Stills was 24 when he wrote one of the best songs for the LP “Déjà Vu” with “4 + 20” and ended the meditation on a broken love relationship with the verse “I find myself just wishing that my life would simply cease”. A year later he contemplated early death again in As I Come of Age, composed during the sessions for his solo debut, but then didn’t want to release it on an LP with such upbeat songs. Last but not least, friend Jimi Hendrix encouraged the creative head of the trio Crosby, Stills & Nash in his ambitions. Stills was so impressed by the success of jazz rock formations such as Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Chicago Transit Authority that after the end of the recording for the second solo LP he also hired the Memphis Horns to jokingly dub the “Drunken Horns” with them to go touring.
He was accompanied on keyboard, bass and percussion by the same four musicians with whom he recorded his masterpiece on the Manassas double LP a few months later at Criteria Studios. For the concerts, he had rehearsed a mix of around two dozen songs from his career from the Buffalo Springfield years to the “Ecology Song” on his second solo LP as a set list. Of these, Stills chose 14 for this album, played on the last two nights in Berkeley. The catchy tune “Love The One You’re With” got the audience in the mood for the “acoustic” first half, the finale was made up of the blues detours “Black Queen” and “Know You’ve Got To Run”.
The soul/gospel/rock/jazz half of the concert began with the newly arranged “Bluebird Revisited”, most obscurely the jazz-rocky “Lean On Me Baby”, only played as part of this tour and never played again afterwards. This, like the epic performance of “Cherokee”, offered the opportunity for many solos by the accompanists. How Stills and Crosby in two duets in “You Don’t Have To Cry” do not always hit the right notes and only hit the right notes in “The Lee Shore” is documented without retouching.
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