Stephen Stills Caricature

Stephen Stills Caricature, age 24, with his vintage Gibson Super 400 CES Archtop. CSNY sound check on stage at Balboa Stadium, San Diego, CA. Sunday, December 21, 1969.

Stills is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Beginning his professional career with Buffalo Springfield, he composed one of their few hits “For What It’s Worth,” which became one of the most recognizable songs of the 1960s.

Stills was born in Dallas, Texas, raised in a military family; so he moved around as a child and developed an interest in blues and folk music. Stills dropped out of the Louisiana State University in the early 1960s. He played in a series of bands, including the Continentals, which then featured future Eagle’s guitarist Don Felder.
Stephen formed a band “Company” with fellow bandmate Richie Furay, gigging around NYC; they toured Canada for 6 months, where Stills met guitarist Neil Young. The band broke up 4 months later.

Stills, Furay, and Young reunited in Los Angeles and formed the core of Buffalo Springfield. Legend has it that Stills and Furay recognized Young’s converted hearse on the streets of LA and flagged him down. The band would release three albums: “Buffalo Springfield”, “Buffalo Springfield Again”, and “Last Time Around”.
During the disintegration of Buffalo Springfield, Stills played on the Super Session album with Al Kooper and joined up with David Crosby, who had recently been ejected from the Byrds in the autumn of 1967. At a party in Laurel Canyon, Crosby was introduced to Graham Nash by a mutual friend, Cass Elliot (of the Mamas and the Papas), and Nash found himself soon joining in singing with Crosby and Stills. Renditions of the latter’s “You Don’t Have to Cry,” led to the formation of Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Several of Stills’s songs, including “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and “You Don’t Have To Cry” on the CSN debut album were inspired by his on-again-off-again relationship with singer Judy Collins. The cover photo pictured on the iconic debut album (Nash, Stills, Crosby sitting on a couch) was photographed by Henry Diltz on the back porch of a house in West Hollywood. Diltz decided to take the band back the next day to re-shoot the cover, because the three sitting, were visually out of order in terms of the band’s name; but the house had been torn down. Wanting to be able to tour and needing additional musicians, the band invited Neil Young to join them for their subsequent tour and second album to make the group the quartet Crosby Stills Nash & Young.

Having played at the Monterey Pop Festival with Buffalo Springfield, and both Woodstock and Altamont with CSNY, Stills performed at all three of the iconic U.S. rock festivals of the 1960s.

Stills has written such hits as: “For What It’s Worth”, “Mr. Soul”, “You Don’t Have To Cry”, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, “4 + 20”, “Teach Your Children”, “Carry On”, “Find The Cost Of Freedom”, “Love The One You’re With”, “Dark Star” “It Doesn’t Matter”, and a host of others.

He is also known for using alternate guitar tunings; his primary alternate tuning is usually EEEEBE, or “Palmer modal tuning”, which can be heard in “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” “Carry On,” and “4 + 20.”

Stills has suffered from hearing loss since his childhood and is almost deaf in one ear.

He is an avid sailor.