A Very Candid Conversation with Richie Furay

Richie Furay: Oh, my gosh, it’s just one of those things that happened in my life. I’m not even sure. I didn’t really have a musical family.

My mom sung in the church choir, but my dad wasn’t musical. I remember when he gave her a tape recorder one year for Christmas; I confiscated the thing and just sat in front of the radio all the time taping all this music.

As I got a little older, music just began to saturate my heart and my life. It seemed that music was the direction I was going to pursue.

JC: How did you get started with Buffalo Springfield?

RF: [Laughs]. I was in Otterbein College in Ohio. In college, I joined an a cappella [a cappella is singing without instrumental accommodation] choir. At one point, we went on tour, and during the tour, we made a stop in New York City. We had a Saturday night off. One of my friends decided, “Hey, why don’t we go down into Greenwich Village and sing.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, right. Okay. Where are we gonna sing, the street corner?” And he said, “Oh, we’ll sing in some clubs.”

My friend—I’m telling you, man, he could sell anybody anything. My friend talked his way into getting three club managers to let us sing at their club. We sang during the time that they were turning over the audiences. [Laughs]. But we still thought it was a big deal to sing in those clubs.

After performing, a bug really caught me. I said, “Man, I’m coming back here in the summertime, and I’m gonna get into the music business somehow. I’m gonna get into doing folk music.” Folk music was happening in Greenwich Village and it was a big thing.

When I went to New York the next summer, I talked my two friends into coming with me. Stephen Stills was working in one of the little clubs that my friends and I played in. That’s where I met Stephen and we became really good friends.

A guy named Ed E. Miller put a band together for us, and it was a group like the Serendipity Singers or the New Christy Minstrels [early folk bands of the sixties]. It was a group of nine—there was stand-up bass, the banjo, as many guitars as you could get, and two girls.

The group was together for about six months. We did an off-Broadway play for two weeks, so it was a quick run. [Laughs]. We did a record for Roulette Records, and we did a supper club [a club that provides dinner and entertainment] tour of Texas.

After that, the group broke up. Steve went off to California with part of the band, and I went to work at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, Connecticut.

A friend of mine, Gram Parsons [Parsons was a pioneer in the country rock field], brought me the Byrds’ first record while I was working at Pratt & Whitney. I said, “Man, I’ve got to get a hold of Steve. I’ve got to find out what’s going on, because I’ve got to get back into music.”

So, I got a hold of Steve, and Steve said, “Hey, come to California. I’ve got a band together. All I need is another singer and we’re ready to go.” I said, “I’ll be there.” So, I quit my job at Pratt & Whitney and went to California sometime in 1966.

Of course, the band was just me and Steve at the time. No one else was there. That was the beginning of the Buffalo Springfield.

JC: Buffalo Springfield’s first album (self-titled album, 1966) contains their most well–known song, “For What It’s Worth.” However, the song seems like an anomaly on that album, as all the other songs are folk rock and “For What It’s Worth” isn’t.

RF: Well, actually, “For What It’s Worth” wasn’t even on the very first record.

JC: Really?

RF: There was a song called “Baby, Don’t Scold Me,” but that song got taken off the record and was replaced by “For What It’s Worth.” We were sharing our new songs for our second album with Ahmet Ertegun, who was the president of Atlantic Records. Ertegun and the band were in a little house in Topanga. I think it was Steve’s house.

The first album didn’t really do what Atlantic Records had wanted it to do or thought that it was gonna do. They thought it was gonna really make a mark right out of the box. So, we played all of our songs—a lot of them appeared on the second record. At the end of the day, Stephen said, “Well, I’ve got one more: ‘For What It’s Worth.’”

JC: Yes.

RF: And that was the song. Ahmet said, “We’ve got to record that song now.” We recorded it, and after recording, Atlantic Records took “Baby, Don’t Scold Me” off the record and put “For What It’s Worth” on the record. The song went to number seven in the country and left its mark in the world of musical history for sure. [Click here to see a 1967 presentation of “For What It’s Worth.”]

JC: The music direction changed dramatically on Buffalo Springfield’s second album Buffalo Springfield Again. One reviewer described Buffalo Springfield’s first album and second album as if you started from the very first Beatles’ album (where all four worked as a group) to an album like Sgt. Pepper’s or The White Album (where everyone was going in their own direction and not cohesive as a group). [Laughs].

