I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (22 page)

The new group was booked for "Quiet Storm" radio station
KBLX's Stone Soul Picnic, on Memorial Day 2004 on the Cal State,
Hayward campus. For Greg, it was "a musical letdown.... We
went onstage and it just fell apart." Greg determined to form yet
another band, the Family Stone Experience, with singer Ian
Neville, son of the Neville Brothers' Aaron, from New Orleans, and
without Vet. Greg arranged for this band to showcase for booking agents in Las Vegas, but soon began experiencing dissent among
the players. "Some of the individuals in the band thought they
should be making a fortune 'cause this was `the Family Stone,"'
Greg attests. "There was a lot of misconception of perspective of
reality." Jerry, says Greg, specifically challenged him about leadership of the group. Ultimately, Greg "stepped out of the way. I went,
if I'm gonna do this anymore, I'm gonna do it with the Man [i.e.,
Sly] himself ... because you don't know how many times, over the
last thirty years, people have come up to me and said, `Well, c'mon,
we'll kidnap Sly and bring him up to the country and put him in
a studio and he'll want to do it.' I've heard every kind of story you
could imagine, knowing none of them could ever work. And
everybody's tried everything, from Clive Davis to Jerry Goldstein
to who knows what."

Thus began the schism that resulted in the formation of two
Family Stone spin-off bands: the Family Stone Experience, under
Jerry's leadership, and the Phunk Phamily Affair, under Vet's. Greg
went off, in 2005, to form Unity Music with producer Sam Beler
and singer Jamie Davis, primarily devoted to showcasing Jamie's
impressive, mellow chops in a big-band jazz setting. Meanwhile,
the funky canon he'd helped create and had tried to resurrect
started appearing on display stands alongside the lattes and Wi-Fi
in Starbucks, under the title Higher!, a user-friendly compilation
of Sly & the Family Stone hits, within the coffee giant's new Hear
Music Opus collection of market-friendly CDs. Starbucks also
marketed Different Strokes by Different Folks, a re-imagining of
several Family Stone hits by young "urban" performers. These were
apparent efforts to appeal both to older Sly fans and to their contemporary offspring. Vet's band got booked for an August 15,
2005, performance at L.A.'s Knitting Factory, a venue for jazz and
"new" music, like the older club of the same name in New York. Vet, who now lives in a comfortable house in a newer section of
her native Vallejo, had been in touch with her older brother, who,
she says, "was kind of moved that I would take this on, after all
these years, doing all the old songs, as opposed to something new."
She called Sly and asked him to transport her to the Knitting Factory and was surprised when he assented. No one had seen him in
public for a long time.

"I didn't think I was going to hold him to it," she says. "So on
the night of the gig, I went to his house [in Beverly Hills], and I
said, `The gig's in about an hour.' And he went down and said,
`Something's wrong with the bike."' A sometime collector of cars
old and new, luxurious and not, Sly had recently begun to accrue
motorcycles. "I said, `You just gotta flip that switch,"' Vet continues. "He forgot that he told me how to work the bike. So ... he
went upstairs and got dressed, I was dressed up, and he came down
and said, `We're gonna stop by Hollywood Boulevard.'

"So I'm on the back of his bike, and we go down and stop at
this store called Zebra. We go into the store and he says, `Dress my
baby sister up, she's got a show to do! Dress her up like a biker!'
And they did," Vet giggles. "I had on Harley-Davidson boots, the
corset thing, the big baggy pants, the whole thing.... So I got back
on the bike ... and when we got there, they lifted up the side of
the Knitting Factory so that Sly could drive his bike in. But Sly
didn't drive right in, he sat outside, and people were just everywhere, and the tears were really flowing from people, because they
really thought he'd died. People were just snapping pictures, and
he was just as calm and collected as he could be." Sly was taken to
a closed-off booth on the Knitting Factory's second level, while his
sister joined the Phunk Phamily Affair onstage. "To me, that was
one of the best shows we'd ever done," she says. "And when I
looked up, where Sly was, I threw him a kiss, and he was dancing away. And I thought to myself, `Dancing to his own music!' And
after the show ... he said to me, `You know what, you guys play
my music better than I've ever heard anyone play it in my life.'
That's when he took a real interest in us."

And the wider music world seemed to be regenerating interest in Sly, or at least in what they remembered of him. Don Was,
successful producer of acts as diverse as Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, the
Rolling Stones, Paula Abdul, and Waylon Jennings, positioned Sly
& the Family Stone among "The Greatest Artists of All Time" in
his 2004 article in Rolling Stone. Sly "is a singular folk orchestrator; Duke Ellington is probably the best reference point," Don
declared, before choosing another laudatory comparison from the
world of art. "As time went on, Sly started using some more dissonant colors; he became like the Cezanne of funk. It's like he took
these traditional James Brown groove elements and started putting orange into the picture." Don went on to reflect on the era of
his great artist's greatest hits. "The so-called revolution that was
coming at the end of the Sixties: We might have lost that one, but
Sly won his own personal revolution, musically and in the minds
of the audience. I just hope he knows that, and maybe that he's OK
with it. I hope he's not sitting around with any kind of remorse.
Because by any real criteria that you could measure success, this
guy is a titan."

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.