Icon: Sly and The Family Stone
Maybe the most startling thing about Sly & the Family Stone’s peak is how short it was. A mere four years elapsed from the Bay Area funk-rock septet’s debut, A Whole New Thing, to the radical masterpiece, There’s a Riot Goin ‘On, which was recorded mostly by Sly alone. Granted, this arc coincided with the greatest mass-societal changes of 20th-century America, but it tells us plenty about Stone’s singularity nevertheless.
As a top-rated Bay Area DJ who’d worked with the early Jefferson Airplane as producer, Stone concluded that other people would appreciate the collision of black funk and arty white rock as much as he would, and set out to make it happen. Of course, “James + Beatles = Sly” is way too simplistic, even for a guy who specialized in slogans. The early Family Stone records are full of huge optimism, always more tempered than not, but they’re like riding a wave. Then, with Riot, it crashes, and after that he’s an inspired craftsman working a category he invented. But invent it he did – by taking both the beats and the coloring that were his tools further than just about anyone ever.
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No one not Bob Dylan sneering at Mr. Jones, not Roxanne Shant tearing other female rappers to ribbons, not U-Roy sending up "gal-boy I Roy" has put so vicious a mockery on record as Sly Stone did with There's a Riot Goin' On. Only he wasn't attacking a straw man or the competition: as his band disintegrated around him (Sly did much of the instrumental work himself, with few full-band performances and a handful of guitar parts handled by Bobby Womack), Stone was side-eyeing his impossibly hopeful earlier records. Riot turns everything he'd ever done inside out and, as the ultimate proof of his genius, made it even stronger. Here, the affirmations of old turn queasy, and set up withering denouements: The brave and strong survive . . . But you're crying anyway 'cause you're all broke down. When I'm lost, I know I will be found . . . Look at you fooling you. That extended to the music, too, most clearly on "Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa," in which the audaciously celebratory 1970 single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is sent back on the road covered in soot and at a third of its previous gear, but it's equally easy to hear the stuttering horns of "Brave & Strong" and the jagged guitar vamp of "Africa Talks to You 'The Asphalt Jungle'" as Bizarro World versions of "Dance to the Music" and its kin. It's the longest, darkest night of the soul ever put on record; it's also the deepest, most compulsively listenable album Sly or anybody else ever made.
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"I switched from coke to pep and I'm a connoisseur" is one of those opening-songs assurances that could have only come from the early '70s. Given how public Sly Stone's private habits had become he missed, or was late to, dozens of concerts, and the making of 1971's There's a Riot Goin' On was fraught with the white stuff it's not too surprising Sly would want to calm everybody down. Including himself, from the sound of it: 1973's Fresh took the harder, bass-heavier pulse of its predecessor, which hit "reset" on the sonic priorities of a generation of R&B artists, and sweetened it without lightening it an iota. The lyrics, too, were less barbed, though they could sting when you listened close: "Keep on Dancin'" was a devious rewrite of "Dance to the Music," and while "If You Want Me to Stay" was a rapprochement with the fans Sly either either no-showed or came onstage late for it laid out the reunion explicitly in Sly's terms. (Is there a more '70s statement than, "I've got to be me"?) But none of that mitigates the pleasure of Fresh. "In Time," "Let Me Have It All," "I Don't Know (Satisfaction)," and "If It Were Left Up to Me" all display Stone at his churchiest, sister Rose's organ holding steady while horns fly all over the place. Sly made other records, but he never made a great one again, so the album's true climax is "Que Sera, Sera," an old Doris Day song whose verses are taken by Rose and the chorus by Sly. They remake it as a loping near-blues, and it stands as the final word of his career: "Whatever will be, will be/The future's not ours to see." Or, sadly, to keep remaking.
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Who in their right mind could have resisted this in 1969? Not many can resist it now. There are duff moments, granted: "Sex Machine" does lose steam, as many rock songs lasting 13:46 did and do. But Stand! is where all the movement-based good cheer of the early Sly & the Family Stone records comes into laser focus. Nearly every song is an anthem and nearly every song is a classic, which isn't the same thing at all. The title track is simply, powerfully affirmative, using calm language and a vaguely Spirit-of-1776-if-it-bumped arrangement to inspire us to "do all of the things [we] set out to do," before jump-cutting to a coda so drop-dead funky it made the excellent song that preceded it seem almost irrelevant. "Everyday People" makes racial fear into a nursery rhyme and caps it with Sly calling, "We've got to live together." He'd never sounded so impassioned. But he comes close on the screaming "I Want to Take You Higher," written as if Sly had somehow foreseen the need for it in his Woodstock set, and the galvanizing "Sing a Simple Song": "Try a little do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do!" cries frazzle-voiced trumpeter Cynthia Robinson. Along with the essential life advice of "You Can Make It If You Try," it makes Stand! more than just a funk or rock classic, but also one of the greatest kids' albums ever recorded.
