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

by Jeff Kaliss

  "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 st
ardom, 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.

  Following Sly to his den on the West Coast, manager David Kapralik was among those lining up for white lines. But the drug couldn't fill in the widening cracks in David's idealized picture of Sly as a paradigm of progressive social consciousness and in his view of himself as an able, anointed caretaker. Kitsaun King, the older sister of Sly's former girlfriend Debbie King and herself a one-time employee of Stone Flower Productions, commented to Joel on the saddening role David played out at Sly's L.A. homesteads in the early 1970s. "You expected people like the David Kapraliks, the people who were adults, who had been in the music business, and who, in theory, had some knowledge, to be telling Sly the truth. But they weren't telling the truth. They were just going along with Sly's program. And Sly's program was totally substandard, because he was high all the time."

  David recalls, "this whole mise-en-scene in this dank, dank house in Bel Air. Various characters were walking around with guns. And there was Gunn the dog, the terrifier. It was heavy. Let's just leave it at that. And I didn't want to live anymore." The formerly confident and buoyant David felt profoundly shaken by what he perceived as the dissolution of his relationship with Sly, who had been under pressure from his older sister Loretta Stewart and from the Black Panthers to "get rid of whitey." Ultimately, after the release of Riot, David "went on my knees before [Sly] to let me bring in Ken Roberts to manage him, so that I could go on and live." David was well aware of Ken's reputation, still in place today, for cool-headed, bottom-line management of talent and other enterprises.

  Having done his best to attend to Sly's future, David decided to shorten his own. He describes the scenario. "One day, I forget what I was on, I was on the whole alphabet at the time, I called a taxicab to take me to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I took two bags, so I could check in. Threw clothes into them.... I'd been going to the Beverly Hills Hotel for years. So there I was at the desk, wavering more than a little bit ... `Good afternoon, Mr. Kapralik!' [said the bell captain], and then, to the bellman, `Bungalow A'. Now, Bungalow A was where Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had their first honeymoon. And it's a scene, in pink satin and gilt, everywhere, in the furniture, in the ceilings. And that's all I had on me: guilt, guilt, guilt, for all that had and hadn't happened in my life."

  Why did David blame himself for what he'd perceived as an unanticipated spoiling of his plans for Sly? It was "the thought that before Sylvester's eyes I had dissembled, disintegrated, fallen apart emotionally ... and [it was] exacerbated by seeing this image, this vision, this expression of my heart-song to the world [that is, Sly] crumbling before me.

  "So I tipped the bellman, was all alone in the bungalow, which had a big, big living room and a big, big bedroom. And I was sitting at this ivory and gilt desk, writing a suicide note, and taking a fistful of Nembutal.... I was in a lot of pain. And suddenly I say to myself, `I'm hungry.' So I reach for the telephone. I'd been there numerous times in the past, so I could do this with my gut overflowing with the Nembutal, beginning to take its effect. `Mr. Kapralik in Bungalow A, service for one.' Final exit time, right? Would you like to know the menu of my last supper? Nova Scotia lox, bagels, whitefish, Bella Sol Beluga caviar, with quail eggs. And then champagne, Neuf de Chandon 1952. Of course, that's every Jew's comfort food I'd just ordered. And I think it was my mother's voice I heard from beyond: `Don't forget your buttermilk!' I'd always loved buttermilk. But let me tell you, it saved my life. Because, the food came, I ate it, champagne and all, with a ritual toast for the big exit, right? And I took the glass of buttermilk and went into the bedroom to expire. Then, the buttermilk curdled in my stomach, with the lox and the whitefish and the new pickles. I ended up at the UCLA emergency ward, they're pumping my stomach, bringing me back to life, and I'm cursing the doctors and Sylvester Stewart/Sly Stone."

  After David had returned to responsibility in his life, including the financial, he found himself facing a fee of five thousand bucks for clean-up of the bungalow bedroom's Persian rug. Not long after, he abandoned show biz to raise onions and flowers on the island of Maui. He left plenty of people on the mainland who were ready to share, and further, his former client's obsessions, but few who could reach David's level of fervent inspired devotion. Sly, though he'd come under the watch of Ken Roberts, continued to wear a Star of David necklace (visible in photos) in tribute to the man who helped launch his career.

  The challenges of traveling alongside Sly in the coke-powered fast lane separated out those companions who wanted to help him get back on the right track from those who wanted to speed along beside him, scoring pieces of him in the process. One of his most famous partners in infamy was jazz trumpet titan Miles Davis. More than for his imprint on Stevie Wonder, Sly gained credit beyond his own work for his musical impact on Miles, particularly as evidenced on Bitches Brew, recorded in 1969 and'70 for Columbia. The album infused elements of rhythmic funk and electrified instrumentation, and was seen as heralding the jazz-rock amalgamation that came to be called "fusion," a breakthrough in the ears of many younger jazz fans and a bane in the estimation of others. In time other jazz-rock stylists adapted the hybrid textures to popular acclaim: Weather Report, Return to Forever, and Herbie Hancock, who'd dropped in at the Riot house and whose 1973 album, Headhunte
rs, featured a track called "Sly."

  Miles had earlier been curious about Jimi Hendrix's musical inventiveness and commercial success, and had heard Sly wow the crowd at the '69 Newport Jazz Festival. But he was more fully exposed to the seductive sounds of the Family Stone and to Jimi's Experience by his girlfriend and short-term wife, Betty (Mabry) Davis, an ex-model and aspiring singer and songwriter many years his junior. "When I first heard Sly, I almost wore out those first two or three records," Miles testified in his biography, before turning critical and being mistaken about Sly's past: "Then he wrote a couple of other great things, and then he didn't write nothing because the coke had fucked him up and he wasn't a trained musician."

  Betty Davis recalls having met Sly in the Bay Area before she'd met Miles and before she went on, after their marriage, to record three legendary albums of funk herself, the first produced by Greg Errico, who, along with Larry Graham, was also featured in her band. "I was at the Record Plant [in Sausalito] and they were having a party there, and [Sly] was at the party," says Betty. She "thought he was really great," musically, but found him, as many did, "a bit aloof" in person. Not so aloof, though, that he didn't try to hustle the long-limbed Betty, perhaps providing inspiration for the most popular track off her Errico-produced album, "If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up." Later, "I turned Miles on to [Sly]," Betty verifies, "because I used to play him in the house all the time. `Dance to the Music,"Family Affair' . . . [Miles] liked it, or else he would have told me to turn it off." Betty sings an admiring shoutout to Sly in the lyrics of "F.U.N.K." on her fabulous Nasty Gal album (1975).

  Miles had been one of several regular celebrity visitors to Sly's Central Park West digs in New York City for several years by the time Ria Boldway made another loving appearance, in 1973. She'd just returned to California from Paris and had ended up consulting a psychiatrist about what she thought was culture shock. "He said, `It sounds to me like you need to leave your husband,"' she laughs. "And I did. I had been planning to. And that's when I got back in touch with Sly. I guess I called his mother's house and left my phone number. I said, `If he ever needs me, if there's ever trouble or anything, let him call me."' Sly himself soon called her, "And he said, `I need you to come to New York with me."' Having hopped a plane to San Francisco, Sly drove over to Ria's and took her to his parents' house. Taking Ria aside, "They begged me to help him," she says. "They didn't out and out say what the problems were, they just said, `He's having a lot of problems and we're worried about his health, and maybe he'll listen to you."'