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Sly Stone

The incredible and unpredictable Sly Stone has left the building, and modern pop music has lost one of its foremost architects. Alec Palao pays tribute and remembers the times he spent in the company of a true legend.
 
EVEN THOUGH he has more or less been absent from the music scene for the best part of three decades, it’s going to be hard to envisage a world without Sly Stone. Because the man’s influence remains as pervasive as ever, hiding in plain sight. Though it was the Family Stone that as a unit pioneered some of the core rhythm patterns of funk and soul, it was fully under the direction and inspiration of their bandleader Sly. And indeed, good or bad, the evolution of beats as the bedrock of all modern music can be traced at least in part to his early 1970s experiments. At his peak, Sly’s arrangements and sound design ploughed a furrow unknown in black music, which is why its top instrumentalists, such as Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davis, would hold him in genuine awe.
 
In tandem with this bold and outrageous hijack of music in sound and form, Sly Stone’s genius equally lay within his songs, for as a songwriter, his audacity was unparalleled. Outside of the familiar, the Family Stone’s repertoire is deep with gems of all varieties, and not just in the pure soul / funk idioms. Pop-wise, he gave us playful bubblegum (‘Life’), Bacharach-ian lilt (‘Running Away’) and a genuine standard (‘Hot Fun In The Summertime’); on the rock tip, he could drive it hard (‘I Want To Take You Higher’), spook us with a psychedelic nightmare (‘Trip To Your Heart’) or a visceral freak-out (‘Jane Is A Groupee’).
 
My own journey with this remarkable catalogue began in London in the early 80s, when I scored an original US pressing of the “Dance To The Music” album on the Holloway Road in north London. I had vague knowledge of the Family Stone hits of course, but this record completely floored me in its energy and precison, especially the 12 minutes adrenalin rush of ‘Dance To the Medley’, a fuzz-filled psych-soul spectacular. I quickly became a besotted student of the Family Stone, and as I absorbed both the highlights and the obscurities that were the legacy of this band of bands, I came to realize – and appreciate – the genius of Sly Stone.
 
SYLVESTER STEWART was born in Texas in 1943, and moved with his family to Vallejo, northeast of San Francisco. Second eldest of the Stewart clan, precocious doesn’t even start to describe the youngster as he started singing in church, leading his siblings on an early gospel disc, ‘On The Battlefield’ in 1956. By high school, christened by a schoolmate “Sly”, he was playing numerous instruments and biding time in both R&B bands and a mixed-race vocal group, The Viscaynes. The latter gave him some brief, if disappointing, experience as a record act, and it was their local hit ‘Yellow Moon’ in 1961 that brought Sly to the attention of Tom Donahue and Bob Mitchell, popular Bay Area deejays and partners in Tempo Productions, who hired him to conduct the orchestra at large multi-act affairs at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. Sly also began receiving musical instruction from David Froehlich at Solano College, helping hone and discipline his raw talents.
 
By 1963, the Tempo gigs had led to a more lucrative position as producer for Donahue and Mitchell’s Autumn Records. The apprenticeship not only saw Sly helm major hits by Bobby Freeman (‘C’mon & Swim’) and The Beau Brummels (‘Laugh, Laugh’, ‘Just A Little’) but delivered invaluable experience in the studio, particularly in the areas of arrangement and production. Open-minded and in thrall to the Beatles and Stones as much as Ray Charles or Marvin Gaye, Sly was at ease producing local rock groups for Autumn, such as The Vejtables and Mojo Men, and was even an unlikely steward of the nascent San Francisco alternative scene with The Great! Society, featuring Grace Slick. All the while, he had made his own discs for Autumn like ‘Buttermilk’, led a nightclub band in the city’s topless den of iniquity, North Beach, and most significantly, followed Donahue and Mitchell into radio, securing a hugely popular slot on startup AM soul station KSOL under the new sobriquet Sly Stone, where he drove the FCC mad by singing or playing along to records on-air and confounded his black listenership by playing the likes of Bob Dylan.
 
But by early 1966 and the collapse of Autumn, Sly was looking to expand his horizons. A brief association with Billy Preston – they intended to work for Ray Charles organization as “The Sons Of Ray” - came to naught. Working clubs after his radio shift with a crew of jaded R&B players known as The Stoners, Sly decided to change course and instead gathered a top-flight crew unbeholden to trends and fully under his direction. To this end, in late 1966 he selected his brother Freddie and drummer Greg Errico from the former’s outfit Freddie & The Stone Souls, and on horns, two long-time pals, Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini. Larry Graham filled an enviable position on bass, and a little later on, the bloodline would continue when sister Rose came in on second keyboard. All the players were masters of their respective instruments, but eager to be guided and conducted by Sly who, to paraphrase a future Family Stone classic, let everybody shine. In fact, Freddie and Larry handled as much of the lead vocals in the early days as Sly. This then was Sly & The Family Stone, and as a recently-released live set from a residency at the Winchester Cathedral nightclub in March 1967 attests, the ensemble was fully incandescent right from its outset.
 
