That same winter, I reconnected with Sly Stone. Nene had brought him around in the fall before I went out to the farm. He had met Sly through Bootsy; they were doing a short film for a single from Bootsy? Player of the Year, “Roto-Rooter,” up on Hollywood Boulevard, and Nene had taken footage of them in a limo. A few weeks later, in New York, a bunch of us were supposed to go to an event commemorating Martin Luther King Jr., but we couldn’t make it, and instead we ended up at a small party over at Jessica Cleaves’s house. Nene showed up with Sly, who Jessica knew from back in the early days, when she was lead singer of Friends of Distinction. Whenever Sly and I had met before, it had been in passing, or backstage during a tour. Even when we had been on the road together, I hadn’t really sat down and talked with him for any extended period of time, man to man, friend to friend. In New York I had time, and we hit it off immediately: we had similar interests but different worldviews, similar skills but different histories. We had everything to talk about, from music to politics to drugs to the strange, distorted-field psychology of stardom. Sly had been on top of the world when I was just coming up—he was an idol and an icon, one of the brightest lights not just in pop music but in the world—but the seventies had belonged to P-Funk and other artists, and Sly had fallen off slightly. Or rather, the market had receded from him, though he was just as brilliant as ever. If anything, he lacked momentum, and the confidence to think that he’d find his way again. He knew that the world had taken him down a peg, and it preoccupied him. During that party, Sly asked me a question. “Man,” he said. “Who in your circle is going to rib me for not being a big star anymore?”
“I don’t know many people who think like that,” I said. In fact, I could only think of one, my ex-partner Liz Bishop. “She’ll say something for sure,” I said. “You can bet the fucking house on that.” The only other one I could think of, maybe, was Nene, and I suspected that Sly already knew that. At the end of the party, I told Sly to come see me in Michigan anytime he wanted.
The holidays came and went. I moved out to the farm. And then Sly came out to the farm. He was always in one bind or another in those days: at that time, I think he was on the run from a dealer up in Connecticut, and I had even heard that he’d been kidnapped for a time. I told him he could stay with me as long as he wanted. He ended up staying a year. We’d fish in the morning, then get high, have some lunch, then continue with the party. We were wrecked half the time at least. But we were also recording, and the shit we were getting down on tape was crazy. Sly could be sitting there doing nothing and then open his eyes and shock you with a lyric so brilliant that it was obvious no one had ever thought of it before. I hadn’t made records with him before. I was impressed and humbled all at once. He was the strangest mix of personalities I had ever seen: funny as fuck on one hand, careless and wild but meticulous on the other, a badass when it came to arranging and producing.
He also made a prophet out of me, a little bit. A few days after Sly showed up, Liz came in and saw him standing there. “Mister Sylvester Stewart,” she said. “Who’s on top now? I remember when you were a big deal.”
“That’s got to be your ex-wife,” Sly said. Then he turned to Liz. “Was I cute?” he said. He had a twinkle in his eye when he said it, so you could see the star that used to be there, and also see how the man who was remembering stardom suspected that it was all a big joke.
One afternoon, the weather was too nice to sit inside, so Sly and I got into the car and went for a drive. After about five minutes, Sly had an idea. “Let’s go get David,” he said. David was David Ruffin, who had been the lead singer for the Temptations. David was home, and he got into the car. As soon as we started driving again, Sly had another idea. “Let’s go score,” he said. Off we went to the dope man’s house.
Just before we got there, I asked Sly if he had any cash on him. He didn’t. He turned and looked at David, who shrugged. It’s not an uncommon occurrence to show up at a drug dealer’s house without cash, which is why it’s important to establish credit. When we pulled up in front of the house, we sent Sly inside to try to arrange things. He had the slickest rap, the tongue with the most silver in it. We saw Sly talking to the dealer and then they motioned for us to come up the walk. “Credit’s fine,” the dope man said. “I’ll set you up. Just give me a minute because I’m busy.”