RF: Well, Jeff, that was actually what was happening. The only record that we really made as a group was the first one.

JC: Right.

RF: On the second album [1967], there were a few songs that were recorded by everyone, but mostly people were going off in their own way. Neil Young was doing his thing and Stephen Stills was doing his thing. And while we were recording Buffalo Springfield Again, I actually had an opportunity to start my solo recording career as well.

By the third album [1968], it was really every man for himself. [Laughs].

JC: Was there any song on Buffalo Springfield’s third album where all the group members played together?

RF: A couple of songs . . . I can’t remember. I would have to go back and look at the album. I’m sorry, but I don’t think too much about it. There were a couple of songs that everybody played on. Then there were quite a few more on the third record that [bassist] Jimmy Messina and I put together so that we could at least release the third record. That third record would have never gotten released had Jimmy and I not contributed a few more songs. So, we got the third record out.

The third album was pretty much a lot of individual effort. There’s no doubt about it. It was a shame. The band had a lot of potential, but there were nine people in and out of the band in two years. It was just really hard to keep the band together.

Neil, of course, had different aspirations. For me, Buffalo Springfield was Stephen’s band. He was the heart and soul of the band. A lot of people think it was Neil’s band, but it was Stephen’s band all the way. He was definitely the heart and soul.

I told Stephen one day, “Listen, man, as long as you’re here, I’m here,” even though there were so many people in and out of the band. But at the end of the day, when Stephen decided it was time to move on and do some other things, that was when I decided, “Okay, well, that’s it. It was a fun run.”

JC: Immediately you started Poco after the breakup of Buffalo Springfield.

RF: Yep. I had already gotten my feet wet from live concerts and making records, so I didn’t want to quit. I was ready to keep on going.

Jimmy Messina was the most recent member of Buffalo Springfield, (Buffalo Springfield went through nine people; Messina was number nine of nine) and we struck up a really nice friendship. Jimmy is a very talented guy. He’s very talented in the technical aspects of recording and he helped me out quite a bit.

So, Jimmy and I started Poco. Jimmy had played bass in Buffalo Springfield, he would now play guitar in Poco. As we were finishing up the last Buffalo Springfield record, we had the idea of the kind of band that we wanted. We wanted to cross over or do a bridge between country music and rock and roll music. There were a few people that were attempting to do that. The Byrds were doing it at that time and we wanted to continue that.

Rusty Young had played steel guitar [a guitar where one hand plucks the strings and the other hand changes the pitch with a steel bar or handle] on my song “Kind Woman” that was on the Buffalo Springfield Last Time Around record [Buffalo Springfield’s third album]. So, Jimmy and I asked Rusty if he would like to join the band because he fit right in the niche of what we wanted to do.

We were looking for singers as well. Rusty said, “Well, I’ve got a great drummer back in Denver. His name is George Grantham. He’s a wonderful singer and great drummer. Maybe we could see if he would like to join the band.” And of course, George joined.

Then we started auditioning bass players. Actually, on the same day, I think we auditioned Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmit.

JC: Oh, really? I didn’t know they both auditioned from the beginning.

RF: At the very beginning, Randy was our first bass player. He lasted right up through the recording of the first record, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, and then he left the band. Then Timothy joined the band after that.

Initially, Poco had Jimmy Messina, Rusty Young, myself, George Grantham, and Randy Meisner. Then it began to take on all the different changes that it went through when Paul Cotton took Jimmy Messina’s place [1971] and Timothy took Randy’s place [1969].

JC: Like your previous band, each album from Poco was different from the next album [laughs]. Pickin’ Up the Pieces, Poco’s first album, is very country-like.

RF: Kind of . . . I mean, that was the motivation behind the record. “Pickin’ Up the Pieces” (the song), “Consequently So Long,” and different songs like that had the steel guitar.

But there were some other elements. We were still trying to maintain and hold onto an original rock-and-roll sound that we were trying to establish at the same time. We were a rock-and-roll band that wanted to cross over into country. “Pickin’ Up the Pieces” was the song that was basically leading the way on that. [To hear “Pickin’ Up the Pieces,” click here.]

JC: On your second album (self-titled 1970), there’s a Grateful Dead-like jam of one of the songs from your first album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces.

