Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

  Sly would influence musicians and music far beyond what we could know in 1970, and he was a glib, flashy writer, producer, and performer. In short, he was a perfect cover.

  I'd just had my 25th birthday when I went sliding with Sly, and, as was required of any good young citizen of San Francisco, I'd gotten high. But I'd yet to experience the real thing. Sly Stone-who was casually, yet carefully sifting a large amount of white, powdery substance from one bowl into another; top of the pops, and on top of his game-was the real thing.

  SLY I S DRESSED U P NICE TONIGHT-in a royal violet dinnercoat-length leather jacket with collars big enough to be a cape. A violet silk shirt. Violet leather pants. Furfringed boots. Walking tall.

  But tonight there's no concert, no TV show, no Family Stone. Sly's at the Johnny On the Spot rehearsal studios out on the 5400 block of Santa Monica Boulevard. He's here, with friend Buddy Miles and secretary Stephanie in tow, to look over prospects for a band he's putting together for his new record label, Stone Flower. He's advertised that he's looking for a guitar, a bass, and a keyboard player.

  The first arrivals, a dozen or so young men, are standing around the foyer while Sly checks out the available amps and speakers.

  Sly calls the first guy into the small practice room, furnished with chairs, a huge speaker and an electric organ. He sets the pattern, showing right away not just who, but what he is.

  "Okay, man," he says, his bassy, radio-schooled voice smooth and soothing: "This is like not an audition, you know; just play some stuff and let me hear you. Just do what you want and we'll join in and see how you sound. Know what I mean?"

  If the auditioner is an organist, Sly listens for a few bars, then slides in with a layer of bass, and if things get moving, Buddy will pick up a guitar. If it's a guitarist, or a bassist, Sly will jump behind the organ, pumping easily, happily behind the player.

  And after each one finishes, he'll have Stephanie take down his phone number, and he'll say: "Okay, we'll call you tomorrow; Friday latest. And I mean that. You know. Whatever happens, we'll be in touch, man."

  Sly runs across some good musicians tonight. He's exchanged only a couple of thumbs-down looks with Buddy, quiet like a Buddha in a corner chair. But he's happiest with a straight-looking youth with a Wayne Newton haircut and a country manner. The kid mumbles, "I sing," while adjusting his guitar, then moves, feet tapping lightly, into the first chords of "Proud Mary." Sly perks up, big smile, listens a bit, and joins in, clapping his hands, rocking his body back and forth on his chair, singing out a harmony line on the chorus. 'Aw, yeah!" he says at the end. "Hey, man. that's great. Can you play another number?" Sly will take his phone number down, and Stephanie will have to call him and say he's not right for the group Sly's got in mind. But for the moment, it's Sly's kind of music.

  It's getting smokier outside, in the lobby, but it's getting cooler, too. People are sitting along the hallway, scrunched up like school kids doing an air raid drill. The word is getting out: Sly Stone, this famous cat, this high school gang leader turned whiz kid record producer turned number-one DJ turned gold record rock and roll star-he's in there just joking and playing and having a good time, and he's wanting all of us to do the same.

  It's 1:15 in the morning now at the ABC-TV studios in Hollywood, in Studio C, two buildings past where the middle American freaks were screeching their way through a taping that evening of Let's Make a Deal. At the top of the stairway to the balcony of Studio C, Ken Fritz, producer of Music Scene, is still shaking his head, telling Sly's manager how of all the shows he'd done that season, the one just finished was the finest. "This was a moment." A few feet away, behind his dressing room door, Sly is looking exhausted, letting his costume fall off him. But the rest of his family, the rest of his band, is already regaining their breath, and their energy revitalizes Sly.

  So now a quick ride in his low-slung yellow and black'36 Cord back to the offices of his Stone Flower Productions on Vine Street, across from the circular tower that houses Capitol Records. The Cord is a one-seater, with one huge fluffy pillow serving as seating for any passengers. It's a beauty, spitting out the sounds of street-proud power in idle, invariably making other drivers at intersections roll down their windows to yell at Sly how much they dig his automobile.

  Up the back stairs from the garage, and the troupe-Sly, manager/partner David Kapralik, secretary Stephanie, a couple of girl friends-slides into the back office-Sly's quarters. Upright tape recorder in an ornate wooden cabinet; electric piano set up nearby; guitar against part of the refrigerator. And the desk-the desk covered by a full-length stretch of violet fur. But that's Sly, the Mr. Flash of rock and roll. For the Music Scene shot, he had on a gold velvet shirt cut off at midriff, with long black fringes brushing against leopard-skin pants. Tall black fur boots. And masked against that head bursting with hair, those huge violet-tinted goggle/shades he wears in the Woodstock film.

