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

by Jeff Kaliss

  Now living in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, north of Marin, Neal found himself summoned by Sly for a variety of pragmatic and fanciful purposes, after Sly moved to Napa County, an hour's drive to the east. Neal's assignments ranged from registering vehicles to evaluating business opportunities (Sly briefly considered opening a rib house) to fielding requests from curious press and documentarians. "I would never violate Sly's privacy or do anything weird like that," he says. "I just feel extremely fortunate that I can pretty much go there any time I want. Nobody [else] really goes up there. From what Mario tells me, [Sly] likes me and trusts me.... It hasn't gotten to the point yet where he's let me hear anything, but he's let me read lyrics, and he's recited lyrics to me, too. I think he wants to share things with people, but he hasn't brought it to that level yet." Through the latter part of 2006, both Mario Errico and Austinson had taken steps to help me realize the hope that Sly would grant some personal experience to include in this book. "He's liable to," Mario remarked mysteriously over a December lunch. "You just gotta catch him at the right time."

  Forty years after the formation of the Family Stone and thirtyfive since the start of its dissolution, it looked like the band's founder was still making music-and still doing drugs. There had been little or no press coverage of either activity for a long time, though intimates reported that the latter had diminished as Sly had moved further from the fast lane. The other scattered remainders of the legendary band had been finding their way through middle age as best they could. Brother Freddie, long cleansed of his own drug problems, continued tending to his family, including several grandchildren, and to his flock at the Evangelist Temple Fellowship Center in Vallejo, where he presided every Sunday. Sister Rose began work on a book and a funky solo album (released in 2008 as Already Motivated). She also sang with Jerry Martini's group, while her daughter, Lisa, prepared to stand in for her in Vet's and Sly's various aggregations. Cynthia, living modestly in Sacramento, brightened all of the spin-off bands with her horn and spunky stage presence. Jerry helped form and lead several of those bands, catering to an abiding appetite for the sounds of the Family Stone by touring fairs, boardwalks, and the like. He also wielded his sax at local engagements in the greater Sacramento area while coparenting a teenage daughter. Greg, raising a young family in Sonoma County, remained in demand for Bay Area all-star jams, but his principal focus was producing a couple of class-act bigband albums for vocalist Jamie Davis and getting Jamie out to a world whose nostalgia extended further back than the '60s. Larry, geographically and socially the most distant from his old mates, settled in Minnesota, close to the funky, unstoppable Prince, and sharing his devout Jehovah's Witness faith and some of his gigs.

  O N NEW YEAR'S EVE , Neal relayed to me a phone call from Sly, summoning us to his place. Under entreaty from Neal, Sly rescheduled the meeting for New Year's Day 2007. At about eight the next morning, I left my San Francisco home (a mile north of the Urbano Drive site of the Family Stone's inception) and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to rendezvous with Neal in Santa Rosa. But there was no reaching the habitually nocturnal Sly by phone at that early hour, so I spent several more hours lunching, chatting, and plotting with Neal what questions, of the many that had occurred to me, I could and should put to my elusive subject. Neal was well acquainted with Sly's taboos and defenses.

  Late in the afternoon, after several phoned attempts, Neal and I determined to trust dumb luck and drive over to Sly's environs. The trip took us across the Napa-Sonoma Marshes Wildlife Area, lovely and tranquil, a contrast to Neal's obvious excitement. The air was crisp and cool, and the conversation, mostly about Sly, amusing. My guide picked a staging area, just off the freeway and within striking distance of Sly, to try phoning him again. After several tries, his hope seemed to fade somewhat, but around 3 p.m. he reached Phunne, Sly's daughter with Cynthia, who was visiting. She told Neal that her dad had been up late the previous night, not ushering in 2007 but working on his music, and that he was still asleep. A while later, she confirmed his rising and gave us the green light.

  Neal navigated me along the rural road leading the way up among the hills to the pretty place Vet had found for her brother, well hidden from the hoi polloi and the media. A driveway off the road wound past oak trees toward a massive six-bedroom mansion, along a curved fence embracing the elongated, well-cultivated furrowed rows of a vineyard. Mario had referred to the grapes in a tale he'd shared with me about a recent visit by the landlords. "I made a joke with 'em, `If Sly buys this place from you guys, the vineyards are going, man.' They go, `Whaddya mean?' I go, `We're gonna put thoroughbreds in there, man.' They didn't know what to say." Sly had no intention of becoming a vintner.

