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

by Jeff Kaliss

  A somewhat longer tribute to Sly and to a particular landmark album appeared in 2006 in the form of Paris-based African American pop culture critic Miles Marshall Lewis's brief but fascinating booklet There's a Riot Goin' On. Miles provided some interesting biographical info and a valuable, if questionable, perspective on the connections between Sly's music and hip-hop and between Sly's struggles and those of African Americans in general. Miles makes special mention of the influence of Sly's introduction of percussive "break beats" and of an attitude in lyrics that sounds "pretty hip-hop boastful, like LL Cool J."

  Shortly into 2006, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences issued a press release announcing that a special tribute to "legendary funk band" Sly & the Family Stone would take place at February's Grammy Awards ceremony at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Guesting in the tribute would be a couple of veteran performers and a bunch of younger Grammy-nominated acts. No explanation was given of what any of the listed guests had to do with Sly and his band. But at the very least, it seemed, the Grammys would serve as an opportunity for yet another reunion of most of the members of the original Family Stone-and maybe for Sly's first public appearance since the Hall of Fame inductions thirteen years ago.

  "There were lots of rehearsals," reports Jerry, "and Sly came to some of them, up in Hollywood.... [He] didn't participate too much.... He just listened. And I was really glad to see him. I said, `I love you, man,' and he goes, `I love you too, Jerry,' and I'll remember that always."

  Another perspective on the rehearsal process, reported in the Los Angeles Times, described how Sly"came to a keyboard at center stage and made eye contact with no one. Still lean, but beneath the hood he seemed smaller than he was in the '60s.... His voice was robust and clear.... His left hand and wrist were in a cast" (variously attributed to a motorcycle spill and to a tumble on his hillside property). The executive producer of the upcoming telecast, John Cossette, seemed disappointed in Sly's demeanor, remarking, "He's not doing this, he's not hiding out for fifteen years to do what you just saw."

  The show, on the evening of February 8, 2006, seemed something like an effort to usher rock 'n' roll itself past the age of retirement. Youthful luminaries like Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and Linkin Park heralded onstage performances at the Staples Center by an ageless Stevie Wonder and a more visibly weathered U2 and Paul McCartney. Unlike Sly, these were veterans who'd never strayed far from the spotlight and had maintained their careers across the decades.

  The Family Stone tribute was delayed till well into the latter part of the telecast, no doubt keeping Sly fans worldwide wondering what would happen. Sly himself was later reported to have conveyed himself to the Staples on a motorcycle, and then to have been turned away by a security guard suspicious of his appearance. Finally comedian Dave Chappelle declared to the audience, "The only thing harder than leaving show business is coming back." The stage was then populated by a select showcase of newer rockers, including the Grammy-nominated band Maroon 5 and Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas, as well as John Legend, Joss Stone, Devin Lima, and self-declared Sly disciple and slide guitar wizard Robert Randolph. The venerable Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith joined their juniors in launching a curious amalgamation of Sly & the Family Stone hits. If you looked hard, with little help from the show's director and cameramen, you could make out original Family Stone members Freddie, Rose, Cynthia, Jerry, and Greg, though not at the center of the stage. Larry, claiming illness, had been replaced at the last minute by Rustee Allen.

  The multi-generational booking may have helped bridge the gap between older and younger fans, but the former were unlikely to have approved of the alterations they were hearing to wellremembered solid songs. Nor did they get much of the man who'd created that music, who was shouted-out by Steve Tyler, partway into "I Want to Take You Higher," Sly's mud-shaking hit at Woodstock: "Hey, Sly, let's do it like we used to do it!" Sly made his entrance from stage right, wearing a spacey outfit and topped by an adhesive blond Mohawk. He made a modicum of music and departed. It was by no stretch of the imagination a fair tribute to his value as creator, performer, and entertainer, and for many watching at the Staples and around the globe, it was something of a letdown. But the appearance somehow encapsulated much about the old Sly story: unpredictable, uncontrollable, and fantastic.

