CHRONICLE MAGAZINE BENOIT FELLER ROCK & FOLK N ° 176 September 1981 1 1972 33 rpm albums Ref: 60021 WEA Seven years after its publication, this double album dominated violently still the work of Stephen Stills, slice very surprisingly, almost inexplicable, everything that could come of the American West and appears as one of the most beautiful patties of this decade. Unexpected moment of magic, pure invention none of the seven men in the group should, subsequently, namely exploit, Manassas repeated four years after the Flyng Burritos Gram Parsons and "Gilded Palace Of Sin", the history of training which as killed by his own energy, artistically dies while it achieves a masterstroke. Surrounded by a group which, unlike those he had been one in the past (Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills & Nash), liked to give more instrumental sensations and thus search the composing technique, Stephen Stills has developed and magnified by all the ideas implicit in the electrical tracks of the first album by CS & N ("Long Time Gone", "Pre-Road Down"). And the alliance of this group of veterans (Chris Hillman, Dallas Taylor, Al Perkins, Joe Lala, Paul Harris, Calvin Samuels) who was one of the best of the entire American rock and also true family tree of country-rock, alliance composer whose inspiration is on these four faces of an unreal quenching, produces a disc anthology: bluegrass ("Cuban Bluegrass"); country'n'western ("Fallen Eagle"); blues ("Bluesman"); rock'n'roll ("Anyway", "Right Now"), all genres (except jazz) that make up the US popular music are here more or joined qu'abordés: melted style cast qu'abreuvent thousand sources and creates as new. The construction of the album is very original: an acceleration sensation and increasing intensity emerges in the course of listening to these four faces, the pieces range from short "Song Of Love" throughout "Treasure" stretching is. In this sense, this first embodiment of Manassas is a concept album, the only addition to all the work of Stills.