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Sly & the Family Stone's 1967 debut was the most aptly titled album since Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come. Compared to the screaming freedom of the later Stand!, it's fairly mild, but one listen makes it obvious that Sly Stone was some kind of visionary, and not just because he had the foresight to put together a band of men and women, white and blacks, all working as equals under Sly's steady hand. "Underdog," which leads it off, is a celebratory statement of intent, the bandleader representing for everyone who felt misunderstood a.k.a. a great deal of young America of the 1960s. His propensity for incorporating nursery rhymes into his songs was already well in place see "Run, Run, Run," with its "Frere Jacques" a cappella bridge. "Run, Run, Run" itself is soul, not funk, at root, and a hint supper-clubby, but it glides; even at the beginning, the Family Stone could handle anything their leader threw their way. "Advice," on the other hand, is a sharp-footed vamp whose stop-start arrangement and whip-crack drumming point straight toward the path-breaking "Dance to the Music" a year later. If they'd never recorded anything else, A Whole New Thing would cement Sly & the Family Stone as one of the great eccentric one-shots of the age.
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Earlier in 1968, Sly had released Dance to the Music, with its galvanic, revolutionary title single. But Life, a late-year release, was the more focused, purposeful full set. Sly left off meandering medleys and concentrated on songwriting, and while the songs had been and would get quite a bit better, they mesh wonderfully, and it's not an accident that "Life," "Fun," and "M'Lady" all made it onto the perfect 1970 Greatest Hits. In truth, the rest is a little gawky. "Dynamite!" mixes tambourine-driven soul with heavy garage-rock guitar a hair literally to kick things off, while "Plastic Jim" is a character study with deep roots in Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones but not enough of the acuity Sly's writing would acquire soon after. And as with so many of the early Family Stone albums, you can have lots of fun playing spot-the-sample, with the clear winner being "Into My Own Thing," whose ascending-then-curlicueing horn-and-woodwinds riff was neatly incorporated into Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice."
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The grooves were willing, but the inspiration was running out by the time Sly & the Family Stone now a very different outfit than the septet that began in the mid '60s recorded its seventh album. The Richard Avedon-shot cover of Sly, his wife (briefly) Kathy Silva, and their newborn Sly Jr., who also guest-stars on the lead title track, cooing and crying over a simple, funky rhythm bed "Small Talk," get it? And as the title indicates, Small Talk is about quiet, homey pleasures, and if adding violinist Sid Page to the proceedings gave them a little more slack sentiment than Sly had ever permitted before, so be it. Sometimes it does get in the way, as on "Time for Livin'" (which the Beastie Boys would later cover as a hardcore song on Check Your Head). "Mother Beautiful" takes the tendency further, into the song itself: "Who's the reason for my daddy's grin?/It's true, it's true." Nevertheless, "Loose Booty" is a funk monster (later made famous by again the Beastie Boys, who swiped its slick groove for "Shadrach" on Paul's Boutique), and "Holdin' On" is early disco if anything is.
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By now, Sly figured out what precisely he wanted his band to sound like, say, and do. And on the title track, he figured it out so precisely that he upended the sonic landscape forever. Like only a select few records, there is pop music before "Dance to the Music" and pop music after it on a widespread scale, not a micro one. Before it, Motown would never have released a song with an arrangement like the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You," with its everyone-takes-a-turn vocal and weaving-in-and-out instrumental arrangement; Parliament-Funkadelic would have been completely unthinkable. "Dance to the Music" made the world a little smaller simply because its audacious breakdown-then-build-up wasn't just a feature of the song: it was the song. It's also part of the rather kitschy 12-minute medley that fills out the LP (the bonus tracks here extend it to an hour) without adding much, though it's got a goofy charm. "Higher," with its focus on organ and guitar and its punchy chorus, is just a rewrite or two and maybe some live jamming away from becoming "I Want to Take You Higher" (Stand). "Ride the Rhythm" is fairly rinky-dink, though, and it's a good example of why the early Sly albums stayed out of print so long: the best stuff has dated far better than what surrounds it.
