| February 9th, 2006 11:46 AM |
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| Make It Funky |
Um... is it me, or did Sly Stone seem completely incoherent and in another land? What was up with the hair? His crouch? I think that the surrogate family members (Robert Randolph, Steven Tyler, Joss Stone etc) carried this performance. I was literally SHOCKED!!! Where did they find Sly? Cracked out in some gutter in East LA?
Cheers.
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| February 9th, 2006 11:48 AM |
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| Break The Spell |
Who knows where they found him, thats certainly not the performance I was expecting from Sly. Even Tyler was shaking his head at how bad it went!!
[Edited by Break The Spell] |
| February 9th, 2006 11:54 AM |
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| Make It Funky |
Yeah, no kidding. I think all of the performers were surprised. The dress rehearsal must've been alot better - otherwise, they probably wouldn't have risked televising that "filler".
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| February 9th, 2006 11:57 AM |
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| Break The Spell |
I wonder if they even had a rehearsal? It seemed to me like Sly was playing a completely different song than his backing band. There was no vibe between him and the others at all. |
| February 9th, 2006 06:28 PM |
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| Gimme Shelter |
Yeah, in the middle of the song he just walked off. |
| February 9th, 2006 06:59 PM |
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| FPM C10 |
It's funny, the newspaper here said Sly was the highlight of the show...guess that says a lot about the show!
I'd like to see it, good or bad. All Sly actually had to do was show up. Miss Youngblood and I were talking about it on the way home. Sly needs to get a good business manager. He could do the George Clinton thing and just show up and look cool while a herd of crazy people plays your songs for you. He could get the guys in Dumpstaphunk to play with a few of the original members of the Family Stone. SOMEBODY needs to do it! He's got a bunch of killer songs that everybody in the whole world knows and loves - he oughta be able to get paid for it, and we oughta be able to go hear it! Is he THAT messed up that he can't just, you know, play a few licks, sing a little...like a funky Brian Wilson?
I'll tell ya what...I heard the P-Funk All-Stars do "Want To Take You Higher" with Larry Graham in 1995, and I heard Dumpstaphunk do "Thank You (etc)" with Bernard singing last month, and those are both some JAMS. Wouldn't a whole night of that shit be fantastic?
All Sly needs to do is sit behind an organ and look cool.
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| February 9th, 2006 07:45 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
Is this a wig?
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| February 9th, 2006 08:13 PM |
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| texile |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
All Sly needs to do is sit behind an organ and look cool.
and he'd still be the coolest guy up there -
its sad but he doesn't need that shit.
maybe he was as confused as me about tyler being up there. |
| February 9th, 2006 08:15 PM |
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| sirmoonie |
Good man ole Sly Stone. Big Steeler fan. |
| February 9th, 2006 09:07 PM |
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| Riffhard |
I loved him in the Rambo films! Eye of the tiger!!
Riffy
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| February 9th, 2006 09:27 PM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
I said this earlier, but I'll say it again....
I don't blame Sly for walking off. I woulda walked off too. His music was getting slaughtered. The people on the stage had NO BUSINESS even breathing the same air as Sly.
And anyone who turns his back on Steven Tyler(he is included on a funk jam why?)is OK by me.... |
| February 9th, 2006 09:37 PM |
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| sirmoonie |
"Eye of the Tiger" was Rocky 3 |
| February 9th, 2006 09:40 PM |
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| Riffhard |
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:
"Eye of the Tiger" was Rocky 3
Right you are! I loved him in Rocky flicks as well!
Is it just me or is he starting to adopt a Clubber Lang look these days?
Riffy |
| February 9th, 2006 11:02 PM |
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| sammy davis jr. |
I thought Sly was and is great.....the more incoherent the better. His mohawk was cool as fuck. I'm glad he walked off on the hangers on. |
| February 9th, 2006 11:10 PM |
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| Martha |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
I thought Sly was and is great.....the more incoherent the better. His mohawk was cool as fuck. I'm glad he walked off on the hangers on.
