I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone (17 page)

If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a
different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away.

-HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I was really tired of R & B sounding the same.
I think Sly taught me that. I think that it's
important for Black music to always, always
grow.

-RICK JAMES

HE LONG WAIT FOR RIOT
helped it debut at the top of Billboard's pop charts in 1971, and
three of its tracks also charted as singles. The follow-up album,
Fresh, is seen in retrospect as Sly's last dealings with anything like
a major hit. Work on Fresh, in 1972 and '73, brought him back to
the Bay Area and to his long-ago employer Tom Donahue. Among
the other engineers credited on the album are Bob Gratts, Mike Fusaro, James Green, Family standby Don Puluse, and Tom Flye.
The latter had gone west, from New York City to Sausalito, just
north of the Golden Gate Bridge, to launch the Record Plant
recording studios there. At the point they hooked up, "Sly had
recorded [most of] Fresh, but he wasn't happy with it, so Donahue
said, `You ought to go to the Plant and see Flye,"' explains Tom,
who still lives within a short drive from the Plant. Before his move,
he'd briefly worked with Sly in New York. "I mixed his part of the
Woodstock album, [on which Sly and the group] played very well.
And not everybody did."

For Fresh, "We rerecorded everything in place on the tape, and
we just dubbed over whatever was there. And the way he kept it
together, since it was piecemeal-one instrument at a time-was
that he had a Rhythm King drum machine. He called it the Funk
Box, because there were rhythms that had a groove to them. It was
like a glorified click track [the term for a sort of analog electronic
metronome]. You could adjust the tempo, and ... you could preset different beats and change them a little bit." An advancement
over the preexisting Rhythm Ace, the Maestro Rhythm King generated a sterile, "dry" tone lacking the acoustic properties of a real
drum kit but making for its own kind of supple groove.

"[Sly] was so innovative in the process of recording," Tom continues. "He was the first guy to record piecemeal, one track at a
time, using this click track. 'Cause quite often, he'd play all the
parts," and would need the coordinating guidance of the clicks. "If
someone could play it better, fine. But usually he played it better
than anybody-everybody except for his brother Freddie." Tom
had determined early in his long career to accommodate the
recording process as much as possible to his clients' needs. He'd
been a professional drummer in the '60s for Don McLean (on the
anthemic "American Pie") and for a moderately successful group called Lothar and the Hand People. He'd experienced what it was
like to be disrespected by a recording studio (Capitol) and had
vowed, "I never want to treat an artist that way."

Adjusting to Sly involved some challenging and fascinating
improvisations. Breaking with studio tradition, Sly preferred playing instruments in the control room, usually reserved for engineers and producers, rather than in the studio area proper. "And
he liked to sing in the control room, which was kind of a pain in
the butt," says Tom. "You get the `bleed' from the speakers." Sly's
earlier recording with the Family Stone had stayed closer to the
standard format, "where everybody pretty much played all at the
same time, or you'd have the rhythm section and the vocalist and
then you'd add the strings or the horns." But once Sly started flying solo, he "did it track-by track, he pulled this together in his
head, and it was amazing. He's hearing in his imagination the ultimate product, so he can understand what each individual thing is."

Ken Roberts, replacing the troubled David Kapralik as the
band's manager in financially shaky times, had reportedly recommended that the leader divest himself of his players as an unnecessary expense. Although Sly still seems resentful about that
suggestion, Tom finds other evidence that the separation from the
band bore hidden virtues. Sly, he believes, "could play all the parts
better" than any pick-up musician, "and he knew what he wanted,
so he didn't have to try to explain it to anyone." Supplying most of
the ingredients himself, and replacing a human drummer with a
machine, were in Tom's opinion "just a different art form."

Says Tom about the recording of "Babies Makin' Babies," a
seeming warning about unwanted pregnancies: "We were working
... and every time we'd get to this one section of the song, he'd
say, `This is really funky! Those four bars are really funky!' And
they were. So he says, `I sure wish I could have the whole track like those four bars: He'd done a rough vocal, a 'guide'vocal [a dummy
track, to be erased later, from which to reference other takes]. So
he says, `Is there any way we could make it all like that?' I said, `I
don't know, but I can try.' We were working on two-inch tape, so
I stayed `after school' that night and made a couple hundred copies
of those four bars.... And then I took a razor blade and cut them
all together. He came in the next day, and really loved it.

"As far as I know, that was one of the first times anybody had
made what in reality was a multitrack loop, which nowadays is the
basis of how many people make a record.... But in the digital
domain, you can go in and move 'em around, do whatever you
want. With a razor blade, it's a little harder. So it's another thing
that [Sly] kind of started.... He had a sense of, `Let's go for it, let's
try it.' Engineers are always trying to keep things technically
together, so they're often on the careful side. But you also have to
let creativity breathe. I'm after the emotional content when I'm
recording or mixing ... and to have someone come in who exuded
emotional content-," Tom chuckles, "it was great."

Gazing back more than three decades, it's tough for Tom to
identify particular tracks on which he was influential, the more so
because there was no sure way of keeping track of them. "Sly had
gotten ripped off a number of times in his life, and he would not
leave the tapes at the studio. He had like a Toyota station wagon,
which one of his bodyguards drove, and every night the thing
would pull up [to the Record Plant] and they would unload all the
tapes. At the end of the [late-night] session, the next day or whatever, they'd pack it back up and take off. Sometimes the paperwork
would get lost with the reels of tape, you wouldn't know where the
songs were, and sometimes you'd have tracks which were started
but didn't have a name for them yet."

