by Jeff Kaliss
Aside from its single hit, Fresh is probably best remembered for Sly's haunting, sincere arrangement of Doris Day's standard "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)." This rare (for Sly) cover was intoned by Rose, with Sly on chorus, in a slow-swaying, praise-giving manner evocative of their childhood harmonizing in church. The reflective song had been penned by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, and first heard in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, but its inclusion on Fresh resulted in a controversy having nothing to do with music or movies. The cover had been facilitated by Sly's good-time Hollywood hang partner and Doris's son, Terry Melcher. The friends didn't anticipate that they were spawning an urban legend, persisting for decades: that Sly Stone had slept with Doris Day.
It was probably a collective projection of sexual fantasies about the perky singer-turned-actress Doris, common among American males of the '50s and '60s. Today, David Kapralik and Steve Paley are both ready to put the myth to rest. "I was Terry Melcher's mentor at Columbia, and we became good friends and remained so through the years," says David. "I introduced Sly to Terry, and several times Terry joined me at Sly's recording sessions. I often visited with Terry and Doris at their home in Beverly Hills, and one day I brought Sly with me to hang out with Terry." "Sly was mainly interested in buying one of her cars," Steve continues. "Sly did go to Doris's house, but only to see the car in question, and that's when Terry introduced him to his mother."
"They had a brief conversation, and then Doris went into the kitchen," David goes on. "While she was out of the room, Sly went to the piano in the living room and began to play `Que Sera, Sera.' Then Doris came out of the kitchen, on her way elsewhere in the house, and with Sly accompanying her, she sang a few bars of the song." Steve describes their rendition as "a gospel version," not unlike its delivery on Fresh. "To the best of my knowledge, that is the first and last time Sly and Doris met," attests David, "despite the false and scurrilous tabloid reports that appeared subsequently." "After the song came out, that stupid Sly-Doris Day rumor started," concludes Steve. "It amused Sly at the time, but irritated Doris. Part of the reason this rumor took hold was because Doris was supposedly having an affair with Maury Wills, a black L.A. Dodgers baseball player," an item attested to in Wills's 1991 autobiography.
During and after the making of Fresh, Tom Flye's engineering engagement with Sly continued, and expanded beyond the studio. "I did a bunch of television shows, I even went out and did frontof-the-house [at concerts] for him sometimes," says the engineer. "We basically kind of lived together for a while. He had a studio in L.A., he had a studio in New York, and at CBS. We spent a lot of time together, because he recorded every day. Sometimes I'd take my mobile unit over to his mother's house [in San Francisco] and we'd record in the basement."
Sly manifested more admiration and trust with Tom, whom he'd dubbed "Superflye," than with most studio personnel. "There were rumors all over the industry," says Tom, "that he'd shot up control rooms, yelled at engineers, all kinds of stuff. But he treated me like a king. We just got along. I think he realized that I was trying to help, I wasn't just there for my paycheck ... and he liked the results, the way it sounded." When Sly was late for a recording session or anticipated not showing, he'd phone Tom from his vehicle, on a cumbersome early model pre-cell portable phone. And Sly confided that Tom had been the first white man whom his mother, Alpha, had allowed entrance to her home unescorted by one of her offspring. (Frank Arellano had been afforded that privilege years earlier, but he could claim mixed race). "I think [Alpha] got the sense that I wasn't there to rip her son off, that I was there to try to help," says Tom.
In turn, Tom maintained his diligence in catering to his client's whims and demands. "I remember we were at the Record Plant, and he was doing a guitar part. He got about half of it done, and he said, `You know, I really wanted to use my new guitar. The problem is, it's in L.A. Let's go to L.A. " Tom continues: "We pack up, we go. So I get the song and say, `You wanna start at the top?' He says, `No, no, let's just punch in where we were at.' I say, `It's a different guitar, Sly, it's gonna sound different.' He says, `That's okay, just do it.' So we do it, and it turns out to be a really unique change in the song. The first [guitar] was real clean-sounding, like a jazz guitar, and then the guitar in L.A. sounded more rock 'n' rollish, more distorted.... You gotta take things and work them to your advantage." (Though Sly as a guitarist was associated with the jangly Fender Telecaster, in the period of Riot, and after, he'd taken to using the fatter-sounding Gibson Les Paul in the studio and onstage. He had both these instruments custom decorated with swirling adornments.)