LOL! |
| February 9th, 2006 11:22 PM |
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| Sir Stonesalot |
>His mohawk was cool as fuck<
Yeah, no shit. Sly has more cool in the tip of his little finger, that all the rest of those wannabes have in their entire bodies COMBINED! And that includes that fucknut Steven Tyler. AND all the dumbass superfluous dancers.
St. Sway...you crack me up...mostly because I know that you are pretty right on the money! LOL! |
| February 10th, 2006 08:30 AM |
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| Make It Funky |
Well the problem with Sly Stone, is that he is totally DISINTERESTED in associating himself with any capital gains from rocknroll. He is beyond cynical. I liked the idea of getting him a new manager. Last summer, long before Sly's resurgence, I had this dream about tracking Sly down, trying to convince him to come out of reclusion... but now I know, the producers of the Grammy's were well aware of his flight risk, and were unsure if Sly would even appear at the awards show. Obviously, he has no desire to make money on past notoriety, and he's quite content to sustain his anonymity. To each their own I guess. (I quite liked Robert Randolph's inclusion).
Cheers! |
| February 10th, 2006 08:55 AM |
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| Candace Youngblood |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
I thought Sly was and is great.....the more incoherent the better. His mohawk was cool as fuck. I'm glad he walked off on the hangers on.
YES!!!!! |
| February 11th, 2006 08:25 AM |
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| JaggerLips |
Sorry thought this was a topic on Sylvester Stallone!! |
| February 11th, 2006 05:51 PM |
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| bon jovi |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
"Earthlings do not yet know the meaning of suffering. Mua-ha-ha!"
"So, humans have easily injured knees. My race will find this information very useful indeed. Mua-ha-ha!" |
| February 12th, 2006 11:07 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
February 8, 2006
Soundtrack to a Riot
The Once and Future Sly Stone
By RON JACOBS
counterpunch.com
I only saw Sly and the Family Stone once. It wasn't the best of times for Sly and my recall is very hazy, thanks to a combination of Henninger Bier and some very good Afghani hash that was making the rounds of the Frankfurt International Rock Festival the summer of 1973. By the time I saw the band, Sly's misfortunes with drugs and fame were as much the stuff of rock and roll legend as was his penchant for missing concert dates that had long ago been agreed to by his agent and the promoters involved. All I really remember was hearing "Dance to the Music" that hot afternoon at the racing ring where the festival was being held.
Nonetheless, Sly Stone and his vision of rock music was revolutionary. An interracial mix of musicians and friends who learned their musicianship in the job, Sly and the Family Stone brought the infectious rhythms of Tax and the easy and very singable bops of bubblegum pop together with a psychedelic energy from the San Francisco Bay Area into a phenomenon that reached teenyboppers, hardcore freaks, brothers and sisters in the Panthers, the middle class housewife, and the GI in Vietnam together in a celebration of rock and soul music (to borrow a phrase from Country Joe and the Fish's song of the same name). It was a postrevolutionary culture that the brothers and sisters of multiple skin tones up on the stage with Sly were living. The top 40 hit "Everyday People" was nothing more (and nothing less) than a three-minute call for tolerance across the spectrum. "Different folks for different folks"--that's all. Simple enough, but how to do it?
The first time I heard the song "Stand!" was another of those revelatory moments that rock provides. Like the first time I heard "All Along the Watchtower," "Come Together,"or "Gimme Shelter," that hearing made me think of the world in a different way. Other folks have other songs, but everyone who listens to music has at least one piece that opened their minds. It could be Stravinsky's Petruschka, Beethoven's Ninth, The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," or any other tune in the world that just changed the way you thought. For me, the list is hundreds of measures long, but I'll leave this column's list at the four I mention above.
Anyhow, it was on the radio that I first heard the song "Stand!" Top Forty radio, in fact. WPGC out of Washington, DC. My brother and I shared a room and the radio dial went between WPGC and WHFS. The latter station went "underground" after 4 PM every day back then (this was a few years before FM radio developed the so-called AOR format), playing entire albums and broadcasting news about the antiwar movement and the counterculture. I first heard cuts from Bob Dylan bootlegs on that station. Anyhow, back to WPGC. I heard that opening roll on the snare drum and then the words "Stand/In the end you'll still be you/One that's done all the things you set out to do." The horns and that funky guitar lick brought me right into the song. The lyrics implored me and everyone else listening to "Stand/For the things you know are right." After all, there was a giant about to fall. Furthermore, it didn't matter if you won because the very fact of standing up for what you believed would set you free. All of that in a pop song! That's why Sly was so good.