RF: “Nobody’s Fool” was on the first album, and then we redid the song as “Nobody’s Fool/El Tonto de Nadie, Regresa” on the second album. That was basically to say, “Hey, listen, we have two great soloists,” as far as instrumental soloists go in the band, Rusty Young and Jimmy Messina. It was really very popular during that time to do those extended instrumental jams. We just said, “Yeah, we’ll do that. We can do that too.” Poco was a very versatile band. When you listen to that jam, it has a lot of jazz flavor on it too.

JC: That’s what I mean. There was a mix of country and rock on the first album. By the second, there was jazz.

RF: Yeah. I think every artist doesn’t want to do the same thing over. You want to think that you’re progressing. You want to think that you can take the gifts that you’ve been given and use them or create something that’s new and fresh.

I think you have to do something that’s fresh with every album. If you just keep doing the same thing, it’s not going to be fresh. And so, that was one of the reasons.

After the second album, we did a live album [1971]. Around the time the live album was released was the time that Paul Cotton was coming into the band to replace Jimmy Messina. As a band, we thought, “Okay, we need to reestablish our rock-and-roll roots.” Paul certainly added to that. I can’t remember the album after—

JC: That was the one I was about to ask you about, From the Inside.

RF: Oh, From the Inside. Yeah, that was the next one. [Laughs].

JC: I was going to ask you about that album, because I know it’s been mentioned that you really did not like the production on that album. [Laughs].

RF: Well, I think it was new for all of us. That was the first record that we did that Jimmy didn’t produce as an in-house producer, an in-group producer. Steve Cropper [the record’s producer] came from a little different musical background than we did.

I certainly think that Steve did a good job, but I think maybe there were some things that were going on that he didn’t relate to. Steve was just cutting his teeth on a lot of production at the time.

Great guy, man. As a matter of fact, I just put a song on my Facebook page two days ago, called “Starlight,” which was on one of my first solo records. Steve played on that, and it was really fun to have him play on it.

Steve was a great guy, but I think there was a little bit of a disconnect. Also, there were a lot of things going on in my life at that time, and I wasn’t really connected in the process as much as I would have like to have been.

JC: From what I read, you were starting to have some thoughts about leaving Poco around the time you were making the album A Good Feelin’ to Know [1972]. Although, you would stay on for one more album, Crazy Eyes [1973]. So, what began the change in thinking, “Maybe Poco isn’t for me”?

RF: Well, I had seen a lot of my friends having more success. Stephen in Crosby, Stills & Nash. The Eagles were starting to come along at that time. And Randy [who first joined Poco] was in the Eagles and they were starting to make some noise.

With A Good Feelin’ to Know, we were looking for a producer who could help us. We had great FM air play. FM was the underground radio at the time, but there was the AM radio that we didn’t have, which was the format that really lifted you or put you into a genre of acceptability.

We were looking for a commercial producer. We didn’t want to go back and do another record with Steve. We wanted to find someone who was more in-tune to hit records. My first choice at that time was Richie Podolor. He produced Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf. But Richie didn’t work out. We recorded a couple of demos with him and took them to CBS, but CBS said no. I don’t know why they said no.

It was suggested that we listen to some of Jack Richardson’s production—he produced Canadian rock band the Guess Who. We really liked a lot of what Jack was doing, so we hired him.

Jack came out and listened to us as we were rehearsing at one time. We all just said, “Yep, let’s do it. Let’s get together. We relate to him. He’s a great guy. He’s easy to work with.”

So, we started Good Feelin’ to Know. When we recorded Good Feelin’ to Know, everybody  thought, from the production right on down the line, “This is it. The title track is the song that’s going to be the AM hit that’s going to give us the opportunity to move along.” [A live version of “Good Feelin’ to Know” can be heard here.]

And when it didn’t happen, it was very discouraging to me. I just thought, “Well, if this record’s not gonna do it, then there’s not one that’s gonna do it.” At that time, I decided that I was going to pull out and try to find another avenue to pursue my career.

JC: What did you do right after Poco?

RF: Right after Poco I got together with Chris Hillman (from the Byrds) and J.D. Souther (who was already starting to make a name for himself, as he was co-writing some songs with the Eagles.) With the encouragement of a record executive named David Geffen, we put together the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band [SHF].

On paper, the band looked great. You’ve got three great songwriters. Well, I won’t say ‘great’—I don’t want to put myself in the category of great. You have three songwriters. [Laughs]. Chris Hillman, J.D. Souther, and myself.

