Impassioned, articulate and deeply felt, it’s a litany whose righteous anger is timeless and hard to argue with, even when its observations aren’t exactly original ones: “ And the rich keep getting richer/ And the rest of us just keep getting old.” Stills’ then-recent album Stephen Stills 2 doesn’t generally get many plaudits, but the accusatory “Word Game” is a fantastic highlight of the acoustic set. David Crosby pops up for a couple of CSN classics, “You Don’t Have to Cry” and the beautiful “The Lee Shore,” and as with every time any of the members of the CSNY family appear onstage together the effect is immediately greater than the sum of its parts. “Do for the Others,” also from Stephen Stills, is less direct, and better – a lovely tune, thoughtful lyrics and a superb performance. Self-justifying sleaze cynically dressed up as a sentimental plea for universal love – maybe – and why not? It has a good tune and is vastly preferable to the kind of well-meaning fluff that it so deliberately resembles. What makes the song more than just a stale hippy-era relic is that now, as then, the lyric has an immediacy that sounds universal, almost a platitude, but which on reflection is extremely ambiguous, or actually, given Stills’ contemporary reputation for rock star debauchery, pretty biguous (I know). He opens with his biggest solo hit, “Love the One You’re With” – and wisely so it’s a classic alright, and the crowd welcomes it with simple enthusiasm. The first, acoustic part of the set is probably the best, and the beautifully clear recording brings out every note of Stills’ guitar and the pleasingly rough edge of his voice, which sounds appealingly fatigued compared with his carefree CSNY persona. The latter are “Jesus Gave Love Away for Free,” which would surface on the first Manassas album the following year, and “Lean on Me,” an otherwise unreleased fiery R&B stomper that’s as much a showcase for the Memphis Horns as it is for Stills himself. By ’71, he had a vast stockpile to draw from and the 14 tracks in the setlist are a judicious mix of songs from both of his solo albums – weighted slightly towards the classic Stephen Stills – with couple of Crosby, Stills & Nash favorites, a pinch of Buffalo Springfield and two then-unreleased tracks. There are Stills the sensitive folk/country singer-songwriter, Stills the rock ‘n’ roller and Stills the R&B bandleader – and he tackles them all convincingly. Live at Berkeley, 1971, vividly recorded and with a stellar performance by Stills and his collaborators, perfectly captures something different: the still-vibrant but weary essence of its times. In short, he was at the peak of his considerable songwriting powers but had a vulnerability that wasn’t always evident in band situations where his prodigious talent was matched only by his apparently boundless confidence. By the summer of ’71, the solid Stephen Stills 2 was riding high in the charts and Stills himself was fresh from CSNY, but not unmarked by its implosion, not to mention various convictions and drug and relationship issues. CSNY’s 4 Way Street, released that spring, was a live album that eschewed the expected informal charm for something more carefully structured and dramatic, but in their various solo tours, the group’s members attempted to shrug off the aura of millionaire decadence that hung around them and embrace the casual, minstrel-with-a-guitar vibe that made Laurel Canyon so seductive to a generation of young idealists in the first place. There was probably no better time to see Stephen Stills in concert than in August of 1971.
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