Right, so the below is a bit of a disorganized ramble through the Sly Stone history to try and contextualize the album a little, maybe help explain what makes it so unique.
in the beginning... in 1966 Sly Stone was a popular San Francisco DJ, occasional producer, singer and musician, and ex student of music theory with a Beatles mop top.
He wrote a few minor, generally novelty hits with names like The Swim,for others and produced the debut album by weird mersey-beat-by-way-of-San-Francisco group the Beau Brummels.
He’d play around town a bit with his band Sly & the Stoners but filled with older guys more interested in getting a bit fucked up than in playing well he eventually drew a line in the sand and called a meeting to formally start a new band.
Sly & the Family Stone were purposely put together to be Sly’s vision of a new America - multi-racial and male and female, all playing and singing in harmony. Most crucially they were to be a group at a time when most R’n’B groups were singers playing with a backup band.
They played incessantly and got a huge local following. Sometimes they’d jump off stage and dance around the room and even lead the crowd into the street, while still playing. They were quickly signed to CBS and their 1967 debut album, A Whole New Thing, was released in 1967 mixing hard soul and acid rock with some early psychedelic tracks. Still underrated today, it was popular among musicians at the time but was accused of being too sophisticated by critics and sank without a trace commercially.
Clive Davis of CBS suggested to Sly that he should try writing something simpler to appeal to a pop audience. Racking his brains, Sly came up with the dumbest track he could possibly think of – Dance to the Music – in its entirety the song tells the crowd to Dance to the Music again and again and then almost painstakingly lists all the instruments playing in case people needed more explanation. Amazingly it worked. To this day, just like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, their first tv performance is often the first thing any kind of retrospective will go to when they are mentioned.
The accompanying album is good but faltered commercially in comparison to the single, i'd say not helped by the fact that the band pushed the Dance to the Music idea to its logical conclusion by including a 12 minute vamp version – Dance to the Medley. A follow up attempt a few months later, Life, failed to chart entirely. For those who were listening though, the albums showed a further progression into psych-soul. A live album recently came out covering their live show at this time, they really sound like the most fun band of all time.
It wasn’t till early 1969 when they really broke through with Everyday People though, it hit number 1 in February 1969 and stayed there for a month. Seen by many as the crowning album of the band, the parent album, Stand!, included both the most positive song of all time, You Can Make it if you Try, but also hinted at something else going on with the 14 odd minute instrumental Sex Machine and the beginnings of lyrical paranoia in Somebodys Watching You. Still though, with the title track being a hit and then Hot Fun in the Summertime reaching number 1 that summer as well, things looked great for the band. This sudden fame hit an even higher level when they played Woodstock and are fairly credited with getting the flagging crowd going at 4 in the morning. God I dunno, I don’t understand Woodstock, but the footage is fairly spectacular.
In December that year they put out another single, another number 1, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). An absolute cornerstone of funk and bassist Larry Graham’s most famous bass line by miles, only James Brown can really boast hits sounding this hard before it. Despite this, it would also be the last time they really appeared together as a unified band.
There’s a great bit in the 33 and a third about the album that points out that at this point in their career Sly & the Family Stone were seen a black Beatles. Even the biggest Temptations fan could see that at their live show they would have a fairly anonymous backing band but the Family Stone were a self contained band who wrote and played all their own songs, were absolutely massively famous and were developing new sounds quicker than the audience could keep up.
But then…. nothing.
Behind the scenes the band had gone from proudly clean living (even singing about it on Run, Run Run) as late as 1968, to next level drug takers, Sly more than anyone. As a unit they were disintegrating quickly, with their last actual full band recordings taking place in January 1970.