And he kept getting better. The album Stand! addressed the nature of language and racial prejudice in its song "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and had Sly taking us all higher. Unfortunately, as the man begin getting high a bit too much, it began to effect his touring. There were shows when Sly either showed up late or not at all, causing his reputation to falter. However, the group's performance at Woodstock remains one of legend and for those who actually saw it, it was one of the best of the festival. That summer also saw the band's single "Hot Fun In the Summertime" climb the charts. This tune remains one of the best songs to celebrate summer every written. In 1969, the band released one of the masterpieces of funk, Thank You Falletinme B Mice Elf(Again)--a rhythmic and lyrical pleasure to hear that expressed the confusion of Sly's life and that of the world we were all living in: "Lookin' at the devil, grinnin' at his gun ... We begin to wrestle I was on the top ."
Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam was getting uglier and more pointless and the war in the US between the system and the people in the ghettos was just getting worse. Richard Nixon was on top and the paranoia of those outside the power structure was intensifying. By 1971, the Black Panthers were in disarray, with many of its leaders in jail or exile and the rest of the party debating the date of the revolution. The dark shadows of heroin and cocaine were spreading even further throughout the Black community and into the youth counterculture. Police were being granted more powers every day while the federal government violated the constitution without qualm. J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon's Justice Department looked the other way while CIA warlords in Vietnam and Laos smuggled smack into the ghettos of the US. GIs coming back from the war were coming back with big time habits and a nightmares that only heroin could calm.
Into this dark hour came Sly and the Family Stone's album There's A Riot Going On. The cover was the Stars and Bars of the US flag and the message was bleak. Taking its title almost assuredly from the Limber and Stroller song "Riot in Cell Block #9," the album chronicles the downfall of the hippie dream of love and peace in the song "Luv n' Haight" and the destruction of a better future. Despite the hopeful strains of "Family Affair" and "You Caught Me Smilin' Again," this album is the story of the street scene in the Haight, the Village and every other hippie ghetto in between. It's the story of despair and exploitation; death drugs taken and death drugs sold; from the psychedelic hopes of Sgt. Pepper to the demonic power chords of Steppenwolf's "The Pusherman." It's the end of that aspect of the American dream enunciated so well by Martin Luther King, Jr: "when the sons of former slaves and former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood;" and Sly himself: " I am no better and neither are you
We are the same whatever we do." Dr. King stood on a stage filled with people white and black that day, just as Sly stood on a stage filled with people white and black every time he performed with the Family Stone. In the same manner, their audiences were multi-hued. The album ends with a sad acknowledgment that that dream for justice in the land of slavery may have met its premature end. Sly is the brother that always hoped for an interracial America where justice ruled the land and people lived as one. His music had always expressed a hope that crossed skin tones. His funky rock and roll had birthed itself in the freedom rides and the counterculture of the San Francisco Bay Area. But, like the streets of that city, things turned sour. There's A Riot Going On tells that story.
=When I heard via a Washington Post (1/27/06) article that Sly and his band might regroup for the 2006 Grammy Awards I have to admit that my emotions bordered on ecstatic. Not since Bob Dylan's performance there in 1998 (the show where the fellow forever known as Soy Bomb showed up) had I even considered watching this self-congratulatory exercise in awarding what is oftentimes merely money-making mediocrity. I mean, I'm a guy who last watched the Academy Awards when Hearts and Minds won best documentary. What might the band play? What song could possibly speak to the commercial nation of 2006 TV land, even if there was a hip hop artist or two in the mix of nominations? Thank you Falletinme be on TV? In a medium where everything becomes just another pose designed to sell a product, would Sly be able to make a point? Or would he even make it on to the screen? After all, the man has had his struggles over the past three decades. And this is the age of five-second delay, after all. Considering this, it didn't matter what he played, I guess, just that he would show up an play was enough. The Stones started the week selling their product during the Super Bowl half-time show and, despite the blatant censorship of two of their songs (thanks to that five-second delay) and the fact that they truly are nothing more than a product anymore--albeit one of the best products on the rock music shelf--they did turn in a damn good performance. What might a Sly and the Family Stone performance portend? Of course, all of this speculation assumed that the man and his band really were going to appear. The only mention on the TV schedule was of some kind of all-star tribute to the group--nothing about an actual appearance.
