Just Roll Tape : Stephen Stills : Review : Rolling Stone

While making 1969's Crosby Stills and Nash, David Crosby and Graham Nash christened Stephen Stills "Captain Manyhands" for his prodigious gifts as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger. Those talents are not heard here. Stills made twelve of these thirteen demos all in one session, on acoustic guitar in mid-1968, after the collapse of his previous band, Buffalo Springfield. But the melodic craft and poetic romance that Stills rushed to tape suggest that the singer-guitarist was, in the beginning, also CSN's most formidable composer. Ironically, he saved some of the best songs here --including "Change Partners," "Black Queen" and "So Begins the Task" -- for his later solo and Manassas albums. And you can hear the haste in these recordings, which Stills made right after playing on a Judy Collins studio date. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" (his valentine to Collins) and the anguished miniature "Helplessly Hoping" lack the polish and harmonies of the CSN versions. But the nonproduction highlights the invention and muscularity in Stills' picking and the young-man blues in his sandpaper tenor. He would make great records as Captain Manyhands, but this is pure, distilled genius.