Long May You Run - THE STILLS-YOUNG BAND***

Long May You Run/Make Love To You/Midnight On The Bay/Black Coral/Ocean Girl/Let It Shine/12-8 Blues (All The Same)/Fontainebleau/Guardian Angel

The Stills-Young Band was the final permutation of the CSNY grouping with Long May You Run the sole collaboration between these two artists. The Young songs find more critical favour than those from Stills. (US:26 UK:12)

“A bit of a lost odyssey in the Neil Young canon as he and old band mate Stephen Stills formed a new band for just one album. Buffalo Springfield fans must have rejoiced to hear the news. Sadly, it's nothing ground breaking. It's a shame that Stills, previously a hip and relevant songwriter, has become a mainly adult contemporary pap writer by this point, and so had very little besides harmonies to add to the table. So yes, all of his songs are sadly filler but Neil's are all pretty good.”

“This is a cohesive and carefully assembled mood album which flows from one track to the next as Neil and Steve play a lazy backyard catch, throwing the ball to each other. Standout tracks are for me Stills' organ-driven Make Love To You and Young's Fontainebleau, possibly the most beautiful song he ever recorded.”

“The Neil songs are good and worth acquiring if you're a big fan. Stills' songs pale in comparison though he does contribute some neat fretwork in places. So a patchy album at best.”

“Long May You Run was a quite successful album, mostly thanks to Neil's classic title track. The reviews were pretty negative, but it's far from a bad record. Neil does deliver better songs than Stills, with Let It Shine and Fontainebleau being great compositions. Stills wrote songs that were good enough, but the contrast with Neil's work is too big, and besides, we all know he could do much better.”

“Neil's stuff isn't exactly revelatory, but it has a certain relaxed charm. Stills' tunes, meanwhile, have a sort of overbearing pretentiousness to them, while still being pretty low-energy.”

“Well, at least the Neil Young songs are good. Unfortunately that only makes up half the album. And even the Young songs aren't among his best. That is, with one notable exception. I love the song Fontainebleau, it's a Neil Young classic that actually makes it worth the album purchase.”