We had a really tremendous band with Paul Harris (keyboards), Al Perkins (guitarist), and Jim Gordon (drums). On paper, it looked like this band was a can’t-miss. This had to be another Crosby, Stills & Nash. But there’s never gonna be another one of those no matter what anybody thinks.

Crosby, Stills & Nash got together because they were close friends, they were working together, and it just evolved. We were put together on paper. Like I say, what always looks good on paper doesn’t always translate out into real time. And it didn’t.

With Chris and J.D., we didn’t necessarily gel as a working unit. They’re both dear friends of mine today. I love them both. I’ve worked with Chris quite a bit. I’ve had J.D. sing on some of my solo records. There’s nothing that would keep us apart other than the fact that it just didn’t work for us in that format. [To hear SHF’s “Fallin’ In Love” click here.]

JC: Okay. So, after that band broke up, what did you do next?

RF: [Laughs]. What did I do next? [Laughs]. Well, there was a guy in the band [SHF]. His name was Al Perkins, and I didn’t want Al in the band.

JC: Oh.

RF: I thought that Al was gonna be a detriment to the band. Chris Hillman is the one who brought him in because he had worked with him previously, and he was insistent on the fact that Al was the guy that we needed. Al played not only guitar, but he played steel guitar, he played Dobro [a wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar], he played banjo—he was a multi-instrumentalist. He was a great player and a great guy.

But Al had a little . . . what do I want to say? He had . . . not a stigma, but he was a Christian. At that time, I didn’t want to have a Christian in the band.

JC: Wow.

RF: I thought Al was going to stop SHF from the success that I was looking for at that time.

Why would that make a difference? You know what, looking back on it, I know now that Jesus draws a dividing line. I thought having Al in the band was going to cause us to flounder and flop. He had a little fish sticker on his guitar that said “Jesus is Lord.” And I just said, “No, I don’t want this guy in the band.”

Jeff, Al could have been anything. He could have been a womanizer. He could have been a drunk. He could have been a drug addict. He could have been anything. But he was a Christian.

And that’s the reason that I didn’t want him in the band, because Jesus does draw a line. Back in the day, it wasn’t necessarily very popular to make a bold stand for Christianity. But Al ended up leading me to the Lord and became [laughs] a very dear friend of mine. But in the beginning, I didn’t want him in the band.

Then things started to change in my life. My wife and I started to have some marital problems, and it really threw me for a loop. And I just decided, “You know what? I have to decide what’s the most important thing in my life right now. Do I really want to be this rock-and-roll star?”

Yes, I’ve seen Stephen’s name up in lights. I’ve seen Neil’s name up in lights. I’ve seen Randy Meisner’s name up in lights with the Eagles. Jimmy Messina had taken off with Kenny Loggins and became a big star. I was thinking, “What about me? I’m just as talented as these guys are.” I don’t have an ego or nothing like that, but [laughs] I was kind of feeling sorry for myself.

I decided SHF was going to be the way to go, but then we had this other thing going on with a Christian in the band who wasn’t ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and was very out front with his little sticker on his guitar and unashamed of his faith. And I was thinking, “Oh man, this just isn’t gonna work out.”

Then the rug was pulled out from under me, and my wife [Nancy] said, “You know, I’m out of the marriage. I don’t want to be married any longer.” I thought, “Good lord, man, what’s going on? Everything’s falling apart in my life.”

I had to reassess what was important to me. Did I want to put my family back together, or did I want to keep on continuing this rat race of trying to put together a rock-and-roll band that was gonna be a star that would burn out in time?

JC: Obviously, you decided to reassess your life at that point. What happened from there?

RF: Well, I did reassess and there was a series of circumstances. Nancy and I separated for seven months after being married for seven years. There was a lot of deep soul-searching in those seven months while the Lord was working in both my life and Nancy’s life.

Nancy and I did begin to talk. I thought at one point in time when she came up to visit that we were just gonna get together again and try to make it work, but she was not ready at that time.

Through time and through circumstances, Nancy and I began to talk, and we said, “Hey, we can give this another try.” This happened between the second SHF record and I’ve Got a Reason [Richie’s first solo record] that we started working on our marriage and came back together. We will be married fifty years on March 4th.

JC: In addition, Al Perkins would introduce you to Calvary Chapel. The chapel would become a big part of your life as well.

RF: Right. Al took me to a church in southern California called Calvary Chapel. Al just took me down there, and all of a sudden I started meeting all these young guys. I guess they were familiar with my music and they probably thought more highly of me than they [laughs] should have at the time. But I was looking up to them because they had this walk with the Lord. I was just trying to get my life back together.

