Stephen Stills


The new disc, Live At Berkeley 1971 is out now.   I got it yesterday and it's on repeat.  I am biased I am sure, but I think he is one of the best singers, songwriters, musicians of my generation.  Plus he plays Sugar Babe on this disc, a favorite of mine, from SS2.

rpeluso

@bigtwin 

Yes, Neil has produced a lot of music, but quite a bit of it has been sub-par too.

"Yes, Neil has produced a lot of music, but quite a bit of it has been sub-par too."

The only reasonable way of comparing songwriters is best-to-best. Say, best 10 vs. best 10 (even Dylan wrote some crap, you know). But this gets tricky, because we're really comparing specific recordings --products of particular times and places and equipment and drug intake and other variables -- not comparing sheet music.

 

@roxy54 @hickamore  I'll handicap Neil and say let's just take the Albums Harvest and Freedom.  I believe they were both voted Album of the year a decade apart?  I don't think, again IMHO, that SS wrote that many classic songs in his entire career?  If it gets close, we can throw in On the Beach, Rust Never Sleeps, Tonight's The Night, After the Goldrush.........  🤣  

SS has definitely written a lot of good music.

My favorite SS track is "4 and 20" from the "Deja Vu" album. It’s a simple, haunting song written by SS and performed by him exclusively. When he played it for CN & Y, they were awe-struck, saying it was perfect as-is and no contribution from them could make it any better, so it remained a rare solo effort on a CSN & Y album.

It was a favorite of mine when it was released and remains so today.

I had the album "Stephen Stills 2" in my youth. I played the daylights out of it. Some entertainers work really hard for their fans. Stephen just plain oozed talent. A very gifted man.