I wanted to make the sound different and wanted room to
experiment."
Richie Furay @ Gold Star Recording Studio 1966
photo by Henry Diltz
The end of October 1967 saw the release of their second album, Buffalo Springfield Again,
their legacy guaranteed with iconic readings of Young’s “Mr. Soul,” and
Stills’ “Rock ‘n’ Roll Woman,” and “Blue Bird.” Taking over the
production chores, these two ambitious young guns finally corralled that
layered, textured sheath of sound - stacks of guitar tracks arrayed
like a tasty parfait - which came to define an entire musical genre.
It's one of my favorite albums.
Buffalo Springfield Again
was a defining moment in L.A. music history; like Brian Wilson before
them, the Springfield meshed song craft with new recording techniques,
elevating the music to a rarefied state of eloquence. If not the
paradigm-shift of Sgt. Pepper,’s, the record furthered the
claim by a cohort of young talents that the artists themselves were fit
for command. Stills and Young would see their captaincies awarded in
very short order.
"We
were always comfortable singing someone else’s song early on,"
underscored Richie Furay in a 2000 interview we conducted for "Goldmine"
magazine.
"The first album and some of the second, you can hear the cohesiveness
was a group effort, there was not the possessiveness of ‘this is my
song, ‘this is my baby, ‘I’m singing it because I wrote it.’ The
individual members brought their own take on what was being presented to
the song. We liked the Beatles with John and Paul singing harmony.
Stephen and I did a lot of that unison singing. That we picked up from
the Beatles but then there was a lot of experimentation."
Buffalo Springfield Again Side acetate label-1968
(Courtesy of Jeff Gold and Record Mecca)
Before playing its final show on May 5, 1968 at the Long Beach
Sports Arena in Southern California, Buffalo Springfield released three
studio albums on ATCO during an intense, two-year creative burst.
Those albums - Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again, and Last Time Around - have been remastered from the original analog tapes under the auspices of Neil Young for the boxed set: WHAT'S THAT SOUND? THE COMPLETE ALBUMS COLLECTION.
Chris Darrow: (Musician): By 1968, they had a number of hits with Still’s ‘Bluebird’ and ‘Rock and Roll Woman’ and Neil Young’s ‘Mr. Soul,’ as well as ‘Expecting to Fly’ and
‘Broken Arrow.’ The band had some tension among the members, both
personally and musically, and began to go in opposite directions. I
went to their final concert on May 5, 1968 at the Sports Arena in
Long Beach. The set was long and intense and ended with a long 20 plus
minute version of ‘Bluebird.’Country Joe and the Fish and Canned Heat
were also on the bill.”
Rodney Bingenheimer (Deejay):
I went to Buffalo Springfield’s last concert in Long Beach. Neil was
back in the band. I really liked drummer Dewey Martin and at the gig he
dedicated ‘Good Time Boy’ to me. I was on the side of the stage and it
was the best time I ever heard the group live. I was really sad when the
band broke up. I was bummed out when I heard Buffalo Springfield was
ending.”
Rick Rosas:
(Musician) Mark Guerrero and went to the goodbye concert in Long Beach.
It was pretty heavy. I was so young. It was really good. Some of the
guitars were out of tune.”
Mark Guerrero (Musician):
I saw the Buffalo Springfield’s farewell performance at the Long Beach
Sports Arena May 5, 1968. It was a great show with one of its
highlights being a hot version of ‘Uno Mundo,’ but it was sad to know it
was the end of the road for the band.”
Denny Bruce: (Record producer/manager): I
went to the last Buffalo Springfield concert in Long Beach. Neil
[Young], Jack [Nitzsche] and I had a limo. Jimmy Messina came home with
us. His head down and crying, ‘I can’t believe it’s over.’ It was a
sense of relief for Neil. He was glad it was over.”
Richie Furay and Stephen Stills @
Shrine Exposition Hall Los Angeles - 1967
photo by Heather Harris
I witnessed Buffalo Springfield live on stage during December 1966 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and The Hollywood Bowl in April 1967
Their three 1966-1968 albums were always debuted over the Southern California airwaves before the rest of the world discovered them. You really had to live in Hollywood then to further understand and comprehend the initial impact of these regionally-birthed discs and artwork design. Thankfully, I was there.
