I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (23 page)

Rose, petite and lovely in middle age, came on strong and
vibrant to "Sing a Simple Song." Cynthia had gained a few pounds
since her salad days, but had lost little of her insouciance or her
trumpet's bright brass, paired with Jerry's feisty sax on "Stand!"
and other numbers. The crowd was ready to put slot fatigue
behind them and take to the floor by the time Cynthia summoned
them to "Dance to the Music." With "Thank You (Falletinme Be
Mice Elf Agin)" pulsing over it a short while later, the dance area
was nearly full. The non-original musicians were easily integrated
into the band and the music, with vocalist Fred voicing his gratitude for being allowed to keep company with the trio of Family
Stone veterans. Fred wore a white space cowboy getup, evocative
of Sly's fringed duds at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Tall and affable in celebrating, on that night, five years of marriage to his Bay
Area wife, Rebecca, Fred assumed both Sly's lead vocals and Larry
Graham's lower-pitched phrases. Additional singing came from
Freddie Stone stand-in Vernon "Ice" Black, a showy but able lead
guitarist, and from lead keyboardist Tache, aka Thomas Cryer.
Blaise Sison slapped electric bass but didn't sing, and drummer
John Mader, keeping to tradition, was the first and last instrumentalist heard from. It was a show traveling on nostalgia, but very
much fueled by its own integrity and enthusiasm. Whether the full
Family Stone itself would ever again take to a stage in that same
spirit remained to be seen.

SLY MAY HAVE LONG AGO left the regular religious practice of
his childhood, but it's not clear that religion ever totally left him.
Rustee Allen recounted to Joel Selvin how Sly had once told him,
"I've done so many shitty things, God's not gonna take me in now."
But several of Sly's siblings have been ready to take him back to
the faith.

The Evangelist Temple of the Church of God in Christ rests on
a sunny corner of a large thoroughfare paralleling Route 80 on the
western edge of Vallejo, not far from where K. C. and Alpha Stewart raised their tuneful offspring a half-century ago. The secondborn son, Frederick J. Stewart, aka Freddie Stone, came into the
new millennium as pastor of the temple, and his youngest and
closest-living sister, Vaetta, aka Vet Stone, is a regular congregant.
At her house, among the newer, tonier developments on the northeast corner of Vallejo, Vet explores what she sees as the uniformly
positive effects of growing up in a Christian household. "My siblings are Christians, and as a Christian you can't harbor anger and
hate, confusion and things, and remain a Christian," she testifies.
"We were raised so that if there were a difference, we would go to
each other and resolve it. We kept communication open, and that's
still going on, let me make that very clear."

Vet also points out that she hears many of her brother Sly's
lyrics as congruent with the family faith. "As a matter of fact, the
lyrics to `Everyday People,' they're being sung, as we sit here, on
BET [Black Entertainment Television] and many gospel stations.
They sing the identical lyrics Sly wrote. And I'm sure when Sly
wrote that, he wasn't thinking that the gospel stations were gonna
pick it up. But I could be sitting here on Sunday, looking at Bobby
Jones Gospel [on BET], and here comes this group, very young,
singing `Everyday People," and I think, `Is this fantastic or what?"'
Vet herself had come to the Family Stone to do background vocals, forty years ago, directly from singing with the Ephesians Church
of God in Christ, in Berkeley. Her family faith also deserves credit,
Vet believes, for maintaining her eldest brother through his times
of trouble, regardless of his responsibility for bringing the trouble
on himself and whether or not he himself acknowledged divine
intervention on his behalf. "I believe that God has had His hand
on my brother's life through his whole life, as well as He has it
now," she says. "I believe that my brother's life has been completely
protected, and through the prayers of my mom and dad, God honored that. And I know that my mom and dad prayed for Sly, so for
that reason I don't believe there's anything I could have done [for
Sly] better than God." What she did do, of course, is to facilitate
Sly's return to Northern California. Her mother, Alpha, would
have been happy to know that although Sly is not a frequenter of
his brother's church, as Vet is and she herself was, he's now at least
within a short drive of what might remind him of how musical
and joyful communal worship can be.