Among Sly's paramours after Riot and during the making of Fresh was Kathy Silva, a lovely Hawaiian-born aspiring actress and model about ten years his junior. She'd romanced him in the company of her older sister, April, and had befriended Maria Boldway during Ria's last stay with Sly. In 1973, Kathy bore Sly a son, Sylvester Bubba Ali Stewart Jr., and the common-law family of three posed for the cover of Small Talk, released the following year.
In that photo, and in the record's concept and execution, it almost seemed as if the high-kicking, high-living rock rioter was ready to come down to earth. Some of Small Talk's material celebrated love and family life: "Mother Beautiful," "This Is Love," and the title tune. Casual studio conversation was audible between and during the pieces. There were classical trappings (solo violinist Sid Page was credited as a Family member) and contributions from old friends, including Rose, Freddie, Jerry, and little sister Vet, as well as more recent helpmates Pat Rizzo, Rustee Allen, and drummer Bill Lordan, who'd replaced both Andy Newmark and (temporarily) Sly's drum machines.
Bill, later to find longtime high-profile work with British bluesrocker Robin Trower, described for the Trower Web site his enlistment into Sly's band in 1973: "I was at Paramount Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, waiting to meet Bobby Womack. Sly walked into the studio with his entire entourage [and] one of the bodyguards, Bubba Banks, who was Sly's sister Rose's husband, came out of the studio and asked if I was a drummer, because he had seen me sitting there with sticks in my hand.... He asked me if I would like to come in and play on some tracks that Sly was working on at the time. I said that I would.... So, I went into the studio with Bubba, where I met Sly, and Sly told me to `Go out behind the drums and put on the headphones and see what you can come up with. There were two songs that night, `Livin' While I'm Livin' and `Say You Will,' which are both on the Small Talk album, which I later recorded with Sly. When the [first] track came to an end, I looked up and saw that in the control room there was all this commotion. So I got up from the drums and went in to see what was up. That's when Sly turned to me and said, `You are in the Family Stone.' I got the job, but I didn't know that I was audition ing for Sly, who did not have a regular, full-time drummer at the time. He needed somebody to do both studio and live shows."
Bill credited Sly with enhancing both his career and his technique. "He gave me his concept of how to interpret his uncanny sense of rhythm," said the drummer. "He always called me `Lord: He said, `Lord, play sloppy tight and raggedy clean.' Then Sly sat down behind my drums and showed me what he meant.... It was kind of a disjointed, loose, but tight placement of the beats on the drums. It was how he placed the kick drum and snare that was unlike the way a 'normal' drummer would play it, but made so much sense, and he was very musical. Then when he got up from the drums, he'd tell me to take what he'd showed me and put my `polish' on it.... Sly was most intrigued with a drum beat I came up with that we later titled `Stick `n' Lick: We worked on it at the Record Plant in Sausalito. We just laid down a backing track of it, without any words. The groove was an inspiration from listening to Jabo Starks, who was the original drummer for James Brown." Bill testified about his later tours with Sly, through 1973 and '74: "Sometimes we were playing live, I thought we were the greatest band in the world.... Sly helped me to develop my own sense of what was unique."
Engineer Tom Flye further confirms that
Sly remained a musical innovator, eager to avoid some of the conceits of production. "He liked a real tight sound.... He liked to hear instruments come and go [in recording], he didn't want them to hang around.... He didn't like a lot of reverb. A lot of records (for your everyday listener who doesn't realize how they're made) sound like they're recorded in a huge room, Carnegie Hall or something like that. Vocals hang on like it's in a cavern.... [But Sly] didn't want that kind of stuff."
