Song of the Day 5/2: Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth/Mr. Soul”

Back in the ’60s it took a long time for the older generation to realize that rock and roll was, as the saying goes, here to stay. As late as 1967, when this “Hollywood Palace” show was recorded, TV was still treating the new music as a passing fad. Those crazy kids with their shaggy haircuts and wacky band names who showed up to lip-synch their hits were often treated like clowns by the hosts.

The Buffalo Springfield were the opposite of a supergroup. Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay and, towards the group’s end, Jim Messina all went on to have greater success in their next bands (except perhaps Furay, whose band Poco never found the mainstream success it deserved). This clip has them playing one verse and chorus of their biggest hit before segueing into their hardest-rocking tune, Young’s “Mr. Soul.” The bass player sitting at the edge of the stage with his back to the audience is not the band’s original bass player, Carl Palmer, because he had been deported to Canada after a drug bust. According to a book Furay wrote in the ’90s, that’s the band’s road manager pretending to fill in for him.