Black Music's Forgotten Superstars

C. Bottomley wonders how Sly Stone and Prince became yesterday's men.
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Sly Stone once helped me make $10 simply by being alive. The former leader of the Family Stone had been out of sight for so long that a friend of mine was sure that Sly had passed on. Not so, I assured him, and after money was exchanged and handshakes made, we checked the relevant reference works. The author of such classics as "Everyday People" and "Family Affair" is happily still with us. It's just that nobody's quite sure where.

Disappearing from view is a fate you might associate more readily with the drummer of Iron Butterfly. Except Sly was no anonymous journeyman, but one of the most important pop stars on the planet, the cool ruler of Haight-Ashbury, schooling us that everybody was a star, scandalizing uptight Amerikkka with his band of black and white men and women (and y'all knew what nonsense that might lead to), blowing minds at Woodstock in '69, and making effervescent singles like "Stand!" and brooding statements like There's a Riot Goin' On, released in response to Marvin Gaye's sociopolitical query "What's Going On."

Stone made music that no one had ever heard before. A bit rock, a bit funk, and plenty o' soul. Rap even - if you considered the flow of Sly's Stoned delivery. Inspired to the max, Miles Davis jammed with Sly in New York. These days heirs such as George Clinton can't praise him enough, and Rick James and Prince traveled the path he pioneered into multiracial shockadelica. If there's a new power generation, Sly's the daddy and Maxwell's got his Afro.

So what happened? It's a question you might not ask just of Sly, but his family. While honky rock beasts like the Stones or the Who continue to reap plaudits and financial glory long after they've been tapped out, there's something about black musical genius that - if it's still alive - is easily forgotten. Rock writers are too busy hyping the fine tunings of artists like D'Angelo or Lauryn Hill, while Sly, Prince, James Brown, and even Chuck Berry - whose discovery that beat plus teen equals rock 'n' roll should be right up there with E=MC2 - fade from view. Well, have you seen them on Behind the Music lately?

With the exception of the young 'uns, all the artists mentioned above have admittedly reacted to success in an unusual manner, as if becoming big is too huge a burden. Sooner or later, white rock stars wise up and start making music that sounds like it's lining the pension plan. Heedless of the future, several black icons have tried to dim their unruly genius with what seems like insanity - ending up in jail or simply testing their audience's faith to the limit.

The son of churchgoing folks, Sly Stone embraced at the height of his fame a gangsta lifestyle whose accoutrements included a ring of girlfriends, unsavory confidants, guns, rabid pit bulls, and a pharmaceutical company's worth of PCP. Riot's murky sound, legend has it, is due to the constant overdubbing Sly made of his latest lady friend's tuneless backing vocals. As the '60s slipped away, he was often a no-show at his own concerts, and his behavior became more and more erratic. It was rumored he ordered a hit on the Family Stone's bassist.

1973's Fresh belied his madness, but then Sly maxed out. In and out of jail during the '80s, he made his last public appearance at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. The once-verbose pop star took the podium and didn't say a word.

Prince has always forced his audience to ask, as his 1981 song "Controversy" put it, "Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?" to which you might add, "Crazy as a fox - or just crazy?" After he changed his name to a symbol in a bid to end his contract with Warner Bros., people thought he was too fruitcake-like to keep turning on, forgetting that his string of No. 1's ("When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy," "Kiss," "Cream," and, er, "Batdance") is as dazzling as music gets. Whereas once Prince's bootlegs were prized collectibles, his last tour saw one reviewer carp that he had too much good material to cram into one show, rather like the Austrian emperor telling Mozart his music had too many notes.

Sly, Prince, and the troubled Rick James have been written off, but generally artists experience as many periods of rejuvenation as they do creative lulls. Duke Ellington regained his musical spark as well as some popular appeal with a 1956 Newport Jazz Festival appearance that passed into legend. He was 57. In a more recent example, Dr. Dre looked to be a victim of rap's fickle fashion sense when his Aftermath album tanked in 1996. The canny Dre simply stuck the familiar chronic symbol onto his next album, 2001, and re-entered the multi-platinum circle.

Yet no black superstar is immune from being pilloried for his or her eccentricity. Michael Jackson earned a standing ovation when he honored this year's MTV Video Music Awards with a few dance steps, but few clapping appreciated the irony that without "Billie Jean" breaking MTV's color bar, the Metropolitan Opera House might not have been filled with Jay-Zs or even Janet Jacksons. Everyone remembered the moonwalking Howard Hughes in an oxygen mask, not a man who sent a seismic wave through music, and not even Jackson's Barnum-esque tribute to himself the following day could change that.

Although we may forget where those shock waves started, there are still plenty of relics to dig. Catch Sly leading the masses in the Woodstock documentary. Rent Prince's Sign 'O' the Times concert film to see a genius at the peak of his powers. And know that Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad are as essential recordings for every pop fan as the Rubber Soul/Revolver/Sgt. Pepper trilogy.

There's always the hope, too, that time has a way of redeeming reputation that Where Are They Now? segments don't. One day scholars might start taking the complex mythology found on Prince albums like Around the World in a Day as seriously as they do Madonna's wardrobe. Choreographers might trace Justin Timberlake's dance steps back to a black kid turning a sidewalk into a fluorescent rainbow. Maybe we'll accept that everybody really is a star. Wherever he might be, I think Sly could get down with that.

By C. Bottomley Say It Loud!: VH1.com