A small helping of Sly Jr. 's fretful baby sounds and Kathy's cooing made it into Small Talk's mix, on the album's opening title tune, a couple of years ahead of Stevie Wonder's similar, far more celebrated paternal nod on "Isn't She Lovely." In a contrasting mood, the harmony vocals, keening horns, and Rustee's propulsive bass on "Loose Booty" sparked with erotic potency. The song's lyric chant was later adapted by white rappers the Beastie Boys for their "Shadrach." Also influential, as a soul music cliche, was the pouring of Sid Page's syrupy strings over Freddie's undulating guitar on several tracks, including "Say You Will," "Mother Beautiful," "Time for Livin'," and "Holdin' On." (Similar sounds are found on B. B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone" and the Temptations"' Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.") The slow ballad "Wishful Thinkin"' evinced Sly's early introduction to jazz by David Froehlich, with authentically smoky guitar that echoed the style of Barney Kessel or Herb Ellis. "Livin' While I'm Livin"' was a session of hard-driving chase music, "This Is Love" felt like an homage to the'50s doo-wop with which Sly had begun his career with the Viscaynes back in Vallejo. And the final track, "Can't Strain My Brain," resonated with a bluesy appeal evocative of "If You Want Me to Stay." Sly's own compositional and arranging uniqueness were perhaps less in evidence on Small Talk than on his prior Epic sides, and the participation of Family Stone veterans didn't result in an identifiable revival of the band's sound. But the album still stands higher than many other artists' best efforts. "Time for Livin"' managed to get a hold, weaker than Sly and the band's previous efforts, at number 32 on the hit parade.
After Small Talk, Sly began to drift away from engineer Tom Flye, but he continued his connection with the Record Plant. "Basically, he was living on budget. When he'd need some money, he'd finish a record and turn it in," Tom observes. "One of the owners of the Record Plant talked him into building a studio in the back area of the building, which we called `the Pit.' Traditionally, there's a studio, and the control room is a bit higher, so [the engineers, producers, and other technicians] see down into the studio.... But I remember [Sly] saying, `Why can't we sink the control room down?'. So the control room was sunk down in the middle, and there were areas all around where he could have the amplifiers and drums and such.... They made him a bedroom and a bathroom, so he could go back there and do what he wanted to do."
Alec Palao, not a fan of Sly's recorded output during this period, hazards a guess at what Sly and his studio supporters wanted to do in the Pit. "Probably, for every month he was there, three weeks would be drug taking and partying, and there might be one week of attempts at recording music," opines Alec.
Tom can't recall nefarious business in the Pit, but he also doesn't know if Sly ever recorded anything there that made it onto a record. Sly's unusual studio configuration was maintained at the Record Plant long after he had returned to recording in his own abode and elsewhere. The Pit was rented out to other artists, including Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. Despite the money invested in Sly, and the time and effort he was investing in studios commercial and personal, his own shelf life seemed to be coming into question.
COLUMBIA/CBS HAD BEEN ANTEING up over a half-million dollars in advance for each of Sly's last few successful recording projects, but the company offered something less for Small Talk, because its predecessor, Fresh, had sold less than previous Sly & the Family Stone albums had. With his career in apparent need of bolstering, Sly decided, in dialogue with his long-term trusted friend CBS's Steve Paley, to make a media event out of his marriage to girlfriend and co-parent Kathy Silva. The public ceremony would bestow familial legitimacy on Sly Jr., already known to fans from the Small Talk cover.
Steve Paley recalls that Irwin Siegelstein, who'd replaced Clive Davis at CBS, allotted some $25,000 for Sly's wedding party, scheduled for June 5, 1974, at Madison Square Garden, the scene of some of the Family Stone's best-remembered performances in New York City. There would also be a wedding reception at the Starlight Room of the Waldorf-Astoria. Steve engaged celebrated fashion designer Halston (with Sly reportedly paying the bill) to clothe Sly and Kathy, their mothers, all Sly's siblings, the other members of the Family Stone and Little Sister groups, Bubba Banks, an additional personal assistant nicknamed Buddha, and a dozen black models, serving as a sort of collective flower girl but bearing gilded palms instead of blossoms. To Freddie Stone's disappointment, Steve was designated best man.
