I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (16 page)

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, Headhunters, 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."'

With time to gather only a few of her things, Ria flew with Sly
back to New York, no doubt recalling their first plane trip together
a dozen years earlier. After landing, "We stayed by ourselves for a
couple of days, and it was absolutely wonderful," sighs Ria. "Then
I stayed there for three months. But he was so heavily into his
downward spiral then that there was just no hope." It was a period
of high living, in more than one sense. "Very posh, little things
everywhere, bodyguards everywhere." Since she'd come across the
country with little luggage, and she and Sly were about the same,
trim size, Ria took to wearing some of "his gorgeous leather
clothes." Sly then financed her shopping trips to the ritzy pharmacy on the building's first floor, for cosmetics, and to Greenwich
Village, for clothing. He topped off his gifts with a floor-length
mink coat. "I used to go walking in Central Park," Ria says, "with
a bodyguard and a mink coat. Can you believe it?"

Bubba Banks, still Sly's right-hand man, acted as guide for her
shopping trips and as much more than just a bodyguard to Sly,
says Ria. "Bubba was more like a valet ... or, he could have been
a very dear friend tending to a very sick buddy.... He would take
[Sly] in and out of the bathtub, when he couldn't do it himself,
and try to get him ready and on his feet for meetings at Columbia, and interviews." The "sickness," of course, was self-induced,
and this time, unlike in Paris, Ria was aware of Sly's habits. "He did
so many drugs [including PCP] that I thought, a few times, he
would die. And Bubba had to take care of him. Many times." Bubba
himself "may have tippled," Ria supposes, "but nobody used like
Sly, poor baby." Whatever Bubba's reputation among others of Sly's
associates, Ria "didn't ever see him implement anything bad....
He never said anything untoward, he never cursed, the `f' word was
never spoken."

The visiting Miles Davis left a cruder but laughable impression
on Ria. "Miles was a real crazy asshole, if you ask me," she opines.
"Extremely talented, but with a very bad personality. He'd be up
to his elbows and eyebrows in cocaine, and sit by himself in the
dark in one of the rooms most of the time." Sly's reigning bassist,
Rustee Allen, served as an additional witness to the jazz giant's
shenanigans. Rustee recalled to Joel Selvin when Miles "got on Sly's
organ, and started to voice these nine-note, ethereal crazy chords.
Sly was way back in the bedroom and he came out yelling, `Who
in the fuck is doing that on my organ?' He came in and saw. `Miles,
get your mother-fucking ass out,' he said. `Don't ever play that
voodoo shit here ...: Miles left, and I said, `Sly, that was Miles
Davis you were talking to. "I don't give a fuck,' he said."

Actor, director, and sometime musician Melvin Van Peebles
drew a more favorable report from Ria, as a guest with good influence: "He was normal and happy and creative." Sly himself seemed happy in the studio that Columbia had set up in his flat. "It
wasn't like the old days [in California], when I could just sit down
on the piano bench and listen to him create for hours," Ria sighs.
But, "You should have heard the stuff he recorded" at Central Park
West. "It's never been released. Hours and hours of beauty. It was
funky, good backbeat, it got down. It wasn't mostly fast, hot dance
music. It was calmer than that-very intricate and beautiful," perhaps closer to some of his post-Small Talk tracks for Epic. Ria,
meanwhile, "took over being the Mother Love kind of person
around the house," cooking up creamed corn from scratch, as Sly's
mother had taught her to do.

There wasn't much evidence of communication with the rest
of the Family Stone, though there were long-distance entreaties
from Cynthia, fielded by Ria. "She was just begging to be paid.
`Please, please talk to him.' `I did, Cynthia, I did, yesterday.' Sly
didn't have an `attitude' toward anyone; he was only focused on
creating his music." Ria recalls only one instance when Sly's
cocaine addiction may have indirectly resulted in some friction
between her and him. "I said, `Who the hell do you think you are,
Jesus Christ?' Because he was already having that kind of delusion." After a tense pause, "He looked at me and couldn't stop
laughing. And Bubba kind of looked over his shoulder at me and
gave me a sign like, he really does think he's Jesus Christ, so let's
not say that anymore."