#1408: Richie Furay

80s Snapshot:

• Number of songs on Hot 100: 1
• Highest peak position: 87
• Cumulative weeks on Hot 100: 1

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Richie Furay’s musical career exists in almost a palindromic timeline. The peak of his solo success came at the middle of a career which saw him form two very notable bands in the beginning, then rejoin those bands in reverse order in more recent years. His influential blend of country and rock will turn up several times throughout this journey.

Born in Ohio, guitarist and vocalist Richie Furay eventually moved to New York where he met and befriended Stephen Stills. The two were a part of the vocal group the Au Go Go Singers, who recorded one album in 1964 before disbanding. Two years later, Stills recruited Furay to join him in California to form a new band. A chance meeting in Los Angeles with Canadians Neil Young and Bruce Palmer led to the foundation of Buffalo Springfield (with fellow Canadian Dewey Martin joining shortly thereafter on drums).

Buffalo Springfield are a prototypical, albeit highly important, one-hit wonder. Their 1967 protest track “For What It’s Worth” reached #7 on the Hot 100 and came to be one of the defining counterculture anthems of the Vietnam era. Though the band had four other singles reach the Hot 100, none of these reached the Top 40 and the band had already disbanded by 1968. Despite a very short recording lifespan, the band’s influence was towering enough to warrant induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Stills and Young would of course go on to very successful careers (with and without each other’s occasional involvement) which would garner each of them a second induction to the Rock Hall (in Stills’s case, twice in the same year).

Though Stills and Young are certainly the best-known members of Buffalo Springfield, Furay went on to have a very successful career in his own right. Shortly after the band’s dissolution, Furay pieced together the third and final Buffalo Springfield album with Jim Messina, an occasional collaborator with the band. Furay and Messina then put together a new band, Poco, building on the country-rock blend that Buffalo Springfield had started experimenting with in their later work.

Similar to Buffalo Springfield, Poco wound up being a successful and highly influential band who nonetheless are best known today for the future successes of its members. Messina was only a part of the band’s first two albums before breaking away to form a duo with Kenny Loggins. The band’s first two bassists, Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmit, are much better known today for their tenures with the Eagles. As for Furay, he was with Poco for each of their first five albums. During that time they only had two singles reach the Hot 100: 1970’s “You Better Think Twice” (#72) and 1971’s “C’mon” (#69).

As former bandmates Stills and Young had previously done, Furay’s next move was to hop aboard the supergroup train. Founded in 1973, the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band’s namesakes included Furay, J.D. Souther (a singer-songwriter best known for his frequent collaborations with the Eagles) and Chris Hillman (previously of The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Manassas – another Stephen Stills supergroup). The band marked yet another country-rock success story for Furay, with their 1974 self-titled album going gold and producing the hit single “Fallin’ In Love”, a Furay composition that reached #27 on the Hot 100.

The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band disbanded shortly after the the 1975 critical and commercial disappointment of their unfortunately-titled sophomore album Trouble In Paradise, and Furay finally embarked on a solo career after many years hopping from one band to another. Signing to David Geffen’s Asylum Records, his 1976 debut solo effort I’ve Got A Reason was country-rock in his traditional style but also with pioneering elements of Christian rock (he was introduced to his newfound faith while a part of SHF). His second album Dance A Little Light was released in 1978, and his cover of the Drifters classic “This Magic Moment” nearly cracked the Hot 100 (peaking at #101). It would be his third album, the 1979 effort I Still Have Dreams, that generated his lone Top-40 hit as a solo artist. The title track, a soft-rock Eagles sound-alike (even featuring former Eagle Randy Meisner on backing vocals), debuted on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1979, and spent the final 3 weeks of the calendar year at its #39 peak. “I Still Have Dreams” spent one final week at #87 on the first chart of 1980.

After an unsuccessful solo album in 1982, Furay retired from performing to focus on his faith, becoming a pastor in Colorado (a post he would hold until 2017). The palindromic part of his career I mentioned at the top of this story began in the late 80s when he and the four other original members of Poco reunited. The original five had only recorded 1969’s Pickin’ Up The Pieces together, making 1989’s Legacy their highly-anticipated first recording together in two decades. The album performed well, generating a pair of Top-40 hits in “Call It Love” (#18) and “Nothin’ To Hide” (#39). Furay remained with the band through a 1990 tour opening for Richard Marx and a performance at Farm Aid IV, but bowed out before a headline tour to resume his ministerial duties.

His next recording was a Christian album in 1997, the same year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Buffalo Springfield. After another Christian album in 2005, he began dipping his toe back into the world of secular recording and touring. In support of his 2006 album The Heartbeat Of Love, he opened for America and Linda Ronstadt while also touring on his own and recording a live album in 2007. Another brief reunion of Poco followed in 2009, with much of the original lineup performing together again for a few shows (most notably at the Stagecoach Festival). His career came full circle in 2010 when Furay, Neil Young and Stephen Stills reunited for a charity concert in California, sparking a full-blown reunion of Buffalo Springfield. Though an announced full tour never came to fruition, the reunited Buffalo Springfield played a number of shows together in 2011, including as one of the headliners of the Bonnaroo Festival that year.

Furay has continued to perform off and on over the past 10 years, most recently touring in support of his 2022 album In The Country (comprising cover versions of numerous country hits across the decades), with a handful of dates on the calendar for summer 2025. His multi-faceted career now spans nearly 60 years of blending country and rock in a familiar yet influential blend that netted him Top-40 hits at every step along the way.

Next: The Adventures
Previous: RCR