We sat outside on the stoop, watching the nice weather go by. Or rather, two of us did. David sprung up and started pacing. “What’s wrong?” I said.
“Waiting’s wrong,” he said. “Doesn’t this shit bother you, man?” he said.
“He said a minute,” Sly said. “Just stay calm.”
“Fuck that,” David said. “Why do you let motherfuckers treat you like that?” David paced faster and faster in front of the house. His forehead was so wrinkled you couldn’t have ironed that shit flat. I started to ride him a little. “What do you want?” I said. “You want him to put the shit on Temptations rush?” He mumbled about going in and strong-arming the guy, or getting in the car and driving away, but he did neither. He wanted. Eventually he calmed down, and eventually we were served.
That was only one of hundreds of scores, but I think about it often. What ultimately saved David that day—what saved us all through that time, maybe—was desperation. It’s ironic, but it’s true. Crack ruled you in part because it cost too much money. And it put you in a jungle where you were either top cat or you were prey or you were one of the thousands of animals going about its business, not especially visible, not especially troublesome. That’s where we were at the time: we were all three begging, and we weren’t worth anyone’s trouble. Pretty soon after that, David had a comeback with Hall and Oates. They made a record with him and Eddie Kendricks, Live at the Apollo, and it was a big hit, a major part of how the eighties rediscovered classic Motown. That’s what did him in. When he had money again, he was a target. He died about a decade later, after reuniting the Temptations and touring the world, and though some reports claimed it was an overdose, there were too many suspicious circumstances hovering nearby: there was missing money, people who weren’t willing to talk.
Another time, Sly and I were visiting a dealer who could sing you every song from every album Sly had ever made. Whenever we bought from him, he was over the moon that he was selling to his idol. One day, light-pocketed as usual, Sly resorted to barter. “Man,” he said to the dealer. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I don’t have any cash on me, but let me give you a copy of the album I’m working on.” The guy was beside himself with joy. He took that tape like it was a religious artifact and put it in a special desk drawer. I don’t think he had any intention of listening to it. That would have been too much for him. Just to have it in there, heating up the place, was enough.
We got the drugs and left. About a block from the house, Sly told me that it was a blank tape. I bagged up. I couldn’t believe it. “Yep,” he said. “Blank. Nothing on it whatsoever. It’s just some fucking tape I found in the studio.”
The next time we went to score, I thought Sly was going to tell the guy, but he didn’t. Instead he asked if his album was being taken care of, and even told the guy he could listen to it, but in a way that made sure that wouldn’t happen. Sly kept the guy going like that for a week or two, and finally I felt so bad that I had to cop to it. I waited until Sly was out of the room and turned to the guy quickly. “You know there’s shit on that tape,” I said.
“What do you mean?” he said. “The music isn’t any good?” He looked devastated.
“No,” I said. “I mean there’s nothing on the tape at all. It’s blank.”
The expression on his face was like a kid who was told there was no Santa Claus, but even worse: there was no Christmas at all. Even when I promised that we’d pay him for the dope, all he could do was nod numbly. When he recovered enough to speak, he told me that he wasn’t even mad at Sly. His reaction was more like admiration. “Come on,” he said. “How can you be mad at that motherfucker?”