On July 30, 1968, Last Time Around,
a posthumous album by Buffalo Springfield materialized. Besides
supplying bass on the LP, Jim Messina served as engineer and producer.
He had earlier assisted Young in assembling “Broken Arrow” and
engineered Stills’ “Rock and Roll Woman” for Buffalo Springfield Again.
By Last Time Around, Neil
Young was faintly involved with the band and had apparently split their
group scene for good. But not before providing “I Am a Child” and “On
the Way Home.”
Richie Furay: "Neil
could not see himself as second fiddle. He couldn’t and wouldn’t see
himself as just a member of the band, one of the five guys," Richie told
me in a 2000 interview subsequently published in my 2009 book "Canyon
of Dreams: The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon."
Pete Johnson in The Los Angeles Times praised
the platter: “Within the Springfield were three of the best pop
songwriters, singers, and guitarists to be found in any American rock
group. I have never seen a group use three guitars as tastefully as they
do, weaving a finely detailed fabric whose pattern never blurred from
overlapping.”
Barry Gifford from Rolling Stone hailed
the album. “The most beautiful record they’ve ever made. Too bad this
isn’t the first time around.” Ellen Sander, writing in The New York Times,
observed, “The group has always manifested its multitude of talents in
straightforward, professional songs, flavored with lithe, sweet country
sounds. They have made an art out of music that is unfailingly pleasant;
no less moving for its tasteful, understated neatness. Their final
album, Last Time Around,
is no exception. The entire album has a fresh, natural feeling about
it, not unlike a soft summer rain.” In my 2016 book on Neil Young "Heart
of Gold," I asked several friends about this wonderful album. During
1967 we were enthralled by the delicious "Buffalo Springfield Again."
The unexpected surprise of "Last Time Around," issued after the group
disbanded, was a sad but fruitful dessert.
Mark Guerrero: Buffalo Springfield’s Last Time Around, was akin to the Beatles White Album
in that it was recorded at a time the band was breaking up so many of
the songs were not recorded as a band. It was like three solo artists
coming in and doing their thing. However, it’s still a really good
album with some great songs. Neil Young’s ‘On the Way Home,’ sung by
Richie and the acoustic gem I Am a Child; Steven Stills- his bluesy
‘Four Days Gone’ in 3/4 time with his great piano accompaniment;
‘Questions’- one of my favorite Stills songs; ‘Pretty Girl Why’- a kind
of Latin jazz song with nice two-part harmony on the choruses; and ‘Uno
Mundo’- a Latin-style song with full blown Latin percussion that was
later covered by the East L.A. band El Chicano. Richie Furay- the
beautiful ‘It’s So Hard To Wait.’”
James Cushing: On Last Time Around,
every song has that wonderful thing that the very best later Beatles
songs have -- that sense that the musicians know all about many
different musical traditions and are not hemmed in or limited by them,
but who can use them in a joyous way to discover their own language.
Country western, rock, samba, folk, it’s all there.
Neil’s ‘I Am a Child’ is spoken from the perspective of someone going
back to and celebrating innocence, but he implies that he now lives in a
world in which that innocence has been lost. His off-the-cuff poetry
stresses the implication of a situation involving an ‘I’ and a ‘you,’
but we get a sense of those characters through statements in a monologue
within a relationship, not through imagery.”
Buffalo Springfield @ Hollywood Bowl on April 29, 1967Photo by Henry Diltz.
Kirk Silsbee: The Last Time Around album
was damn good. Stills' ‘Pretty Girl Why’ showed that the band was
capable of being very effective while understating. Sure--Buffalo
Springfield could rock hard and play hard but ‘Pretty Girl Why’ points
to a level of sophistication and subtlety that was just coming into rock
at the time. Nobody had to yell and scream or show how many hot licks
they could play in that song. In that regard, it was anticipating the
better angels of the coming singer-songwriter genre.
Maybe Neil didn’t sanction that album but look he gave us ‘On The Way
Home'; that's just a beautiful song. It was on rotation on our AM and
the new FM radio playlists--years after the band was gone. B. Mitchell
Reed, in particular, implicitly positioned the Springfield as an
important antecedent by programming tracks well into the early 1970s,
but in the context of Crosby, Stills & Nash or After the Goldrush.
