I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (15 page)

Recording at 783 Bel Air Road commenced in the autumn of
1970. The resulting music lacked the live, spacious ambience of the
whole band playing together in real time, so much a part of the
appeal of earlier albums. Instead, the tracks that would be used on
Riot favored a compressed, claustrophobic density, in part due to
endless overdubs that actually threatened to wear out the magnetic
oxide coating on the recording tape. Sly Stone annotator Alec
Palao shares a report about this process, which is corroborated in
part by Jerry Martini. "Sly would pick these girls up at L.A. clubs
and say, `Baby, I want you to sing on my record. They'd be high on
cocaine, he'd record them at two in the morning, warbling along,
and then the next morning he'd wipe the tape" and dismiss the
musical and romantic one-nighter. In any case, the fidelity on the
album is unusual and somehow intimate; listen to the breathy wetness and directness of Sly's voice on "Family Affair."

Outside John Phillips' studio, Sly did much taping in a Winnebago camper parked near the mansion and fitted with state-ofthe-art recording gear. The original Family Stone members were
in and out, logging tracks individually, and holding on to Sly for
a variety of reasons, among them the supply of cocaine.

But Larry, Greg, and Freddie started spending more time in
Northern California, and Sly was supplying more of his own bass
and guitar parts, also supplementing his rhythm needs with a
drum machine. Greg credits the album with extending Sly's talent
and vision. "He was one of the first to take the drum machine and
make it be an instrument," concedes the flesh-and-blood drummer. "The machine, as opposed to what it is now [i.e., high-tech
computerized programs], was a lounge instrument that the guy at
the bar at the Holiday Inn might have used. Sly took the tickytacky, which started on the `tick,' and he inverted it, turned it inside
out, into something the ear wasn't used to. He took the texture and
created a rhythm with it that made it very interesting." From the
man-versus-machine perspective, "I don't think the trade-off was
good," Greg insists, but he points out that Sly had become
attracted to synthesized percussion well before its use on Riot.

While the band's bonds of togetherness frayed, Sly kept company with Bubba Banks (who at this point was married to Rose)
and James "J. B." Brown (Bubba's buddy, not the Godfather of
Soul), and he received visits from musicians Ike Turner, Bobby
Womack, jazz legend and enfant terrible Miles Davis, and Sly's old
friend Billy Preston, who'd gone on to play with everyone from
Ray Charles to the Beatles. It can be assumed that any or all of
these visitors shared recorded jams, inspired by snorts of coke.
Billy provided the artful keyboards on "Family Affair," and Bobby
and Miles maybe somewhere in the mix, but it's likely that nobody
had a chance to get very comfortable.

"I was always thinking I was gonna get killed and that the feds
were gonna bust in on Sly," Bobby told Vanity Fair. "Everybody had
pistols ... Sly be talkin' to you, but he ain't there. He'd be lying on
the piano whacked out of his brain when it was time to do a vocal,
and they'd have to lay the microphone next to his head." For his
autobiography, Miles Davis recollected, "I went to a couple [of
recording sessions] and there were nothing but girls everywhere
and coke, bodyguards with guns, looking all evil. I told him I
couldn't do nothing with him-told Columbia I couldn't make
him record any quicker. We snorted some coke together and that
was it."

Jerry, although he'd return to Sly periodically to help burnish
recording projects, described to Joel Selvin how he extricated himself from the drug-driven L.A. residence. "I got in my jeep, put my
dog and my wife in, and went back up to my house [in Marin
County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco]. Left
no notice, and didn't talk to [Sly] for a couple of months." Greg
was the soonest to escape from an orbit around Sly altogether,
returning to his own Marin home. He noted to Joel that, after his
departure, "I'd get daily calls from [Sly], from everybody, and I just
didn't want no more part of it. It wasn't fun anymore.... The
business was handled very poorly... I had seen the situation
deteriorate and seen [Sly] not responding to it, refusing to respond
to the needs of everybody on all different levels. It got ugly within
the group, around the group, the audience, the whole thing....
Then I made a decision, emotionally: I cut the umbilical cord." Riot
was the last album with Greg named as a member of the Family
Stone. On some cuts, Sly augmented the drum machine with his
own live beats on hi-hat cymbals, creating a complex melange of
the real and the robotic, and a brand-new rhythm sound that
would continue to captivate listeners.