  And Sly's Family-all six of them every bit as done up as Sly himself, sister Rose in yellow satin pantsuit, gold chain cap, and silver hair: brother Freddy in a light violet shirt and black coveralls; bass man Larry Graham regal in a black musketeer outfitcavalier hat, flowing cape, brushed velvet pants.

  Sly puts a long wooden pipe in motion around the warm, darkened office, and now he lets out a low, bassy laugh about that television show. Accustomed to working for concert crowds of anywhere from 5,000 to 20.000 (and 400,000 in the Woodstock mud), Sly & the Family Stone found themselves facing a tired gathering of maybe 100 die-hard kids in the studio by the time they got the call. at half past midnight. Even Leslie Uggams and Merv Griffin gave him bigger crowds to work with.

  T H F. TA P I N G S HAD B G G N GOING O N, on and off, since around 8, and two hundred fifty people, maybe a quarter of them blacks, had been there at the beginning. But after four hours of harsh Kleig lights, repeated takes of lame comedy sketches, and some music from Buffy Sainte-Marie and Bo Diddley, but mostly technical stops and starts, people began to trickle out. So there are maybe one hundred left, and Ken Fritz is worried that Sly won't be able to come across, and Sly comes onto the mike and right out tells the kids that the instrumental track they're going to use has already been recorded, done the night before over at Columbia, so that the TV show doesn't have to worry about mixing, and the kids let out a groan, not hearing what Sly had just said, anticipating a lip-sync trip, so they turn their attention to the clothes. "Well, they gonna lip-sync, but would you check out Sly's outasite threads?"

  And Sly, a vision in black and pink and fringes, sits at his organ, looks around, a boxer in his corner ready for the bell. And lined up behind him, the Family, fussing over a piano, sax, trumpet, bass, guitar. and drums that won't be recorded. All of a sudden, four stomps on the black fur boots, and Sly & the Family Stone are into "Higher"Cynthia, pale, with her high, rouged Indian cheekbones, holding her horn high, away from her, screeching her clarion call; her cousin Larry Graham crooning his melodic bass reply, then Freddy, the middleman between Larry's bottom and Sly's elephant roar, carrying it down the line to his brother Sly. Sister Rosie is counterpointing him, a serious musician at work on the piano. By now they're all stomping, saxophonist Jerry Martini pumping his hips along with his instrument: his cousin Greg Errico flailing away at drums above and behind him. Sly is itching to leave his chair, and he jumps out, laughing, clapping hands, roaring coarsely, stamping the stage floor like a tribal chief, thoroughly digging the music he'd spent four hours putting together, in at least two dozen takes, the night before.

  And that's just the first minute of the medley. Short count even as the first tune ends, and Sly is wah-wah-ing: "Don't call me Nigger, Whitey; don't call me Whitey, Nigger!" This is the tune Kapralik has been nervous and excited about all day; he'd heard that execs at ABC had heard about plans to include the song in the medley and were ready to come down on it, and Kapralik, the elfish little dropout from Columbia Records' executive ranks, was rubbing his hands together, spoiling for a fight.

  To give A
BC no chance to get at the group before taping time, Kapralik stalled giving Music Scene the lyrics for the tunes Sly'd do until the day of the show: then Sly showed up as late as he could, missing the 3:30 rehearsal call with the explanation that he had to see an ear doctor. Now he's singing, and black kids in the audience are doing the lip-syncing, singing along with a tune that had made the soul charts last summer. The Family Stone shifts gears and coasts into "Hot Fun in the Summertime," a lazy essay about how they spent their vacation.

  Then screech-this time it's Rose, crying from behind the piano: "Say! Get on out-and dance to the music!" The song that did it for this band, and the small, bouncing audience is straining to get it on. But this is TV: Sly's done a perfect take, and the mikes fall silent.

  But Sly doesn't like to see an audience restrained; at concerts he hates to see the uniformed rent-a-cops forming an armed bridge between his Family and the audience. He even has a clause in his concert contracts prohibiting armed cops. Both his songs and his between-songs raps are filled with exhortations for people to get out of their seats and move. "I don't care if they rush the stage," he had said before the Music Scene taping. "We love it. Even on TV, if they rush us and they can't see us on camera, I don't care."