‘On The Way Home’ is atypical of Neil because it’s an optimistic song.
And you don’t get optimistic songs from Neil Young. He deals in dour
self-immolation. And it’s Richie Furay at his optimistic, celebratory
best. That’s as good as anything they ever did. At the same time
you’ve got ‘I Am a Child'--something new as well. Yes, it’s Neil
indulging his obsessive self-examination, but he’s also leveling a
critique of the music industry and painting himself in a very vulnerable
light. In that, it’s a window into the future solo Neil Young: you hear
similar sentiments on the first Neil Young album in ‘Last Train To
Tulsa.’ The lyrics on both tunes are from a supine point of view.
On the front cover of Last Time Around, Neil is looking away from the other group members--signifying his continual one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out status in the band.
Neil always asserted his individuality in the Springfield, and probably
in his mind, it was time to go; I don’t think he had any compunction or
second thoughts.
Last Time Around almost sounded
like a different band on every track. So I didn’t have the sense of
great ride coming to an end so much as a great band splitting off into
different directions.”
"Neil Young: Heart of Gold" by Harvey Kubernik
Thrasher's Wheat has previously published two highly popular articles by Harvey Kubernik:
(A child of Hollywood, music historian Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972 and 2015’s “Neil Young Heart of Gold.” Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. Kubernik’s writings are in several book anthologies, including, The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. Harvey wrote the liner notes to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.
In 2020, Harvey served as a consultant on the 2-part documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time directed by Alison Ellwood that debuted on the M-G-M/EPIX cable television channel and is airing during August 2022 on EPIX.
Labels: album, buffalo springfield, neil young, review, stephen stills
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(Off topic – sorry.)
Do we know when Toast (the released version) was mixed?
Because if you listen to the Are You Passionate mix of Goin' Home, you can instantly hear why Crazy Horse (from the other side of the mixing control room) weren't totally impressed by these recording sessions back in 2001.
The mix is limp and grey and flat sounding (what I call the "wet cardboard" effect). The vocal is tentative — it struggles to find the melody, and is submerged by the guitars. The lead guitar hits a series of bum notes that kill the mood.
The bass has no real depth or presence. The overdubs might as well not be there. Poncho's masterful second-guitar performance is buried.
And in the end, Neil just aborts the performance.
The feeling is: "this isn't quite working". Which is frustrating. For the musicians and producer and the listener.
But the mix on Toast is the opposite of all that. And it's the *same* take — the same version! Neil and John Hanlon knew there was something special in this performance, and they went in and brought it to the surface.
This is an album where the production, the overdubs and the mixing all play a huge part in the success of the music.
That's not a criticism! The production is part of the art.
Similarly, many people wear makeup to accentuate their natural beauty. Nothing wrong with that, and it's the same principle.
In the music world, an audible sense of production only becomes a problem when a) it detracts from the music's natural beauty and b) when the production covers up a lack of substance.
(Much of Le Noise, in my opinion, is an example of the latter. The production is impressive, but the effect is a hollow one.)
On Toast, extensive work has gone into making Goin' Home sound as good as humanly possible. The bum notes have been chopped (as minimally as possible), the vocal has been heavily compressed to even it out and add some heft, there's a 3D sense of vocal echo, the abrupt ending is faded out...
It sounds magical. And, unlike the Are You Passionate attempt, it's been mixed with both gutsy horsepower and real colour. This is the spirit of David Briggs in the mixing room.
The Are You Passionate mix of Goin' Home is like a documentary. We might imagine it's Neil telling us "this is why I re-recorded this album".
Whereas the Toast mix is designed to take this rough diamond of a performance and present it to the world in the best light possible.
PS: the mixes of Goin' Home are different enough that some listeners have imagined them to be two different takes. Understandable!
But there are some extra overdubs on the Toast mix — so the two aren't musically identical.
E.g notice the twinkling piano (and what sounds like the church organ) rising out of the mix just before the final guitar solo — helping propel it into a higher gear.
I think these are inspired touches, instantly reminding of the overdubs we hear on Drive Back from Zuma. Another power-chord-based song that somehow feels entirely different to its 2001 cousin.
Scotsman.