Manassas - Down the Road (1973)

The parallels between the careers of Eric Clapton and Stephen Stills, both born in 1945, are uncanny.  Both guitarists/singers became famous in playing in bands that lasted two years (Cream and Buffalo Springfield, respectively), both joined supergroups in 1969 (Blind Faith and Crosby, Stills and Nash, respectively), both found themselves making their debut solo albums at the beginning of the seventies (with each one making an appearance on the other's record!), and both formed their own bands - Stills forming Manassas and Clapton forming Derek and the Dominos.  And, the debut albums of both of those bands were double sets recorded at Criterion Studios in Miami and engineered by Ron and Howard Albert. But after one Derek and the Dominos album, Clapton scrapped a follow-up when he realized he couldn't do any better.  Stills and his partner in Manassas, former Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers member Chris Hillman, went ahead and made a second Manassas album.

They shouldn't have.  Really, they shouldn't have.

Down the Road is a sloppy, hastily composed and recorded follow-up that proves that traditional music drawing on rock, country, Latin and blues can still be worse than overproduced music played on synthesizers.  The music on Down the Road is a series of jams as appetizing as undercooked strawberry preserves, and the songs are lyrically embarrassing, especially on lame rockers like "City Junkies" and "Business On the Street."  The title track is simply annoying, with vocals that almost sound like a fingernail on a chalkboard (it could have been worse; the vocals could have sounded like ten fingernails), and Latin workouts like "Pensamiento" and "Guaguancó de Veró" show none of the imagination that Stills and Hillman brought to "Rock and Roll Crazies / Cuban Bluegrass," which is on the first Manassas album.  Indeed, they sound like a cliché of Latin music, much like Madonna's 1986 hit "La Isla Bonita" would. There, I said it; I just accused Stills and Hillman of making a record as embarrassing as a single from pop music's worst female singer of all time.

Stills later admitted that that drink and drugs interfered with the quality of Down the Road, and the Albert brothers gave up on this album before it was finished.  "I short-circuited there for awhile," Stills said.  Perhaps he should have remembered the cardinal rule of his better-known outfit, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and just gone on to something else when Manassas didn't feel right.  Ironically, Manassas members knew, as drummer Dallas Taylor later noted, that as long as a regrouping of Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young) was always a possibility, Manassas didn't stand a chance.

There are a couple of good songs on Down the Road, such as the delicate Hillman-Stills country lament "So Many Times" and also "Do You Remember the Americans," a bluegrass commentary about a hitchhiker back in the United States after years away from home (presumably a Vietnam vet) who can't get a ride from the truckers who pass him.  And guest artist Joe Walsh contributed some mean slide guitar on this album.  But it's obvious that Stephen Stills' best work is found elsewhere.  Manassas started out as great project for Stills, but Down the Road is a second battle that shouldn't have been fought.