> Once, Sly and I were playing a show, and when we went onstage, Tom Joyner came and stole our pipes. When we came back afterward, he was standing there holding the pipes upside down, draining them, which is a crackhead sin. Years later, on his radio show, Tom would clown about me when I got busted, or lost a court case, though he never seemed to mention any of the stories that involved him. Another time, I had to send Sly to get Bootsy from the hotel. We were playing the Capital Centre, and Roger opened up. About twenty minutes before his set was scheduled to end, we looked around: no Bootsy. Someone told us that he had left for the hotel and wasn’t coming back. He meant to punish Roger—someone, probably Nene, had put some friction between Roger and Bootsy—but he was punishing us all. Sly volunteered to go get Bootsy. He went to the hotel, knocked on the door, and started wheedling. “Bootsy, man,” he said, “you made me promise that I wasn’t going to fuck up in front of George. I’m coming to get you, man. You have to be a good example for me.” Bootsy was up on the bed with the pillow in his mouth to keep from laughing. “Come on, Bootsy,” Sly said. “I’ve played these hotel rooms before. Nobody comes to see you. When somebody does, you need to answer the door. Come on, man.” Bootsy was on the verge of busting, but he couldn’t come out. Finally, Sly knew he was up against it. He came back and told us that at least he had tried. He played his set, and he was excellent. That night, he even gave himself an extra reward for trying to coax Bootsy back—he came out of the Mothership. He emerged and walked down to the bottom of the steps, and people were applauding like crazy. And then, about ten seconds later, they started applauding even louder. He was proud. He thought the applause was for him. What he didn’t see was that I was right behind him, buck naked.
Sly was the most perceptive person I had ever met. He remembered everything about everyone, put you immediately in the Sly file. But a normal conversation with him was more like an interrogation. If you told him you grew up in Kentucky, he’d ask you about the horse races, and if you answered too slowly, or too specifically, or with too much of an interest in the way he was hearing your answer, he’d know that he had caught you in a lie. Once we were hanging out with Henry Mayer, the young guy who we sent around to radio stations for Parliament. “Hey, Limp,” Sly said, “didn’t it use to be the other leg?” Henry had always walked a little crooked, but Sly had the idea that he was putting his limp on, maybe not faking it entirely but exaggerating, and damned if it wasn’t true that Henry had switched legs somewhere along the way.
Lots of people tried to be like Sly. Take Rick James: more than half of the shit he did was in direct imitation. But there were only two people who were capable of that kind of cool: Miles Davis and Sly. I didn’t know Miles as well, but watching Sly was a strange experience, both educational and disorienting. To me, crazy is a prerequisite for greatness. But it doesn’t have to be actual craziness. I play crazy, when in reality, I’m pretty close to sane. Sly wasn’t playing. He believed in his own abilities, but he also believed in his own legend. And while he was a real nice guy in most ways, he wouldn’t hesitate to misuse you when it came to money and drugs. Of course, he was so ahead of the game that he wouldn’t try to trick you. He’d come right out and ask you if he could misuse you. If he wanted money so he could make a drug buy—maybe he wanted to impress a dealer or a girlfriend—he had a way of asking. He’d say, “Can I star?” If you gave him the money, you had to make peace with the idea that you might never see it again. Giving money to Sly wasn’t a loan. You had to come back at him the same way he came at you. I’d say to him, “That was fine, but I will be starring in the show next week.” That would make him laugh. He loved people who knew how to get theirs.
One afternoon we were at the airport and we heard a voice calling Sly: “Mr. Sylvester Stewart?” We looked down and saw this lady in a wheelchair, her arms all bent and folded by some kind of palsy. “You were very good last night,” she said to Sly. “Very good.” Sly almost never let his guard down, but this time he was in a great mood from the show—he had done an extended version of “Stand!” where everybody got up and everybody got down. He leaned in to kiss the lady. Just then she snatched back, all curled up, and said, “About time you got your shit together.” Sly didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t usually at a loss for words. He stopped in midair, leaning over her. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, hey.” His voice was suddenly really heavy, resounding like he was back onstage. “Fuck you,” he said, “you wheel-kneed bitch.” There were about twenty people standing there, some from the band and some not, who heard the whole thing. Everybody ran in every direction because they couldn’t laugh right there. They ran like roaches when the light comes on. The lady just sat there, looking stunned, stars around her head like in the cartoons.
