walking upstream…
Buffalo Springfield
Formed in April 1966 when Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, fresh off the Greenwich Village folk circuit, spotted Neil Young's hearse stuck in Sunset Strip traffic, Buffalo Springfield fused folk, country, and British Invasion rock into something no American band had quite managed before. The lineup barely held together for two years and three albums, undone by clashing egos and Young's in-and-out membership, but it produced "For What It's Worth," a curfew-riot dispatch that became the era's unofficial anthem, and a songbook (Stills' "Rock & Roll Woman," Young's "Mr. Soul") that pointed straight at country rock and the Los Angeles singer-songwriter scene to come.
the sound in question
1967
For What It's WorthBuffalo Springfield
walk the tributaries ↓
The Beatles1960s · Rock / Pop rock
Stills has said the band was chasing the unhurried, "laid-back groove" he heard in the Beatles' mid-1960s records rather than the frantic pace of the L.A. scene around them, and he's called seeing Paul McCartney play San Francisco's Cow Palace in 1965 a formative jolt -- "one of my gods," he called him.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone -- Stephen Stills on the Beatles' and Stones' "laid-back groove" and seeing Paul McCartney at the Cow Palace ↗
1965
Nowhere ManThe Beatles
1967
Rock & Roll WomanBuffalo Springfield
listen forListen for how "Rock & Roll Woman" refuses to rush -- the tempo sits back in the pocket instead of driving, with vocal harmonies stacked the way Lennon-McCartney's were, rather than snapping to the tighter, punchier beat most of their Sunset Strip peers favored.
The Shadows1960s · Instrumental rock / Rock and roll
Neil Young has said he was "especially influenced" by Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin as a teenager in Winnipeg, chasing the same tremolo-picked, echo-drenched lead tone in his own pre-Buffalo-Springfield instrumental band, the Squires, whose repertoire he later recalled was built around Shadows covers like "Apache" and "FBI."
listen: upstream & heresource: Guitar Player -- Randy Bachman on Neil Young's teenage devotion to Hank Marvin and the Shadows ↗
1960
ApacheThe Shadows
1966
Flying on the Ground Is WrongBuffalo Springfield
listen forYou can still hear the clean, ringing, tremolo-inflected lead line Young carried over from his Shadows fandom running under the vocal on "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" -- less a direct copy than the same guitar vocabulary transplanted into a folk-rock ballad.
Judy Collins1960s · Folk / Folk revival
Stills has said he was "obsessed" with Judy Collins' 1963 album Judy Collins 3, which included a version of "Turn! Turn! Turn!" arranged by future Byrds leader Jim (Roger) McGuinn -- an early template for turning bare acoustic folk repertoire into ringing, arranged folk-rock that Stills absorbed before Buffalo Springfield existed.
listen: upstream & heresource: Wikipedia -- "Turn! Turn! Turn!," on Jim McGuinn's 1963 arrangement for Judy Collins ↗
1963
Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)Judy Collins
1966
Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say ItBuffalo Springfield
listen forListen for the chiming, carefully arranged acoustic-into-electric guitar figures on "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It" -- the same move from bare folk source material to a fuller, ringing folk-rock arrangement that the McGuinn-arranged Collins recording modeled three years earlier.