LOS ANGELES (AP) - After 25 years, Sly Stone speaks.
The famously reclusive funkster broke his silence by granting his first interview since the '80s to Vanity Fair. In the magazine's August issue, the frontman of the late-'60s band Sly and the Family Stone talks about his music, his disappearance from public view and his long-awaited return.
Stone, 64, who made a brief, blond Mohawked appearance at the 2006 Grammys, says he plans to start work on a new album in the fall. But after more than two decades away from the spotlight, why come back now?
"'Cause it's kind of boring at home sometimes," he tells the magazine. "I got a lot of songs I want to record and put out, so I'm gonna try 'em out on the road. That's the way it's always worked the best: Let's try it out and see how the people feel."
Hits by Sly and the Family Stone include "Everyday People," "Dance to the Music," "I Want to Take You Higher" and "Stand!"
Stone says he has "a library, like, a hundred and some songs, or maybe 200" that he's been sitting on at his Napa Valley compound, also home to his two chopper motorcycles and an eclectic collection of cars that includes an old London taxicab.
He is humble when asked about his contributions to music and unapologetic when pressed about his reputation for missing gigs. And though he has been isolated, he says he's been enjoying life.
"I do regular things a lot," he says. "But it's probably more of a Sly Stone life. It's probably . . . it's probably not very normal."
5th July 2007 07:36 AM
corgi37
Wow, this is the record the world is waiting for. It will cure all of the problems in Iraq, Afganistan and Newcastle.
What could be more irrelevant?
5th July 2007 09:55 AM
mojoman
who's gonna release one first sly or axl?
5th July 2007 09:57 AM
Fiji Joe
quote:corgi37 wrote:
Wow, this is the record the world is waiting for. It will cure all of the problems in Iraq, Afganistan and Newcastle.
What could be more irrelevant?
You left out Camp Baxter...will it cure the problems there as well?
5th July 2007 10:04 AM
Joey
quote:Fiji Joe wrote:
You left out Camp Baxter...will it cure the problems there as well?
"Lil Fiji..I just got a feeling that in 15 or 20 years, you're gonna be somebody...maybe like a writer or something"
5th July 2007 10:52 AM
Fiji Joe
Ahh yes...Joey...now here is a man who I know pulled him some pork yesterday...I just hope he washed his hands before he slapped that pork between his buns
Joey?
5th July 2007 10:55 AM
Joey
quote:Fiji Joe wrote:
...I just hope he washed his hands before he slapped that pork between his buns
Fiji ............................
I REFUSE to give up on you --- REFUSE !!!!!
You have such tremendous talent -- Sometimes I just want to cry !!!! .. Please ..... keep at it .. practice ... and one day you WILL become a fantastic writer .
Joey Hemingway !
5th July 2007 12:14 PM
guitarman53
Not one mention of his severe drug addiction, he was into free basing Cocaine long before crack came along, & that's what kept him away from music business.
5th July 2007 10:50 PM
GotToRollMe
Sly Stone's Higher Power
Some highlights...
He is aware of his surroundings. He is capable of participating in linear conversational exchanges. He is able to move chairs.
He doesn't flinch when I broach the subject of his hunched posture and neck brace, but it's clear he doesn't want to break out the M.R.I.'s, either. "I fell off a cliff," he says. "I was walking in my yard in Beverly Hills, missed my footing, and started doing flips. But you know what? I had a plate of food in my hand. And when I landed, I still had a plate of food in my hand. That's the God-lovin' truth. I did not drop a bean."
Stone has been absent from the scene for such a duration that it's hard to imagine that he was with us all along, experiencing all the things we experienced over the years - the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the rise of the World Wide Web, the attacks on 9/11, the invasion of Iraq. It's almost as if he went into a decades-long deep freeze, like Austin Powers or the astronauts in Planet of the Apes. Except he didn't. "Did you do normal-person things?" I ask about the missing years. "Did you watch Cheers in the 80s and Seinfeld in the 90s? Do you watch American Idol now? Do you have a normal life or more of a Sly Stone life?"
"I've done all that," he says. "I do regular things a lot. But it's probably more of a Sly Stone life. It's probably - it's probably not very normal."
...Then, sometime around midnight - the stroke of April Fools' Day - a man who looked like an extra from a blaxploitation version of Buck Rogers sauntered onto the stage. He was wearing a black knit cap, wraparound white sunglasses, outrageous black platform boots with sneaker-style laces, spangly black trousers cut like newsboy knickers, a matching spangly black jacket, and a red spangly shirt. He sat down at the Korg synthesizer parked center stage and pumped his fist.
"I don't think it's him," said a woman near me, the companion of the impatient shouter. And she had a point. The figure before us was so swaddled, layered, shaded, hatted, be-scarved, and neck-braced, it really could have been anyone. But then he went into "If You Want Me to Stay," one of his later hits, from 1973, and everyone recognized that, Omigod, Sly made the gig. The place erupted in appreciative cheers, and Stone, tentative and seemingly nervous at first, grew more confident. On "I Want to Take You Higher," he got up from behind his keyboard and boogied down the center-stage catwalk, slapping hands with members of the audience.