On Riot's biggest hit, "Family Affair," the Rhythm Ace, an
ancestor of the synthesizers and sequencers that power contemporary urban music, thrummed electronically under Rose's choruses,
Billy Preston's keyboards, Freddie's ghetto guitar, and Sly's seductively languid vocal. Stephen Paley, at that point working for CBS's
Clive Davis, notes that his boss was skeptical about "Family Affair"
before its release as a single. "[Clive] said, `That sounds like he's
stoned. We can't put that out: And I said, `Clive, it's okay, it won't
matter, it's a great record."'

It was, and so were most of the album's diverse other tracks.
"Africa Talks to You `The Asphalt Jungle"' was a long, loose jam,
and "(You Caught Me) Smilin"' had some of the same shag-carpet sexy feel of "Family Affair." Riot also revels in solid soul on
"Time," and in a very different and capricious mode, a yodeling
tribute to Sly's childhood idols on "Spaced Cowboy." "Thank You
for Talkin' to Me Africa" was a slinky, slowed-down retake of
"Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." As for the title track,
with its noted "0:00" timing (there are no sounds), Sly told Jon
Dakss in 1997, "I did it because I felt there should be no riots."

Riot was finally released in November 1971, with a cover that
depicted an altered American flag, with suns instead of stars, hanging above the fireplace at 783 Bel Air Road. Also on the cover was
a composite photo collage of persons involved with the album and
other aspects of Sly's life. But it was the first Family cover with no
band members depicted. In a year that also heard the debuts of
Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, the Who's Who's Next, the Rolling
Stones' Sticky Fingers, and Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV, Riot
proved as easy for the public to be motivated to purchase, in large
amounts, as it was difficult for them to comprehend and categorize. Reviewers, however, seemed quick to project onto the
album their own alarm about changing times and a changing Sly, vacillating between criticism and praise for his new modes of
expression.

"The album is a testament to two years of deterioration rather
than two years of growth," wrote Vince Aletti in Rolling Stone,
before allowing, "Once you get into the haze of it, it can be rather
beautiful: measured, relaxed, hypnotic." Greil Marcus reviewed the
album three times for Creem, admitting that "we're confused by
it." He compared Riot to "Van Morrison's Blowin' Your Mind, his
first solo album, where Van reached for the grotesque because it
seemed the only adequate description of everyday life; Dylan's
John Wesley Harding, in that Sly is escaping his own past; and
Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, though Sly is working with much
greater sophistication and control." Less concerned with postulating indicators of personal and general decline, Greil insisted," The
success of this new album is that it is simultaneously deeply personal and inescapably political, innovative and tough in its music,
literate and direct in its words, a parody of the past and a strong
and unflinching statement about the present."

Suggestive of the power and influence of the entire album is
the degree to which the deep, brooding funk of tracks like "Luv N'
Haight" and "Brave and Strong" earned homage on Stevie Wonder's work later in the '70s, particularly Innervisions (1973) and
Songs in the Key of Life (1976). Sly's keyboard on the "Poet" track
is a particularly clear antecedent to "Just Enough for the City" by
Stevie, whose social commentary was more explicit than Sly's,
though in a similar somber mode. Throughout Stevie's lyrics, there
were echoes of Sly's fanciful tricking out of the English language,
an aspect of poetic prowess rarely encountered in rock or any
other song form. Sly's and Stevie's more serious approach to songwriting was shared by writer-musician Gil Scott-Heron, who fused
politically charged verses with a kind of jazz-funk accompaniment ("The Bottle," "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"). And Marvin Gaye was getting more serious, moving from his charming origins in Motown hits to the powerfully honest "What's Going On"
and the bedroom confessional of 1973's "Let's Get It On."