  I was instructed by Neal to wait in the spacious garage while he ascended into the living quarters to announce me. I wondered if arrangements for a papal audience might be like this. It was a good time to take a look around at some of the "toys" for which Mario and Neal shared the responsibilities of registration and maintenance. They included a Hummer, a motorized scooter, and several massive brightly painted three-wheeled motorcycles, like the one with which Sly had gifted Vet. I'd seen it parked outside her home in Vallejo. On the walls of the open garage, above an enviable assembly of parts and tools, was a poster of Al Pacino in Scarface and the words Money, Power, Respect. The green, spicy aromatics of the outdoors overpowered any motor oil fumes.

  A tall, attractive woman approached and introduced herself as Phunne. We chatted about how grateful she feels about seeing her father settled in such a benign environment, and how brisk it might get, so much cooler than the Hollywood Hills, should the wind blow over the vineyards later in the evening. Coming back down the stairs, Neal reported somewhat regretfully that Sly would prefer to prepare his own answers to a written list of questions, and have me return, later in the cool evening, to retrieve the list. I told Neal to tell Sly I'd already put in enough waiting and would prefer some action. After another unseen deliberation in the bowels of the mansion, Neal, in a brighter mood, said Sly would speak with me, but only for twenty minutes and without any recording device. I was given the impression that the ban on taping had been imposed by the ominous and unreachable manager Jerry Goldstein.

  Clutching a notebook, I ascended the staircase into what looked to be the kitchen. I saw a slight, older man seated at the kitchen table, wearing casual clothes and a knit cap. He regarded me with a bemused expression, and I smiled back. But I kept looking past him, looking for the person I was expecting to encounter. Then Neal stepped up to introduce me to the seated man: "Sly, this is Jeff Kaliss; Jeff, this is Sly." I realized my mental image had been out of date.

  Colleagues of mine and associates of Sly had warned me that he'd be expected to come across as confrontational, unresponsive, or unintelligible in interchange. But it had been twenty-one years since Sly's last in-person interview, and I had never been one to let my curiosity or my professionalism be compromised by my subjects' quirky reputations. My starting point for interviews has always been that I can have a friendly and informative conversation with anyone. I shook Sly's large hand, we exchanged New Year's greetings, and I sat down, ready to scribble. Neal joined us at the table.

  I knew Sly had recently given his sister Vet permission to call her band "The Family Stone," that this group had landed a gig in Anaheim, California, and that it was rumored that Sly might join in the performance. I told Sly that I'd be using my interview with him for a newspaper article in advance of Vet's show, as well as for a much bigger project, a book on Sly & the Family Stone. I asked him what he judged to be the most important element in telling such a story.

  "The truth," he replied.

  I got him to expand on the truth about what he'd been up to, up there among the grapevines. "I've been writing new songs," he said, "some on tape, some on paper, and some on tape and paper." What would he do with the new material? "I'll release them, with members of my family ... my daughter [I assumed he meant Phunne], maybe my son, my nieces, and a
grand-niece." For the news story, I felt it necessary to ask Sly what he thought about his sister Vet's ensemble, which I hadn't yet heard. "One of the best things is that they're all willing to do what it takes," Sly replied diplomatically. But are they willing to do it right? I wondered. "That's the main thing: they do it perfect."

  Vet had said her group might release a debut album on Sly's PhattaDatta label, but it hadn't happened. Sly told me he'd have his own record of new material out by the end of the year, and that the prospect of returning to recording and performing helped him feel "new again." I asked him to say more about what might be on his new album. "Before, my songs had a lot to do with dealing with unnecessary fighting," he said. "And that's still the case." He quoted a fraction of one new lyric: When you wind up / Making your mind up / That's when you'll find up / Instead of down." He was reciting instead of singing, but I had to tell him how wonderful it was to hear that rich basso voice up close. He smiled. Had coming back north brought him closer to his family, as Vet had hoped? "I see a lot of them," said Sly, "and they always have music on their mind. It takes more of the time than conversation." He reminded me, gently, that our talk would have to come to an end, because he wanted to spend more time with Phunne.