THE EVANGELIST TEMPLE is a joyful place for the curious to
visit, as this writer did at Vet's invitation, on a sunny Sunday morning in the fall of 2006. The man credited by his peers as an enduring icon to aspiring lead guitarists now looks the part of a church
elder, balding and wearing glasses, but his preparation for his
church's weekly celebration is uniquely evocative of his former
lifestyle. He straps an electric guitar over the robes of his office, and
is fitted with a headset by his daughter, joy, a lovely reflection of her
mother, Melody, who sits attentively in her pew. On the wall behind
Freddie (officially Pastor Frederick J. Stewart) are posted the four
sections of the service-Prayer, Praise, Worship, and Power-and
the week's gospel readings associated with each. Vet arrives in a tailored but lively dress, and the female portion of the gathering African American congregation is, like Vet, arrayed in Sunday best,
many of the older women also wearing generously decorated hats.
While conversation burbles in the pews, the sounds at the front of
the church resemble a run-up to a gig, with burps from Freddie's
guitar and paradiddles from a young man on drums. Ready to provide keyboard support are Joy on a Kurzweil and Vet on a Hammond B-3, the instrument of choice of her eldest brother, Sly.

Reliably on time at the noon start of the service, Freddie
announces, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord! Whatever we need,
we thank you for it. Whatever we don't need, we thank you for taking it away." It seems to summarize how, over a long life, he's gotten
to where he is. Through the rest of the service, ritual worship and
readings are interspersed with musical offerings, and both prove
more enjoyable and inspiring than your average religious experience. "Where would we be if we had not let women go forth in the
church?" asks the pastor at one point, then repeating the rhetorical
question. Melody's response from her pew provokes general laughter: "Alone!" Referring to the Book of Joshua, and probably to the
former fruits of his fame, Freddie declares, "We don't define success
by money. Do you put your money ahead of your relations with
your fellow man?" Several women in the congregation mutter softly
but audibly, "Uh-huh." The pastor responds, "Y'all be jokin', but the
Lord's gonna hear your joke! I'm talkin' about where you're supposed to go, now let's talk about where ya' go."

For the vocal musical numbers, the lyrics are projected on a
screen with the expectation that the congregation will join in, at
least on the choruses. There are good voices among them, sometimes recalling the uplift of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, who had
themselves been based in their church, in Oakland, and had
crossed over to the pop charts in the late '60s with "Oh Happy
Day," alongside the Family Stone. Freddie affords himself a few soulful solo-guitar breaks, showing he still has what it takes, and
his wife supplements the drums with raps on her tambourine. Vet
and joy remind the listener of how Sly made use of keyboards to
get the thrill of gospel music onto some of his tracks.

Freddie knows how to keep up with his congregants' concerns
with current affairs, and how to appeal to the younger churchgoers, including several of his own grandchildren. He preaches about
the devil lurking behind ongoing racial divides, and about how
much things have changed since he was a young player. "I can't go
to those [hip] places any more," he says, bending over in mimed
antiquity. "I'm just an old country preacher, preachin' the Gospel."
Commenting more seriously on the lessons he's learned about
detours from the Kingdom of Heaven, he points out, "All you have
to do to get the Kingdom of the World is to be willing to lose your
dignity and be degraded." He reminds his listeners, "My salvation
is bigger than your not liking me, bigger than your not liking the
way I sing or play the guitar." It's apparent, of course, that these
people, who count themselves as family and friends, feel that they
like him and his God-given musical talent very much. Following
outreach with the collection plate and the sobriety of communion, the pastor rewards the congregation with a short scat, very
much evoking the kind of jive lyrics he used to share with his sibling Sly: "When you know that you know that you know that you
know that you know, amen, you can do it."

S LY' S RELOCATION FROM THE hyper heat of the L.A. hills to
the bucolic, breezy heights of Napa County put him closer not
only to his brother and one of his sisters but also to two of his offspring in the Sacramento area, son, Sly Stewart Jr., and daughter,
Sylvette Phunne Robinson. He was also in close reach, when and if he decided to extend it, of three other members of the Family
Stone: Greg in Petaluma, Jerry in Folsom, and Cynthia in Sacramento. "He wanted to come back up here where his group
started-that was the idea, man," says Mario Errico, who made the
move back to his native Bay Area alongside Sly and continued to
function as Sly's right-hand man. Now somewhat frail and
inclined to nervous energy, Mario approved of the "peacefulness"
of the new Napa home, and the exercise gear that came with the
rented mansion. Despite the tolls that hard living and middle age
have taken on both men, "If he sees me get into [an exercise program], he'll do it, he'll follow," assures Mario. But most of Sly's
days, at whatever hour they commence, are filled with "music,
man. We take a little ride to the store, for groceries, clothes and
things. Then back to the house.... He's got this Korg [keyboard],
it cost about ten-and-a-half thousand.... He stays there, man, he
loves it.... I'm down in the garage, messing around."