I guess there's nothing left for me to do but turn on the television and see what goes down.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: [email protected] |
| February 13th, 2006 10:15 AM |
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| FPM C10 |
Hey, what happened to that reprint from The Couch? More Intellectual Property problems?
Here's some more stolen intellectual property:
http://www.kcci.com/entertainment/7005170/detail.html
After playing his first public gig in 19 years at the Grammys last week, Sly Stone appears to be ready for more.
Sly's brother Fred Stone said the group's plans for hitting the road for a tour are going full steam ahead.
******
http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertainment/cst-ftr-sly13.html
Getting Sly Stone onstage ain't easy
February 13, 2006
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter Advertisement
Sly Stone's disjointed Grammy performance last week was another knot in his weird family tree. But longtime Chicagoans are familiar with Sylvester Stewart's escapades. Around here, he's most famous for his failure to appear at a July 1970 concert in Grant Park.
It was not a family affair.
Even though opening act Fat Water appeared, Sly & the Family Stone fans rioted when the headliners were nowhere to be found. More than 90 people were hurt and 148 fans were arrested. The Chicago Park District-sponsored gig was Stone's third consecutive no-show in Chicago.
Stone, however, did show up for both his tribute at last week's Grammy ceremony at the Staples Center in Los Angeles (for a few minutes, anyway) and for a new tribute CD, "Different Strokes by Different Folks" (Epic/Legacy), featuring 14 Sly & the Family Stone hits remixed with Sly and guest artists such as Maroon 5 ("Everyday People"), Buddy Guy and John Mayer (a gritty version of "You Can Make It If You Try") and "I Want to Take You Higher," Stone's eccentric Grammy performance uplifted on CD by Stone, Steven Tyler and Robert Randolph.
Ken Ehrlich, longtime executive producer of the Grammy telecast, was living in Chicago in the summer of 1970 and remembers the riots. For the last several years, he has been working with Stone's longtime manager, trying to get the elusive Stone booked at the Grammys. Stone's last major public appearance was in 1993 during his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wednesday night, Stone finally appeared on the Grammys: He muttered a couple of verses -- and then left.
But at least he got there.
"There's very little that hasn't happened to me in the past 26 years of doing the Grammys," Ehrlich said Friday in an interview from Los Angeles. "But around 8:45 [p.m.] someone ran down to the tunnel where people go after they win. That's where I camp. It was about an hour before he was supposed to go on. They told me Sly was in his hotel room and wouldn't leave until there was a police escort."
So Ehrlich sent a police escort.
Around 9:30 p.m., Ehrlich finally got word that Stone had arrived at the loading dock of the Staples Center. "He was in a car at the top of the ramp," Ehrlich said. "He told us he wasn't going to get out of the car until five minutes before his performance. Just before we started with John Legend, Joss Stone and the other performances before it got to him, I saw him walk in backstage.
"He was hard to miss, you know."
Stone joined the all-star group for a portion of "I Want to Take You Higher" before suddenly stopping and leaving the stage. "He went up the ramp, got on a motorcycle and took off," Ehrlich said. "Yes -- there was a motorcycle there."
At least Ehrlich saved money on the return police escort. "It's the only time in all the shows I have done [including a stint as producer of "The Dennis Miller Show" and 2002's "Motown Christmas"] where I had no more than eight words with one of the artists on the show," Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich said he's not saddened by Stone's brief, odd performance or his disconnected emotional state.
"If anything, it probably extends the legend," Ehrlich said. "I don't think you'll be seeing him on 'Oprah.' I am glad that you take people like Will.I.Am [who covers "Dance to the Music" on the tribute CD], Maroon 5 and John Legend and look at the fact that Sly's music has transcended into those generations. Everybody was so excited to just perform his songs.
