There are very few good Buffalo Springfield videos on You Tube, probably because the band is still relatively obscure except for a few songs that everyone knows. But when the little-noticed drummer from an underrated band dies, his obituary still makes the news because the 60's generation that now works in journalism knows a noteworthy death when it sees one.
Buffalo Springfield was a folk-rock band from Los Angeles which stayed together only a few years, long enough to release three albums and spawn the careers of Neil Young and Stephen Stills. They ended the 1960's playing with other people, but their great songs and ensemble cast made Buffalo Springfield the closest thing that America had to the Beatles. And I don't give damn what anyone ways about that comparison. I'm sticking to it. The drummer, Dewey Martin, who died this week at 68, was not well-known, but his death reminds us that his generation of rock stars is now dying off one by one. It's time to appreciate what Buffalo Springfield did.
The story of how Buffalo Springfield got together is like something out of a slapstick comedy. Neil Young and bass player Bruce Palmer went to Los Angeles to find Stephen Stills, who becam acquainted with Young a few years earlier. According to Wikipedia, "Roughly a week later, discouraged at having been unable to locate Stills and ready to depart for San Francisco, they were stuck in traffic on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles when Stills, Furay and Friedman, sitting in their white van, recognized Young’s black 1953 Pontiac hearse, which just happened to be passing by in the opposite direction. After an illegal u-turn by Furay, some shouting, hand-waving and much excitement, the four musicians realized that they were united in their determination to put together a band."
The Beatles' influence on 1960's rock is well-documented, but an under-appreciated result of their success is abandoning the bandleader model for an ensemble approach. Buffalo Springfield had several leaders, Stills and Young, and most of the band wrote and sang. That created a diverse sound which includes folk, country, psychedelia and rock. It also means the band did not have a distinct sound, so while some of their songs are well known, many fans do not realize they emanate from the same group. That's kind of a compliment, in my book.
A pleasant demo of "Flying on the Ground is Wrong." Dewey the drummer is nowhere to be found
Buffalo Springfield's most famous song is "For What It's Worth," featured in nearly every movie about the 1960's. Most of us know the song from its chorus ("stop, hey, what's that sound"). But don't overlook the others, like "Bluebird," "Mr. Soul" and "I Am a Child," which turned into a Neil Young staple. My fave, though, is the little-known, "Flying on the Ground is Wrong," which unfortunately has the worst edit in rock history, as some engineer or producter stitched together two parts of the song in the clumsiest way possible. That does not destroy the song, but a better, acoustic version appears on the Buffalo Springfield box set. Scroll back up to hear it, and ignore the boring visual.
Buffalo Springfield perform "Rock and Roll Woman" before an audience of squares
In the 1960's, rock musicians must have thought it would last forever. It didn't. Neil Young went on to 40 years of success, and Stephen Stills made it work with Crosby, Stills and Nash, but even CSN only had a few good albums. Dewey Martin, the recently deceased drummer, kept the Springfield going for a few years with other musicians, but Stills and Young got a court order to stop the exploitation. According to Wikipedia, Martin eventually quit music to become a car mechanic, returning to music from time to time. He probably thought he would find success as a drummer with someone else, but rock history is all about five-year careers, with the lucky few chugging along for decades.
Whether you can read this or not, this is a Buffalo Springfield concert poster from the late 1960's
Reseaching Dewey Martin was enlightening. I had never heard of him, and I have most of Buffalo Springfield's work. Not every drummer is as famous as Ringo. Dewey apparently was a good guy. Here's a first-person account from Rolling Stone's website about Martin's character:
Gene Herd | 2/6/2009, 4:49 pm ESTI saw plenty of bar brawls during my days as a club musician, but none was as satisfying as one night in 1968 that my friend Dewey Martin punched out two beer-soaked rednecks who were ragging on him for his long blond hair at the club where my band was playing in Portland Oregon. Dewey, who was wearing little rectangle tinted glasses at the time was a ringer for John Lennon. He had just dropped by to say hello to our band. It started in the men’s room when one of them said to Dewey, “You’re in the wrong bathroom aren’t you sweetie?” Dewey told him to “Fuck off,” and walked out. As he went through the door, the redneck hit him from behind. Dewey turned and floored him with one punch. When Bubba’s friend came all the way across the dance floor to help, Dewey punched him out too. In case you’ve forgotten, hippie-length hair was not a popular hairstyle among the moral majority in the 60s. Longhaired kids were a favorite target of straight-arrow necks because longhairs were usually too intimidated to fight back. Dewey was an exception to that rule. Wherever you are Dewey, I hope they let you sit in.
So, Dewey didn't put up with any shit. Other first-person accounts of Dewey Martin in Rolling Stone further speak to his kindness and decency, frankly a rare set of qualities in a rock star. I didn't know the guy, but I'll say this: drumming for one of the greatest American bands of the 1960's is good enough for me.