Apart from the myths about its creation and critical commentary on its content, it's entirely possible, and certainly advisable, to
appreciate Riot for its good tracks, not necessarily better or worse
than any other part of Sly's output, and for its imagination and
spirit, as well as for its significant, if not singular, place in the evolution of Sly's music and popular music in general. Also memorable are the artful lyrics, presenting an unglossy examination of
personal relationships, rare in rock. ("Family Affair," often judged
as melancholy, actually showcases scenes of positive family values
alongside those of interpersonal insecurity.) It's important to realize that Riot didn't signal a complete or permanent darkening of
Sly's expression. Despite his continuing dependence on drugs over
the next decade, several of the albums recorded by Sly during that
period exhibit considerable brightness, both musically and lyrically

In a recent interview for this book, Sly himself talks about an
influence on the album unfamiliar to most, from within the record
business. "People were coming from all different kinds of record
companies," he points out. "People were talking to different people in the group, and telling me that I didn't need this person or
that person, or telling [the group's members] how they didn't need
this or that person. They break you up so they can have different
concerts every night, and make everybody different stars, with different record sales. Those record companies have people (and I
won't say their names right now) whose job was to infiltrate inside
an organized musical endeavor and separate and divide it up." Sly
says he tried to warn his colleagues about this purported threat,
but they "really weren't seeing it. They were like, `They don't really mean that, do they?' and I was, `Yeah, that's what they mean."' He
hopes that reflective fans will "put things together and notice that,
`Oh yeah, when that record was out, that's when they got separated, and that's when that argument started."'

Sly couldn't deny, though, that the breakup of the band, however encouraged by outside forces, was also seriously exacerbated
by misuse of drugs. He may have been controlling the distribution
of cocaine to those around him, but that kind of activity inevitably
spins out of control. The strain of induced ups and downs on Bel
Air Road simultaneously prompted both Sly's self-centered
approach to music making and his band members' alienation from
him. And drugs deteriorated Sly's sense of professional and financial responsibility.

Al DeMarino has his own take on Sly becoming more dependent on substances during this phase: "Between the pressure of stardom, family pressure, social pressures, cultural pressures, and a
habit that was becoming consuming, it made for a difficult
moment in time." Al and some others at Columbia and Epic
attempted interventions with Sly. "There were discussions with
him, and eventually he tried rehab programs. Perhaps it would
have been better for all of us, starting with him, if he had started
sooner. [Drugs] altered his personality upon occasion. Those who
loved him dearly were hurt, because it changed him in a certain
way. He wasn't as positive and as open and warm as he had once
been.... It would hurt me.... I would talk to him, others would
talk to him-as opposed to the hangers-on, who were always looking to get some free blow-and I would say, `Sylvester, what are we
doing here?' And he'd respond, `I know you love me, and I'm in
control.' Famous last words."

In conversation with Joel Selvin, Bubba Banks testified how he
had functioned as the "pit bull that lived good" at Sly's residences, while Sly, as "the controller," determined who got how much of
which drugs when. "Nobody had their own blow, he was the man,
and that is where he gets his audience." The audience at times
included band members, numbed into a very different relationship with the band's leader. They included brother Freddie, who
managed to make occasional trips to his own home in the Oakland Hills to dry out.

Jerry marks the move to Los Angeles as the inception of the
troubles. Sly amassed a collection of vicious dogs, intimidating
most visitors and temporary residents. Frank Arellano, working to
establish himself as a musician in L.A. and living a safer life, was
invited to Bel Air several times on the strength of his credentials
as a singer with Sly in the Viscaynes. He found that his former
schoolmate and singing partner "wasn't the same guy. He wasn't
as relaxed and loose, he was more rigid and seemed serious." While
Sly's father was still functioning as the band's road manager, K. C.
Stewart had seemed to turn a blind eye to his son's use of drugs,
and after he'd retired from those duties and returned to San Francisco, the onetime warm and regular contact between Sly and his
parents became undependable.

"I think cocaine is one of the largest industry-dismantling vehicles," says Jerry. "The downfall of the most famous bands was largely
due to the affiliates, the hangers-on, the dealers, the doctors....
[With] everybody we were on tour with, it happened to most of the
other bands back then. I don't want to talk about other bands and
stuff that I saw, though.... It's kind of a scary thing, and it leaves
me open to a lot of criticism." During the late '60s and throughout
the '70s, the world of rock was indeed populated by many with
addictions of various durations to various drugs. The usual suspects
included Elton John, Eric Clapton, Marvin Gaye, Billy Preston, James Taylor, James Brown, David Bowie, and some within the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead,
the Temptations, the Allman Brothers, and Aerosmith.