"It reminded me of what I did three years ago with Earth, Wind and Fire, Outkast, Robert Randolph and George Clinton. That's three generations. What happened to Earth, Wind and Fire's career after that is amazing. It took off again. We did a great thing because they were another anthemic band from the '70s that you hear in others today. We gave them long overdue recognition on a world stage."
[email protected]
rollingwithstone
FROM (STONE) SOUP TO NUTS
A brief history of that guy at the Grammys with the killer mohawk:
Sylvester Stewart (vocals and organ, later known as Sly Stone) is born March 15, 1944, in Dallas.
In 1965 Sly offers to sit in on "Somebody to Love," performed by Grace and Darby Slick's band, the Great Society. His offer is rejected. The Great Society morphs into Jefferson Airplane, which has a 1967 hit with that song.
Sly forms the Stoners in San Francisco in 1966. The next year, he forms Sly & the Family Stone.
The band's first hit single, "Dance to the Music," hits Billboard's top 10 in 1968.
Sly & the Family Stone releases "Stand!" in 1969 and later turns the crowd upside down at Woodstock. Sly enjoys three major hits this year: "Everyday People," "Stand!" and "Hot Fun in the Summertime."
Sly & the Family Stone fail to appear at a Grant Park concert in July 1970 in Chicago; as a result, 90 fans are injured and 148 are arrested in riots.
Family Stone bassist Larry Graham quits the group in 1972 to form Graham Central Station.
Sly & the Family Stone releases "Fresh" in June 1973, which includes a straight-ahead cover of the Doris Day hit "Que Sera, Sera." Stone and Day become friends. In July that year, the band has its final crossover hit, "If You Want Me to Stay."
Sly marries Kathy Silva, 20, in June 1974 before 23,000 "guests" at Madison Square Garden in New York City. They split up in November.
Sly & the Family Stone disbands in 1975.
In 1981, Sly guests on Funkadelic's "The Electric Spanking of War Babies."
Beginning in February 1983, Sly Stone spends six weeks living in Chicago's Marquette Park.
In January 1993, Sly & the Family Stone reunites to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Just like last week's Grammys, no one was sure if Sly would show up. He appeared at the last minute to a standing ovation, uttered, "See you soon," and left the podium.
By June of 2003, the Family Stone reunites again to make a record -- without Sly Stone and Graham.
Dave Hoekstra
In the early '80s, Stone lived on the sly in Chicago 'hood
Sly Stone always has had a strange, spiritual tie to Chicago.
In the spring of 1983, he did a six week "residency" with the One Eyed Jacks, a popular mid-'60s, early '70s rhythm-and-blues outfit from the Southwest Side.
At the time, the Jacks were on their last legs. They had been doing a Sly and the Family Stone tribute act for a year when a mutual friend introduced Stone to the band. In February that year, Stone had been arrested in Downstate Illinois for possession of narcotics and an illegal weapons charge as he was driving to Chicago. (The charges were dropped two weeks later.) Stone had come to Chicago to chill. He wound up living with Jacks keyboardist Jack Sweeney -- in Marquette Park.
The Irish-Lithuanian neighborhood was the scene of some of America's worst race riots in August 1966, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a series of marches into all-white Chicago neighborhoods demanding that housing be open to blacks. Now, Sly Stone was a neighbor, famous for songs such as "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" (covered by Nappy Roots and Martin Luther on the new Sly and the Family Stone tribute CD).
I visited Stone then at his Marquette Park digs. I was one of the few journalists to find him in a semi-coherent state. When I arrived at the bungalow on the tree-lined street, I found Stone in an Adidas track suit scuttling about the kitchen picking up empty beer bottles and cleaning off a table.
His gig with the Jacks was the first time since 1974 he had played his hits on a consistent basis. Stone and the Jacks were playing lounges in Stickney and Kenosha, Wis. He was on time for his shows.
Stone had stopped recording in 1975 when the Family Stone broke up. He said he dropped out to live on the West Coast "riding motorcycles and spending money."
But within a year, he was broke. He returned to the studio with a new band in 1976 to record "Heard Ya' Missed Me, Well I'm Back," an uneven flop for his new label, Warner Bros.