Fresh continued to move the sound of Sly's music away from
that of a live band and toward what might be dubbed a prototechno mode. The drum machines, multiple overdubs, and tape
loops deployed by Tom were all early, makeshift versions of studio
tools that would become ubiquitous in later decades, along with
increasing computer sophistication. Still new in 1973, this
approach put a hypnotic electronic gloss on Fresh, testifying yet
again to Sly's innovative pioneering genius. Today, when anyone
with a computer and a digital recorder can burn their own music
disc, technology has become overextended, to the detriment of
pop music generally.

Sly's diminished but ongoing recording and performing activity still needed flesh-and-blood players to go along with the
machines. When Jerry Martini began demanding what he saw as
fair compensation for past and present services, Sly hired saxophonist Pat Rizzo. Was that the coercion it appeared to be? "I guess
you could call it that," Jerry responds. "But I [ended up getting]
my money." Actually, Jerry and Pat served Sly together for a while
(both men were credited on the sleeve of Fresh). They became
friends, and they were both present for the return of Sly to the
Apollo in Harlem, in March 1972. Brother Freddie was present in
body too, but not in spirit. "Freddie passed out at the Apollo,"
Bubba Banks reported to Joel Selvin. "I think the thing was, who
could get the highest and be the most out of it. Freddie was always
trying to get Sly's attention. Everybody was trying to out-high each
other."

Another sort of competition had Larry Graham attempting
to out-macho Sly. Larry's questioning of Sly's authority had surfaced during the first few hours of the band's existence, and it's
arguable that his handsome, cocky stage presence, resonant vocals, and peerless bass technique later drew some of the spotlight away
from Sly. Behind the scenes, there were reports of affairs with Rose
and with Freddie's wife, Sharon. Ultimately, Larry assembled his
own posse of brutal, badass hangers-on. By the time of the making of Riot, Larry's bass parts were among the countless overdubs
requested and sometimes discarded by Sly, who played the instrument himself on "You Caught Me Smilin'. "I didn't play anything
with the rest of the band," Larry griped to Mojo, and his thump `n'
pluck style is certainly less noticeable on Riot.

Late in 1972, Sly and Larry's two sets of "bodyguards" confronted each other at L.A.'s Cavalier Hotel. Bubba Banks and his
pal Larry Chin, high on PCP and inspired by a recent screening of
Stanley Kubrick's dystopian film A Clockwork Orange, assaulted
Larry's henchmen Vernon "Moose" Constan and Robert Joyce with
fists, feet, and walking sticks. Sly's men had also been assigned to
apprehend Larry Graham, over what Sly perceived as the bassist's
insubordination and alleged designs on Sly's life. Alerted to the
threat, Pat Rizzo sought out Larry and his girlfriend, Patryce, in
their hotel room at the Cavalier and escorted them safely away
from the mayhem. Later in San Francisco, Ken Roberts could not
persuade a shaken Larry, who continued to fear for his life, to
rejoin the group.

"Sometimes in a family, it comes time to go," a discreet and
reformed Larry told Bass Player years later. He went on to form
Graham Central Station, and by the time of that group's biggest
hit, One in a Million You (1980), Larry was better known as a singer
than as a bassist. Larry then dissolved his band, but was always
sought as an accompanist, and he found gigs with Carlos Santana,
Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, and Stanley Jordan. He also made a
popular instructional video for aspiring bass players, with his oldest and greatest rhythmic teammate Greg Errico serving as
drummer.

Sly handpicked a replacement bassist, Rustee Allen, who'd been
pointed out by Larry himself. The young Louisiana native, now a
resident of Oakland, had experience playing with blues guitarist
Johnny Talbot, the Edward Hawkins singers, and Vet Stone's Little
Sister group. Rustee fit in quickly on Fresh, most memorably pouring out the haunting bass line on "If You Want Me to Stay." "Rather
than being controlling, [Sly] encouraged the tune's spirit and
vibe," Rustee told Bass Player. "He wanted me to be myself and put
my nuances in the part." Influenced more by Motown stalwart
James Jamerson's melodic technique than by Larry's percussive
snap, the new recruit managed to blend the two. "Although I've
always been primarily a finger-style player, I was able to adapt," he
pointed out. "It's sort of a light slap in which you hold your thumb
perpendicular to the strings and, using just the side of your thumb,
you strike the string, sometimes using a little bit of your nail. You
control the notes' duration with your left hand." The effect helped
morph Sly's sound from psychedelic funk toward studio-rigged
soul.

Seeking another real live drummer, Sly went with Pat Rizzo's
recommendation of Andy Newmark, a solid pro with extensive
credentials in a variety of acts. The Drumming World Web site has
described how Andy was introduced to the leader of the Family
Stone while Sly was prone and zoned-out in bed. "Are you funky?"
Sly managed to ask. Andy replied in the affirmative, and sat down
at a nearby kit to play for less than a minute. It was all Sly needed
to command Freddie to replace Greg's temporary replacement,
Jerry Gibson. Widely considered one of the Family Stone's most
valuable additions, Andy later went on to play with David Bowie, George Benson, Luther Vandross, and with John Lennon on his
final album, Double Fantasy.

Riot's one big hit had been "Family Affair." For Fresh, released
in 1973, it was "If You Want Me to Stay" (revived thirty-four years
later as a highlight of Sly's comeback performances). It's a slinky
mid-tempo soul statement, based on the same Phrygian mode of
chord changes as Bobby Hebb's 1966 hit "Sunny." Rustee recalled
for Bass Player Sly's reaction to his freestyling fretwork on his
Fender Jazz bass: "He just turned his back to me and grooved with
my interpretation, giving a shout when he really liked what he
heard," which involved nailing down the rhythm while pumping
out flourishes of eighth- and sixteenth-note fills, effectively functioning as the track's lead instrument. Andy Newmark's drums
propelled the song unobtrusively. "I didn't zero in on any part of
his kit per se," Rustee explained. "I just focused on the overall
groove.