A cool article on Sly (and two sidebars) that I found in my Sunday paper this morning:

Still missing, still alluring

By Tony Hicks
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

SOMETIMES, Jerry Martini hears himself on the radio -- either on an oldies station or being sampled by fresh blood.

Not today. Wheeling his SUV through suburban Folsom to pick his daughter up from school, the 62-year-old former sax player for Sly and the Family Stone jams his latest CD into the stereo like a teen with his first garage demo. The ensuing sounds are spectacularly familiar. Hear the locked-and-loaded groove, laying ground for popping bass and soulful vocals that spar with funky guitar chinking like baseball cards hitting bicycle spokes. Martini's saxophone practically bursts through the speakers.

It sounds a lot like Sly and the Family Stone, back in its prime 35 years ago, when the band's outrageous blend of pop, funk and psychedelic rock was changing the course of popular music. When a passenger in Martini's SUV offers this assessment, he smiles wistfully.

"I know," Martini says. "Man, I know."

Recorded in 2003, the unreleased demo was an attempt by former members of Sly and the Family Stone to recapture the magic. But, at least so far, it has never worked without Sly, commercially or otherwise. Record companies want Sly or nothing. Disagreements sprout up between the remaining musicians over direction and approach.

Where's Sly?

Though a Sly Stone revival inches forward, with two new Family Stone spinoff bands at work and a tribute record reportedly in the works, unless something changes, it will all have to happen without the man himself.

That's because the funk/rock pioneer, who wrote classics like "Everyday People," "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf)" and "Dance to the Music" has been secluded in retirement in Southern California since a brief, final comeback attempt more than a decade ago.

Record companies don't even know what Sly's up to anymore. Few people do, even those with whom he broke out of the East Bay, zoomed up the charts, played Woodstock, got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and left a legacy of obviously influenced contemporary stars, including OutKast and the Roots.

Several attempts to reach Sly for this story failed. His manager, Jerry Goldstein, who handles all of Sly's outside business, didn't return phone calls. Sly hasn't given an interview since 1997, and that was to the creator of a fan Web site.

"He's easy to track down ... when he wants to be tracked down," chuckles Frederick Stewart, aka Freddie Stone, Sly's younger brother and Family Stone bandmate. Stewart sits with his guitar, gently riffing blues at Vallejo's Evangelist Temple Fellowship Center, where he's been pastor for 11 years.

"He lives in Beverly Hills, in a place where you're not going to stumble across it." He laughs again and looks at sister Vet, who sang backup for the Family Stone and had moderate success later in the group Little Sister. "You're not going to find it by accident." Understandably, the siblings aren't exactly handing out their brother's address and phone number to reporters.

"Sly's had his 15 minutes and he's done," Martini says over lunch in a strip-mall restaurant. "He just doesn't want to work anymore. He doesn't choose to be found. People should concentrate on what Sly did, not what he didn't do."

But moments later, Martini can't help doing just that.

"It's been 30 years of no music," he says. "It's a shame."

Technically, it hasn't been that long, if one considers a couple of frazzled comeback attempts, the last coming in 1983 with the poorly-received "Ain't But the One Way." But as far as Martini, or anyone else who was there for the salad days, is concerned, Sly's career ended long before 1983.

'60s explosion

Sly and the Family Stone broke out in 1967, a mix of race, gender and style that no one had experienced. They blended psychedelia, soul, rock and, along with James Brown, took funk music to the masses. And Sly was the creative center of it all.

Born Sylvester Stewart in Dallas, Texas, Sly grew up in Vallejo. A former DJ at KSOL, he produced and wrote for other Bay Area acts before combining bands with brother Freddie into one unit that could flat-out play.

"Man, Sly was on back then," says drummer Greg Errico, who now lives in Petaluma and plays with Martini in the Family Stone Experience. "He DJ'd, he produced, he worked. He was artistic, intelligent, sharp, witty. Sly had an incredible vision."

In his lyrics, Sly mixed the whimsical with biting social commentary. His was one of the few bands who could inspire hippies at Woodstock and old-school soul fans at Harlem's Apollo Theater.

"When you go back and listen to that, it was some really heavy stuff," says bassist Larry Graham, from his home in Minneapolis.

As the '60s gave way to the '70s, Sly's chemical use increased, even while he was earning the admiration of people like Miles Davis. He became infamous for being late for or blowing off gigs. The band was attracting distracting hangers-on. Power struggles developed. And things spiraled out of control. By 1972, just one year after the release of what many consider Sly and the Family Stone's greatest record, "There's a Riot Goin' On," Graham and Errico quit.

"I was disenchanted with the way things were going," says Errico, who has since made a nice career of producing and session work. "Sly was way into not showing up and being real late, and I just wasn't happy. The band was generating lots of money, but things just weren't going right. I just didn't see things turning around."

"If you have a family, which we were, kids decide they have other things to do," says Graham, who later hit the charts with Graham Central Station and who plays on and off with Prince. "I didn't leave to start my own thing. It just turned into that."

