I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (18 page)

Among the most distinctive of the tracks was the disc's opener,
"In Time," spiraling out in a treacherous time signature that oneupped "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." Miles Davis
was reportedly so struck by this piece that he made his band listen
to it repeatedly, to absorb its snakelike syncopation. The remaining songs were arguably somewhat brighter and more artful than
Riot's, with something of the sensuality of Al Green or Marvin
Gaye and an obvious influence on the later output of Stevie Wonder. Equally upbeat was the cover art, featuring images by fine
art/fashionista photographer Richard Avedon of a grinning Sly
(again without ensemble), high-kicking in a tight leather outfit,
bare-chested, and sporting a lush Afro. Compared to Riot, the
album was also embedded with more "message" material. "Let Me
Have It All" carried an almost gospel hopefulness, supported by
wah-wah guitar, bubbly bass, and female chorus. "Thankful N' Thoughtful" showcased Cynthia's tight trumpeting in a similarly
bright vein. Here was evidence that, musically at least, Sly was not
on the steady road to hell to which many seemed ready to consign
him.

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.