In their solo recordings, Roger McGuinn, always the central figure in the Byrds, and Stephen Stills, the primary creative force in the Buffalo Springfield, have exposed their limitations much more dramatically than they've exhibited their strengths. McGuinn's primary problem is that he doesn't have much to say. After a period as leader of the latter-day Byrds, during which the group vacillated from near-greatness to bored detachment, followed by a promising initial solo album (with a great deal of unacknowledged help from producer Terry Melcher), McGuinn has settled into a drearily unproductive phase as one of rock's weary patriarchs. On Roger McGuinn & Band, his third solo effort, McGuinn again fails to come to grips with his present inertia. The band is little more than a backing unit of typically competent, anonymous L.A. country rockers. True, they harmonize better than later editions of the Byrds but they play without imagination or spirit. This album makes it terribly clear just how important was Clarence White's contribution to the best work of the latter-day Byrds: White's virtuosity and controlled energy gave McGuinn the inspiration he needed to keep him involved and productive. There's no one in the present band capable of providing that challenge.

Ironically, McGuinn underscores this current lack by recutting his and Jacques Levy's "Lover of the Bayou." The original version of the song, recorded live in 1970 and contained on (Untitled), the last exceptional Byrds album, is punishingly raw and vital, with White's guitar twisting nastily through McGuinn's torn and equally nasty vocal. Here, in contrast, we get a polite performance in which all the pieces fit but nothing is expressed or risked.

That kind of pointlessness is the album's distinguishing characteristic. McGuinn's inclusion of inferior versions of "Lover" and "Born to Rock and Roll" (in its original form the best track on the Byrds reunion album) points out his lack of new inspiration. So does his resorting to the songs of his current band members for five of the album's ten tracks: None of these is likely to become a rock standard. That leaves a pair of slight new McGuinn songs, "Lisa" and "Easy Does It" and a rendition of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that has neither the magic of the original nor the audaciousness of the version recorded by the English group G.T. Moore and the Reggae Guitars (on the Charisma import of the same name). There it is, an entire album by a certified old master without a single noteworthy track.

Compared with McGuinn, Stephen Stills has a lot to say on his fifth (counting the two with the group Manassas) solo endeavor—but not enough to make Stills a successful album. Stills's first problem is that he often fails to express his thoughts and feelings in an artful or lucid way; his second problem is that his arranging and recording approach tends to obscure whatever life and intimacy his songs and basic performances might have originally possessed. Stills may be failed autobiography but it is a concerted attempt at candid expression. And if these tracks mask their basic moods and spirits with fancy and expansive production, several of them at least wind up sounding quite commercial, in much the same way "Love the One You're With" does. So Stills's form and content are at odds and form overpoweringly predominates with mixed, middling results.

All the characteristics we've come to expect from Stills's records—the fat vocal harmonies, the busy percussion with its Latin inflections, the trademark lead guitar work, the general sense of forced intensity—are present to excess on Stills. It's those backing chorales that do the most damage to the sincere feeling with which several of these songs were apparently written. In "My Favorite Changes," the lyric of which mixes confessional honesty and self-pity—"Here I stand tryin' so hard to find/One more clever line/For this song of mine"—vocals overdubbed at a different time and in a different studio environment steamroller Stills's basic vocal so thoroughly that one can only speculate as to what pathos it might have conveyed on its own.

Every song gets this kind of overpowering production—in some cases for the best, because the songs, if unmasked, would seem confused or silly. "Shuffle Just as Bad," "Turn Back the Pages" and "First Things First" have that old AM-radio catchiness, and so, I suppose, does Stills's version of Neil Young's "New Mama," which transforms a tense, ambiguous song into a simplistic statement of conjugal satisfaction. Here as everywhere else on Stills, nuance doesn't stand a chance.

The most obvious solution to both Stills's and McGuinn's present dilemma is the introduction of new challenge. That could come from interaction with other individuals—musicians and/or producers—who have the character, credentials and interest to challenge and redirect the efforts of these uncertain old pros. For McGuinn, the answer might be Melcher, Chris Hillman or even David Crosby; for Stills, the answer might be Young. Whatever they do, McGuinn and Stills have made it clear that they can't do it alone. (RS 194)

BUD SCOPPA