Buffalo Springfield — Sunset Strip, Los Angeles

Buffalo Springfield — Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, and Bruce Palmer — formed in Los Angeles in 1966 and became one of the most consequential bands in American rock history despite existing for less than two years. Their headquarters was the Sunset Strip, where clubs like the Whisky a Go Go at 8901 Sunset Boulevard gave them a residency and an audience. When the city of Los Angeles imposed a curfew on the Strip in November 1966 to clear teenagers from the street, the ensuing confrontations between police and young people prompted Stephen Stills to write "For What It's Worth" — a song that became an anthem of the protest era and one of the most recognisable recordings in American music.

The band's three albums — particularly the second, "Buffalo Springfield Again" (1967) — showcased an astonishing concentration of songwriting talent: Stills's meticulous, polished compositions alongside Young's rawer, more idiosyncratic songs, with Furay providing a gentler country-folk sensibility. The combination of these approaches, and the tensions between them, produced music that pointed directly toward Country Rock, CSNY, and the Eagles. The personnel changes and personal conflicts that dissolved the band by 1968 dispersed the talent into careers that would collectively define the next decade of California rock.

The Whisky a Go Go at 8901 Sunset Boulevard still operates as a live music venue and is one of the anchors of the Sunset Strip's music heritage. The riots of November 1966 are commemorated in rock history accounts and the events are documented in photographs taken on the Strip. Young and Stills reunited periodically over the decades, most recently in a brief Buffalo Springfield reformation in 2011.