"Mr. Soul" | ||||
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Single by Buffalo Springfield | ||||
from the album Buffalo Springfield Again | ||||
A-side | "Bluebird" | |||
Released | June 15, 1967 | |||
Recorded | January 9, 1967 | |||
Studio | Atlantic, New York City | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 2:35 | |||
Label | Atco | |||
Songwriter(s) | Neil Young | |||
Producer(s) |
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Buffalo Springfield singles chronology | ||||
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"Mr. Soul" is a song recorded by the Canadian-American rock band Buffalo Springfield in 1967. [1] It was released June 15, 1967, as the B-side to their fourth single "Bluebird" and later included on the group's second album Buffalo Springfield Again .
"Mr. Soul" is about Neil Young's personal problems with fame and disregard for rock stardom. [2] It was written by Young after he had an epilepsy attack after an early show with Buffalo Springfield in San Francisco. (Many in the audience wondered if the attack was part of the act. [3] ) While a patient at UCLA Medical Center, he wrote the song once he was awake and recovering and told to return for further tests. [3] The lyrics reflected Young's experience, feeling as though he was about to die. [3] Thereupon, he was advised by his doctor to never take LSD or any other hallucinogenic drugs. [3]
Composed on an acoustic twelve-string guitar, the dark and moody song is in double drop D tuning, which Young used in a number of other songs, such as "Ohio" and "Cinnamon Girl". [4] On the third track of Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968 , Young stated that, "A lot of songs take a long time to write. Generally they take an hour and a half, two hours to write. But this one took only five minutes". The main riff of the song is based on a modified version of the riff used in the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction" [5] Young subsequently recorded several other versions of the song, often with marked stylistic changes. The song has been described by music writers as folk rock, [6] psychedelic rock, [7] [8] hard rock, [9] and R&B. [10]
In a contemporary review of the song, Cash Box called it "a rhythmic, funky-filled stanza". [11]
An excerpt of a live version of the song is heard in the song "Broken Arrow" (1967), with the sounds of cheering crowds, taken from the cheering for the Beatles.
Young has frequently performed the song both solo and with various backing bands. Live recordings appear on Sugar Mountain – Live at Canterbury House 1968, 1993's Unplugged and 1997's Year of the Horse with Crazy Horse. In addition, Young re-recorded the song in a synthrock style on his 1982 album Trans , with vocals processed with a vocoder; [12] a live performance of this version also appears in the film Solo Trans . During the 2016 Bridge School Benefit concerts, Young guested with Metallica to perform an acoustic cover of the song. [13]
Cher recorded a cover of the song for her 1975 album Stars . In 1984, new wave band Wire Train covered the song as a bonus track of their album In A Chamber . [14] In 2004, Rush covered the song on their cover EP of songs from the 1960s, Feedback . [15] The song has also been recorded by The Everly Brothers in December 1968, but was not released until 1984 on their studio album Nice Guys. [16]
Iron & Wine covered the song on his live album Iron & Wine Live Bonnaroo , released in 2005. [17]
The Icicle Works covered the song on the 12-inch version of All the Daughters (Of Her Father's House).
Model Zero covered the song on their self titled album from 2019.
Decade is a compilation album by Canadian–American musician Neil Young, originally released in 1977 as a triple album and later issued on two compact discs. It contains 35 of Young's songs recorded between 1966 and 1976, among them five tracks that had been unreleased up to that point. It peaked at No. 43 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, and was certified platinum by the RIAA in 1986.
Funkadelic is the debut album by the American funk rock band Funkadelic, released in 1970 on Westbound Records.
Buffalo Springfield was a rock band formed in Los Angeles by Canadian musicians Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin and American musicians Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. The group, widely known for the song "For What It's Worth", released three albums and several singles from 1966 to 1968. Their music combined elements of folk music and country music with influences from the British Invasion and psychedelic rock. Like contemporary band the Byrds, they were key to the early development of folk rock. The band took their name from a steamroller parked outside their house.
Buffalo Springfield Again is the second album by Buffalo Springfield, released on Atco Records in October 1967. The album features some of the group's best-known songs, including "Mr. Soul", "Bluebird", "Expecting to Fly" and "Rock & Roll Woman", all of which were released as singles. In contrast to the band's hastily made debut album, recording for Again took place over a protracted nine-month span and was fraught with dysfunction, with each member eventually producing his own material largely independent of one another.
Last Time Around is the third and final studio album by the Canadian-American folk rock band Buffalo Springfield, released in July 1968. The line-up at the time officially consisted of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, and Jim Messina, though the band itself was essentially broken up and the album was put together from previous recordings, some made up to a year earlier. Jim Messina acted as the album producer and mixing engineer, with input from Furay, as the two compiled the record to fulfil the band's last contractual obligation to its label. A number of guest musicians appeared on the album, notably pedal steel guitar player Rusty Young.
