I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (25 page)

A much anticipated box set of the seven Epic albums under the
Sly & the Family Stone name was released in April 2007 as The Collection, in limited numbers, by CBS's Epic/Legacy division, complete with bonus alternate or unreleased tracks and both original
and redacted liner notes by various rock writers. The most thorough presentation of Sly's work since Jerry Goldstein's admirable
The Essential double album in 2002, the package inspired a new,
almost universally laudatory cascade of reviews in the media and
further nostalgia and anticipation among listeners. However, Sly,
Vet, and Sly's lawyer, Greg Yates, cast doubt in interviews with Vanity Fair on Sly's connections with the box release and on Jerry
Goldstein's management of the material and the finances. "As far
as I'm concerned, there is no deal with [Jerry]," said Vet, and Greg
added, "I've been retained by Sly Stone to represent him regarding
issues surrounding contracts with other third parties for his publishing rights.... We are concerned about certain matters that he
was kept in the dark about." In the same periodical, Clive Davis,
who'd captained CBS and Epic during most of the launches of
those albums, commented, "I have great regrets that it's taken Sly
all these years to return, but the fact that there might be a happy
ending to all this is a great feeling."

The Vanity Fair article was written by contributing editor and
superfan David Kamp, who had "spent a dozen years chasing the
former Sly & the Family Stone front man" and managed, with the
help of Vet, to get an interview with Sly in the spring of 2007. The
piece got global exposure but provided little new insight. "I get the
sense," David wrote tellingly, "that Sly relishes this sort of opaqueness, letting people in just enough to intrigue and confound
them."

Rumors had been circulating about a summer tour with Vet's
band through Europe. An Independence Day weekend event in San Jose, a couple of hours south of Sly's Napa base, gave him and
Vet a chance to ramp up for the European junket. There were serious delays during the festival, dubbed "Back in the Day," but none
due to Sly, and the eager anticipation of the featured act seemed
not to diminish. Attended backstage again by Mario Errico and
Neal Austinson, and ushered onto the outdoor stage by a very tall
bodyguard of recent hire, Sly got to perform for only about fifteen
minutes, dressed in a rather unbecoming bulky white hoodie,
baggy jeans, baseball cap, and shades. Local police, mindful of permit restrictions, brought the proceedings to what both artists and
audience considered a premature halt. The Bay Area press, having
wondered whether their hometown boy might somehow make
good, reacted with disappointment. The San Jose Mercury-News's
Shay Quillen credited Sly as "the most soulful person on stage," but
berated Vet's Family Stone for not bringing him out until after several of his familiar hits and a couple of his creations for Little Sister had been played without him. Joel Selvin, there for the San
Francisco Chronicle, praised the band's "extraordinary showmanship," but he noted that they"seemed more like a tribute band than
a new model of the old standard," and that Sly's own voice was
"hardly audible."

The tour abroad, for which the same basic ensemble took to
the skies a few days later, also drew mixed notices. A reviewer in
England's Observer seemed unaware of the history of Vet's band
when he attended a performance in Italy and wrote, "It is somehow typical of Sly that he finally chooses to return without most
of the original musicians who were such an integral part of the
musical revolution he set in motion. In Perugia, they were sorely
missed." A Swiss reporter caught the Family Stone's appearance at
the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14, and shared the Observer's
impression of Sly as "tired." The band itself was judged "very average." At the Blue Note Records Festival in Belgium, some spectators were said to be annoyed and to have demanded ticket
refunds after a delayed and foreshortened performance. A TV5-
Monde reviewer in Nice, France, told of "a weird and deceitful
evening which didn't lift the veil of mystery surrounding this tortured personality." At the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, Sly's "old
and worn out voice" was bemoaned, as was the Family Stone's
"correct and safe" delivery of the classic repertoire.

The very different scene at the venerable Olympia in Paris
elicited memories of Sly's last visit there, twenty-seven years
before, and drew praise from the city's Funk-U magazine. "I had
arrived at the venue expecting nothing," wrote the reviewer, who
took notice of Vet's familiar onstage angst, "looking for a sign of
the roadies or sound engineer to know if her beloved brother
would finally take her off the hook and finally appear." When Sly
did show up to sing "If You Want Me to Stay," the writer determined
that "the voice was there, almost unchanged after all these years."
Even the trademark basso dip, delivering, The kind of person / That
you really are now, had been preserved. The review went on to confirm that Sly, "looking at first pretty weak ... got increasingly
confident, thanks perhaps to the unbelievable and immediate
response from the audience, which screamed all the lyrics." Sly
even leapt off the stage to shake hands with the delighted front
row. "You get some, you give some back," he later pronounced
from the mike, before tossing his necklace and jacket as relics to
the crowd.

In retrospect, the Olympia show stands out as the high point
of the European tour. "When I saw him connect to the music again,
that was really a joyful moment for me," commented Greg Errico,
after watching video segments from the show on the Internet.
"And I told him that, last night, on the phone," Greg continued. "And he immediately knew what I was talking about: he said, `That
was the night!' I saw him jumping up, dancing, connecting with
the music, connecting with the people, connecting with himself,
connecting again.... He goes, `I can't believe how rusty I was,' and
I start laughing. I go, `Sly, look at all the ball players. We're lucky,
we have extended life expectancies, as musicians. Ball players are
done when they're thirty. We're sixty! And you know what, you can
still do it. But you gotta get out there.'"

It was encouraging, but also a little sad to see Sly retracing the
steps of his formerly compelling tours without reaching the
assured measure of magic that he and his fans still hoped for. But
the reaction of the press and the public had to be assessed within
the context of its own inherent foibles, as well as Sly's. On the dark
side of America's obsession with fame is the envy that accompanies the admiration of celebrities, and which seems to feed directly
into the joy of watching them crumble.

