Creativity Quote by Jim Messina

It lands like a shrug, but it’s really a diagnosis. Jim Messina’s line about Buffalo Springfield not rehearsing isn’t just a backstage gripe; it’s a compact way to describe a whole late-60s rock ecology where myth often outran process. Coming from a working musician and organizer type, the sentence has the blunt, unromantic cadence of someone who values craft. No metaphors, no nostalgia, no “creative differences.” Just a missing verb in the band’s life: practice.

The intent reads as corrective history. Buffalo Springfield’s legend is built on volatile talent and a short, incandescent run, but Messina points to the mundane infrastructure that makes greatness repeatable. “They did not rehearse” implies more than laziness: it hints at ego, fragmentation, and the way a band can become a rotating cast of brilliant individuals rather than a functioning unit. It’s also a quiet jab at the period’s fetish for spontaneity, the belief that authenticity lives only in the unplanned moment. Messina suggests the opposite: that spontaneity without preparation is just chaos with good PR.

Context matters. Springfield’s lineup was famously unstable, with clashing personalities and competing ambitions; rehearsing requires commitment to a shared center. By naming the absence of rehearsal, Messina frames their dysfunction as structural, not merely dramatic. The subtext: you can hear the cracks onstage and in the band’s lifespan, and the romance of that disorder doesn’t make it sustainable. This is the grown-up version of rock lore: talent is common; discipline is the differentiator.