Sly and the Family Stone: Everybody Is a Star
Sly is dressed up nice tonight — in a royal violet dinnercoat length leather jacket with collars big enough to be a cape. A violet silk shirt. Violet leather pants. Fur-fringed boots. Walking tall.
But tonight here’s no concert, no TV show, no family reunion in Daly City. No Family Stone. Sly’s at the Johnny On the Spot rehearsal studios out on the 5400 block of Santa Monica Boulevard, near Beverly Hills. He’s here, with friend Buddy Miles and secretary Stephanie in tow, to look over prospects for a band he’s putting together for his new record label, Stone Flower. He’s advertised that he’s looking for a guitar, a bass, and keyboard.
The first arrivals, a dozen or so young men, are standing around the foyer while Sly checks out the available amps and speakers. The proprietor’s not here, but the manager — his mother — is attending to business tonight, and she is telling the gathering how she thought up such a neat name for the place. “It’s just so simple,” she is laughing, sitting by the coffee percolator, looking like a double of Ringo’s fat Auntie Jessie from the Magical Mystery Tour. “My boy got this place just this year and he says what can I call it and I says ‘Well, what you’re offering is a place convenient for musicians whenever they need a place to practice. You’re like a Johnny on the spot.’ ” No one says anything.
Sly calls the first guy into the small practice room, furnished with chairs, a huge speaker and an electric organ. He sets the pattern, showing right away not just who, but what he is.
“Okay, man,” he says, his bassy, radio-schooled voice smooth and soothing: “This is like not an audition, you know; just play some stuff and let me hear you. Just do what you want and we’ll join in and see how you sound. Know what I mean?”
If the auditioner is an organist, Sly listens for a few bars, then slides in with a layer of bass, and if things get moving, Buddy will pick up a guitar. If it’s a guitarist, or a bassist, Sly will jump behind the organ, pumping easily, happily behind the player.
And after each one finishes, he’ll have Stephanie take down his phone number, and he’ll say: “Okay, we’ll call you tomorrow; Friday latest. And I mean that. You know. Whatever happens, we’ll be in touch, man.”
Sly runs across some good musicians tonight. He’s exchanged only a couple of thumbs-down looks with Buddy, quiet like a Buddha in a corner chair. But he’s happiest with a straight-looking, night-clubbish youth with a Wayne Newton haircut and a country manner. The kid mumbles “I sing” while adjusting his guitar, then moves, feet tapping lightly, into the first chords of “Proud Mary.” Sly perks up, big smile, listens a bit, and joins in, clapping his hands, rocking his purple body back and forth on his chair, singing out a harmony line on the chorus. “Aw, yeah!” he says at the end. “Hey, man, that’s great. Can you play another number?” Sly will take his phone number down, and Stephanie will have to call him and say he’s not right for the group Sly’s got in mind. But for the moment, it’s Sly’s kind of music.
It’s getting smokier outside, in the lobby, but it’s getting cooler, too. People sitting along the hallway, scrunched up like school kids doing an air raid drill. The word is getting out: Sly Stone, this famous cat, this high school gangleader-turned-whiz-kid record producer-turned-number-one DJ-turned gold-record rock and roll star — he’s in there just joking and playing and having a good time — and he’s wanting all of us to do the same.
It’s 1:15 in the morning now, at the ABC-TV studios in Hollywood, in Studio C, two buildings past where the middle-American freaks were screeching their way through a taping that evening of Let’s Make a Deal, the ultimate realization of The Committee’s skit on TV giveaway shows, “Greed.” At the top of the stairway to the balcony of Studio C, Ken Fritz, producer of Music Scene, is still shaking his head, telling Sly’s manager how of all the shows he’d done that season (the show’s first and last), the one just finished was the finest. In his words: “This was a moment.” A few feet away, behind his dressing-room door, Sly is looking exhausted, letting his costume/clothes fall off him. But the rest of his family, the rest of his band, is already regaining their breath, and their energy revitalizes Sly. So now a quick ride in his low-slung yellow-and-black ’36 Cord back to the offices of his Stone Flower Productions on Vine Street across from the circular tower that houses Capitol Records. The Cord is a one-seater, with one huge fluffy pillow serving as seating for any passengers. It’s a beauty, spitting out the sounds of street-proud power in idle, invariably making other drivers at intersections roll down their windows to yell at Sly how much they dig his automobile.
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