But there was one mesmerizing moment that seemed lost on the liquored-up, good-timey Vegas crowd. "Stand!" began not with the rousing drumroll you hear on the record but with Stone singing a cappella in a soft, deliberately fragile voice. ("I just felt like doing it like that - so everybody could really hear it properly," he later told me.) Some of the crowd chattered through it, but to hear him almost whisper these words -
Stand
In the end you'll still be you
One that's done all the things you set out to do
Stand
There's a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you're going anywhere
- and to know the things he went through, the things he set out to do, the things he achieved, and the things he threw away; and then, to see him there, hunched and older but still standing, onstage, surrounded by family … well, it got to me. I misted up.
Stone is intent on getting to work on the new album in the fall, when the European tour is over. He says it will be a Sly and the Family Stone album, not the solo album. Vet's version of the Family Stone will play on it, as will his siblings Rose, who lives in Los Angeles, and Freddie, who is now the pastor of the Evangelist Temple Fellowship Center, in Vallejo.
So I put it to the main man: Is there any chance that the whole lineup from the old days will gather to play on the new album?
"I'm sure that's gonna happen, yeah," Sly says.
It almost happened last year, at the Grammys. For the first time since 1993, the year of the Hall of Fame induction, the seven original members were in the same place, and, what's more, they were poised to play together for the first time since 1971. This time, though, while Sly and his Mohawk made it to the stage, Graham fell ill and dropped out at the last minute. (His successor, Rusty Allen, filled in.)
As it turned out, Graham fared the best of anyone that night. In a bizarre miscalculation, and an affront to anyone with an appreciation of soul and rock history, the awards show's producers barely acknowledged the original group's presence. As the musicians plowed through a medley of the old hits, the cameras stayed fixed on a series of guest vocalists, who ranged from the mildly credible (John Legend, Joss Stone [no relation], Steven Tyler of Aerosmith) to the verily D-list (Fantasia, Devin Lima).
"We just kept playing, because there was really no order," says Cynthia Robinson. "There was a stage band standing in front of us, so hardly anybody knew we were there." To make matters worse, Stone had flipped his motorcycle a few days before the broadcast, damaging tendons in his right hand and making him even more uneasy with the situation than he would have been on his best day. When I ask him why the whole performance seemed so discombobulated, he says, "That wasn't my gig. Really, that wasn't my gig. I was trying to, like, cooperate with someone else that" - He pauses to find the right words: - "had their turn."
Admiring the Stone
When funk legend Sly Stone faded away in the 1980s, he became one of rock's most mysterious recluses. In "Sly Stone's Higher Power," Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp finally pulls him back into the limelight. Here's a photographic history of Sly's illustrious career.
[Edited by GotToRollMe]
6th July 2007 07:27 AM
UGot2Rollme
thanks for posting that. I read that Sly and the Family were playing Montreaux, but thought it was a misprint/promoter attempt to sell more tix. I have to see if he's still in the area!
6th July 2007 12:52 PM
aladdinstory
sly was (is) the man, influencing so many who came after, hopefully he's really back and this fall he and the Family Stone will record, the fact he's on the road is a good sign. i enjoy listening to riot in tandem
with exile, always felt a common vibe in the grooves.
i may be one of the few but i've always really dug the slowed down version of thankyoufaletinme that closes riot to the single version, riot's follow up fresh is another masterpiece. great to see his return!
6th July 2007 01:23 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:corgi37 wrote:
What could be more irrelevant?
Do want me to start the list. It could be quite lenghthy. I'll admit I'm prejudice. Sly's great or he was. Whether he can still cut the mustard or not is still an open queation. He'll be a hard act to follow....even if he's doing it himself.
6th July 2007 01:33 PM
pagey666.6
quote:aladdinstory wrote:
i may be one of the few but i've always really dug the slowed down version of thankyoufaletinme that closes riot to the single version
Yeah, me too. Just listening to it the other day. Awesome groove and killer bass from Graham....
6th July 2007 02:06 PM
guitarman53
Sly On Dick Cavett show
8th July 2007 03:25 PM
sirmoonie
Cool pics - that guy was a heavy talent.
Search for information in the wet page, the archives and this board:
The Rolling Stones World Tour 2005 Rolling Stones Bigger Bang Tour 2005 2006 Rolling Stones Forum - Rolling Stones Message Board - Mick Jagger - Keith Richards - Brian Jones - Charlie Watts - Ian Stewart - Stu - Bill Wyman - Mick Taylor - Ronnie Wood - Ron Wood - Rolling Stones 2005 Tour - Farewell Tour - Rolling Stones: Onstage World Tour A Bigger Bang US Tour
NEW: SEARCH ZONE:
Search for goods, you'll find the impossible collector's item!!!
