STEPHEN STILLS & MANASSAS
ATLANTA 1972

Formed in the fall of 1971 following Stephen Stills' concert tour to support his album Stephen Stills 2 (1971), Manassas were an American supergroup formed by Stills and used largely to pursue his own music. The band released two studio albums before disbanding in October 1973. 

After a chance meeting with Flying Burrito Brothers singer/multi-instrumentalist Chris Hillman in Cleveland, where Stills' tour schedule crossed paths with that of the Burritos, Stills saw an opportunity to change his artistic direction. He subsequently contacted Hillman, asking him, along with Burritos' guitarist Al Perkins and fiddler Byron Berline, to join him in Miami at Criteria Studios to jam. Stills also invited several members of his touring band (drummer Dallas Taylor, bassist Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, keyboardist Paul Harris and vocalist/percussionist Joe Lala) to play at the session. 

The musicians quickly gelled in the studio, and within several weeks had recorded enough material at Criteria to fill a double-LP album release. The band was capable of a wide musical range, with a repertoire including blues, folk, country, Latin, and rock songs. They named themselves Manassas after Stills, who had an interest in American Civil War history, orchestrated a photo shoot for them in Manassas, Virginia, the site of the First and Second Battles of Bull Run (1861 and 1862, respectively). 

The band's first album, Manassas, a double-LP sporting a cover photo from the shoot in Virginia, was released in April 1972. The album was well received, quickly peaking at No. 4 in the United States and achieving RIAA gold certification. For most of 1972, Manassas embarked on an international tour in support of the album, playing in Europe, Australia, and arenas in the United States. They would open their concerts with the first side of the album in full, and finish with "The Treasure", then an acoustic "Find the Cost of Freedom". During this tour they appeared on the TV shows ABC-TV's In Concert in the United States, BBC's In Concert in the United Kingdom, and Beat-Club in West Germany. Upon returning to the U.S. from the European leg of Manassas' 1972 tour, Chris Hillman took several weeks away from the band to record a reunion album with his pre-Burritos band The Byrds. Manassas then regrouped and quickly completed their second album, Down the Road. 

While on their 1972 world tour, Manassas played one of their finest shows at Atlanta’s Alexander Memorial Coliseum, and the concert was recorded for live FM radio broadcast and transmitted across the southern states.