The more time I spent with Stone, the more reflective he became. No one has been able to extract his mindbending political jazz-funk-soul-gospel muse, but I tried. "In 1968, I was writing about things that I observed near me or far away and seemingly near," Stone said. "The '70s were just kind of ... OK ... but something's gotta happen. Somebody has got to say something. The '70s felt like limbo. Cool. Bring on another year [laughs]. Nothing counted. Nobody was bothered; right or wrong. It feels like the '80s will have summers again and some heart and some life."
Summers. Stone's heart always beat with the bounce of summertime.
"There are some things that people believe about me or are led to believe that is either good, bad or negative," he said, while looking around the room with a shade of forgiveness. "But I hope it is not negative enough to overwhelm the positive value of whatever it is I'm about."
Dave Hoekstra
And he insisted that Sly Stone will be on board for it, too.
Fred Stone described the reclusive leader of the group as being "jazzed" about the prospect of doing new music and touring again.
He said the group has actually become stronger because of their time away from each other.
As Fred Stone put it, "The funk has taken on a new element."
Fred Stone said it's possible they could tour without Sly, but they prefer to have him along because "each person adds a beautiful element to the group."
An all-star band played a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone at the Grammys on Wednesday that included John Legend, Joss Stone, Maroon 5, Will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
The Family Stone was also there, and Sly Stone, who is 61, came out on stage to play "I Want to Take You Higher."
Sly Stone's last public appearance prior to the Grammys came in 1993 for the group's induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has played music in public since 1987.
Sly and the Family Stone have recorded such classics as "Everyday People," "Dance to the Music" and "Hot Fun in the Summer Time." |
| February 13th, 2006 11:13 AM |
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| FPM C10 |
I love this one: "The J. D. Salinger of Funk." I'd like him to become the Brian Wilson of Funk. Like Brian, he can just sit there and hit a few notes while other more capable yet less brilliant musicians play the incredible songs he wrote decades ago - because we NEED to hear them, dammit.
http://cbs4.com/entertainment/entertainment_story_040120228.html
Sly Stone Emerges From Seclusion
(AP) LOS ANGELES Sly Stone, the J.D. Salinger of funk, was drawn out of seclusion by a Grammys tribute.
Wednesday night in Los Angeles, the reclusive pioneer of a hugely influential soul-rock-funk fusion made his first major public appearance since Jan. 12, 1993, when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Sporting a giant blond Mohawk, dark shades and a silver, purple-lined robe, Stone took the stage after a five-song medley tribute that included John Legend, Joss Stone, Maroon 5, Will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
Stone played "I Want to Take You Higher" behind a set of keyboards with his old band, the Family Stone, appearing uncertain and unaccustomed to the bright lights of the big event. He kept his head bowed, declining to address the audience or acknowledge the occasion.
He departed after just a few verses — leaving befuddlement in his wake. Perhaps Dave Chappelle, who introduced Stone, had an inkling of the task facing the legend.
"The only thing harder than leaving show business is coming back," said Chappelle, who famously abandoned his hit Comedy Central show.
Though the Sly and the Family Stone tribute had been planned for weeks, Stone's presence had been a giant question mark in the days leading up to the show. Even Grammy producers — speaking hopefully but cautiously in the days before the Grammys — seemed uncertain he would be there.
The 61-year-old Stone, whose real name is Sylvester Stewart, hadn't performed live since 1987. He did, however, make a cameo appearance last year at a concert with his sister, Vaetta, who plays in a Family Stone tribute band. He has reportedly renamed Vaetta's band "The Family Stone," and is writing and producing for them.
But in the late '60s and early '70s, Stone was ubiquitous, an icon of the Woodstock era. His performance with the Family Stone on the second day of that fabled festival was one of its most acclaimed.
Stone's band began in 1967 with its debut, "Whole New Thing." It then delved deeper into exuberant funk on the album "Dance to the Music," which featured the title track. Its third album, "Life," followed just months later.
But the band's 1969 release, "Stand!" was its masterpiece. Songs like "I Want to Take You Higher," "Everyday People" and "Stand!" were instant classics that rewrote pop music, mixing Motown with pop melodies and `60s hopefulness.
