Buying a ticket to a Sly Stone concert these days can be like betting on the lottery. It?s a toss-up whether he?ll actually show. And if he does, what exactly do you get?
This year, he?s already canceled concerts in Chicago, Minneapolis and Victoria, B.C. The no-show streak goes back decades: In 1970, according to Billboard Magazine?s online biography, he canceled 26 of 80 shows.
Flash-forward 30-plus years, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is still an enigma. At the 2006 Grammy Awards, Sly appeared like a ghost ? in a platinum Mohawk, ever so briefly, tossing out a few vocals and a peace sign for goodbye.
At a Manhattan concert last fall, the New York Times reported, he disappeared mid-show so many times it was hard to tell if he spent more time onstage or in the wings. After an April concert at the House of Blues in Southern California started two hours late, a headline the next day read: ?Sly Stone makes history in Anaheim simply by making it to the show.?
Now, after a string of concerts from Europe to Japan, he?s still trying to mount a comeback at 65, which brings him to the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa on Oct. 17.
For years, his whereabouts were the subject of rumor and debate. After two cocaine busts in the ?80s, Rolling Stone reported ?he remained hidden from public view, living first in a series of apartments in the greater Los Angeles area. ...?
When Jeff Kaliss, author of ?I Want to Take You Higher: The Life & Times of Sly & the Family Stone? (due out Oct. 15), caught up with his subject, Sly was living in a massive compound among vineyards in the hills between Napa and Solano counties.
Now his agent says he?s moving into his manager?s fourplex in Fair Oaks outside Sacramento, only a few miles away from Family Stone founding members Jerry Martini and Cynthia Robinson.
Without any new material in decades, the royalties still roll in as songs appear on the soundtrack to ?Shrek? movies or push Princess Cruises TV ads.
By most accounts, the man who grew up Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, is a frail glimpse of his former self. A TMZ video shot outside funk-meister George Clinton?s L.A. birthday party in July shows Sly pulling up on a bright yellow three-wheel chopper. He walks by, stooped over with his chin against his chest, his thin frame draped with loose sleeves hanging well past his fingertips and a shapeless black kilt ? all propped up by wobbly knee-high combat boots.
When Kaliss arrived for his first interview, he said, ?I?m looking over his shoulder, thinking ?Where?s Sly Stone?? Because this just did not fit the image I and probably millions of other people had of Sly Stone.?
It?s a far cry from the 20-something Vallejo High grad who blindsided the music scene in the late ?60s to redefine rock and roll with a fusion of funk, soul and R&B that had never been heard before. Black, white, male, female ? the seven-member band defied genre, race and gender.
To witness the infectious power of Sly and the Family Stone, all you have to do is watch ?I Wanna Take You Higher? mesmerize 400,000 people in the 1970 ?Woodstock? documentary. The band would go on to pump out a string of hits: ?Everyday People,? ?Stand!,? ?Dance to the Music,? ?Hot Fun in the Summertime.?
At some point in the early 1970s, after the band moved to Los Angeles, fighting within the group escalated. According to published reports, Sly?s behavior became more and more erratic: There were stories of Black Panthers and bodyguards and the general paranoia that clouds heavy drug use. After the band broke up in 1975, Sly dabbled in solo projects that fizzled.
So, what?s in store for Santa Rosa fans at the Wells Fargo Center?
?It all depends on who wakes up that morning,? says Family Stone co-founder and saxophonist Martini. ?He?s not 28 anymore and getting paid a million dollars up front for an album.?
Sly?s agent Robert Devine admits some of the shows ?weren?t so good in the past,? but claims the recent tour of Japan was a success and a turning point.
Perhaps the best way to understand Sly Stone today is to look at his House of Blues stint in April. At one show, the band was supposed to go on at 11 p.m., but Sly wouldn?t take the stage until he got paid, Martini said. When the promoter balked, he holed up in his van and refused to come out. At some point, Martini went in to find out what was going on.
?I told him, ?You gotta go on, man. They?re waiting for you,?
? Martini recalled. ?He got that deep voice and said ?Jerry, we?ll talk about it later. We had a deal and I?m not playing till they pay up.? He?s just old-school like that. Whatever he was promised, he wasn?t playing until he got it.? Sly readily admits to being out of touch with the workings of today?s music biz. ?One thing he said during our second interview,? Kaliss said, ?is, ?I?m not really sure how music is done now. I need to learn how to do it again.?Longtime fan Eddie Lanier flew out from Virginia to see the April show and blogged about it on his MySpace page. He?d seen Sly at least a dozen times, including the 1974 concert at Madison Square Gardens when Sly married his 19-year-old girlfriend in front of 21,000 fans.Just before the House of Blues concert finally started around 1 a.m., ?He comes out onstage, tells the crowd that he?s having problems with money and getting paid but that no matter what happens he?ll play for free,? Lanier said. ?And then at some point he comes out with these hundred dollar bills and he?s throwing them out to people.?And, as he does at nearly every show now, Sly told the crowd, ?I gotta go use the bathroom? and disappeared for a spell.?A lot of newspaper critics assumed he was going off to do drugs,? said Kaliss. ?But (road manager) Neal Austinson has told me, no, what Sly would do is go back to the green room and lie down for a while just to relax and regain his energy.?Part of it may be a sense of stage fright and anxiety that has set in over the years. While researching the book, Kaliss interviewed Sly?s high-school girlfriend, who told him, ?I think Sly is actually shy. As smart as he is, as talented as he is, as dynamic a performer as he has proven himself to be at times, like Woodstock ? he?s really shy. And maybe that had something to do with the substances that he got involved with to keep him going.?But, no matter how many shows he cancels or fades in and out of, the diehard fans and faithful followers don?t seem to care.?Everybody was saying, ?I just wanted to see him again,? said Lanier, 54, recounting the concert in Manhattan last fall. ?It was like you hadn?t seen an old friend that knew how to party and made you feel good with the music ? you hadn?t seen him in so long. That?s what everybody was there for.?Staff Writer John Beck writes a pop culture blog at pop.pressdemocrat.com.
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