Getting it together

The creative well ran dry by 1975. An increasingly reclusive Sly watched bands such as the Jackson 5, Earth Wind & Fire and the Commodores build on his sound. His songs were among the most sampled when hip-hop took off in the '80s and '90s, by which time he had been arrested twice for cocaine possession, and there were reports he was wandering L.A., homeless.

Sly got his life together during the early '90s, says longtime associate Lou Gordon, going to rehab and trying to get another record deal. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in January 1993, the last time Martini and Graham saw their old bandleader.

"True Sly," says Errico. "I kept calling his room. He didn't come down (to the induction ceremony) until 30 seconds before we went on. You're supposed to pose for pictures afterward, and he just kept walking."

"I was just glad to be on the same stage with him," says Martini. "He said 'Hi,' that was about it. I would love to get in touch with him, but no one would give me his number."

Boosted by song residuals, and a nice paycheck from a car company using "Everyday People" in commercials, Sly's life reportedly picked up in the late '90s. He stayed connected to his three grown children, two of whom live in the L.A. area. Freddie says Sly's son did production work on "Everybody Loves Raymond," and his daughter just graduated from UCLA. Another daughter, born to trumpet player Cynthia Robinson, is a fledgling rapper in Sacramento.

From what he knows, Freddie says his brother is free from drugs. "Last time I saw him, he didn't look like he'd been using," he says. "And I'd know. I'm the one who used with him for 10 years."

Meanwhile, Sly apparently still writes and records lots of music in his home studio. Errico says a couple of years ago, Sly was faxing lyrics to his sister Rose, another Family Stone band member, who lives in L.A. (Rose didn't respond to an e-mail request to be interviewed.)

"He's having fun on his (motorcycle), he's writing, he's living his life," says Vet, who visited Sly just a few weekends ago. "Does he talk about making records? Sometimes."

One outsider managed to break the barrier between Sly and the outside world in 1997. While a student at Columbia University, Jon Dakss started a fan Web site discovered by Rose and Freddie, who told Sly about the site. "And next thing I know, I got a call from Sly at 5 in the morning in my dorm room," Dakss says. "He gave me his number and said 'I don't want to hear from anyone who isn't you.'"

Over the next couple of months, they spoke semi-regularly about getting Sly's new music on the Internet, where he could get feedback without anyone knowing his identity. Even in seclusion, Sly was ahead of his time.

Eventually, through Sly's manager Goldstein, Dakss flew to L.A. for a meeting. An assistant picked him up at the airport and drove around for an hour, with Sly on the cell phone asking questions until he was satisfied Dakss could he trusted to visit Sly's home. "The house was set back, completely covered by trees and foliage, completely obscured," he says. He eventually was led to Sly's studio. "He was sitting behind a keyboard. He looked different. His face was younger and he had a wild hairdo, like a Mohawk, but braided and dyed blond. I shook his hand and he showed me around. My task was to basically get his computers to function on the Internet."

Dakss spent most of the evening fiddling with equipment while Sly made music. "The songs were great, like nothing you've ever heard," Dakss recalls. "We talked about everything under the sun."

Did he say anything about releasing that music someday?

"He didn't," says Dakss. "The sense I got from him was 'When I'm ready, I will.'"

Dakss never met Sly face-to-face again, and lost contact with him by 1999. "Sly doesn't understand that people want to hear something, anything, from him," says Freddie. "They want to hear his voice. People want to know he's OK. But there's no reason for him to do it."

Post-Family Stone

The music lives on, in various incarnations. While Freddie played and sang on the spinoff Family Stone Experience 2003 demo, he's since split from the others because he wanted to focus on new material.

"Maybe a medley (of the old stuff). But that's it," says Freddie, who now mostly focuses his musical talents on his congregation.

Martini and Errico tour the country with the old songs in Family Stone Experience, while contemplating new material. Robinson, who played trumpet on the 2003 demo, now tours with Vet Stone, playing the old songs in a second spinoff band, the Phunk Family Affair. Rose Stone, it seems, is retired.

But nearly everyone, even Freddie, who will revisit the past only through medleys, agrees that the original Family Stone could get back together, if a certain musical genius desired it.

Graham recalls that during a Prince/Graham Central Station tour in the late '90s, "I played with Jerry, Cynthia, Rose and sometimes Greg would sit in. It was really wonderful. But you can't be Sly and the Family Stone without Sly. If he ever decided to do something ... If Sly called? I'd ask 'What time does the next plane leave?'"

"It would be absolutely ludicrous to think people wouldn't want to track down Sly," says Freddie. "Because of his genius. The world was Sly's. But Sly's been mysterious for years. And you know how mysteries go ... they go unsolved."

Tony Hicks is the Times pop music critic. Reach him at 925-952-2678 or thicks@cctimes.com.

Where Are They Now:

An update on Sly and the Family Stone members:

• SLY STONE: Retired, living in Beverly Hills, writing music, riding motorcycles; no plans for a new album on horizon.