By 1971, Stone had grown more disenchanted, releasing "There's a Riot Goin' On." 1973's "Fresh" continued that trend, but still had funk gems like "If You Want Me to Stay."
By '75, the Family Stone was no more, breaking up largely because of Stone's increasing drug problems, which led to canceled concerts. Stone would later release several solo albums of little note and poor sales. He was arrested several times in the `80s for cocaine possession.
He collaborated with Funkadelic in 1981, but increasingly shunned the spotlight — though the spotlight also shied away from Stone.
His brother Freddie told Spin magazine in the early `80s that Stone "didn't want to be out in front anymore. The glamour didn't mean anything anymore. He wanted to be normal."
As the years went by, Stone's absence from the public eye became a thing of legend, leading to a documentary, currently in the works, titled, "On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone."
His appearance Wednesday, bizarre as it was, was still defended by some — including Adam Levine of Maroon 5.
"Can you really argue with an unbelievable looking mohawk and a silver jacket?"
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| February 13th, 2006 11:33 AM |
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| FPM C10 |
Sly Stone might be dancin' to the music
Sunday, February 5, 2006
By J. FREEDOM DU LAC
THE WASHINGTON POST
Sly Stone, the reclusive, long-vanished funk-rock pioneer whose potent recordings in the late 1960s and early '70s defined the era and altered the course of popular music, may be about to strut back into the public eye.
According to several friends and associates, Sly and the Family Stone are planning a reunion performance at the Grammy Awards on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
It would be Stone's first live performance since 1987, and his first major public appearance since Jan. 12, 1993, when Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It would also mark the first time since 1971 that the band has played in its original configuration. (Drummer Greg Errico quit the group that year and was soon followed by bass player Larry Graham.)
As songwriter, producer, bandleader and singer, Stone dazzled the world of pop music more than 35 years ago with a string of superlative anthems -- timeless songs, including "Dance to the Music," "I Want to Take You Higher," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Family Affair" and "Everyday People" (whose lyric "Different strokes for different folks" became a slogan for the Woodstock generation). By the early '70s, though, he had developed an all-consuming cocaine addiction, and he soon faded from the spotlight. Speculation on the whereabouts and condition of Sly Stone has been a pop pastime for decades.
Ron Roecker, a spokesman for the Recording Academy, wouldn't confirm that the reunion is on the Grammy-night schedule, which already includes an all-star tribute to Sly and the Family Stone. The tribute will feature John Legend, Maroon 5, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, among others, performing a medley of Sly classics. All the artists appear on a Sly and the Family Stone tribute album that will be released Tuesday.
"The facts are what we put in the press release," Roecker said. "As far as anything else, it's all just rumor. But we do believe that he is attending the Grammy Awards."
He added: "It seems like the right time for him. We're thrilled that we'll be able to do this."
Stone's manager, Jerry Goldstein, could not be reached for comment.
Nor could Stone himself -- no surprise, given that he stopped speaking to the media in about 1987.
"He's been in seclusion for so long, he's like J.D. Salinger," said Greg Zola, who is producing and directing "On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone," a documentary about the elusive musician and his band mates. "He was so famous for a period of time, but he's just not around anymore. A lot of people who you'd think are in the know actually think Sly Stone is dead."
In its heyday, from roughly 1968 through 1971, Sly and the Family Stone created revolutionary music, an intoxicating mix of psychedelic pop, pulsating funk and social commentary. Among the first fully integrated groups on the American music scene, with blacks and whites and men and women together onstage, the seven-piece San Francisco band played the world's biggest venues while cranking out hit after cutting-edge hit.
Stone was an innovator whose work inspired Motown to find its social conscience, helped persuade Miles Davis to go electric, and ultimately laid out a blueprint for generations of black pop stars, from Prince and Michael Jackson to OutKast, D'Angelo and Lenny Kravitz.
Rickey Vincent, author of "Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One," said, "Sly was so far ahead of everybody else, he was flaming out when everybody was still trying to figure him out."