But the lady wasn’t wrong about Sly needing to get his shit together, especially when it came to playing live. Many times, Sly didn’t have performances that really connected with the crowd, and sometimes he would refuse to come out at all. In fact, all you had to do was tell him to do something, and that was an ironclad guarantee that he’d do the opposite. The only way you were going to get him out there was to kill him. I felt nearly the opposite: when the Motor Booty Tour had threatened to derail in that first show in Madison Square Garden, I had taken a skeleton crew out there and hoped that bare bones would be enough. Sly used to tweak me for being so conscientious. “George has those little ones,” he would say. What he meant was that I survived in the business by understanding other people’s behaviors and motives, and by knowing that they were part of a larger picture. Sly got so mad sometimes that he wanted to kill someone, but I considered the consequences. “You can’t be mad at the kid in the mailroom,” I said, “because one day he might end up running the company.” And I didn’t redirect my frustration wrong: if a promoter was being unreasonable, I didn’t take it out on the audience. Sly admired me for it. He wished he could keep a cool head. He just couldn’t. Like Miles, though, he was in a special zone, in rare air. They were so good at what they did that the bad shit didn’t count. They got a pass.
Sly and I were different when it came to drugs, too. I have a big drug reputation, and some of it is earned, but in other ways I’ve always been a punk user. I was the same way as a kid. Other kids were thugs for real, but if a group of us went to rob a store, I made sure to leave before anyone wearing a uniform appeared. I couldn’t get caught up in that shit or else my father would whip my ass. Plus, when I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t have to really rob the place. I just had to be there to be seen with the people who were going to rob it. Drugs were the same way. I got high but I tried never to get strung out. I wanted to go to bed at a time that made sense, so that I could work the next day. And I hated the idea of using down to the bone and then jonesing for more. Sly operated at the other extreme. He would party until everything was gone and then use tactics to resupply himself. One night, out on tour somewhere, he slipped a note under my door. It was written in his handwriting, which was beautiful. He wrote like he was addressing wedding invitations. “Knock knock,” it said, “put a rock in a sock and sock it to me, doc. Signed, cojunkie for the funk.” Everything that motherfucker wrote was like a song lyric. Later on, while he was in a battle with his label, paranoid about people trying to get new songs from him, I told him I was just going to publish his dope notes.
YOU CAN WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES, BUT YOU CAN’T DANCE A STEP IN MY FEET
Warners was trimming the sails on Funkadelic. Polygram was putting Parliament in dry dock. But we had an idea for a new flagship: a label of our own, overseen by me and by Archie Ivy, which we’d call Uncle Jam Records. It made perfect sense. We had proven with Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome and One Nation Under a Groove that we could deliver hits, but we had also proven with the Brides and Parlet and especially Bootsy that we could oversee other acts.
From the start, we had an Uncle Jam roster in mind. We had Philippé Wynne, who had been with Bootsy way back in the Pacemakers days. He had gotten famous as
the lead singer for the Spinners and had been one of the main singers on “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” I knew that Philippé had a solo record in him. We had Roger Troutman, who had played around Cincinnati and Dayton before joining up with Funkadelic. We had Jessica Cleaves, who had sung with us for years and was ready for her close-up. And we had Bootsy, sort of.
In the late seventies, Bootsy had encountered a speed bump regarding his use of the Rubber Band name. There was a little folk act called Rubber Band somewhere in California, and the guy who ran that band sent a letter to Warner Bros. It wasn’t a combative letter. He was a Bootsy fan. He was just looking for a little payout for consideration, five hundred dollars, a thousand tops. It seemed like a painless solution and I recommended that Bootsy just pay him. But Warner Bros. copped an attitude and refused to pay. The case went before a judge, who upped the settlement to five thousand. Even then, Warners kept going. They looked right at the judge and said, “We’re Warner Bros. We can pay that standing on our head.” The judge looked right back at him and said, “Oh yeah? Try five hundred thousand and get back on your feet.” Just like that, Warners was out a half million dollars. The ruling stipulated that the label couldn’t take the payment out of Bootsy’s royalties, but they did it anyway. We did Sweat Band sessions when the Rubber Band was hanging in the balance, but it snapped back into place predictably, and he went on to record a few more records for Warners.
Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You?: A Memoir Page 21