Stephen Stills 2

Stephen Stills 2 is the second solo album by Stephen Stills, released on Atlantic Records in 1971. It peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 and was certified as a gold record by the RIAA.[1][2] Two singles were released from the album, both just missing the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: "Change Partners" peaked at number 43; while "Marianne" peaked at number 42.[3]

Stephen Stills 2
Studio album by
Stephen Stills
ReleasedJune 30, 1971 (1971-06-30)
RecordedFebruary–May 1971
StudioStudio B, Criteria, Miami, Island Studios, London; Wally Heider Studios, Los Angeles
GenreFolk rock, rock
Length43:02
LabelAtlantic
ProducerStephen Stills, Bill Halverson
Stephen Stills chronology
Stephen Stills
(1970)		 Stephen Stills 2
(1971)		 Manassas
(1972)
Singles from Stephen Stills 2
  1. " Change Partners" / "Relaxing Town"
    Released: 1971
  2. "Marianne" / "Nothin' to Do but Today"
    Released: 1971

Background and recording

After the break up of CSNY, being busted on a swathe of possession charges, overdosing on pills, and his loss of Rita Coolidge to Graham Nash, Stills became extremely prolific and wrote and recorded 23 songs for this album. It was originally intended to be a double album that included songs such as "Johnny's Garden", "Love Story", "So Begins the Task", "The Treasure", "Colorado", "Fallen Eagle", and "Rock and Roll Crazies". However, Atlantic executive Ahmet Ertegun insisted it be a single album.[4][5]

Stills, was influenced by the recent success of bands with horn sections, including Chicago, and Blood, Sweat, & Tears, and introduced the Memphis Horns on this album and the tour to support, despite its mixed reaction from fans.[4]

This was the first album he recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami from February to March 1971 with the Albert Brothers, who he used for the majority of his 1970s work.[5] Ahmet Ertegun had suggested Miami as to get away from all the drama on the West Coast.[6] Stills started work on the album while his first album had only just been released a month prior. This album was released only six months after his first album.

It was during this time that Stills would hold marathon recording sessions for three months while recording the album, employing two teams of studio engineers working shifts around the clock just to keep up with him. Jerry Garcia recalled Stills flew him to Miami for a week to record pedal steel on "Change Partners" saying "I did sessions at the weirdest hours... the way he worked in the studio was totally crazy, but at the time he was really happening. He just accumulated endless tracks." Engineer Howard Albert recalled "he turned up to his very first session at 2 am on the very night he landed in town. We didn't know he was coming and we were in the middle of making a Johnny Winter album. Lucky for us, there were two of us because Stephen wanted to start straight away".[6]

Content

The lyrics were printed on the inside of the gatefold cover in red, on a background photograph of Stephen Stills in a mountainous outdoor setting pointing into the distance. There were numerous errors in the original printing of the lyrics, which necessitated that Atlantic issue the album with a large sticker affixed to the shrink wrap of the back cover with the corrections to the lyrics. Later editions of the album had corrected lyrics inside the gatefold and thus did not include a correction sticker on the album.[4]

"Singin' Call" which had been demoed for Déjà Vu was written about Rita Coolidge.[6] Stills was inspired to write "Word Game" after watching a documentary film about apartheid and musically influenced by Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (Im Only Bleeding).[6]" Fishes and Scorpions" which featured Stills and Eric Clapton on guitars was recorded during the recording sessions for his first album. "Relaxing Town", expresses disconnect with the narrator wanting to settle down in a relaxing town away from the revolution. It contains a reference to Jerry Rubin, one of the Chicago Seven, and Mayor Daley.

Aftermath

He had already performed "Bluebird Revisited" on tour with Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young in 1969 including at Woodstock.[4]

Stills undertook a 52 date tour called The Memphis Horns Tour in the summer of 1971 to support this album; members included the Memphis Horns along with CSNY bass player Calvin Samuels and CSNY drummer Dallas Taylor. The tour encompassed a variety of formats and moods from solo acoustic confessionals and folk duets to rock anthems and big band R&B. The tour was not very well received due to Stills' lack of confidence. The opening night in Seattle only 3,000 people appearing out 15,000 as the Boeing factory had just closed. With this fact and his recent split from Coolidge severely knocking his confidence Stills, started drinking hence the tour's nickname "the Drunken Horns Tour". However, Stills has also said there were good nights like the night he sold out Madison Square Garden. Though this was overshadowed by The Concert For Bangladesh just a day later, which Stills had donated his stage, sound, lighting system and production manager and was not even invited to play.[5] Also a roadie died on stage after plummeting from the rigging at MSG, then a few a days later Stills fell off a motorcycle and finished the tour in a brace requiring David Crosby to help him finish the last few dates of the tour.[7] Stills had been promising a massive tour since his first album saying it would be 'a real road show - the biggest since Ray Charles hit the stage', however early on in the tour he commented saying it was a marathon where you watch the singer bleed trying to sing 18 songs in a row". Due to these issues Stills has a negative reception of the tour.[7] It was during this tour that Stills met with the Flying Burrito Brothers' Chris Hillman and the beginnings of Manassas took place.

