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October, 2006
 
Picking Up the Pieces
Interview with Richie Furay, Part 2 by Steve Matteo In part one of our interview with Richie Furay, we detailed his musical beginnings and his time with the Buffalo Springfield. This month, we look back at his time with Poco, the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band and his solo career. With the Springfield falling apart, Furay developed a musical relationship with Jim Messina, and the idea for a new group, which would eventually be called Poco, took hold. "We knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to put together this country-rock band and it was going to include Rusty Young," Furay recalled. The rest of the lineup seemed obvious in some cases but quite surprising in others. A choice that made sense but didn’t happen was Gram Parsons. Furay explained why Parsons didn’t join the group. "Gram was just a little too far over the edge. Who he was as a person, I liked. He was just a little bit on the outside. I could like him from a distance, but when it became something where we were going to be a family together—where it was a musical marriage—that wasn’t going to work. There was too much of a dark side to Gram." For both Poco and Crosby, Stills and Nash to simultaneously record their debut albums, something of a baseball trade ensued that involved Atco and Epic Records. Simply put, Furay was still signed to Atco from his Springfield tenure and Graham Nash was signed to Epic from his time with the Hollies. In order for CSN to record for Atlantic and Poco to record for Epic, Furay and Nash were essentially traded, with Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic and Clive Davis of Columbia, Epic’s parent label, brokering the deal. The original Poco lineup included Furay, Messina, Rusty Young, George Grantham and Randy Meisner. Meisner, who would go on to form the original Eagles with Don Henley, Glen Frey and Bernie Leadon, left the group after its debut, Pickin’ Up The Pieces. Furay said he was "in shock when Randy decided to leave." Again, as with the Springfield, part of the problem was getting the right sound. With Poco recording at Columbia Studios, union engineers had to be used, which meant that Messina could only direct the engineers and not actually touch the controls. When it came time to mix the album, Furay and Messina were finally in control, but Meisner wanted to get involved. When he was barred from the studio, he quit. In what would prove to be an ironic turn of events, Timothy B. Schmit joined the band on bass. He would eventually replace Meisner in the Eagles. While Poco, like the Springfield, never quite achieved the success they seemed destined for, in part due to their polished sound on record, they were regarded by those who saw them in concert as red-hot performers, evidenced by their live album, Deliverin’, in 1971. "Poco was a dynamic live act," Furay proclaimed. "Had it not been for that, Poco would have probably dissolved because we couldn’t sustain ourselves on record sales." Furay was with Poco for their first five studio albums (Pickin’ Up The Pieces in 1969, Poco in 1970, From The Inside in 1971, A Good Feelin’ To Know in 1972 and Crazy Eyes in 1973), as well as for its live album. He eventually left, as did Messina, who formed Loggins & Messina after the group’s live album, and the group continued on. As for Poco continuing on to this day, Furay, with no rancor said, "I figured they would." The original lineup reunited for a tour and an album, Legend, in 1987, but the reunion never really worked, according to Furay, because "the people directing the business" of the band had too much input into the song selection and recording of the album. Furay said, "Most times reunions don’t work." This was also the case with the few times the Springfield tried to reunite. Furay talked about what happened when Neil Young wanted to try a Springfield reunion a few years ago. "Young called and said, 'You and Stephen and I should get together and do this acoustic trio thing.'" Furay paused and then said, "‘It’s just not going to happen.’" If two supergroups were not enough, Furay was part of yet another with the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, who released their self-titled debut album in 1974. The brainchild of David Geffen, and comprised of Furay, Chris Hillman from the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Manassas, and J.D. Souther, who co-wrote some of the Eagles’ biggest hits, as well as for writing for James Taylor, the trio recorded two albums. The band never gelled and, reflective of the tensions within the group, named its second and final album Trouble In Paradise in 1975. The group, which also included Paul Harris, Al Perkins and Jim Gordon, who had just come from Derek & the Dominoes, never worked out, according to Furay, due to the fact that "what might look good on paper doesn’t always translate out." Still signed to Geffen’s Asylum Records, Furay recorded three solo albums, I’ve Got A Reason (1976), Dance a Little Light (1978) and I Still Have Dreams (1979). He explained the direction he wanted to take with his solo albums. "I wanted to make some changes," he stated. I didn’t want to have the country-rock flavor that I had been associated with in the past." Throughout the three albums he recorded for Asylum, Furay felt that he never got the kind of record company support he needed. "It became frustrating. As long as David was there I really felt I had an ally, a friend, someone who was going to support me, but David was making changes in his life and was moving away from Asylum and moving more toward movies." Joe Smith eventually took over Asylum, and while he did show interest in Furay, the label simply never got behind his subsequent albums. Furay had been going through many personal changes in his life for years, which included problems in his marriages and a gradual conversion to Christianity. He eventually decided to make music that reflected his new spiritual life and released Season of Change in 1982 on Myrrh Records, a Contemporary Christian label, and two more recordings: In My Father’s House in 1997 and I Am Sure in 2004. Since 1982, Furay has been a minister at Calvary Chapel in Broomfield, Colo. Gradually, Furay has come back to playing the music from his past and has now made an album entitled The Heartbeat of Love, which harkens back to his roots. The album boasts an impressive cast of supporting players including Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Kenny Loggins, Timothy B. Schmit, Mark Volman, Sam Bush, Jeff Hanna, Jim Horn and Paul Cotton from Poco. The album has a fresh sound, overall is energetic and upbeat, and in the case of songs like "Dean’s Barbecue," displays a real leap forward in his songwriting. As for why he chose to make the album now, Furay said, "I feel like I just have freedom in my life to do what I want to do." |