The 10th anniversary of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is now in the record books. Boasting a turnout of 80,000-plus, the four-day fête was a huge success with its diverse roster of musical talent that included the newly reunited '60s folk rockers, Buffalo Springfield. As one of the festival's headliners, Springfield founding members Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay shared a stage again 43 years after the band's demise in 1968. Their performance alongside more contemporary artists like Eminem, Arcade Fire, Widespread Panic, Girl Talk, and Florence + The Machine must’ve seemed like a dinosaur sighting to the Bonnaroo audience, whose average age is in the mid-twenties.
"We're Buffalo Springfield," Young said when the band took the stage. "We're from the past." And with that simple introduction, concertgoers were treated to a reunion set that consisted of all Buffalo Springfield originals, including the classics “Mr. Soul,” with its two bruising guitar solos courtesy of Mr. Young; an extended, plugged-in “Bluebird”; and the protest anthem, “For What It’s Worth,” which was the band's only hit. With its familiar refrain "stop hey what's that sound everybody look what's goin' down," the song had the entire audience singing along, some of whom were born decades after Stills penned the number back in 1966 in response to escalating tensions between law enforcement and young hippies.
Buffalo Springfield played a 90-minute set during which Stills, Young, and Furay stood in a circle jamming and obviously enjoying the chance to perform together again. Rounding out the revamped band were Young's longtime bassist Rick Rosas, filling in for the late Bruce Palmer, and Crosby, Stills & Nash drummer Joe Vitale, replacing the late Dewey Martin. Furay sang lead on most songs, just as he had on Springfield's albums, but all three vocalists traded off. Young played an impassioned harmonica and sang "I Am a Child" and the iconic "Broken Arrow," which was performed live for the first time as part of the reunion, while Stills took the lead for a seasoned version of "Hot Dusty Roads." Furay’s best moment came with the soulful "Kind Woman," which he told the crowd he wrote for his wife of more than forty years. He performed it almost entirely with his eyes closed. For an encore, Buffalo Springfield bid the audience adieu with an extended, blistering version of Young's solo hit, "Rockin' in the Free World."
For a band that lasted only two years (1966-68) and put out only three studio albums—Buffalo Springfield (1966), Buffalo Springfield Again (1967), and Last Time Around (1968)—Buffalo Springfield's influence has been far-reaching and can be heard in today's thriving folk- and country-rock scenes. Organizers of Bonnaroo jumped at the chance to land the reunited act and saw it as a way to look forward by acknowledging the past. "I think Bonnaroo has always been about presenting what is current and breaking but also artists that have influenced a lot of the music that our audience is listening to," Bonnaroo co-creator Rick Farman of Superfly Productions said. "And there's always been a thing within the rock world of looking back at the predecessors, the ones who created the pathways for the new artists and putting them up on a pedestal to be experienced in that way." Bands like Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Ray LaMontagne, and many other acts in the festival's lineup can easily be called distant descendants of Buffalo Springfield.
After Buffalo Springfield disbanded, their legend grew as individual members went on to even greater successes. Stephen Stills formed Crosby, Stills & Nash with David Crosby of The Byrds and Graham Nash of The Hollies in 1968. He also put together the short-lived band Manassas in the early '70s and had a notable solo career. Neil Young forged a hugely successful and highly acclaimed solo career and maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with Crosby, Stills & Nash, while Richie Furay went on to form the noted country-rock band Poco with another Springfield alum, Jim Messina, who replaced Bruce Palmer on bass for the group's final album. When Poco disbanded, Furay joined J.D. Souther and Chris Hillman in the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and Messina teamed with Kenny Loggins in Loggins & Messina.
The Buffalo Springfield reunion, after more than four decades, resulted from a lunch date between Young and Stills, who were both looking to do something fun. The two decided on a whim to reunite Buffalo Springfield and "play the Bridge," Stills says. Young approached Furay with the idea saying, "Well, you know Richie, we don’t have to do it this year. We can do it next year, or the next year, it doesn’t matter." But with all three men pushing 70, Furay felt there was no time like the present. "We better do it now," he said.
When the newly resurrected Buffalo Springfield took the stage at the Bridge School Benefit in October 2010, it was the first time they'd appeared together since they played the Long Beach Arena in May 1968. “This time I can actually play the guitar,” Stills said. The group joined benefit regulars Pearl Jam, who played both nights, as well as Elvis Costello, Billy Idol, Jackson Browne, and Lucinda Williams, among others. Young and his wife Pegi have been staging the annual benefit for the past 24 years. The school, where their son Ben has been a student, is a Northern California institution that serves children with physical and speech impairments. The gig went so well that Buffalo Springfield played a few California theaters in early June before taking on that big daddy of music festivals, Bonnaroo.
Although Young, Stills, and Furay sounded just as groovy on the Bonnaroo stage as they ever had, Stills worried that some of the younger fans attending the festival might not know who they were. "They're going to go, 'Wow, those old guys, look at them,'" he said. "'Mommy, who is that old man?'" But Furay says although the faces may've changed, if you close your eyes and just listen, the music is timeless.
Furay, who is now a pastor at a Colorado church, is thrilled at the chance to create music with his old friends again after so many years. “It’s really neat to reconnect with these guys that we started making music with years ago when we were kids and didn’t know what we were doing.” He claims he doesn’t remember all the bickering and fighting that reportedly went on within the band during their heyday and attributes the rumors of internal tensions as just that—people making something out of nothing. "Lots of times it’s more fun if there’s a little dirt,” he says.
According to Furay, Buffalo Springfield have plans to do some 30 shows in the fall. No one has committed to anything beyond the fall tour, but evidently there's some songwriting being done. "We haven't discussed, you know, 'Hey, we're going to sit down and we're going to write 10 new songs,'" Furay said. "Neil's so prolific anyway. Stephen told me the other day he had a song. I've been writing music. So I just think it's obvious that something may transpire like that, it may come to pass."
While he didn't rule out the possibility of the band recording new material, Furay implied that a live album would likely come first. “Things are being recorded and what we decide to do with that is anybody’s guess.” He also stated that Buffalo Springfield will be reissuing all three of its late ’60s albums on vinyl in a package called Buffalo Springfield Complete in the coming months.
A wise Neil Young once said it’s better to burn out than fade away. Lucky for us an ember that was Buffalo Springfield still glows.
