AS THE bass player in Buffalo Springfield, Bruce Palmer was a member of one of the most significant and influential American rock groups of the 1960s. Although he was not a songwriter, his muscular playing was a key component in the group’s folk-rock style and added vital backbone to the songs of its two main writers, Neil Young and Stephen Stills.

When the group, often described as “America’s answer to the Beatles”, broke up in 1968, Palmer was still only 21 and he never again enjoyed such a high profile in the rock world. But he did make a solo album that became a collector’s item and he played again with Neil Young during the 1980s.

Bruce Palmer grew up in Leaside, Toronto, the son of a concert violinist and an artist mother. He began playing the guitar before his teens, switching to bass when he was 14 shortly after joining his first band, the Swinging Doors. As the only white musician in a black band, he developed a unique style, combining the funk of R&B with a more fluid feel that was all his own.

By 1964 he had joined Jack London and the Sparrows, a Canadian outfit imitating groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones who were leading the “British invasion” of the North American charts. The group even adopted fake English accents, an idea Palmer loathed. The next year he transferred to the Mynah Birds, the main rivals to the Sparrows, who were led by the singer Rick James.

Palmer suggested his friend Neil Young should join the line-up, and at first the Mynah Birds flourished. They were signed by the Motown label, which took them to Detroit to record an album. But when James was arrested as a draft-dodger, the record label cancelled the group’s contract. Young decided to quit Canada and persuaded Palmer to leave behind his wife Dale and daughter and head with him for Los Angeles, driving across America in a 1953 Pontiac hearse that Young nicknamed “ Mort”.

Young intended to look for Stephen Stills, a singer he had met on the folk circuit the previous year. He had no address or even any firm evidence that Stills was in LA, but, according to legend, they met at a traffic light on Sunset Boulevard. Stills already had the nucleus of a new group with the singer Richie Furay and the drummer Dewy Martin. With the addition of Palmer and Young the line-up was complete. As Palmer later put it: “They needed a bassist and a guitar player and we needed a band, so it was perfect.” They took the name Buffalo Springfield from a steamroller. The group’s rise was rapid. Palmer and Young had arrived in LA on April 1, 1966. By July they were supporting the Rolling Stones at the Hollywood Bowl and had signed to the Atco label.

From the start, Palmer’s bass playing was an integral part of the group’s sound, heard to particularly fine effect on Stills’ For What It’s Worth on the band’s debut album (1966) and on Young’s forceful Mr Soul on the follow-up, Buffalo Springfield Again. But in early 1967, the band was thrown into disarray when Palmer was arrested for possession of marijuana and was deported to Canada.

He kicked his heels in Toronto for four months but was back in California in time to play that summer’s Monterey pop festival, the first of the great Sixties festivals.

His problems with the law may explain the stories of him playing with his back to the audience and concealing his face in publicity shots. Despite his attempts to keep a low profile, he was arrested again in January 1968 for driving without a licence and further drug offences. To his disgust, the band abandoned him and he was replaced on bass by Jim Messina even before the court ordered his deportation for a second time. In the end, it made little difference; infighting between Young and Stills meant that the group was on its last legs anyway. Buffalo Springfield split up for good in May 1968, before their third and final album had even been released.

Palmer was considered for a job backing Crosby, Stills and Nash. His bass playing can be heard on two tracks recorded by the band that eventually appeared many years later. When he wasn’t offered the job, he launched a solo career with The Cycle is Complete (1971). One of the strangest and most wilfully uncommercial albums in the rock canon, the almost wholly instrumental record contained four meandering, improvised jams, backed by members of Kaleidoscope and his old colleague Rick James. Predictably, it failed to sell and Palmer retired from the music business.

During the 1970s he spent time with an Indian religious cult, continued a love affair with LSD (he had been an enthusiastic experimenter since the mid-1960s), developed a drink problem and had further run-ins with the US immigration authorities. He had made little money from Buffalo Springfield and lived a hand-to-mouth existence. At one point he appealed to his old colleagues for help when he was in yet another scrape. Young put the phone down, but Stills came to his aid.

Out of the blue in 1982, he made contact again to suggest a Buffalo Springfield reunion. It never happened, but Young invited him to join his touring band and to play on his 1983 album, Trans. A couple of years later he put together a band called Buffalo Springfield Revisited, although Martin was the only other original member in the line-up. But a planned reunion of the original group in 1988 collapsed when Young “forgot” to show up for the scheduled rehearsal. Palmer angrily denounced his old friend. In 1997 Palmer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the other members of Buffalo Springfield, but Young again failed to turn up.

He is survived by his daughter.

Bruce Palmer, musician, was born on September 9, 1946. He died of a heart attack on October 4, 2004, aged 58.