  What about the way in which the public will view him, now that he's been so long out of the public eye? "I hope it's still that I'm doing music, and still representative of the truth." Would he be likely to let his long-waiting fans see him down in Anaheim later that month? "I feel like I'm gonna," he answered, shining that perennial beacon of a grin.

  Driving back to Santa Rosa, Neal was bountifully pleased, and relieved. After I'd dropped him off and was headed south toward a delayed dinner, I got a call on my cell from Neal. He'd followed up by phone with Sly, who had complimented him on his judgment of character. Sly, it seemed, was happy with his brief return to being interviewed, and with the interviewer.

  The resulting profile of Sly appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 9. A couple of days later, Neal and Mario conveyed Sly and his live-in girlfriend, Shay, down the coast to Anaheim in a costly rented motor home, in which Sly was able to continue to work out on a keyboard. Despite the Times story, his imminence was to be kept secret from his fans till the last minute. I made my own way to Anaheim, curious about how Sly would do it, almost two decades since his last foreshortened gig at the Las Palmas in L. A.

  At the House of Blues, adjacent to Disneyland in Anaheim, a sizeable crowd was kept waiting an hour and a half on the evening of January 13 for the start of what had been billed as the Family Stone show. Just like old times. "They're very patient," Dawn Elder-D'Agostino, a regular at the venue, remarked to me. "If it was a punk crowd, they'd be raving." She added, "You don't see many crowds that are this diverse," in reference to the multiethnic, multigenerational audience. There were younger neo-hippies and designer-leather-jacketed Hollywood cognoscenti, but also a large portion of pre-punk Baby Boomers, happy to groove during their wait to a succession of funky songs played over the house system. Also in the throng were the twins Arno and Edwin Konings, who'd rewarded themselves for their continuing research on Sly by flying in from Holland, just for the concert. Positioned right up against the stage was a wise-looking lady in a wheelchair, sporting a flower in her graying hair. She was Serena-Marie Diflipo, Sly's one-time drug counselor and long-time informal advisor. They were all listening to the recorded sounds coming over the house system, of those funkmeisters who'd preceded Sly ("Sex Machine," James Brown), his contemporaries ("Atomic Dog," George Clinton; "Got to Give It Up," Marvin Gaye), and a few of the many he'd influenced ("Nasty Girl," Prince with Vanity; "Jungle Boogie," Kool & the Gang). Sometime around ten o'clock, the revelers were advised to "Put your hands together for Sly & the Family Stone." This heralded, to the sound of "Dance to the Music," the appearances of Vet, dressed in a three-quarter-length white jacket and gold boots, Skyler Jett, the designated male vocalist, wearing a leather jacket and leather pants, and Lisa Stone, Rose's daughter and Sly's niece, looking slim and lovely in an airy outfit. Cynthia, the only player lateraling between Jerry's and Vet's bands, also took the stage with three other horn players, one of them Pat Rizzo, who'd partnered with and then replaced Jerry in the original group. Four string and rhythm players completed Vet's lineup. But there was no sign of her celebrated sibling, and not even any confirmation of his proximity. Yet.

  Through a string of nine tunes from the original Sly & the Family Stone songbook and a couple from Vet's lither days with Little Sister, Skyler acted as a sort of barker to the crowd, demanding, "How many people know this song?" and "How many people got Sly Stone records out there?" Skyler also mimicked the chuckle from the closing bars of "Sing a Simple Song," an odd affectation, since Sly's original chuckle had been an act of unrehearsed spontaneity (a reaction to Larry's apparently improvised lyric, "livin, lovin', overdubbin"'), and was not meant to be reproduced. In other aspects, the arrangements of this new Family Stone seemed intent on retrofitting the classic hits with the trappings of neo-soul and jazz. It was fun, however, and well-received by the assembled.

