The Greatest Living Sly Stone Tells All

Did I think Jerry Lee Lewis would live as long as he did?

No.

Did I think Keith Richards would live as long as he has?

No.

Did I think Sly Stone would live this long and write a memoir?

That’d be a double no, and a big double no at that, but here it is: The 80-year-old rocker and funkateer, the leader of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Sly and the Family Stone, has written with (I’m guessing) extensive prodding, coaxing are re-writing from Ben Greenman, a zig-zagging account of his life and (hard and happy) times called Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), titled after one of his biggest hits.

There’s no doubt about the musical impact Stone’s music had in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s–hits like “Everyday People,” “Stand,” “Dance to the Music” and “I Want to Take You Higher” to name but four–stand the test of time. They’re rock/funk staples, classics. Stone was a crossover artist early in that game, a pre-Prince if you will. He helmed an integrated band, and over the years, numerous rappers have covered and sampled his music. Which is to say, currency and cred, no doubt the reasons Questlove–who wrote the foreword–made this book his launch for AUWA Books an imprint of MCD/FSG,

And there’s no doubt that’s why people are paying attention now. Well, that and the mystery and presumed decadence and decline. A bit of you feels guilty about it, but schadenfreude. Many thought he was down and out–homeless?–or on the way out, and will be surprised that he’s still here to tell his (tall) tales. In that foreword, Questlove writes that Greenman–who also co-wrote a George Clinton bio–had been talking to Stone’s camp for many years about doing this but “the project didn’t really get off the ground until Sly was clean and his manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, could help make it a reality.”

But there’s this: Stone–born Sylvester Stewart in 1943, raised in the church–may be the ultimate unreliable narrator. (He certainly rivals the late, far more entertaining and scabrous Mark E. Smith of the Fall.) This book is stuffed with the names of umpteen family members and friends who keep coming in and spinning out of Sly’s world, and if you can keep all of them straight while reading, you’re a more assiduous reader than I. There’s love and hate, separations and homecomings, ever-shifting players in the Family Stone band. Dysfunction rules the roost.

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a curious, intermittently entertaining and ultimately frustrating mix of bits about hits, scrambled history, and wanton misbehavior. It’s mostly self-aggrandizing. (Yeah, I know an egotistical rock star, imagine!) When he’s self-critical, it’s rendered in a blasé fashion, the damage that was done coming across like oh-well, these-things-happen, water-under-the-bridge.

As a reader, you stagger through Stone recalling (or trying to recall – he hedges a lot of bets here and there’s a fair amount of “I can neither confirm nor deny”) the considerable psychic or physical damage done to himself and others while manifesting a peace-and-love we’re-all-brothers philosophical pose.  (He doesn’t understand why radical Muslims would applaud Osama bin Laden for 9/11 attacks, nor does he understand why most of the world applauded news of Saddam Hussein’s death.)

He starts telling a story that portends some depth or insight and then it sputters out and he’s on to something else. At one point he frames recollections – his own and others – this way: “A record’s not straight, especially when you’re not. It’s a circle with a spiral inside it. Every time a story is told it’s a test of memory and motive. Telling stories isn’t right and it isn’t wrong. It isn’t evil but it isn’t good. It’s the name of the game but a shame just the same.”

As a lyricist, Stone was in love with clever (or would-be clever) wordplay and even more so in his prose. Initially, it’s mildly amusing until you realize it’s his fallback gimmick, his stylistic tic, and most of the attempts bring a shrug: Oh, that trick again. Ha.

Over the course of the decades, there’s ownership of many guns, multiple high-end cars (and crashes) and houses, and a parade of women, that for some reason, Stone doesn’t write about in graphic detail. Mostly, it’s things like “We went upstairs.” There are major tax problems (and repossession of property), jail problems, showing-up-for-concerts / late-starting-concert problems. Not all of these no-show/late situations were Stone’s fault he maintains, nor were they just because of the drugs. There was, well, other shit, too. Not his shit necessarily. OK …

Yes, it’s a head-spinner, almost comic in his lack of regret or insight about his own demons. Cocaine was high on the list, first powder than freebase and crack. “I was at home with drugs,” Stone writes. “I was comfortable with them but I mean that one day I was in my house with them, home base, freebase.” After that he notes, one day he blew his bathroom up, set in ablaze, because of an errant crack torch.

Later: “I would say drugs didn’t affect me too much, but I didn’t have to be around me. Other people did,” Those people, he notes, said that on coke he’d start fight a day after a confrontation or “rush out of a room with a dark look on my face.” But, hey, on the upside: “It kept my energy up, kept me intense, kept me think, kept me in constant motion, shark-style.”

The lack of insight extends to the musicians, famous and otherwise, he’s encountered. If someone has chops, they played or sang like “a motherfucker.” He writes about his friendship with fellow Woodstock star Jimi Hendrix and says on the day he died Cream’s Ginger Baker wanted to share some primo coke with Sly and Jimi but never connected. And then foreshadowing his death: “It’s like he didn’t know what the world could do to him.” Soon after, “he was dead in the bed. Someone called me in the morning, but I couldn’t take it in fully. By which I mean my head was already full.” If you’re looking for any further musings on Hendrix – what he meant to the world or to Stone or what the rock star/drugs lifestyle can bring, forget it. Stone’s done.

There’s a comic/sad element to the number of times Stone has tried to come back–albums titled Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back (1976), Back on the Right Track (1979) and (as a solo record) I’m Back! Family and Friends (2011). And, let’s face it, there’s an aging, dwindling audience, even as Stone keeps thinking he’s writing his best music ever and his fans, old and new!, are still out there salivating for new music. They are not. Everyone knows the best days are well in the rear-view mirror. If there are concerts, and fans remain to attend, they pretty much want to hear the hits replayed and for Sly not to storm off the stage because some sonic detail wasn’t right.

Stone, of course, has gone in and out of rehab, sometimes trying to stay clean, sometimes not, often lying about whether he was or not. (He mostly wasn’t.) By the end of it–the 2012-present is given pretty short shrift, 10 pages–he’s mellowed and, allegedly, clean on what I think is his fourth stint while he’s been in the Medicare era. The man’s got a myriad of health problems and doctor visits are the norm.

So, it’s a sad, often sordid story, high on repetition, but I’ll say this: Every time Stone brought up one of those hits–and he brings ‘em up a lot–the melody immediately ran through my brain and that was not unpleasant at all. You can still dance to the music in your head. You just have to put the story of the man who made it in another room.