Credit: Far Out / Omroepvereniging VARA
Thu 20 August 2026 2:00, UK
“This is a tight group, the tightest in the business,” Stephen Stills told a reporter in 1972, touting his latest rock ‘n’ roll outfit, built in the aftermath of the quick flame-outs of both the Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Unlike those previous bands, in which a sharing of creative input had led to more fisticuffs than hugs, Stills was making a point of changing the rules with this new supergroup.
“I am the quarterback,” he explained to the Atlanta Constitution. “It has to be that way. A band is a democracy up to a point; then, somebody has to be in charge. Everybody in this band understands that.”
Stills’ new band, which he seemed hell-bent on comparing to an American football team at every opportunity, was Manassas, a jammy but disciplined country-rock group built around seven musicians from different corners of the early-1970s American music scene.
The project saw its initial spark after Stills crossed paths with Chris Hillman backstage in Cleveland, where both were on tour. Hillman, a former Byrd who went on to help launch the Flying Burrito Brothers, was looking for a fresh creative path. Stills invited him down to Miami’s Criteria Studios for a jam, bringing along Burritos steel player Al Perkins and fiddler Byron Berline. Berline ultimately declined the invitation to become a permanent member, but the other pieces quickly fell into place.
Stills then brought in four musicians from his own touring band: drummer Dallas Taylor, his old collaborator from Crosby, Stills & Nash; bassist Calvin ‘Fuzzy’ Samuels, another veteran of Stills’ orbit; keyboardist Paul Harris, a versatile session player; and Joe Lala, a percussionist and vocalist who had previously co-founded the Florida rock band Blues Image.
Credit: Far Out / Crosby Stills Nash and Young / Original Posters
The result was the more versatile sort of “team” that Stills had been imagining for a while: Hillman and Perkins supplied country and bluegrass credentials, Taylor brought the muscular rock foundation, Harris could navigate everything from gospel and soul to country, Lala provided Latin percussion, and Samuels added a distinctive Caribbean flavour.
Stills himself could move between guitar, piano, organ, slide guitar and vocals. The group was augmented on the first album by several guests, including Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, the aforementioned Berline, harmonica player Sydney George, keyboardist Jerry Aiello, and acoustic bassist Roger Bush.
Manassas’ self-titled 1972 debut double-album was a commercial and critical success, putting Stills back on the right path. He took his “quarterback” role with the band quite seriously when they embarked on their first tour, as well, donning a brand new custom-made football jersey and gathering his “teammates” around him at the start of each gig for a pre-game huddle.
“When performing, I pick up on things happening on stage and react to them,” Stills said, leaning even more into the sports analogy. “It’s exactly like reading a defence and adjusting to it. I even call audibles [an American football term for changing a play call at the line of scrimmage].”
Unlike any of his previous touring experiences, Manassas gave Stephen Stills the ability to follow his own personal whims and make each night on a tour completely unique, confident that the other guys in the band would be prepared to go wherever the vibes might lead them. This would have been an impossibility in a CSNY travelling show.
“We wanted to tour with the Crosby, Stills & Nash thing,” drummer Dallas Taylor said during that first Manassas tour, “but couldn’t find the right band. Then Neil joined us, and more than our sound changed. The music was good, but the situation wasn’t.”
Despite the new leaf he’d managed to turn over with Manassas, Stills’ optimism was still undercut with a realism born from experience. “We’re a band, and we will stay together,” he boldly told the Atlanta Constitution, before clarifying, “Two years. Two years at least for this band.”
Credit: Public Domain
Turns out, Stephen was right on the money. When Manassas reconvened for their second album, 1973’s Down the Road, they’d already lost a lot of their momentum. Stills was newly married (to French pop singer Veronique Sanson), and Chris Hillman was distracted by an attempt at a Byrds reunion along with offers for another supergroup recording with JD Souther.
Soon enough, the financial draw of a CSN reunion came to Stills’s door, as well. In the meantime, though, he remained focused on trying to get a second Manassas album across the goal line, pushing through take after take, even after Dallas Taylor’s heroin addiction got him kicked out of the band. Calvin Samuel quit the band before the record was finished, as well, turning the process into a bit of a shambles.
Down the Road still performed reasonably well, reaching number 26 in the US and 33 in the UK, but it proved to be the end of the road for Manassas as a band. They’d served their two years.
In retrospect, despite getting much of what he’d wanted with this version of a supergroup, Stills was still a man dealing with a lot of pressure during the Manassas years, desperate to plot the course in his career that would result in some level of sustained contentment.
At the end of the band’s 1972 gig in Atlanta, which had been received with enthusiasm and seemingly went off without a hitch, Stills was visibly upset backstage. A string on his guitar had broken twice late in the set, and, like a good quarterback who’s too hard on himself, he addressed the fumble at the end of the game.
“We missed the whole second encore, and it shouldn’t have happened,” he said, concluding, “If the string had been fixed right, it wouldn’t have broken a second time. We blew it. We had it going out there, and we lost it.”