This instant Bay Area notoriety quickly translated into a record deal and out-of-town dates under the tutelage of manager David Kapralik, but the Family Stone’s ascent was somewhat measured. Their 1967 debut “A Whole New Thing,” in retrospect a remarkable and prescient fusion of pop, R&B and psychedelia, was considered too dense for the marketplace, and so it was the clarion call chorale of the modular ‘Dance To The Music’ that would announce Sly & The Family Stone to the world in early 1968. The titular second LP and its sequel “Life” continued the remarkable rock-soul brew, with the group’s colourful on-stage energy palpable even within Sly’s trickiest production values. But it was the crossover smash ‘Everyday People,’ a devastatingly simple hymn to brotherhood and understanding that would make Sly & The Family Stone a household name.
 
Their music having now entered the global pop consciousness, the group was one of a handful of ostensibly black acts to become fully integrated into the rock scene, with a legendary appearance at Woodstock in 1969 the apotheosis of it all. The “Stand” album was a crystallization of that moment with cutting-edge commentary along the lines of the title cut, ‘Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey’ and the non-LP ‘Thank You (Falettin Be Micelf Agin).’ But behind the scenes, Sly was already onto his next move. His boutique label Stoneflower presaged the deconstructive, drum machine-led technique heard on “There’s A Riot Goin’ On,” a record two years in the making that would take black pop music into a completely different realm. The coarse-grained groove of ‘Family Affair’ was Sly’s third chart topper in 1971, but a reputation for no-shows and numerous, well-documented diversions would go on to frame the public perception of Sly Stone, and siphon attention away from his groundbreaking recordings. Whilst there was still a Family Stone, the outfit was no longer populated by the original constituents, and, it’s fair to say, lost something into the bargain.
 
Generally considered the last great Sly record, the featured cut of 1973’s “Fresh” track posited ‘If You Want Me To Stay,’ in retrospect a question Sly might have been asking himself. His creativity remained unstemmed, but the inspiration of earlier times started to diminish, and over the course of the next decade and several less-than-essential albums, the best of which was "Small Talk" and the 1975 solo effort “High On You”, Sly’s star had seemed to wane. Publicly, he had allowed a near-caricature to evolve, and seemed not to care. In and out of the news as ridiculous rumours spread about his supposed activities, Sly slowly became a recluse from the late 1980s on. Still ruled by music, he recorded constantly and took to the new digital technology that gave him ever more autonomy, just as the Rhythm King beatbox had in earlier times. Demos from this lost period suggest that Sly still had a lot more to offer than the few desultory bits of music bearing his name, which can be assessed as largely the exploitative work of others. Having originally decamped to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, Sly subsequently spent time on the East Coast, before he returned to the Bay Area for intermittent spells. A lifelong fan of cars and motorbikes, he actually enjoyed his nomadic existence, as extenuating circumstances governed by a fractious relationship with management saw Sly divide time between Los Angeles area motels and his beloved camper van by the late 2000s.
 
THIS WAS THE PERIOD in which this writer got to meet and engage with Sly. As a reissue producer, I had taken great pleasure in earlier assembling “Precious Stone,” a compendium of Sly’s mid-1960s work for Autumn, issued on Ace in 1994. Fifteen years later, a sequel was on the cards, heavily inspired by my ensuing friendship with funk superfans Edwin and Arno Konings, who not only both shared my love for the Family Stone, but whose honest enthusiasm had allowed them to gain the various band members’ confidence. Having uncovered various Sly-related masters left at Bay Area studios in the mid-1960s, I needed to license them from Sly on behalf of Ace, and thanks to the Konings twins’ credibility, I had an entré.
 
Thus it was in May 2009 that I checked into a Travelodge near LAX and made my way up to Sly’s room with, I must confess, not a small amount of trepidation, as I had no idea what to expect. But Sly was instantly gracious and cordial, beaming his famous smile as I handed over copies of the various CDs and box sets I had worked upon that contained his music. As he needed it to pay the overdue room bill, I also gave him the cash up front for the license. He did not actually sign the agreement until three days later, when I was about to leave. Somehow, even against my better instincts, I felt no concern, for despite his current living circumstances, I was quick to note the man’s warmth and innate decency.
 