  Sly calls for a retake, this time inviting the people to dance. His staff and other friends, unabashed yell-leaders at the sidelines just outside the camera cables, scurry around the outer edges of the crowd, trying to find people to start the dancing when the time comes. Everyone's up, sending the camera on the crane swooping back and up, filling all three camera monitors with bobbing heads and bodies.

  THERE WAS A B 0 U T THE same size crowd around when Sly & the Family Stone first surfaced, back just a couple of years, in early 1967. The scene was the Winchester Cathedral, a teen and after-hours club in Redwood City, down the Peninsula an hour from San Francisco. The Cathedral is one of those all-night pubs serving blue-collar suburb towns like Hayward, San Jose, and, in the heart of the electronics industry on the Peninsula, Redwood City.

  Freddy recalls, "We'd play places like Frenchy's in Hayward and the Losers' in San Jose six nights a week, then on weekends drive to the Winchester to play all night." Three months into the gestation, they began to pick up believers. One, a college student named Bill Lacy, began to offer himself as a chauffeur to Sly, picking him up from his radio station gig at KDIA in Oakland, then driving him to North Beach or to whichever bar the band was playing that night, then back to Sly's place on Ocean Avenue in the residential Sunset District. It was just a thing to do, Lacy said, once you got to know the music and Sly.

  At this moment, in 1967, there's a San Francisco scene going, with the first Family Dog and the original Fillmore Auditorium thriving. Actually, two scenes-the hip/dope/rock/ballroom scene, and the East Bay teen/drag strip/beer/bike scene, with dances, featuring combos, at clubhouses and memorial halls. A night in the big town meant a sojourn to North Beach to mingle with the illiterate. You heard about one scene on KMPX-FM, the other on KYA.

  Sly, his own man, worked the suburban scene, 2 to 5 A.M. every weekend for five months. No matter. Almost three years before the "San Francisco Sound," Sly had produced the very first rock and roll hits out of the city. At the age of 19, Sly Stone produced the Beau Brummels' string of hits-"Laugh Laugh," "Just a Little," and "Still in Love with You Baby" for Tom Donahue's Autumn Records.

  Soul music is a hot commodity in the music industry now, in 1967. Aretha Franklin has shot out of nowhere and become Lady Soul to Otis the prince, Ray Charles the genius, and James Brown the king. Memphis is having a banner year, led by Otis, Sam and Dave, Booker T., and Carla Thomas. And Motown is as prosperous as ever.

  Sly is not a part of this, either. But the arrangements he is working out, in front of the white crowds, will eventually win out, and when Atlantic and Stax cool, it'll be Sly & the Family Stone up front, putting out sounds that the Temptations, among many others, will imitate outright. But the Temptations, among many others, can't play with their voices, with instruments, with studios, and with musical theories the way Sly does. For seven or eight years, now, the Tempts have had one of the best bassos around in Melvin Franklin, but he's only come out strong since Sly made high (Rosie)/low (Larry) contrasts part of his trademark.

  SLY & THE FAMILY STONE are finishing up "Sex Machine" now; the studio is darkened, and only Greg "Hand Feet" Errico, the drummer, is at work, pounding out the final drum solo. With a headset strapped on and eyes closed, Greg has finished piledriv- ing and slowed down to a plod. Slowly, a heavy door is pushed open, and in sneak all the other members of the Family, up behind Greg. And just as he lets the sticks fall for the last time, Freddy yanks his headphones off and the brothers chant: "Time...."

  Sly's music will drive "acid rock" critics running for their record collections, so that they can draw comparisons between him and jelly Roll Morton, and John Coltrane and Otis Redding. That Lambert/Hendricks/Ross scat; that horn sectionthat's jazz; that sing-along, dance-along melody and beat-that's Top 40, soul; that polish, that production, that arrangement. Here's all those San Francisco bands talking about going to Marin County and gettin' it together, and here's Sly taking care of business, whipping through the back door and beating them all up the charts.

  And that showmanship-that onstage flash of colors: choreographed spontaneity and spontaneous choreography. Two things have become standard at Sly & the Family Stone concerts: After one song-or, on a slow night, after two or three numbers-the audience is up off their seats, often on top of their seats, dancing. Last fall, Kapralik took out full-page ads in the trades apologizing to a Cleveland auditorium manager for thousands of stuffed seats stomped nearly to shreds. It was a timely-and needed-warning for all future bookers of the band.