The Chocolate Watchband is an American garage rock band that formed in 1965 in Los Altos, California. The band went through several lineup changes during its existence. Combining psychedelic and garage rock components, their sound was marked by David Aguilar's lead vocals, songwriting, as well as proto-punk musical arrangements. The band's rebellious musical posture made them one of the harder-edged groups of the period with many critics labeling them as America's answer to the Rolling Stones.
Buffalo Springfield is the debut album by the folk rock band Buffalo Springfield, released in October 1966 on Atco Records. Band members Stephen Stills and Neil Young wrote all the material on the album.
"For What It's Worth " is a song written by Stephen Stills. Performed by Buffalo Springfield, it was recorded on December 5, 1966, released as a single on Atco Records in December 1966 and peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the spring of 1967.
The "Alabama Song"—also known as "Moon of Alabama", "Moon over Alabama", and "Whisky Bar"—is an English version of a song written by Bertolt Brecht and translated from German by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play Little Mahagonny. It was reused for the 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and has been recorded by the Doors and David Bowie.
Journey Through the Past is a double LP soundtrack album from the film of the same name by Canadian / American musician Neil Young, released in November 1972 on Reprise Records, catalogue number 2XS 6480. It peaked at #45 on the Billboard 200. Its initial release was on vinyl, cassette tape, reel-to-reel tape, and 8-track tape cartridge. Although its follow-up Time Fades Away was finally released on CD in August 2017, Journey Through the Past remains the only 1970s Neil Young album yet to see an official CD reissue.
Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield is a compilation album released in February 1969 after the band disbanded in mid-1968.
Crazy Horse is the debut album by Crazy Horse, released in 1971 by Reprise Records. It is the only album by the band to feature Danny Whitten recorded without Neil Young, and it peaked at No. 84 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
"Broken Arrow" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young and recorded by Buffalo Springfield on their 1967 album Buffalo Springfield Again. It was recorded in August and September 1967 at Columbia Recording Studios and Sunset Sound Recorders. It incorporates musical ideas from "Down Down Down," a demo Young recorded with Buffalo Springfield.
Buffalo Springfield is a compilation album released on Atco Records in 1973. It is the fifth album by rock band Buffalo Springfield, and their second compilation. It was assembled by the label well after the band had broken up at a time when Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were quite popular and had not released any new material as a group for over two years, with their 1974 reunion tour eight months away. It features a nine-minute extended version of the song "Bluebird" by Stephen Stills, only available elsewhere on the Warner Special Products LP compilation "Heavy Metal – 24 Electrifying Performances", released in 1974. It has never been issued on compact disc and is currently out of print.
Neil Young Archives Vol. 1: 1963–1972 is the first in a planned series of box sets of archival material by Canadian-American musician Neil Young. It was released on June 2, 2009, in three different formats - a set of 10 Blu-ray discs in order to present high resolution audio as well as accompanying visual documentation, a set of 10 DVDs and a more basic 8-CD set. Covering Young's early years with The Squires and Buffalo Springfield, it also includes various demos, outtakes and alternate versions of songs from his albums Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, and Harvest, as well as tracks he recorded with Crazy Horse and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young during this time. Also included in the set are several live discs, as well as a copy of the long out-of-print film Journey Through the Past, directed by Young in the early 1970s.
"The Loner" is a song by Neil Young, his first solo single. It was released on his solo debut album in November 1968, and then an edited version as his debut solo single three months later on Reprise Records. It missed the Billboard Hot 100 chart completely, but over time has become a staple of his performance repertoire. Both it and "Sugar Mountain", its B-side recorded live at the Canterbury House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were released on album together for his 1977 compilation, Decade.
"Bluebird" is a song recorded by the American rock group Buffalo Springfield. It was written and produced by Stephen Stills, with co-production by Ahmet Ertegun. In June 1967, Atco Records released it as a single to follow-up their hit "For What It's Worth" (1966).
"Expecting to Fly" is a song written by Neil Young and performed by Buffalo Springfield. The song appeared on their 1967 album, Buffalo Springfield Again. It would reach #98 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.
"Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" is a song by the Canadian-American folk rock band Buffalo Springfield, released as the group's debut single in August 1966. Neil Young wrote the song in Yorkville in 1965 shortly after returning from a series of performances in Toronto, during a period when his bid at a solo career had been met with little positive response. The lyrics reflect metaphorically on Young's frustration toward his stalled career in music, and was inspired by Ross "Clancy" Smith, an aberrant classmate who incited awe in his school. Commentators recognize "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" as one of Buffalo Springfield's signature songs, as well as a milestone in Young's progression as a songwriter.
"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" is a song written by Neil Young that was originally released as the title track of his 1969 album with Crazy Horse, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. The song was written earlier, and a different version was originally considered for Young's 1968 solo debut album Neil Young.
...on the psychedelic R&B of "Mr. Soul"...