• FREDDIE STONE: Guitarist and singer, now Pastor Frederick Stewart of Vallejo's Evangelist Temple Fellowship Center. He still plays, mostly gospel and R&B music.

• ROSE STONE: Singer/keyboard player, briefly reunited with other original members in 2003, is now mostly retired from music and living in Southern California.

• GREG ERRICO: Drummer, lives in Marin County and works as music producer and occasional session musician. He's reunited with sax player Jerry Martini in the band Family Stone Experience.

• JERRY MARTINI: Saxophone player, lives in Folsom and still plays sax in various bands, including the Family Stone Experience.

• CYNTHIA ROBINSON: Trumpet player, lives in the Sacramento area and still plays trumpet, lately with Sly's younger sister and former Little Sister vocalist Vet Stone, in a band called Phunk Family Affair.

• LARRY GRAHAM: Bassist, went on to score hits in Graham Central Station (which, at times, included every other former member of Sly and the Family Stone except Sly himself). Now working on a new record in Minneapolis, where he often collaborates with Prince.

Surprise meeting with Sly not so slick



SLY STONE has been infamous the past couple of decades for being hard to find, even for extended "family" members with whom he gained fame. While reporting this story, I couldn't get remotely close to the man. Yet I once had Sly standing in front of me, waiting to talk.

And I didn't know what to say.

When I was in a band in L.A. in the early '90s, I was casual friends with one of my roommates' buddies, Jay Gordon, who later went on to some fame as the singer for Orgy.

Jay came over one day and noticed the framed picture of Sly on my wall. "You know, Sly's my godfather," he said. "You want me to get that signed for you?"

Now Jay was a sweet guy, but he could talk someone into buying rainwater in a monsoon. I was naturally skeptical, and the topic quickly died. Jay was determined to make it in the music biz, whether it was as a singer, drummer, guitarist or, at that time, club promoter. A couple of weeks later, some of us went to a Hollywood Boulevard club he booked, supporting him despite knowing it would likely be dead on a Monday night.

About an hour in, I'm leaning on the bar with one of my roommates in a half-empty club, watching some faceless band. Apparently we weren't the only friends of Jay coming out to support him. Just as I suggested we leave, somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around.

It was Sly Stone.

"Toe Nail," Jay said. It was one of about 30 nicknames I had, and easily the most unexplainable. "Meet Sly Stone."

With high-top-faded hair and wearing some shiny clothes (it was the early '90s -- Hammer was big), Sly stuck out his hand and said one of the funniest things I could ever imagine: "Hey Toe Nail," in his deep voice. "Nice to meet you."

Seeing and even talking to celebrities isn't such a big deal if you live in West Hollywood. But this was one of my heroes. I had no prep time. I had no warning. I was paralyzed.

"Uh ... Hi, Sly. How are you?"

Sly said he was pretty good, and I expected him to walk off. Except he didn't. Apparently Jay told him I was a big fan and, on this particular Monday, Sly Stone had nothing better to do than talk to me.

I froze.

After a couple of seconds of embarrassed silence, my buddy jumped in, shaking Sly's hand and chatting, while I stood by like an idiot.

Eventually Sly said goodbye and walked off. I remember one of us asking him when he was going to start recording again. He said pretty soon. He didn't, and not many people have heard from him since.

http://www.contracostatim...099778.htm

Great article - thanks!

Wow!!! Fantastic article. Thank you very much for taking the time to post this.

I smell a documentary; Searching for Sly Stone

Wow, sly's starting to sound like one of those ancient warriors or wizards in fantasy novels who retires to some monastery in the mountains whose younger followers keep trying to bring him out to fight in one last battle. Damnit sly, we're losin' the music war to the forces of darkness, and you're just the man we need in our corner

anon said:

Great article!

Thank you Stax.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

This article pretty much answered all my questions on Sly's whereabouts. Thanks for the posting this. Sly is still THE MAN in my book.

Kool article, Stax! Thanks!!





...

Your welcome, y'all. I only wish the online edition included the photos. The print edition has a great picture of Sly that takes up an entire broadsheet page. Tony Hicks did a great job with this story. I knew you guys would love it.

DorothyParkerWasCool said:

Thanks Stax, great article.

Thank you Stax , very nice..very nice.

jacktheimprovident said:

Ain't that the truth!

Nice article. Thanks, Stax.

That article was fucking fantastic! Thanks so much.

I always DID want to know Sly's whereabouts these days. Thanks, Stax!

I wish he'd come back.

The "Anthology" collection has been on heavy rotation for the last week or so, on my stereo. Thanks for posting.

The Family Stone debut Album "A whole new thing" has been in heavy rotation ova here. It's amazing how underrated those first three albums are. Life rocks hard, Dance to The Music is one of the ultimate party albums, And the debut is first class proto-funk soul, and all of them have some of the tightest jams in any genre of music.

I Cannot make it
[Edited 7/18/05 0:34am]
[Edited 7/18/05 0:34am]