Indeed, even as Stone's star was ascending, he was deteriorating personally -- skipping concerts (he missed a third of the band's shows in 1970), blowing off record-label deadlines, acting increasingly ornery. He was abusive toward associates, band mates, friends and family members, too: Once, upon being caught with cocaine and a handgun, Stone -- whose real name is Sylvester Stewart -- told police that his name was Freddie Stewart. (Freddie was Sly's little brother and the guitarist in the Family Stone.)
By 1975, the hits had dried up, and Stone's downward spiral quickened.
Stone, who'd once earned a reported $2 million per album, was cut loose by Epic Records in 1978. Warner Bros. offered a half-million-dollar contract, and in 1979, the label released Stone's "Back on the Right Track." It didn't even crack the Top 150 -- a disastrous showing for an artist who was once a fixture at the top of the charts.
Stone summarily retreated from the studio and the spotlight. His brother Freddie told Spin magazine several years later that Stone had "wanted to get away from the fast pace. He just kicked back. ... He didn't want to be out in front anymore. The glamour didn't mean anything anymore. He wanted to be normal."
In 1981, Stone -- w ho'd been raised in a strict Pentecostal household and grew up singing gospel songs with his siblings -- reemerged to work with George Clinton on a Funkadelic album, a summit that resulted in both artists getting arrested for possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
As Stone's career faltered, his legal problems mounted. In 1983, he was charged in Illinois with possessing a sawed-off shotgun; was found barely conscious in a Fort Myers, Fla., hotel room, apparently a result of a cocaine overdose; and was then arrested during the middle of a show in Fort Lauderdale on charges that he'd stolen a ring from a hotel owner. (During one court hearing that year, bailiffs had to shake Stone to wake him.)
In 1989, after failing to show up for a court date in Los Angeles, Stone was declared a fugitive. The FBI arrested him in Connecticut and extradited him to Los Angeles, where, in a two-week span at the end of the year, Stone pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of cocaine and then guilty again to two counts of cocaine possession.
Since then, the world has heard very little from -- or about -- Sly Stone. Just a single song recorded with Earth, Wind & Fire, a national advertising campaign for Toyota that used "Everyday People," and the 1993 appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, where the six original members of Family Stone (drummer Errico, bassist Graham, saxophonist Jerry Martini, trumpet player Cynthia Robinson and the siblings Freddie and Rose Stone) walked onto the stage, sang a bit of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," said their thanks ... and then waited for Sly to surface.
"As usual, it's just us," Rose said, looking at her watch.
Sly finally materialized, in an electric-blue leather jumpsuit, and gave a brief speech, which concluded: "See you soon."
Bucking Hall of Fame tradition, he didn't stop afterward to pose for pictures with his band mates, instead disappearing into the night -- and into the ether, for 13 years of radio silence.
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| February 13th, 2006 07:28 PM |
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| texile |
quote:
FPM C10 wrote:
Bucking Hall of Fame tradition, he didn't stop afterward to pose for pictures with his band mates, instead disappearing into the night -- and into the ether, for 13 years of radio silence.
that's my sly - and why SHOULD he pose with joss stone or ANYBODY?
nothing more distressing than an idol of mine kissing conventional ass......
that's why i hope the stones NEVER end up a respectable at the grammies or whatver.... |
| February 13th, 2006 10:58 PM |
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| sammy davis jr. |
Texile Wrote: "that's why i hope the stones NEVER end up a respectable at the grammies or whatver...."
Uhhh..too late for that.
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| February 14th, 2006 06:14 PM |
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| texile |
quote:
sammy davis jr. wrote:
Texile Wrote: "that's why i hope the stones NEVER end up a respectable at the grammies or whatver...."
Uhhh..too late for that.
but they're not really respected ..... |
| February 14th, 2006 07:05 PM |
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| pdog |
quote:
Make It Funky wrote:
Um... is it me, or did Sly Stone seem completely incoherent and in another land? What was up with the hair? His crouch? I think that the surrogate family members (Robert Randolph, Steven Tyler, Joss Stone etc) carried this performance. I was literally SHOCKED!!! Where did they find Sly? Cracked out in some gutter in East LA?
Cheers.
Sylvester Stallone is so hardcore he is willing to go hunting with Dick Cheney.
[Edited by pdog] |
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