Remembering Buffalo Springfield

I wrote this before I had any readership so I thought I would post it today. 

I had a friend’s dad who owned their 1969 greatest hits album when I was in sixth grade and we wore it out. Broken Arrow, Mr Soul, and Expecting to Fly were the ones we played over and over, and heard something we missed in the previous play. So when my peers were listening to The Flock of Seagulls (nothing wrong with that!)…I was listening to Buffalo Springfield and I stayed stuck in the 60s for a long time.

Buffalo Springfield is a band that gets lost in the shuffle at times. People know their big hit “For What It’s Worth” but little about the band. They were only active between 1966-68 but had a huge impact on other artists. The band was very talented……with Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin, and Jim Messina who replaced Bruce Palmer. They had some great songs like Mr Soul, Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing, Burned, Expecting to Fly, Bluebird, Rock and Roll Woman, Broken Arrow, and their big hit For What It’s Worth…

I just read Neil Young’s book “Waging Heavy Peace” and he said that the end of Buffalo Springfield started because the bass player Bruce Palmer kept getting busted for drugs and taken away…more than once… By 1968 it was over and what a waste of potential they had…The remaining members reunited in 2011 and played 6 concerts… in 2012 they were going to tour and do 30 concerts. Neil quit and did an album with Crazy Horse. He has a history of leaving projects when they don’t interest him anymore.

If this band would have stayed together originally… There’s little doubt they would have gotten much bigger with the talented members they had in place.

The song Broken Arrow is a song that was made in sections and it’s hard to explain it with words… Something is haunting and beautiful about it. I listen to it now and it’s like Buffalo Springfield’s own A Day In The Life. It was produced in 1967 during the psychedelic era. One of my favorite songs of all time…any song with the lyric “He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall” grabs my attention. Neil Young wrote this beautiful song. Gregg Allman cornered Neil backstage somewhere in the 2000s and pleaded with him to start playing this song again. He did when Buffalo Springfield reformed. 

Right after the breakup, Stephen Stills helped form Crosby, Stills, and Nash….short time later Young came aboard and would join them occasionally. Furay and Messina helped form Poco and Messina teamed up with Kenny Loggins later on.

They made three albums while together. Buffalo Springfield (1966), Buffalo Springfield Again (1967) and Last Time Around (1968). A greatest hits came out in 1969 called Retrospective The Best of Buffalo Springfield. A box set was released in 2001.

So…what are your thoughts about Buffalo Springfield?

Broken Arrow

The lights turned on and the curtain fell down
And when it was over it felt like a dream 
They stood at the stage door and begged for a scream 
The agents had paid for the black limousine 
That waited outside in the rain 
Did you see them, did you see them? 
Did you see them in the river? 
They were there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered 
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow 
Held a broken arrow? 

Eighteen years of American dream, 
He saw that his brother had sworn on the wall 
He hung up his eyelids and ran down the hall 
His mother had told him a trip was a fall 
And don’t mention babies at all 
Did you see him, did you see him? 
Did you see him in the river? 
He was there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow
Held a broken arrow? 

The streets were lined for the wedding parade 
The Queen wore the white gloves, the county of song 
The black covered caisson her horses had drawn 
Protected her king from the sun rays of dawn 
They married for peace and were gone 
Did you see them, did you see them? 
Did you see them in the river? 
They were there to wave to you 
Could you tell that the empty quivered 
Brown skinned Indian on the banks 
That were crowded and narrow
Held a broken arrow?

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

25 thoughts on “Remembering Buffalo Springfield”

  3. I was a fan but I have to say that Bonnie Raitt owned “Bluebird”. She had the ability to take songs written by others and make them her own.

    It seems some bands had an embarrassment of riches and maybe that much talent in one place meant they were going to have to go their separate ways. Hard to believe they did so much in so little time.

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    1. I do like the Raitt version as well…it’s great. Yea so much talent means too many egos many times but I would have loved to hear what they could have done. Broken Arrow will always be in my top songs.

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  5. ‘For what it’s worth’ is a true late-’60s classic. I always liked ‘Mr Soul’ too but I’m used to hearing Neil’s solo version more. A lot of talent in the membership for sure

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  6. A band I know more by reputation, as you point out some incredible names there. You can hear elements of them in CSNY for sure, which I guess would be inevitable anyway. I need to give some of these songs a listen.

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  8. Pingback: Remembering Buffalo Springfield – MobsterTiger

  10. Happy to say, I have my original albums. These guys were way ahead of their time. Bluebird, Mr. Soul, Kind Woman, all wonderful tunes. Stills and Young trading lead riffs was quite amazing, likely the first ones to do that on a record. I still listen to them a few times a month. I saw a YouTube video of them live and they sounded as good as in the studio. Great musicians back then.

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      1. From that time, 1966-68, they were my favorite band. I begged my bandmates to learn a few of their tunes, but they wouldn’t. My last band, for twenty years, did learn For What It’s Worth, so I guess I got my wish. We recorded it on our greatest hits CD. So much darn talent in a band and they couldn’t get past their ego’s.

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      2. I know…they were so loaded but in the end that was a bad thing as for the personalities. Young doesn’t seem like a great bandmate anyway…he is more of a lone wolf.

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      3. I watched a documentary on CSNY and Young and Stills came off as a-holes, even worse than Crosby. I saw CSN in Dallas back in 2000. They sounded great, but Stills, born and raised in Dallas didn’t say a thing about playing in his hometown. I have many of their albums, all of BSpringfields disc, and CSN too, and still listen to them.

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      4. I saw them in the mid to late eighties… their voices went through me….a lot of that was pure volume but still…yea they sounded good. I can imagine that with Stills and Young. Nash seems ok to talk to.

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  11. I had a used cassette of the greatest hits that I played a lot, and I think I graduated to a used CD. I have older siblings that are die-hard CSNY fans in all their offshoots, so it filtered down to me. Love all the songs, but I’m partial to “Bluebird”. Great band, great musicians.

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