Stephen Stills interview: CSN, the Rides and more

It's been 51 years since he launched his recording career as one of nine Au Go Go Singers, a folk-music house band of sorts at the Cafe au Go Go in New York City's Greenwich Village.

And Stephen Stills was glad to see that work anthologized in 2013's "Carry On." The four-disc box set features one Au Go Go Singers selection before delving into the music that saw him enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of two groups in a single night — Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash (which also, on occasion, features Neil Young).

As Stills recalls the experience of looking back on 50 years of music with the help of "Carry On," "It was like, 'Oh yeah,

that

song.' I forgot about that song."

RELATED:20 best Stephen Stills songs

What that means for fans, he says, is that "there will be some surprises" in the set list when he brings his latest tour to Phoenix for a Celebrity Theatre concert that's set to feature both full-band and solo acoustic performances.

"It's really nice to get started and have enough songs in my playlist to tell a little story, make fun of myself and the state of this poor world," he says, with a laugh, "and reach back."

Stills doesn't do a lot of reaching back, revisiting his old recordings.

"The thing is, after I finish the records," he says, "for the next five years or so, all I want to do is go back in the studio and fix a mistake I made. So I can't listen to myself. And I don't listen to much else. I listen to jazz."

He tries not to listen to other rock artists, he says, with a laugh, "because I'll end up subconsciously copping something totally by accident."

"I'll go, 'Oh Jesus, that's this other song.' And I'll have to rewrite it. I did that once, but it was so much the other chorus that we did a 50/50 copyright, like the rappers do when they sample my stuff and build a new song."

He seems to like when rappers sample what he's done, saying Cypress Hill's sample of one of his best-known songs, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," on the 2010 song "Armada Latina" was "really cool" in his book.

Stills is an affable interview subject, laughing easily and often, whether lamenting the weather in Phoenix ( "It's one of those places you visit and go 'Why'd they'd stop here?!' ") or taking the edge off jokes about his bandmates.

Asked what song required him to share a copyright, Stills says, "Oh, I refuse to be specific."

Then, he laughs again and says, "Actually, that's like a snipe hunt to send the readers on. See if you can figure out which one Steven stole the chorus for. I think I heard the song once on tour and then a year later was fiddling around with something and this great chorus came into my head. Only it was somebody else's. It was close enough where I had to go and split it. It wouldn't have been right."

On the road, in the studio

It's been a decade since Stills' latest solo album, "Man Alive!," which featured guest appearances by Graham Nash, Young and Herbie Hancock. But that doesn't mean he's been taking it easy.

Crosby, Stills & Nash toured with Young in 2006 and without Young several times since then. After playing together at Young's Bridge School Benefit in 2010, the three surviving members of Buffalo Springfield (Stills, Young and Richie Furay, who went on to form Poco) did several dates in 2011. And Stills just cut a second album with the Rides, a blues-rock supergroup of sorts that finds him trading licks with guitar wizard Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Barry Goldberg, who formed the Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield in the '60s. The Rides' first album, "Can't Get Enough," hit the charts at a very respectable No. 42 in 2013.

"I wanted to make a blues album," Stills says. "So I got together with Barry Goldberg, and I wanted another really great blues guitar player who's better than me so I could learn from him because, you know, I'm always over-achieving," he said. "And I ended up with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and it was like a bromance from the get-go.

"And then, he's got the drummer from Double Trouble, Chris Layton, and I've got Kevin McCormick, who's this fabulous bass player who thinks about the bass the same way I do. So we're a real good match. And we just started fiddling with this stuff and the songs started pouring out."

Stills says he's known Goldberg since the '60s. In fact, they both appear on "Super Session," a seminal Al Kooper album that features guitarist Bloomfield on Side 1 and Stills on Side 2. Bloomfield was supposed to play on the entire album but went missing on what would have been his second day of tracking

As Stills recalls the situation, with a laugh, "Barry played on the Mike Bloomfield side and then Mike ran away so Barry went looking for Mike. And Al was sitting there with an empty studio so he called me. I said 'How far down the list of guitar players was I, Al?' He said, 'Oh not too far.' So I said, 'Well, I'm close. I'll be there.' And we did 'Season of the Witch,' which turned out to be a stellar thing. I'm still trying to get good at it but it's elusive."