Ostensibly recording a new LP, Sly locked himself up in a Beverly Hills Mansion and, high and paranoid on an endless amount of Cocaine and PCP; with his new fame attracting the attention of the Black Panthers who pressured him to remove all the white people from the band; he watched his vision (and the 60’s dream) fall apart – Martin Luther King had been killed only weeks after Everyday People was number 1, the Beatles would split up, two fellow Woodstock stars, Jimi and Janis, proceeded to die, and race riots were flashing up all across America. As his drug use escalated, Sly surrounded himself with some hanger-on thugs from his past and proceeded to alienate everyone he ever worked with; band members would fly up to record and last a few days of madness before leaving out of fear for their own safety and sanity,
Throughout 1970 the band attempted to soldier on as a live unit, booking shows and tv appearances. Sly would sometimes turn up. As a product stop-gap his record company put together a Greatest Hits compilation ( which also contained a load of songs that weren’t actually hits) that just happens to play as one of the greatest ever records. If you’re looking for a way in, play this first.
Meanwhile, recording with no consistent band, Sly relied increasingly on overdubbing tracks on the same tape and using a very early drum machine called the Rhythm King. Not programmable, Sly would get over its limitations by lining up several of them at the same time and sequencing them together on tape manually. Some songs would be released in obscure ways on his own Stone Flower vanity label that year that pointed towards the sound he was coming up with for There's a Riot Goin' On.
.
The extreme drug usage and overdubbing on the same tape would continue for the best part of two years. There’s an endless amount of grim and ugly stories from the recording sessions as Sly descended further and further into his own drug-fuelled madness - overdoses, maulings, shootings, abortions, you name it.
The mastertapes are famously so overdubbed that they're purportedly practically translucent. As a result, no one really knows who plays what on the album (Miles Davis and Ike Turner were certainly around, whether or not they're on there is a different matter). The back cover including a collage of all the people whirling around at the time. What is known for sure is that the only two songs the full band play on are the last two, Runnin’ Away and Thank You for Talking to Me Africa, both of which were recorded in January 1970 and December 1969 respectively. Billy Preston plays keyboards on A Family Affair. As for the rest, similar to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, what is presented is not clean, separated instruments where you can marvel at the technique of various players but a muddy murk that comes across like a recording of pure emotion. Unlike the giddiness of Spector's stuff though, the emotions on here are cynicism and despair.
in the beginning... in 1966 Sly Stone was a popular San Francisco DJ, occasional producer, singer and musician, and ex student of music theory with a Beatles mop top.
He wrote a few minor, generally novelty hits with names like The Swim,for others and produced the debut album by weird mersey-beat-by-way-of-San-Francisco group the Beau Brummels.
He’d play around town a bit with his band Sly & the Stoners but filled with older guys more interested in getting a bit fucked up than in playing well he eventually drew a line in the sand and called a meeting to formally start a new band.
Sly & the Family Stone were purposely put together to be Sly’s vision of a new America - multi-racial and male and female, all playing and singing in harmony. Most crucially they were to be a group at a time when most R’n’B groups were singers playing with a backup band.
They played incessantly and got a huge local following. Sometimes they’d jump off stage and dance around the room and even lead the crowd into the street, while still playing. They were quickly signed to CBS and their 1967 debut album, A Whole New Thing, was released in 1967 mixing hard soul and acid rock with some early psychedelic tracks. Still underrated today, it was popular among musicians at the time but was accused of being too sophisticated by critics and sank without a trace commercially.
Clive Davis of CBS suggested to Sly that he should try writing something simpler to appeal to a pop audience. Racking his brains, Sly came up with the dumbest track he could possibly think of – Dance to the Music – in its entirety the song tells the crowd to Dance to the Music again and again and then almost painstakingly lists all the instruments playing in case people needed more explanation. Amazingly it worked. To this day, just like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, their first tv performance is often the first thing any kind of retrospective will go to when they are mentioned.
The accompanying album is good but faltered commercially in comparison to the single, i'd say not helped by the fact that the band pushed the Dance to the Music idea to its logical conclusion by including a 12 minute vamp version – Dance to the Medley. A follow up attempt a few months later, Life, failed to chart entirely. For those who were listening though, the albums showed a further progression into psych-soul. A live album recently came out covering their live show at this time, they really sound like the most fun band of all time.