Two days before Thanksgiving 2007, and a couple of weeks
later, Sly was happy to make it back onstage in New York City for
the first time in thirty-two years, at B. B. King Blues Club and Grill
on 42nd Street. The gigs had originally been promoted as a
reunion of the Family Stone, but had to be recast after it was
revealed that Freddie, Rose, Greg and Larry would, for a variety of
reasons, not be playing. Dressed in a white sweat suit trimmed in
silver, with sunglasses and Mohawk back in place, Sly was joined
this time by two of his most stalwart Family Stoners, Cynthia and
Jerry, as well as by Rose's singing daughter, Lisa, and the ensemble
from the European tour minus Vet and Skyler. The New York Times
reported, "He did sing, sporadically, and quite well, using something close to the eerie, insinuative voice that can be heard on
There's a Riot Goin' On." The reviewer (and many others who witnessed him that year) felt particularly touched by Sly's "slithery" invocation of "If You Want Me to Stay," "which sounded more bittersweet than ever: Count the days I'm gone /Forget reaching me by
phone / Because I promise I'll be gone for a while." During "Sing a
Simple Song," Sly excused himself from the stage, saying he had to
urinate, an urgency he'd expressed frequently on recent tours.
Rumor had it that this was code for a drug break, but Neal Austinson, serving as road manager in New York, says that in truth Sly
was seeking time to go stretch out in his dressing room, to regain
his stamina. He did indeed seem shaky on both entrances and
exits, in New York and elsewhere. And his apparent physical vulnerability, along with sometime uncertain coordination with his
pick-up bands, rendered Sly's comeback less certain than others in
the same year by the formerly acrimonious reggae-rockers the
Police, the revamped Van Halen, and the once-wild Led Zeppelin.
Agent Steve Green, fielding some offers on Sly's behalf, assured
uncertain bookers and a Reuters reporter, "He can do it, but he's
got to want to do it."

Looking back now on 2007, Sly believes his audiences "can tell
that I'm not satisfied, by the way I walk off the stage. I do what I
have to do, but I'm not satisfied, 'cause I'm not dealing with the
people I will be dealing with in the near future.... Because it's
money, we need more money to prepare. Then I'll get the people
who are supposed to be there."

In song, Sly promised he'd be gone for a while, and he was.
There are a lot of people who want him back, if only he wants it.
"Now is the time to let your light shine," David Kapralik advises
his former client, and he then applies some other memorable
lyrics: "You can make it if you try. Are you ready?"

N FEBRUARY 2008, A LITTLE OVER
a year after my first interview with Sly
and several months after submitting
the first draft of this book, I found myself summoned back to the
wine country mansion that had become Sly's haven, workplace,
and crash pad for such occasional old friends and partners in
crime as George Clinton. Once again, the stalwart Neal Austinson
rode shotgun with me through the hills of Northern California
and provided an opportunity to reflect not only on what was happening with his friend Sly but also on the short- and long-term
impact of the Family Stone's legacy.

We talked about how the Family Stone had been funky enough
for Harlem and Watts, and trippy enough for the Haight-Ashbury.
The band had also demonstrated that rock outfits could ride a hip
groove, and that grooving dance bands could have the autonomous individuality of a rock outfit. The Family Stone could as easily generate good vibes in dance clubs and bedrooms as enthrall
thousands at live concerts.

Part of Sly's power as songwriter had flowed through his lyrics,
conveying politically and culturally cogent messages without being
polemical, and thus clearing the way for forthright free-speechers, all the way up to Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur. Then there were
the melodies and arrangements, in which Sly could position as
many as five singing voices over a foundation of drum and bass,
elaborated by guitar and horns and decorated with shouts,
scats, and occasional electronic effects. This had served up a delicious alternative to power trios and hard-rocking quartets. And in
resurrected form today on reissued recordings and by spin-off
bands, it continued to put the shame to music manipulated
through sound samples, synthesizers, and advanced computer
programs.

When Neal and I arrived at Sly's place, we found he was already
being visited by another long-time acquaintance, Charles Richardson. Charles had shot and produced documentaries for the History Channel and elsewhere and was very savvy about computers
and their creative potential for music making, as well as about
record production. He'd helped Sly and the recently visiting
George Clinton lay down some tracks, and was hoping to help
materialize Sly's own first album in twenty-six years, along with
more live gigs. Observing Charles's artful manipulation of a laptop was Rikki Gordon, the San Francisco-based singer who'd partnered with Sly onstage the previous November in New York.

After the expected wait, Sly descended from an upper floor,
comfortably dressed in loose clothing and a knit cap. He seemed
in a mood befitting the warm, bright weather outside. In fact, he
insisted on our leaving the mansion and getting the interview
started inside his 1958 Packard, with him driving, so that he could
take the classic car into town and get it washed. We walked out to
the vehicle, which was stationed alongside the terraced vineyard.
The Packard was colorful, shiny, and solid, the way rock 'n' roll was
a long time ago.

This time around, Sly was comfortable having me record him.
He was quite cogent and cordial, and he drove carefully along the
narrow roads winding through the pastoral landscape.

He began by talking about social and political issues, noting
that he'd never voted. "I've wanted to," he maintained, "but I
never know who's who till after it's over. And everybody always
switches up on me. I don't want to think that I voted for someone who's doin' shit." Regarding the 2008 Democratic primary, Sly
offered, "I'm thinking that these Clintons would not be so likely
to goof up too much. How could Bill and Hillary both do two
fuckups?"