  In the days that followed, the Washington Post referred to the "tentative and frail" appearance of "the J. D. Salinger of pop," and Rolling Stone wondered, "Where has Sly been? No one seems to know for sure. Will we ever see him again?" "Just the fact that Sly showed up that night, as busted up as he was, showed me he really wanted it to happen," added Aerosmith's Joe Perry, who knew something firsthand about the long-term consequences of coke. "I hope he got a taste of what it's like having the band behind him. Maybe that's the only thing that will get him going."

  "It was fun, it was great, it was good," says Greg about the Grammys. But "there were a lot of things that could have been better. They should have given us the stage.... In some ways, I could say Sly shouldn't have come out, and if he did, he should have been prepared to do something and follow up right after." "Really, that wasn't my gig," Sly himself told Vanity Fair.

  In retrospect, it seemed that the selection of the Grammy tribute band and the positioning of eight of the non-Family artists at the front of the Grammy stage may have been intended to promote the Different Strokes by Different Folks album, originally marketed by Starbucks and more recently reissued by Epic/Sony. All eight artists were involved in the album's remixes, and Jerry Goldstein was its executive producer.

  "I don't think it was necessarily his platform-I thought it made stars of other people" is Vet Stone's perceptive comment about the tribute to her brother. "But all in all, I think [Sly's] only reason for being there, knowing him, could only be saying `Thank you' to people who stood by him all these years: his fans. It was his way of saying, `Thank you very much, I love you, and I will be back."' With the help of his baby sister and some significant others, Sly soon began getting back to his public.

  To help her brother reconnect with his roots and his public, Vet facilitated his relocation to Northern California. With her parents' passing, K. C. in 2001 and Alpha in 2003, her mission had been reinforced. "Before my mom and dad left, they told me, `Go and get your brother,"' she shares. "And that's exactly what I did.... I went to L.A. and told him what Mom and Dad had told me, and he thought about it and said, `Find me a house. I'm ready to come home.' It took me a while, but I found what he wanted." In 2006, Vet located a rentable property in the hills between Napa and Solano counties, a short drive from their childhood home and her own spacious modern residence in Vallejo. Compared to Sly's digs in L.A., the wine country mansion, formerly occupied by actress Sharon Stone (no relation), afforded "more privacy, it's larger, and it's got exactly what he wanted, like the pool, the guesthouses, and the garage space. He has space to put all of what I call his `toys,' his bikes and things." The first time Vet was able to take Sly on a walkthrough, he was entranced. "There's this lake at the side of the house, and he pointed to it and said, `I could write a song right here. And I thought, `Whew, wow! That's how much he loves this house. This is right. This is his home."

  The year that opened with the Grammy homage continued to serve as one of reckoning for other Family members. A Family Stone spin-off band, captained by Jerry and including both Cynthia and Rose, appeared in October 2006 at the neon-skirted Cache Creek Casino resort, in California's Sacramento Valley. The three "originals" were ceremoniously brought onto the stage by the band's younger players, who included Bay Area-based singer Fred Ross. The casino club's audience was similarly multi-generational, from twenty-something officemates off on a weekend lark to retirement-age peers of the Family hoping to recoup some of their youth if not (at the slots and tables) their wagered pensions. It quickly became apparent that what was going down onstage was vital and accessible enough to bridge any gap.

  Rose, petite and lovely in mid
dle age, came on strong and vibrant to "Sing a Simple Song." Cynthia had gained a few pounds since her salad days, but had lost little of her insouciance or her trumpet's bright brass, paired with Jerry's feisty sax on "Stand!" and other numbers. The crowd was ready to put slot fatigue behind them and take to the floor by the time Cynthia summoned them to "Dance to the Music." With "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" pulsing over it a short while later, the dance area was nearly full. The non-original musicians were easily integrated into the band and the music, with vocalist Fred voicing his gratitude for being allowed to keep company with the trio of Family Stone veterans. Fred wore a white space cowboy getup, evocative of Sly's fringed duds at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Tall and affable in celebrating, on that night, five years of marriage to his Bay Area wife, Rebecca, Fred assumed both Sly's lead vocals and Larry Graham's lower-pitched phrases. Additional singing came from Freddie Stone stand-in Vernon "Ice" Black, a showy but able lead guitarist, and from lead keyboardist Tache, aka Thomas Cryer. Blaise Sison slapped electric bass but didn't sing, and drummer John Mader, keeping to tradition, was the first and last instrumentalist heard from. It was a show traveling on nostalgia, but very much fueled by its own integrity and enthusiasm. Whether the full Family Stone itself would ever again take to a stage in that same spirit remained to be seen.