It wasn’t till early 1969 when they really broke through with Everyday People though, it hit number 1 in February 1969 and stayed there for a month. Seen by many as the crowning album of the band, the parent album, Stand!, included both the most positive song of all time, You Can Make it if you Try, but also hinted at something else going on with the 14 odd minute instrumental Sex Machine and the beginnings of lyrical paranoia in Somebodys Watching You. Still though, with the title track being a hit and then Hot Fun in the Summertime reaching number 1 that summer as well, things looked great for the band. This sudden fame hit an even higher level when they played Woodstock and are fairly credited with getting the flagging crowd going at 4 in the morning. God I dunno, I don’t understand Woodstock, but the footage is fairly spectacular.
In December that year they put out another single, another number 1, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). An absolute cornerstone of funk and bassist Larry Graham’s most famous bass line by miles, only James Brown can really boast hits sounding this hard before it. Despite this, it would also be the last time they really appeared together as a unified band.
There’s a great bit in the 33 and a third about the album that points out that at this point in their career Sly & the Family Stone were seen a black Beatles. Even the biggest Temptations fan could see that at their live show they would have a fairly anonymous backing band but the Family Stone were a self contained band who wrote and played all their own songs, were absolutely massively famous and were developing new sounds quicker than the audience could keep up.
But then…. nothing.
Behind the scenes the band had gone from proudly clean living (even singing about it on Run, Run Run) as late as 1968, to next level drug takers, Sly more than anyone. As a unit they were disintegrating quickly, with their last actual full band recordings taking place in January 1970.
Ostensibly recording a new LP, Sly locked himself up in a Beverly Hills Mansion and, high and paranoid on an endless amount of Cocaine and PCP; with his new fame attracting the attention of the Black Panthers who pressured him to remove all the white people from the band; he watched his vision (and the 60’s dream) fall apart – Martin Luther King had been killed only weeks after Everyday People was number 1, the Beatles would split up, two fellow Woodstock stars, Jimi and Janis, proceeded to die, and race riots were flashing up all across America. As his drug use escalated, Sly surrounded himself with some hanger-on thugs from his past and proceeded to alienate everyone he ever worked with; band members would fly up to record and last a few days of madness before leaving out of fear for their own safety and sanity,
Bobby Womack said:I used to go over to Sly's place just for entertainment value. It was crazy. Everything you could think of, girls, drugs, guns, completely wackadoo. He even had a zoo. A fucking soul zoo. He had this monkey. Every time I went over this monkey would clamber down and bash his pit bull over the head before jumping back on the fence. It drove the dog wild. Only this one time Sly greased the fence and the monkey slid back down. The dog tore the monkeys chest out, right in front of us. It was always like that at Sly's. It was like the fall of Rome with afro's.'
Throughout 1970 the band attempted to soldier on as a live unit, booking shows and tv appearances. Sly would sometimes turn up. As a product stop-gap his record company put together a Greatest Hits compilation ( which also contained a load of songs that weren’t actually hits) that just happens to play as one of the greatest ever records. If you’re looking for a way in, play this first.
Meanwhile, recording with no consistent band, Sly relied increasingly on overdubbing tracks on the same tape and using a very early drum machine called the Rhythm King. Not programmable, Sly would get over its limitations by lining up several of them at the same time and sequencing them together on tape manually. Some songs would be released in obscure ways on his own Stone Flower vanity label that year that pointed towards the sound he was coming up with for There's a Riot Goin' On.
.
The extreme drug usage and overdubbing on the same tape would continue for the best part of two years. There’s an endless amount of grim and ugly stories from the recording sessions as Sly descended further and further into his own drug-fuelled madness - overdoses, maulings, shootings, abortions, you name it.
The mastertapes are famously so overdubbed that they're purportedly practically translucent. As a result, no one really knows who plays what on the album (Miles Davis and Ike Turner were certainly around, whether or not they're on there is a different matter). The back cover including a collage of all the people whirling around at the time. What is known for sure is that the only two songs the full band play on are the last two, Runnin’ Away and Thank You for Talking to Me Africa, both of which were recorded in January 1970 and December 1969 respectively. Billy Preston plays keyboards on A Family Affair. As for the rest, similar to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, what is presented is not clean, separated instruments where you can marvel at the technique of various players but a muddy murk that comes across like a recording of pure emotion. Unlike the giddiness of Spector's stuff though, the emotions on here are cynicism and despair.