The wedding gig produced the expected and much-needed media attention for Sly, but not necessarily in the tone that Steve would have preferred. Maureen Orth, in Newsweek, characterized Sly as "one of the shrewdest and highest-paid talents in the pop world," and declared that he'd "always been the badass of the rock world." She described the wedding scene as a performance before "23,000 screaming freaks." Steve later confided to Joel Selvin that Sly had attempted to seduce Maureen on the evening of the event. George W. S. Trow, a writer friend of Steve's, provided a more sympathetic and detailed-though sardonic-account for the New Yorker magazine. He portrayed Sly as "a lean, graceful man with a large smile" and went on to state, "He is in control of his leanness and his grace. He is in control of his large smile. He is in control of many of the people around him, and, sporadically, he is in control of his considerable talent." Accompanying Steve on a premarital visit to Sly's Central Park West flat and waiting to take the star to a fitting at Halston's, George was inspired to comment, "Sly uses small, benign delays in the way that a lion uses small, undeadly nips to indicate affection while calling attention to his teeth." One virtue of Sly's particular talent, the writer observed, is: "A singer who appeals to hip blacks and hip whites at the same time makes a lot of money." But about the purported evolution of the ideals of the '60s into the harsher realities of the '70s, George felt that "the waited-for convergence of white and black experience on the countercultural grid failed to take place." Of Ken Roberts, who attended and helped plan the wedding, George wrote, "He became Sly's manager in 1972, at a time when Sly was very badly behaved, when, Roberts says, no one else wanted the job. He books Sly's concerts and exercises some tactical control, but he seems to have few long-term ambitions for Sly. While Paley (who is almost Sly's age) and others at Epic Records seem eager to make a new career for Sly, Roberts seems willing to ride the old one out."
The Madison Square Garden wedding, then, was conceived as an entertaining and hopefully regenerative part of Steve's script, not Ken's. Playing the role of master of ceremonies was Don Cornelius, immaculate host of TV's syndicated music program Soul Train. Geraldo Rivera was billed as both celebrity reporter and "eyewitness usher." By Maureen Orth's reckoning, though, the "Family Affair for 23,000" never lived up to the planning and expectations. "Security guards," she noted, "wouldn't let Sly and his bride march down the aisle. The Humane Society called and said they'd arrest [set designer and de facto wedding director Joe] Fula if he released 500 white doves in the Garden.... And Tom Donahue, the 400-pound disc jockeywho was originally supposed to perform the ceremony, had to bow out because he wasn't ordained in New York State," although mail-order ordinations were readily available. The Garden service was in fact performed by B. R. Stewart, ordained as a Bay Area-based bishop in the Church of God in Christ, the sect in which Sly's mother, Alpha, had been raised in Denton, Texas. After listening to a timely musical rendition of "Family Affair," the audience became energized, and mama Alpha took the mike to remind them that her son's nuptials were "a sacred ceremony." The service was followed by a secular Family Stone concert, which for Maureen, at least, "showed Sly's lack of preparation with his band." Then came the recep
tion, to which Sly was conveyed in "his brand-new $38,000 brown Mercedes limo, one of a dozen cars he owns." Select guests at the reception included New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein's daughter Jamie, Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, and pop artist Andy Warhol.
Looking back on all the hoopla, Steve now admits that "it didn't do anything for record sales." George, in the New Yorker, drolly closed his piece by noting, "Sly's new album, Small Talk, has picked up some momentum on the charts. Currently, it is thirtynine on Billboard's list, up from forty-nine." But Steve insists that the wedding did in fact "establish Sly as a mainstream artist again. He was asked to host the Mike Douglas Show for a week, and he could have done soundtracks, had he a manager that had any kind of foresight.... If he'd had [record mogul] David Geffen or someone like that, or even David Kapralik, he would have known how to take advantage of the spotlight that was back on him."
For a while, Sly's career seemed more solid than his marriage. Kathy sued Sly for divorce in November 1974, less than six months after the wedding, complaining he had abducted Sly Jr., among other misdeeds. "He beat me, held me captive, and wanted me to be in a menage a trois," Kathy confessed to People magazine in 1996. "I didn't want that world of drugs and weirdness." But their relationship continued on for several years. "He'd write me a song or promise to change, and I'd try again. We were always fighting, then getting back together." One painful source of conflict was Kathy's discovery that Sly had fathered a daughter, Sylvette Phunne, with his bandmate Cynthia, in 1976. Later that year, Sly's favored fighting dog, Gunn, lacerated Sly Jr. 's scalp at the couple's rented mansion in Novato, in Northern California. Their divorce was finalized after a long estrangement, and Sly was commanded to provide child support, for which noncompliance put him in legal trouble several times. "Sly never grew out of drugs," said Kathy. "He lost his backbone and destroyed his future."