A Quote by Stephen Stills

I remember that first week at the Whisky and the gigs we (The Buffalo Springfield) did with the Byrds, We could really smoke ! That band never got on record as bad, and as hard as we were. Live we sounded like the Rolling Stones.
I just got into it like a lot of people through the rock 'n' roll bands in the late '60s that turned to country music, like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, but particularly through The Byrds because of Gram Parsons, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman (with their 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo). They kind of introduced English kids to Merle Haggard and George Jones and the Louvins (brothers Charlie and Ira).
It's true that when I was younger and I first got interested in music, I used to read books about the Stones and the Beatles and how they listened to Muddy Waters and people like that when they were starting out, who are much less well known now than the Rolling Stones. The Stones really changed blues.
The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it... you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one's ever done it better.
Chris Hillman (of the Byrds) recounts...'What happened to the Buffulo Springfield at the Whisky was similar to what happened to us at Ciro's...everybody wanted to be there. It became the place to be...a great gig.'
I don't recall what the first record I bought was, but I definitely remember hearing Creedence's 'Born on the Bayou' and going out and buying it. The guitar and drums in that band were really good. I loved the words to the title track, and Fogerty's voice sounded just great.
After the week at the Fillmore we flew down to L.A. to hang out and pick up whatever gigs we could. We did a gig in Santa Barbara on July 1st and then the next night we opened for Sam & Dave at the Whisky.
We were so heavily influenced by The Replacements and by a lot of hard core bands like Bad Brains, not that we sounded like them but we were trying to play as hard and fast as we could.
I really felt like we were gonna be The Rolling Stones of heavy metal, and we could have been.
I would do a Byrds tour or a Byrds record in a minute. I miss that band now. I've tried to convince Roger over and over to do it, but he's not interested. Music isn't something you can legislate into being.
I think we got started like all bands. We wanted to make some noise, hang out, and have some fun. Remember, we're from Buffalo - there isn't really that much to do. When we started we were a cover band and slowly developed our own material.
Growing up, as much as country was a big influence in my life, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles and Led Zeppelin were such a close second. My first concert ever was the Rolling Stones in Denver. I snuck a camera backstage and filmed Mick Jagger during sound-check.
I'm really glad we came up when we did. When we got started, the record companies were concerned with building careers. They made sure you could put on a live show before you put a record out. And if your first album sold 100,000 to 200,000 copies, they were happy, because they figured you had your foot in the door on a way to a long career.
I spent most of my 20s playing music. I was in a band and we worked really hard and did not get very far. I was really close to being this guy who used to be in this band who is still playing and trying to get some recordings together, but I got really lucky. That's never lost in me, that I went through Saturday Night Live.
I remember when our first album came out. After one of our gigs, we went across the border to Mexico and the band in the bar where we were was doing covers of our songs. I don't think they understood a word they were singing but they did the songs perfectly.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
If somebody says, 'Do you remember the first time you heard a Rolling Stones song?' if you say you do, you're crazy. You've just always heard them. You might remember the first time it impacted you, but the first time you heard one, you were in a cradle.
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