Stephen Stills Sells Catalog to Irving Azoff's Iconic Artists Group in ExpansiveDeal

Stephen Stills, co-founder of Buffalo Springfield and CSN, sells controlling interest in his intellectual property to Iconic Artists Group

Stephen Stills Sells Catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group in ExpansiveDeal

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Stills owned his compositions aside from a handful of Buffalo Springfield songs (like the protest classic — and the band’s only hit — “For What It’s Worth”) that will revert to him at the end of this year. With the IAG move, he has shifted administration of his catalog from Wixen Music Publishing to Universal Music Publishing Group and his music rights management from BMI to Azoff’s Global Music Rights. And while Warner Music Group owns the masters to CSN and CSNY releases, the bands’ members own their unreleased music, and Stills owns the master recordings of a significant amount of his unreleased solo material.

Asked what he wants out of his partnership with IAG, Stills replies: “A profit.” He’s half-kidding, but Azoff is dead serious when he talks about promoting and marketing Stills’ work better. “Nobody has focused on him for years and years,” he says. “Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Manassas; and Stephen Stills — I mean, he has had more than five careers.”

Stills and IAG are already teeing up projects that will appeal to longtime fans and expose new generations to his music. First is a previously unreleased live album captured from two shows at California’s Berkeley Community Theater in 1971 to support Stills’ sophomore solo album, Stephen Stills 2.

“We were deep-diving in my vault and we discovered this thing,” says Stills. “We thought, ‘This is sloppy but great.’ I couldn’t hit those notes with a cattle prod these days.” The release is expected later this year on a label yet to be named. (Stills hints that the vault is “full of tapes” still to be explored.) Also planned: an expanded 50th-anniversary version of Manassas’ self-titled 1972 double album, a lineup that featured former Byrds member Chris Hillman, former Flying Burrito Brothers member Al Perkins and Dallas Taylor, studio drummer for Young and CSN.

Azoff adds that people are also “circling” potential CSN and CSNY film projects. While Graham Nash and Neil Young have both fallen out with Crosby, Stills says he remains on good terms with all three. When Azoff asks him how long it has been since he has spoken to Crosby, Stills replies, “Not that long. Same with Graham. And Neil, I can get on the phone any time. Neil’s my son’s godfather.” He adds, “they’re great guys and we had a great career as long as we didn’t spend too much time in close proximity.”

There is also potential for a documentary on Stills, who was one of rock’s most compelling and tempestuous artists of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. “Stephen, separate from the band, is a story that has to be told,” Azoff says. And what stories there are: At the 1969 Big Sur Festival in California, Stills was famously captured on film trading punches with a heckler in the crowd. He is the only member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to be inducted twice in one night, he unsuccessfully auditioned for The Monkees, and Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton played on his debut solo album. He’s playing bass on Clapton’s “Let It Rain,” guitar on Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” and percussion on the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing.” In addition to his rock success, his blues supergroup with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, The Rides, took two albums to the top of Billboard’s Blues Albums chart.

That so much of his backstory remains widely unknown was “all part of a carefully devised plan,” Stills says with a smirk. “We’re going to change that,” says Azoff.