  SLY MAY HAVE LONG AGO left the regular religious practice of his childhood, but it's not clear that religion ever totally left him. Rustee Allen recounted to Joel Selvin how Sly had once told him, "I've done so many shitty things, God's not gonna take me in now." But several of Sly's siblings have been ready to take him back to the faith.

  The Evangelist Temple of the Church of God in Christ rests on a sunny corner of a large thoroughfare paralleling Route 80 on the western edge of Vallejo, not far from where K. C. and Alpha Stewart raised their tuneful offspring a half-century ago. The secondborn son, Frederick J. Stewart, aka Freddie Stone, came into the new millennium as pastor of the temple, and his youngest and closest-living sister, Vaetta, aka Vet Stone, is a regular congregant. At her house, among the newer, tonier developments on the northeast corner of Vallejo, Vet explores what she sees as the uniformly positive effects of growing up in a Christian household. "My siblings are Christians, and as a Christian you can't harbor anger and hate, confusion and things, and remain a Christian," she testifies. "We were raised so that if there were a difference, we would go to each other and resolve it. We kept communication open, and that's still going on, let me make that very clear."

  Vet also points out that she hears many of her brother Sly's lyrics as congruent with the family faith. "As a matter of fact, the lyrics to `Everyday People,' they're being sung, as we sit here, on BET [Black Entertainment Television] and many gospel stations. They sing the identical lyrics Sly wrote. And I'm sure when Sly wrote that, he wasn't thinking that the gospel stations were gonna pick it up. But I could be sitting here on Sunday, looking at Bobby Jones Gospel [on BET], and here comes this group, very young, singing `Everyday People," and I think, `Is this fantastic or what?"' Vet herself had come to the Family Stone to do background vocals, forty years ago, directly from singing with the Ephesians Church of God in Christ, in Berkeley. Her family faith also deserves credit, Vet believes, for maintaining her eldest brother through his times of trouble, regardless of his responsibility for bringing the trouble on himself and whether or not he himself acknowledged divine intervention on his behalf. "I believe that God has had His hand on my brother's life through his whole life, as well as He has it now," she says. "I believe that my brother's life has been completely protected, and through the prayers of my mom and dad, God honored that. And I know that my mom and dad prayed for Sly, so for that reason I don't believe there's anything I could have done [for Sly] better than God." What she did do, of course, is to facilitate Sly's return to Northern California. Her mother, Alpha, would have been happy to know that although Sly is not a frequenter of his brother's church, as Vet is and she herself was, he's now at least within a short drive of what might remind him of how musical and joyful communal worship can be.

  THE EVANGELIST TEMPLE is a joyful place for the curious to visit, as this writer did at Vet's invitation, on a sunny Sunday morning in the fall of 2006. The man credited by his peers as an enduring icon to aspiring lead guitarists now looks the part of a church elder, balding and wearing glasses, but his preparation for his church's weekly celebration is uniquely evocative of his former lifestyle. He straps an electric guitar over the robes of his office, and is fitted with a headset by his daughter, joy, a lovely reflection of her mother, Melody, who sits attentively in her pew. On the wall behind Freddie (officially Pastor Frederick J. Stewart) are posted the four sections of the service-Prayer, Praise, Worship, and Power-and the week's gospel readings associated with each. Vet arrives in a tailored but lively dress, and the female portion of the gathering African American congregation is, like Vet, arrayed in Sunday best, many of the older women also wearing generously decorated hats. While conversation burbles in the pews, the sounds at the front of the church resemble a run-up to a gig, with burps from Freddie's guitar and paradiddles from a young man on drums. Ready to provide keyboard support are Joy on a Kurzweil and Vet on a Hammond B-3, the instrument of choice of her eldest brother, Sly.