In tune with Mario's affections for Sly and wheeled vehicles, and
standing high in Sly's confidence, is Neal Austinson. Twenty years
younger than Sly and Mario, Neal grew up in Marin County and
became a focused fan of the Family Stone while in high school.
Through one of his schoolmates, a daughter of Jerry Martini, Neal
got to visit Sly's pad in Novato while the marriage to Kathy Silva was
still in place, though he got little one-on-one attention from Sly at
that time. There were occasional interchanges during the '80s and
'90s as Neal pursued his father's career in surveying, and in his offhours began accumulating what is arguably the world's most complete collection of Sly & the Family Stone memorabilia and material.
The Neal Austinson Archives include photographs, promotional
papers, clothing, and audio and video recordings.

Now living in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, north of Marin,
Neal found himself summoned by Sly for a variety of pragmatic and fanciful purposes, after Sly moved to Napa County, an hour's
drive to the east. Neal's assignments ranged from registering vehicles to evaluating business opportunities (Sly briefly considered
opening a rib house) to fielding requests from curious press and
documentarians. "I would never violate Sly's privacy or do anything weird like that," he says. "I just feel extremely fortunate that
I can pretty much go there any time I want. Nobody [else] really
goes up there. From what Mario tells me, [Sly] likes me and trusts
me.... It hasn't gotten to the point yet where he's let me hear anything, but he's let me read lyrics, and he's recited lyrics to me, too.
I think he wants to share things with people, but he hasn't brought
it to that level yet." Through the latter part of 2006, both Mario
Errico and Austinson had taken steps to help me realize the hope
that Sly would grant some personal experience to include in this
book. "He's liable to," Mario remarked mysteriously over a December lunch. "You just gotta catch him at the right time."

Forty years after the formation of the Family Stone and thirtyfive since the start of its dissolution, it looked like the band's
founder was still making music-and still doing drugs. There had
been little or no press coverage of either activity for a long time,
though intimates reported that the latter had diminished as Sly had
moved further from the fast lane. The other scattered remainders
of the legendary band had been finding their way through middle
age as best they could. Brother Freddie, long cleansed of his own
drug problems, continued tending to his family, including several
grandchildren, and to his flock at the Evangelist Temple Fellowship
Center in Vallejo, where he presided every Sunday. Sister Rose
began work on a book and a funky solo album (released in 2008 as
Already Motivated). She also sang with Jerry Martini's group, while
her daughter, Lisa, prepared to stand in for her in Vet's and Sly's
various aggregations. Cynthia, living modestly in Sacramento, brightened all of the spin-off bands with her horn and spunky stage
presence. Jerry helped form and lead several of those bands, catering to an abiding appetite for the sounds of the Family Stone
by touring fairs, boardwalks, and the like. He also wielded his
sax at local engagements in the greater Sacramento area while coparenting a teenage daughter. Greg, raising a young family in
Sonoma County, remained in demand for Bay Area all-star jams,
but his principal focus was producing a couple of class-act bigband albums for vocalist Jamie Davis and getting Jamie out to a
world whose nostalgia extended further back than the '60s. Larry,
geographically and socially the most distant from his old mates,
settled in Minnesota, close to the funky, unstoppable Prince, and
sharing his devout Jehovah's Witness faith and some of his gigs.

O N NEW YEAR'S EVE , Neal relayed to me a phone call from Sly,
summoning us to his place. Under entreaty from Neal, Sly rescheduled the meeting for New Year's Day 2007. At about eight the next
morning, I left my San Francisco home (a mile north of the
Urbano Drive site of the Family Stone's inception) and drove
across the Golden Gate Bridge to rendezvous with Neal in Santa
Rosa. But there was no reaching the habitually nocturnal Sly by
phone at that early hour, so I spent several more hours lunching,
chatting, and plotting with Neal what questions, of the many that
had occurred to me, I could and should put to my elusive subject.
Neal was well acquainted with Sly's taboos and defenses.