The Lost Child of Buffalo Springfield

Birthday remembrance for Bruce Palmer, forgotten member of a game-changing rock band

Trouble seemed to follow Bruce Palmer. His life was beset with legal scrapes, substance abuse, and wild card behavior, but his musical journey placed him in some of the most remarkable episodes of classic rock music.

Born 1946 in Nova Scotia, Canada, Palmer developed as a bassist, guitarist, and singer-songwriter. In 1965 he moved to Toronto to get absorbed in the city’s bustling scene for folk rock and British Invasion-inspired bands. He joined Jack London & The Sparrows (who morphed into Steppenwolf after Palmer left).

Then came The Mynah Birds, a jangly garage band started by Buffalo NY-born Rick James (long before “Superfreak” made him a funky superstar). One day Palmer, seeing Neil Young walking down the street with a guitar case, asked Young to join the band—who had just signed to Motown, the legendary Detroit-based soul music juggernaut that was expanding into mainstream pop/rock. The Mynah Birds recorded a few sessions:

...but Motown dropped them when label heads found out James was a deserter from The US Navy (years later the jettisoned Mynah Birds tracks were released on a Motown CD box set).

Palmer and Young sold Mynah Birds gear to fund a trip to Los Angeles, searching for Richie Furay and Stephen Stills, who they’d intersected with in Toronto. One day in April 1966, as the ex-Mynahs rode Young’s “legendary band hearse” down Sunset Boulevard, Stills drove by in the opposite direction. When Stills saw the Ontario license plates, he turned around, pursued the hearse, pulled up beside them, realized who they were, and the whole crew pulled into a carpark and introduced themselves. Not long after, Jim Dickson (manager of The Byrds) suggested they add another Canadian, drummer Dewey Martin (formerly with Patsy Cline, The Dillards, and The Standells). Within days they became Buffalo Springfield, named after a steamroller parked outside of Stills house.

In a matter of weeks, thanks in part to plugging from Chris Hillman of The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield were celebrated alongside The Byrds and The Doors in the thriving L.A. music scene. Their first hit single, “For What It’s Worth,” came right out of the heat of a riot on Sunset Strip.

Released in December 1966, it became a Top 40 chart mainstay for the next four months. The lyrics were topical, but the spirit of the song still applies to the shape-shifting constants of cultural strife. Their 1967 landmark performance on CBS television’s The Smothers Brothers Show…

…was tattoo’d on to my 10-year old mind—years later I covered it:

(hitting #1 on Apple Music in 2002).

That CBS broadcast gave Buffalo Springfield a big boost. The band charmed viewers with their charismatic spright, but Palmer was already out of the band (he was replaced on screen by Jim Fielder of The Mothers of Invention, sitting on his amp with minimal exposure to the cameras). Palmer had been deported back to Canada after several arrests for drug possession. His legal hassles, compounded by his penchant to stay home reading mystical texts, distanced him from the band’s social strata. In May 1967, disguised as a businessman, he sneaked back into the US and was re-admitted to the band, but they now thought him to be unreliable and parts of their second album was finished with session bassists ghosting Palmer’s parts. This situation lasted until Palmer was deported again in 1968 right as they were set to do a major share bill tour with The Beach Boys.

Their sound engineer Jim Messina (later of of the mega-hit duo Loggins & Messina) permanently replaced Palmer. Then Young began to phase himself out of the band. By late summer 1968, the clashing egos of young bucks and other problems put an end to the classic line-up of Buffalo Springfield.

Within weeks, Martin formed a New Buffalo Springfield with Jim Price (later sideman with Joe Cocker and The Rolling Stones) and future members of Love. Martin’s NBS hit the road until Stills and Young put on the kibosh, negotiating that Martin could go out as New Buffalo (no Springfield), which segued into the band Medicine Ball (they released one acclaimed country rock album in 1970). Martin went on to a notable career as a drummer-for-hire and bandleader of Buffalo Springfield tributes. Furay, Stills, and Young flourished with successful solo careers as well as forming supergroups Crosby Stills Nash & Young and Poco—all this happening while Palmer languished in Canada.

It’s unclear how the twice-deported Palmer got back into the US, but in May 1969 he was given another break and was hired to play bass for Crosby Stills Nash & Young. That lasted two weeks (he was replaced by Motown prodigy Greg Reeves), and back to Canada he went. Then in February 1970 he illegally returned to the US to give a deposition in a civil suit, then flaked on his attorney. A private investigator was hired to locate Palmer, who was caught outside his hiding place in January 1971, arrested on multiple charges, and deported a third time in 1972.

Despite all the lamming around, Palmer somehow found time to record his outlandish (and only) solo album in 1971, THE CYCLE IS COMPLETE. It’s an uncanny yet riveting offering of four improvisations featuring a scat-singing Rick James, members of the psychedelic folk group Kaleidoscope, and innovative keyboardist Ed Roth—whose ethereal Mellotron parts presaged the sprawling space music of artists like Tangerine Dream.

The few people who heard Palmer’s new album gave it strong and extreme reactions. One negative review described it as an “aural, drug-induced nervous breakdown,” while fans of the album compared it to Syd Barrett’s solo albums, wistful Grateful Dead jams, and Miles Davis’s trippier fusions. One critic called it a “jazzier version of OAR,” the touchstone solo album by the mercurial Skip Spence of Moby Grape.

Verve Records was a label accustomed to fringe music, but no one knew how to promote this bizarre record from such an erratic artist, and the LP went straight to the cut-out bins (I bought one for $1.99 at a drug store). The LPs commercial failure nudged Palmer to drop out of music until 1977, when he re-emerged with musicians from the seminal Canadian band, Kensington Market, with guitarist/producer Gene Martynec (later award-winning composer and sideman for Bruce Cockburn and Lou Reed). Outside of regional gigs, however, the Palmer/Kensington merger didn’t last.

Palmer’s reclusion ended in 1982 as his old friend Neil Young hired him back. He played bass for Young’s controversial techno-experimental TRANS album and international tour, and Palmer was given ample face time on the 1983 concert film.

That reinvigorated him to join new iterations of Buffalo Springfield Again with Dewey Martin, with tentative support from Stephen Stills (who briefly considered joining them). However, by the late 80s, Palmer was a spent force. Three marriages and battles with chronic illness and mental health had taken a toll. He retreated from serious mainstream music work, coming out long enough in 1997 to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Buffalo Springfield.

In 2003, despite the master reel gone missing, Palmer’s CYCLE IS COMPLETE album was reissued on CD using cobbles of surviving tapes and alternate takes. Hopefully it gave the musician some closure. A year later, he died of a heart attack at age 58.

Palmer became a footnote, at least compared to his illustrious ex-bandmates who mostly went on to phenomenal success and are still celebrated for their global influence on popular music. However, whatever kept Palmer off track, he played a pivotal role in groundbreaking work that endures, leaving us much evidence of glimmering creativity that feels complete on its own terms.

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