Instead, I ended up with an unprecedented opportunity to talk candidly to Sly Stone at length about his career, his creativity and a host of other subjects, often in a one-on-one situation where I could also play music for him to comment upon. Of course, with a parade of visitors and constant interruptions, it was never going to be a linear conversation, and I grabbed what I could at different times over the course of four days – a freewheeling and captivating mixture of arbitrary reminiscence, homespun philosophy and classic Sly aphorism (for instance, in response to a comment that his musical persona might be considered colourblind, he instantly threw back, “I can see all the colours!”) Sly was slowly and painfully extricating himself from the clutches of his former manager, but he remained in good humour, and there was a lot of laughter.
 
I am not by habit a journal-keeper, but so many things happened in such a short space of time that I ended up making a brief diary of events. Amongst other things, I can remind myself that I ran a few errands on his behalf, as anyone who was around Sly was wont, and willing, to do. These included, of all things, buying him a tracksuit at the local Target. Having vaguely asked me to pick up “some new sweats”, I had no idea what he might like, but luckily the fleece lined red-and-black outfit I selected – his favourite colours as it turned out – did the trick and he put it on immediately. Yes, I dressed Sly Stone. The lengthy interview notes that would result from these packed few days helped inform not just the ensuing, well-received compilation “Listen To The Voices”, but also two subsequent collections on Ace: “Yellow Moon,” which anthologizes Sly’s “baby pictures” with The Viscaynes, and this year’s “Everybody Is A Star: The Sly Stone Songbook.” Some of the audio has even ended up in the recent documentary “Sly Lives!”, as the producers adjudged it to be amongst Sly’s last cogent musings upon his art.
 
A few years later, there was another opportunity to spend time with Sly when I worked on a set dedicated to the Stoneflower recordings. He was still living the motel life, this time in a Ramada Inn in Hawthorne. Though there was less talk on the record on this occasion, over the course of several visits we had further meaningful conversation, and I also got the ride of a lifetime in Sly’s car when rushing across LA to get his computer out of a pawn shop ahead of a filmed interview. Still catching my breath from that one. It was 2015 that I last caught a glimpse of him, at Love City, a fan event in Oakland attended by all the Family Stone. As the day wore on, there were serious doubts that he would show up, and then all of a sudden there was Sly. To gauge the reaction of the assembled throng, you’d have thought the Messiah had arrived. True to form, he was only there briefly, so no chance for even a hello, but I did receive a wave from the departing limo. Since then, my understanding from the Konings and others is that Sly spent his last decade in seclusion in Los Angeles, in deteriorating health, thanks to issues with COPD, but comfortable and otherwise happy.
 
IN THE 24 HOURS since his passing was announced, there have been numerous news stories, obituaries and social media posts in regard to Sly Stone and his life. From what I can observe, many of these seem rather shallow, dumbing down the man’s myriad achievements and often trivializing what ought to be regarded as one of the most significant careers in music history. Most troubling are those reports that still insist Sly’s is a cautionary tale, one of lost potential, or implying a betrayal of talent. His departure should in reality be another reason to once again celebrate his incredible achievement, and not wallow in salacious dirt. The sounds and ideas he brought forth are still one hundred per cent relevant today, and every musician, of every hue - rap, rock, hip-hop and beyond - needs to pay very real tribute, because most would not be where they are without his liberating example.
 
To this end, Sly, and his incredible cohorts in the Family Stone, are often referred solely as a funk/soul outfit – which they surely were of course, writing a major part of the core lexicon of those styles. But as mentioned above, Family Stone music, in composition, arrangement and performance, also touched the genres of pop, rock, blues, jazz, gospel and psychedelia in equal measure. In a world where popular music has been compartmentalized to death, the inclusivity of their legacy is something that ought to be venerated and emulated. Similarly, Sly Stone usually gets himself lined up along with James Brown, Prince, George Clinton and others, as well he should, as they are all arbiters and guardians of the funk. But if I had to compare Sly to any other single artist, it would probably be an unlikely, but avowed, hero of his – Bob Dylan. One could argue they both had a “purple period” in their art, which they found difficult to surpass. At once pathfinding and populist, both also transcended their respective musical backgrounds to create a lasting legacy, and with a strong message imbued within their most famous work. But whilst Dylan’s message could appear world-weary and somewhat cynical, even in its bleakest Rhythm King-fed moments, Sly’s was never less than upbeat.
 
They say one should never meet your heroes or heroines, lest one suffer disappointment or disillusion. But I consider myself so incredibly fortunate to have spent quality time in the presence of this musical titan, and to realise he was simply a warm-hearted human being who had used a stratospheric talent to enrich the world we live in. As Sly Stone wrote in another song, “I’m just like you – I’m just like you.” Nevertheless, the planet may never see or hear his like again.