  Reliably on time at the noon start of the service, Freddie announces, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord! Whatever we need, we thank you for it. Whatever we don't need, we thank you for taking it away." It seems to summarize how, over a long life, he's gotten to where he is. Through the rest of the service, ritual worship and readings are interspersed with musical offerings, and both prove more enjoyable and inspiring than your average religious experience. "Where would we be if we had not let women go forth in the church?" asks the pastor at one point, then repeating the rhetorical question. Melody's response from her pew provokes general laughter: "Alone!" Referring to the Book of Joshua, and probably to the former fruits of his fame, Freddie declares, "We don't define success by money. Do you put your money ahead of your relations with your fellow man?" Several women in the congregation mutter softly but audibly, "Uh-huh." The pastor responds, "Y'all be jokin', but the Lord's gonna hear your joke! I'm talkin' about where you're supposed to go, now let's talk about where ya' go."

  For the vocal musical numbers, the lyrics are projected on a screen with the expectation that the congregation will join in, at least on the choruses. There are good voices among them, sometimes recalling the uplift of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, who had themselves been based in their church, in Oakland, and had crossed over to the pop charts in the late '60s with "Oh Happy Day," alongside the Family Stone. Freddie affords himself a few soulful solo-guitar breaks, showing he still has what it takes, and his wife supplements the drums with raps on her tambourine. Vet and joy remind the listener of how Sly made use of keyboards to get the thrill of gospel music onto some of his tracks.

  Freddie knows how to keep up with his congregants' concerns with current affairs, and how to appeal to the younger churchgoers, including several of his own grandchildren. He preaches about the devil lurking behind ongoing racial divides, and about how much things have changed since he was a young player. "I can't go to those [hip] places any more," he says, bending over in mimed antiquity. "I'm just an old country preacher, preachin' the Gospel." Commenting more seriously on the lessons he's learned about detours from the Kingdom of Heaven, he points out, "All you have to do to get the Kingdom of the World is to be willing to lose your dignity and be degraded." He reminds his listeners, "My salvation is bigger than your not liking me, bigger than your not liking the way I sing or play the guitar." It's apparent, of course, that these people, who count themselves as family and friends, feel that they like him and his God-given musical talent very much. Following outreach with the collection plate and the sobriety of communion, the pastor rewards the congregation with a short scat, very much evoking the kind of jive lyrics he used to share with his sibling Sly: "When you know that you know that you
know that you know that you know, amen, you can do it."

  S LY' S RELOCATION FROM THE hyper heat of the L.A. hills to the bucolic, breezy heights of Napa County put him closer not only to his brother and one of his sisters but also to two of his offspring in the Sacramento area, son, Sly Stewart Jr., and daughter, Sylvette Phunne Robinson. He was also in close reach, when and if he decided to extend it, of three other members of the Family Stone: Greg in Petaluma, Jerry in Folsom, and Cynthia in Sacramento. "He wanted to come back up here where his group started-that was the idea, man," says Mario Errico, who made the move back to his native Bay Area alongside Sly and continued to function as Sly's right-hand man. Now somewhat frail and inclined to nervous energy, Mario approved of the "peacefulness" of the new Napa home, and the exercise gear that came with the rented mansion. Despite the tolls that hard living and middle age have taken on both men, "If he sees me get into [an exercise program], he'll do it, he'll follow," assures Mario. But most of Sly's days, at whatever hour they commence, are filled with "music, man. We take a little ride to the store, for groceries, clothes and things. Then back to the house.... He's got this Korg [keyboard], it cost about ten-and-a-half thousand.... He stays there, man, he loves it.... I'm down in the garage, messing around."

  In tune with Mario's affections for Sly and wheeled vehicles, and standing high in Sly's confidence, is Neal Austinson. Twenty years younger than Sly and Mario, Neal grew up in Marin County and became a focused fan of the Family Stone while in high school. Through one of his schoolmates, a daughter of Jerry Martini, Neal got to visit Sly's pad in Novato while the marriage to Kathy Silva was still in place, though he got little one-on-one attention from Sly at that time. There were occasional interchanges during the '80s and '90s as Neal pursued his father's career in surveying, and in his offhours began accumulating what is arguably the world's most complete collection of Sly & the Family Stone memorabilia and material. The Neal Austinson Archives include photographs, promotional papers, clothing, and audio and video recordings.