He later re-recorded two songs from this collection: "Singin' Call" for his 1991 album Stills Alone; and "Word Game" for his 2013 album with blues supergroup The Rides. He also reworked the song "Know You Got to Run", adding on a chorus to change it into "Open Up", a tune which he never recorded himself, but instead gave to REO Speedwagon, who recorded it for their album Ridin' the Storm Out.

By 1974, according to Rolling Stone magazine the album had sold an estimated 600,000 copies.[8]

Reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
Christgau's Record GuideC[10]
The Village VoiceC[11]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[12]

Contemporary reception was mixed to positive with John Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone describing Stills as "a solid second-rate artist who so many lower-middlebrows insist on believing is actually first-rate" and his post-Buffalo Springfield work collectively as "fifth-rate self-indulgence". Of Stephen Stills 2 specifically he commented, "the words to Stills 2 are alternately trivial, cloyingly self-important, and downright offensive, the music is decidedly lackluster and undistinguished, and the production of the whole shebang is so distant from up to snuff that one is hard pressed to get much impression at all of the playing of the latter."[13]

In a positive review Nick Logan reviewing for the NME, 1971 said "The heartfelt plea to know the reason for the pain in 'Open Secret', among the set's best tracks, saves itself from tumbling into a self pitying abyss because the 'pain' is not specified but universal".[6]

Robert Christgau, 1971 said "Stills is of course detestable, the ultimate rich hippie--arrogant, self-pitying, sexist, shallow. Unfortunately, he's never quite communicated all this on a record, but now he's approaching his true level. Flashes of brilliant ease remain--the single, "Marianne," is very nice, especially if you don't listen too hard to the lyrics—but there's also a lot of stuff on the order of an all-male chorus with jazzy horns singing "It's disgusting" in perfect tuneful unison, and straight, I swear. Keep it up, SS—it'll be a pleasure to watch you fail."[14]

In a positive review Bill McAllister, writing in August 1971 for Record Mirror, called the album "more personal" than his first due to the fewer number of other musicians, and "absorbing while reaching out further, which it should". He summarised his review by saying "Like his 'Bluebird', Stephen Stills knows how to fly".[15]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Stephen Stills, except where noted.

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Change Partners" 3:13
2."Nothin' to Do but Today" 2:40
3."Fishes and Scorpions" 3:13
4."Sugar Babe" 4:04
5."Know You Got to Run"Stephen Stills, John Hopkins3:50
6."Open Secret" 5:00
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Relaxing Town"2:20
2."Singin' Call"3:01
3."Ecology Song"3:22
4."Word Game"4:13
5."Marianne"2:27
6."Bluebird Revisited"5:23
Total length:43:02

Personnel

The Memphis Horns:

Technical Personnel

Charts

Album
Chart performance for Stephen Stills 2
Chart (1971) Peak

position

US Billboard Top LPs[17] 8
UK Album Charts[18] 22
Canadian RPM 100 Albums[19] 11
Norwegian VG-lista Albums[20] 7
Swedish Kvällstoppen Chart[21] 5
Australian Go-Set Top 20 Albums[22] 19
Dutch MegaCharts Albums[23] 2
US Cash Box Top 100 Albums[24] 6
US Record World Album Chart[25] 8

Singles
Sales chart performance for singles from Stephen Stills 2
Year Single Chart Position
1971 "Change Partners" US Billboard Hot 100[26] 43
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[27] 42
Netherlands (Single Top 100) 22
US Top Singles (Cash Box)[28] 38
US Top Singles (Record World) [29] 40
"Marianne" US Billboard Hot 100[26] 42
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[27] 17
Netherlands (Single Top 100) 28
US Top Singles (Cash Box)[28] 31
US Top Singles (Record World) [29] 33

Year-end charts
Chart (1971) Position
Dutch MegaCharts Albums[30] 27

Tour

All concerts were in 1971 in the United States. The Madison Square Garden show, was professionally recorded and filmed for a future release, as seen and said on an episode of The Old Grey Whistle Test where Stills plays a live version of "Go Back Home".[31][32] Two songs recorded here were also used on his Carry On box set, "Find The Cost Of Freedom", and "Do For The Others" featuring Steven Fromholz. It was during this tour he played to 20,000 fans at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, as mentioned in the Manassas song 'Don't Look At My Shadow', released in 1972.

Date City Venue Opening Acts Attendance Notes
June 27 McCrea, Louisiana Celebration of Life Festival 150,000 Headlined, not part of the main tour