It's pointed out that longtime fans may take exception to the idea that Shepherd is somehow a better guitarist than he is.

"Well, I'm interesting," Stills says. "But sometimes I try too hard, and now I've got carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand, which is probably good because it slowed me down enough to think more about melodies. I mean, you've got to find something, you know? You've got to find a silver lining."

Regardless of how Stills insists on sizing up his own abilities, there's no real question that those chops have played a huge role in establishing his legend, from Buffalo Springfield and CSN to Manassas, a short-lived side group from the '70s, and a solo career he launched in 1970 with "Love the One You're With," which even now remains his biggest hit. In 1997, Stills became the first person ever to be inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice in the same night. And his reputation as a lead guitarist was confirmed in 2003 when he finished No. 28 on a Rolling Stone list of the greatest guitarists of all time.

In putting together "Live From Laurel Canyon," a local tribute to the sound and spirit of the LA scene that brought Stills together with Crosby and Nash one fateful night in Joni Mitchell's Laurel Canyon living room, Brian Chartrand of Phoenix has done his share of research on the major players of that scene.

"And there were a couple of aspects of Stephen that were brought up again and again," he says. "One was his guitar playing and the other was his drive. And he wasn't the only one in the canyon (in LA) who had those two things, but those two things helped create the legend. He knew what he wanted. He knew how he wanted things to sound. He knew how the studio should run. He had this vision and ultimately ended up playing a lot of the instruments because he had this thing that this is how it had to sound."

Rocking with Neil Young

Stills recently tested the waters with "Virtual World," a song from the upcoming Rides release, at a benefit concert for Autism Speaks in Hollywood with a very special guest on lead guitar.

"There's a YouTube video of me and Neil doing it at my benefit for autism," he says. "And I actually sang it so good that night that I'm glad the album got delayed so I can go back and sing it again on the album. The words and the phrasing got solidified. It was almost on point and now it is."

The rest of the set at the benefit show, he says, "was all things that everyone knew and we could learn easily because those things, especially if you're the host, you're just completely overwhelmed with doing meet-and-greets and organizing everything."

"So we didn't have much time for a sound check or rehearsal, and Neil didn't have much time. He was working on something else. So he came in and we did Buffalo Springfield and standards like 'Rockin' in the Free World.' But we did learn one new song because it's very simple. It only has about four chords. As a matter of fact, I think I stole the opening guitar lick from Neil. And he said, 'Oh, that's OK. I probably stole it myself. I undoubtedly stole it myself, but I have no idea where from.' But that's the way Neil and I are together. We understand each other completely."

Asked if he sees himself doing more work with Young in the future, his answer is brief but emphatic.

"That book," he says, "is never closed."

As for Crosby and Nash, he says, "We're the rock and roll version of 'The Sunshine Boys,' " referring to Neil Simon's play about an aging vaudeville act whose members grew to hate each other. He laughs when he says it, though, so there's that.

"There are so many songs that we've got to play because people expect it of us," he says. "And the new material, we're starting to really diverge from one another. David (Crosby) is writing a lot with his son, James, and it's all this upside-down jazz stuff that's, like, impossible for the guitar. It's very hard for me. And it is not served very well by harmony. And Graham is writing songs that he likes to do in his own set. We have pretty big solo sections in the show, and the rest of it is those same songs. I'm glad we're taking a few months off from doing that."

They're about to tour Europe, he says.

"And the big reason is we get to ride on the Queen Mary. You sing an acoustic concert for the passengers, and you get to bring all of your gear, all of the crew and everything, and you're in Europe. You can do a European tour in a very cost-effective manner. And, of course, they give us the really posh rooms. It's a pretty neat deal. James Taylor turned us on to it. I mean, we'll see. It's late August. We could run into the tail end of a hurricane, which on a boat that size is actually kind of fun."

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley

Stephen Stills

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 26.

Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.

Admission: $40-$100.

Details: 602-267-1600, celebritytheatre.com.