  After the eleventh number, "Everybody Is a Star," Skyler reminded everybody that "this is a historical night, y'all!" And then the real star himself finally shuffled out onto the stage, and displayed a credible reaction to the rapt crowd. "I don't know whether any of you are as old as I am," Sly told them. He'd reattached his blond Mohawk, last seen at the Grammys, and had donned a military jacket with cape and red scarf. Sunglasses obscured his lustrous large eyes.

  Over the next couple of songs, a couple of his daughters seemed bent on reinforcing him in curious musical forms: Novena was petite and cutely garbed and noodled some Chopin on one of the Yamaha Motif keyboards. Phunne, cool and long of limb, took the mike and rapped about family, while Sly laid down some keyboard funk behind her. Niece Lisa Stone helped make the event a literal Family Affair. Shay, who'd started with her sister as helpmates to Sly and became his regular female companion in Napa, joined the jam on an African drum.

  Wandering to the front of the stage, Sly was greeted with cheers and camera flashes by the adoring throng. Responding with visible delight, he attempted to lead them in an aptly timed "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," and no one seemed to mind that Sly had started the tune off in the wrong key. Grinning almost shyly, Sly was led by Mario offstage, where Neal and his lady, Jeanine, were waiting with congratulations. The formerly patient audience now chanted "We want Sly!" repeatedly. "He'll be back," promised Phunne. Vet, who'd been looking less than comfortable through much of the waiting for Sly, now seemed inspired by her brother's act of commitment, and she began some uptempo gospel sounds, suggestive of her time with the Heavenly Tones. Sly then returned to the stage to lead the house through the chanting portion of "I Want to Take You Higher," as he'd done for hundreds of thousands at Woodstock more than thirty-seven years earlier. Then he was gone again.

  In a nice touch, Vet finished off the extended evening by acknowledging the upcoming Martin Luther King Day holiday and performing" Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey." She and the band then covered "Sex Machine," which she dedicated "in honor of the great godfather of soul, James Brown," who'd passed away on Christmas morning.

  The Konings twins from Holland later gifted Sly at his hotel with a vintage drum machine, like the one he'd deployed on Riot. This scored them some video ops for an accompanying Dutch TV crew. Sly was delighted, as he ought to have been. More than on the HOB stage, he was being treated like the esteemed elder of a vibrant tribe.

  Through the rest of 2007, Sly's performances with Vet's reconfigured Family Stone band followed much the same suit as the year's opening gig, There was variation, though, in the degree and quality of Sly's participation and in the reactions of the everskeptical but always curious press and public. For a gig arranged by comedian/impresario George Wallace at the Flamingo in Las Vegas and scheduled for March 31, local bookmakers were betting forty-five to one that Sly wouldn't show. He beat the odds, taking to the
stage after the band's introductory medley in what the Las Vegas Sun described as "a black sequined suit with black platform shoes and red heels, a red sequined shirt, a black belt with a giant rectangular plate reading `Sly," a black stocking cap, a neck brace, and big white Dolce & Gabbana shades." The outfit was enough to ignite '70s flashbacks in the "amped-up fans," even if Sly's halfhour performance was far short of what they recalled of those times (though still far longer than at the Grammys). The Las Vegas Review-Journal described Sly as "the ghost of R & B's past, a funk forebear who's finally come out of hiding." He made his way onstage with a pump of his fist, "looking like a perspiring gemstone, like he'd been covered in an imploded disco ball." The media differed in their assessments of Sly's voice and the band's coordination with him, but they lauded his interaction with the crowd. Sly "appeared to enjoy himself and regain his old funk form," reported the PR Newswire. "His smile was infectious, he slapped high fives with an adoring audience, and he even gave autographs as he walked amongst the fans.... He seemed particularly happy to introduce his daughters, Baby [Novena], a classical pianist, and Phume [Phunne], a rapper, as each of them shined in solo moments from the stage they were sharing with their dad during this eventful evening." Audience member and Family Stone exmanager Ken Roberts, when questioned about Sly's brace, connected it to what he said was a large growth on Sly's spine. But Mario and others referred instead to a prolonged recovery from Sly's accidental tumble from a slope near his former Beverly Hills abode. Numerous amateur videos of the Flamingo show and later performances remain available on the Web.