played without the Memphis Horns

Memphis Horns Tour
July 3 Seattle, Washington Seattle Center Coliseum Crazy Horse
July 5 Portland, Oregon Memorial Coliseum
July 8 Houston, Texas Sam Houston Coliseum
July 9 San Antonio, Texas Municipal Auditorium
July 11 Dallas, Texas Dallas Memorial Auditorium
July 12 Kansas City, Missouri Municipal Auditorium
July 16 Chicago, Illinois International Amphitheatre
July 17 St. Louis, Missouri Kiel Auditorium
July 20 Cleveland, Ohio Public Auditorium
July 21 Detroit, Michigan Olympia Stadium
July 23 Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati Gardens
July 24 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Civic Arena
July 27 Boston, Massachusetts Boston Garden
July 28 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The Spectrum
July 30 New York City, New York Madison Square Garden[33] 21,000/
21,000[32]		 Graham Nash Guests
August 1 Columbia, Maryland Merriweather Post Pavilion 14,000
August 3 Louisville, Kentucky Fairgrounds Coliseum
August 6 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Fairgrounds Arena
August 7 Minneapolis, Minnesota Minneapolis Auditorium
August 9 Denver, Colorado Denver Coliseum
August 10 Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Palace
August 12 Oakland, California Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum
August 14 Phoenix, Arizona Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum
August 15 San Diego, California San Diego Sports Arena
August 18 Inglewood, California The Forum[34]
August 20 Berkeley, California Berkeley Community Theater David Crosby Guests
August 21

Typical tour set list

All songs written by Stephen Stills, except where noted.

  1. "Rock and Roll Woman"
  2. "Questions"
  3. "Helplessly Hoping"
  4. "Fishes and Scorpions"
  5. "Go Back Home"
  6. "Love the One You're With"
  7. "Black Queen"
  8. "Change Partners"
  9. "Know You Got to Run" (Stills, John Hopkins)
  10. "Word Game"
  11. "Do for the Others"
  12. "I'd Have to Be Crazy" (Steven Fromholz)
  13. "Texas Train Ride" (Steven Fromholz)
  14. "Jesus Gave Love Away For Free"
  15. "You Don't Have to Cry"
  16. "49 Bye-Byes/For What It's Worth"
  17. "Ecology Song"
  18. "Open Secret"
  19. "Lean On Me Baby" (Wayne Jackson)
  20. "Bluebird Revisited"
  21. "Cherokee"
  22. "How Long"
  23. "Find the Cost of Freedom"

Tour personnel

References
  1. Billboard Chart History Stephen Stills retrieved 22 May 2018.
  2. RIAA Gold and Platinum retrieved 22 May 2018.
  3. Billboard Chart History Stephen Stills retrieved 22 May 2018.
  4. Zimmer, Dave, and Diltz, Henry (1984). Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Biography.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. Zimmer, Dave (2000). Crosby Stills and Nash: The Biography. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306809743.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  6. Uncut (2019). Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Ultimate Music Guide. pp. 34–35. ISBN 5010791106060 Check |isbn= value: invalid prefix (help).
  7. Doggett, Peter (2019). Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Biography.
  8. Fong-Torres, Ben; Fong-Torres, Ben (1974-08-29). "The Reunion of Crosby Stills Nash & Young". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2020-01-18.
  9. Chrispell, James. Stephen Stills 2 at AllMusic. Retrieved 3 September 2006.
  10. Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: S". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 13, 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
  11. Christgau, Robert (October 14, 1971). "Consumer Guide (19)". The Village Voice. New York City. Retrieved April 14, 2013.
  12. Larkin, Colin (2007). Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.
  13. Mendelsohn, John Ned (August 19, 1971). "Stephen Stills 2 – Album Review". Rolling Stone. No. 89. Archived from the original on July 3, 2007. Retrieved January 12, 2007.
  14. "Robert Christgau: Album: Stephen Stills: Stephen Stills 2". www.robertchristgau.com. Retrieved 2020-03-03.
  15. McAllister, Bill (August 7, 1971). Record Mirror. p. 17.
  16. Greenwald, Matthew. "Change Partners". AllMusic. Retrieved February 20, 2019. ...Jerry Garcia's fabulous, lyrical pedal steel guitar...
  17. "Stephen Stills". Billboard. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  18. "STEPHEN STILLS | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". www.officialcharts.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  19. Canada, Library and Archives (2013-04-16). "The RPM story". www.bac-lac.gc.ca. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  20. "norwegiancharts.com - Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills". norwegiancharts.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  21. "Swedish Charts" (PDF).
  22. "Go-Set Australian charts - 23 May 1970". www.poparchives.com.au. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  23. "Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills - hitparade.ch". hitparade.ch. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  24. "CASH BOX MAGAZINE: Music and coin machine magazine 1942 to 1996". worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  25. "RECORD WORLD MAGAZINE: 1942 to 1982". worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  26. "Stephen Stills". Billboard. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  27. Canada, Library and Archives (2013-04-16). "The RPM story". www.bac-lac.gc.ca. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  28. "CASH BOX MAGAZINE: Music and coin machine magazine 1942 to 1996". worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  29. "RECORD WORLD MAGAZINE: 1942 to 1982". worldradiohistory.com. Retrieved 2020-07-05.
  30. "Dutch Charts - dutchcharts.nl". dutchcharts.nl. Retrieved 2020-08-02.
  31. Stephen Stills - Go Back Home, retrieved 2020-01-18
  32. Jahn, Mike (1971-08-01). "Stephen Stills Plays at Garden In His First Solo Concert Here". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
  33. Inc, Nielsen Business Media (1971-06-12). Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc.
  34. Inc, Nielsen Business Media (1971-06-12). Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc.
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