I made a lot of good friends out there at Calvary, and I made changes in my life as to the direction that I wanted to go and what I was gonna do. The fact is, Jeff, I thought I was gonna put together the rock-and-roll band for God. That was really what I thought after Nancy and I got back together. I thought that was my purpose in life. I was gonna make Christian rock records.

JC: Yes.

RF: First of all, I had to get everything else together. I had to get my family together first, because if that wasn’t gonna work, then it didn’t matter. It no longer mattered if I saw my name or my group’s name at the Hollywood Bowl or Carnegie Hall. That didn’t matter anymore. What really mattered was my family. I had this gift. When God gives you a gift, it’s something that he doesn’t want you to bury. He wants you to use it.

At that time, I was trying to figure out how all this was gonna fit together. First of all, I had to get my family back together, so when that happened, I met a friend at Calvary Chapel. His name was Tom Stipe. Tom and I started writing music together. We actually wrote quite a few songs on my first solo record, I’ve Got a Reason, the first album that I did apart from a band.

That record kind of tells a lot of story of the struggles that I was going through—trying to work out my relationship with Nancy, how our life was gonna evolve . . . I’ve Got a Reason were the struggles I was having at that time, and trusting in the Lord to put together my marriage, which everybody said was pretty much over and done with.  David Geffen came to me and said, “You’re not gonna give me one of those Jesus records, are you?” And I said, ” I think you’re gonna enjoy this music, man.” [To hear “Look at the Sun” from Richie’s first record, click here.]

It was interesting. On that record, the name of Jesus isn’t mentioned one time. Yet, when it came out, the Christian community rejected it because of that fact.

JC: Oh.

RF: It wasn’t because of music. It was because of the fact that the I never said Jesus’ name. So, it wasn’t Jesus enough for them, or it wasn’t quote-Christian-unquote for them.

But the secular world caught on right away and they rejected it too. Even though it came on the charts at good numbers and was getting support, I couldn’t get the support of the record company to go for it because they were afraid. “What are we gonna do with this guy, a man who is now an outspoken person for Jesus Christ?”

So, the secular world rejected it as well. There I was, caught between a rock and a hard place, not knowing which way to go and what to do. But there was the record out there.

That was the beginning of the solo career and the beginning of some other things. Nancy and me starting to get our life back together and our marriage back together. It was an interesting time in 1976. [Laughs].

JC: Did you do any more solo albums after that?

RF: I followed that up with an album called Dance a Little Light, which was another record that was on Asylum [David Geffen’s record label.] At that time, I was kind of required to give Asylum more products after leaving SHF, so I did Dance a Little Light.

I thought really a very fine record. It was not as directly faith-based as I’ve Got a Reason was. David Geffen had left Asylum at the time, and another guy had taken over, and we did not have a rapport.

I played a concert in Los Angeles, in support of Dance a Little Light, at a place called the Roxy. The record company was coming down and I was hoping they were gonna say, “Well, you know what, it’s been a good run, but we’re gonna cut you loose. We’re gonna let you go.”

Well, that was not the fact.  I blew them away, because I had a great band. I’ve always had great live bands. I blew them away at the Roxy, and they said, “When are you gonna do the next record?”

JC: [Laughs].

RF: And it’s like, “Oh man, I’ve given you two, and you’ve done nothing at all with them.” I was so disheartened, but I went back at the encouragement of another friend and recorded another solo record called I Still Have Dreams. We had a top 40 record with that, but Asylum still neglected to get behind it. At that time, I was throwing up my hands, saying, “What in the world do I do now?”

Then I thought about doing a record for a Christian record company called Myrrh. I gave them a record called Seasons of Change. They re-released my first record, I’ve Got a Reason, while I put together the songs and the recording for Seasons of Change.

But for some reason, I just couldn’t get it going with anybody, so that’s when I began to really throw up my hands. After I gave them Seasons of Change, nothing happened with that as far as in the Christian community.

I was still striving, man. I was still trying to get that recognition record, that recognition in a group setting somewhere, whether it be a secular setting or a Christian setting. It was like I was out in no-man’s-land. I’d created a lot of good music that nobody had even heard of because the record companies at first didn’t know what to do with me. First Asylum and now Myrrh.

RF: Yeah. That was probably about five years ago.