  When Sly introduces "I Want to Take You Higher" with a request for the audience to flash the peace sign at the word "higher!" he sets the stage for one of those moments in time when an audience becomes a community.

  And Sly's words: messages that take cliches and make them work, stated viewpoints that will serve as vanguards for the Impressions, for Gladys Knight & the Pips, and for all the others now singing out for the black man's freedom.

  In early 1967, Sly is not a part of the soul scene. But his only concern now is to make that comeback. He'd been playing since-well, since he was 4, twenty-one years ago with the rest of the Stewart family in Vallejo-but professionally since the early sixties, mostly with a group called Joe Piazza and the Continentals. Sometimes he'd have a band of his own, and they'd play in the go-go clubs that then dominated North Beach. Often Sly'd be playing rock and roll dances, at places like the American Legion Hall. That's where he met Tom Donahue, in 19 64.

  "I told him I had some songs," Sly said, and Donahue, just departed, along with partner Bob Mitchell, from a DJ job at KYA, told Sly he had a record company.

  "He was very obviously a talented musician," Donahue recalled, "and he had some good ideas on arranging." Donahue and partner Mitchell, on the other hand, knew nothing about arranging or producing, let alone running a record company. "So we all tried to learn together!"

  Sly became staff producer for Autumn Records. One of his first compositions, with Donahue pitching in on lyrics, was "C'mon and Swim" for Bobby Freeman. Autumn and Sly hit the British invasion next. They found a five-man band beating around in San Mateo, another Peninsula town. They were called the Beau Brummels. One of the lads was named Dec Mulligan, just off the boat, still smelling of shamrocks. Another, Ron Meagher, was from Oakland High School. But they were good musicians and had uncommonly long hair for a bunch of Bay Area guys in 1964. With Ron Elliot and Sal Valentino writing the songs and young Sly working the controls of the three-track machine and board at Coast Recorders, the Brummels made it.

  Sly went on to produce about 90 percent of Autumn's output, which included hits by such groups as the Vejtables, the Tikis, and the Mojo Men. Sly tried to cut a few records under his own name-"Sly and the Mojo Men"-but didn't like them enough to release t
hem.

  Despite the successes, Donahue and Mitchell soon became easy suckers in the record industry's rough game of hide-the-profits. Autumn had the numbers on the charts, but somehow a lot of the money got lost on the way from the record shops back to the record company. Sly would soon be back on the streets.

  One more shot, however: Autumn had reached out to one of the first of the head bands in town-a scraggly group led by an ex-model with the improbable name of Grace Slick. For Autumn, the Great Society would record one single ("Somebody to Love" b/w "Free Advice"). The producer, of course, was Sly Stone. But Sly didn't get along with the Great Society, Donahue said. It took something like 286 takes to get one single hit.

  "There was a sense of paranoia on the part of the Great Society about the level of their musicianship," Donahue said. "But they also had a hipper-than-thou sort of thing." Except for Grace, who seemed to Donahue "too far ahead of the others," the Society crumbled soon afterward, and it seemed like the end for Sly, too.

  SLY S T O N E WA S B o R N Sylvester Stewart. In the fifth grade, in Mr. Edwards' class, a classmate went up to the blackboard to spell out Sylvester's name. He wrote: "Slyvester Stewart." His first record was "On the Battlefield for My Lord," done years before he hit the fifth grade. He and his brothers and sisters were singing as the Stewart Four. Sly was five years old, and he already had good control of both drums and guitar.

  By late 1967, when he gathered the Family Stone together for the first time, Sly had mastered more than a dozen instruments and the whole recording process.

  In the studio, Sly is the obvious chief, the arranger and producer who directs the engineer and conducts the Family Stone. Total control. But he's never more than an older brother to anyone. Over the control room PA, you can hear him, guiding, explaining: "See if you could put some more bottom on your bass, 'cause when you hit the fuzz without the bottom it's like a guitar.. .And Freddy, it sounds like your guitar's got no middle-[Freddy strums]-See, it sounds too thin." Talking, Sly drums on a binder nearby. "Greg, are your skins real tight on your snares? You need something heavy on it. Don't let them go, Stephanie." Sly's spotted across the heavy plate glass his secretary pulling the reins on two of the Family Stone's immense stable of pet dogs.