Buffalo Springfield 4: Box Set

Buffalo Springfield was only around long enough to put out three albums, followed a year later by the Retrospective collection. Once Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, and Neil Young had become successful with their further adventures, the label dug deeper into each of the albums for a two-record set that has since become a collector’s item due to the inclusion of an extended version of “Bluebird”, which eschews the banjo section for an lengthy electric jam that manages to incorporate “Leave”.

Fast-forward to this century, and something of the first fruits of Neil’s long-awaited Archives project became reality with the Buffalo Springfield Box Set (after a few years of teasing and delays of its own). First of all, it sounds great — Neil being such a stickler for authentic fidelity, giving that as his main excuse for waiting so long. The first three discs follow the band’s evolution from the first demo recordings through the last sessions. Not counting bootlegs, there’s about 90 minutes of what falls into the category of “never-heard-before” material from Neil, Stephen, and Richie.

Handfuls of guitar-and-vocal demos abound, some of which turned into later classics for the Springfield, CSN (and Y) and Poco, and some of which weren’t explored further. The first disc is loaded with these, some with harmonies, heavy on Stephen and Neil, but Richie’s “Sad Memory” predates the debut and is the best by far of his other tentative drafts. Stephen’s “We’ll See” and “Neighbor Don’t You Worry” both appear as demos as well as decent band takes, while “So You’ve Got A Lover” is a heartbreaking little tune heard nowhere else, and “My Angel” would evolve quite a bit before it made it to an album. “Four Days Gone” is sung slowly and quietly with just piano.

Neil’s songs don’t show any of the shyness he professed to have had before he found his way. His own take on “Flying On The Ground Is Wrong” is a treat, but “Your Kind Of Guy” is a vaudeville tune that should have stayed undiscovered. “Down, Down, Down” appears twice—once with just Neil and another time in an appealing full band take, and both strengthen the line from “Broken Arrow” to “Country Girl”. “One More Sign” is a gentle surprise, as is “The Rent Is Always Due”, which mutated melodically into “I Am A Child”. Then there’s “Whatever Happened To Saturday Night?”, which is full of big production and sung by Richie, but Neil wrote it all by himself. “Falcon Lake (Ash On The Floor)”, with Buddy Miles, sounds very much like his first solo album, and even has a nod to “Here We Are In The Years” in the bridge, as well as an echo of “One More Sign”.

Long-booted outtakes, including the instrumentals “Kahuna Sunset” and “Buffalo Stomp” and Stephen’s vocal on “Down To The Wire”, make their official appearances, although the extended “Bluebird”, which both Neil and Stephen had long denounced as crap, was omitted. Stephen also takes the lead vocal on the future Poco track “What A Day”. In a unique example of using outside writers, the frothy “No Sun Today” was contributed by one Eric Eisner.

However, the fourth disc consists of Buffalo Springfield in mono and Buffalo Springfield Again in stereo. As some of these tracks are represented elsewhere in the full-priced four-disc set, one is justified in crying foul at the value for the money. But it’s obvious from everything here, from the packaging and the booklet to the overall sound, that Neil spearheaded this box set out of respect, reverence and real love for the guys in the band who put him on the map. That he gave more of his own vault jewels to this project than he had for the CSN box ten years earlier shows how much the Springfield means to him.

Still, rabid students of rock history have at the very least read about how this band, along with the Byrds, was responsible for a lot of what came after it, for good or bad. It only makes sense that the first two albums should be heard back-to-back and in order. (Besides, there’s all that unreleased stuff. They didn’t have to include any, you know.)

A couple of decades later, once his own archives had become an online entity, Neil took the opportunity to remaster and repackage the original albums yet again. On five discs, What’s That Sound? offered the debut in mono (with “For What It’s Worth” stuck on the end), the revised version in stereo, Again in mono and again in stereo, and Last Time Around in stereo. Even with all the extra space, none of the rarities from the first box were included, nor was the extended “Bluebird”.

Buffalo Springfield Retrospective: The Best Of Buffalo Springfield (1969)—3½
Buffalo Springfield Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Jim Messina, Bruce Palmer, Dewey Martin (1973)—3½
Buffalo Springfield Box Set (2001)—4
Buffalo Springfield What’s That Sound? Complete Albums Collection (2018)—3½