In April of 1972, a friend and I went to a record store, and we each bought the brand new double album Manassas on the day it was released.
Of course it was hard to tell if Manassas was just the name of the album, or if it was the name of the band. It was both, but the record company hedged their bets by placing Stephen Stills’ famous name above the title.
My friend and I both loved the album. We were also both into taping our albums using reel-to-reel recorders, and later my friend decided to sell any albums he had on tape. So, he offered his vinyl to me, and I bought it as a back-up copy.
Interestingly, on the back he had marked the songs he liked most with plus signs (unfortunately I don’t still have it). That way I knew we both had chosen “So Begins The Task” as our favorite song, because he had put +++ on it. His second favorite was “It Doesn’t Matter” with ++, and I agreed with that choice too. As you can see, the four sides were named The Raven, The Wilderness, Consider, and Rock & Roll Is Here To Stay. Basically, the sides could have been described as Rock, Country Rock, Folk Rock, and Rock & Blues. It all makes for a continually interesting album.
Overall, the album would be labeled Country Rock, which Stills had been recording since the ‘60s with Buffalo Springfield. The Manassas album came out the same year as the first album by the Eagles. Manassas in April of ‘72, and Eagles in June.
Manassas was a band of highly skilled musicians, including Chris Hillman from The Byrds.
The reason for writing about Manassas 54-years after its release is because it deserves to be remembered. It should be right there with discussions about the albums Crosby, Stills & Nash and Deja Vu, as well as a solo album from 1972, Neil Young’s Harvest. That album hit #1 in June of 1972, and the double album Manassas hit #4 that same month.
The album is the peak of Stephen Still’s songwriting. He wrote 16 of the 21 songs by himself, co-wrote another four, and there was just one song with outside writers. For my recordings and playlists, I have always excluded songs I don’t want to listen to over & over. For Manassas I included an amazing 18 of 21 tracks…it’s that good.
You can see I started with the first four songs off the Folk Rock side 3, then the entire side 2 of Country Rock, the entire side 1 of Rock, and concluded with songs from side 4 of Rock & Blues.
It takes some time to get to know a double album, so here are four songs to sample to see if you want to check out the whole album…”It Doesn’t Matter”, “Johnny’s Garden”, “Colorado” and “So Begins The Task”. Those are basically in the style of CSN. If you like those, you can check out more of the Rock and Country Rock songs. There’s a good variety of styles.
For instance, among the Country Rock songs is “Don’t Look At My Shadow”. It’s uptempo with fiddle and pedal steel guitar, but the lyrics are about Stills playing Rock & Roll in bars and arenas. Or, in a completely different genre is “Blues Man”, a solo Stephen Stills blues song on acoustic guitar. It’s about the then recent losses of three of his friends, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Al Wilson (of Canned Heat).
So, was Manassas (the band) able to continue that level of quality?
Unfortunately, no. A year later, 1973, Manassas released Down The Road. I only added three of the songs to my playlist. Then in 2009 an album of outtakes from the two Manassas albums was released. Surprisingly, it had another five good songs that could have been included on their second album. Here’s a playlist of the best tracks.
The first five songs are from Pieces, and the last three from Down The Road.
That’s a summary of some of the best music made by Stephen Stills with help from his hand-picked musical friends. Stills went off to do the huge money-making CSNY 1974 world tour, and Chris Hillman combined with J.D. Souther and Richie Furay to form the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band.
Bonus: Just to make it easy, here’s the audio of two of the songs.
“So Begins The Task”
“It Doesn’t Matter”