[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. There's a new book out called Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), and it's by Sly and The Family Stone. The book is a comprehensive reflection on Stone's life and career in music starting as baby Sylvester Stewart Denton in Denton, Texas to an emerging musical talent and radio DJ in Northern California known as Sly. He would form The Family Stone with some of his siblings and friends in the late '60s, providing a fresh sound, blending psychedelic rock, funk, and soul backed by an integrated band of white and black folks as well as women and men.

You know the hits, Dance to the Music, Everyday People, Family Affair, If You Want Me to Stay, but Sly's story isn't just about the music, it's about a predatory music industry, the formation and breakup of the band, Stone's addiction, legal and financial trouble, some of it here in New York City, but Sly Stone is still alive today. He's in his 80s. He's clean and ready to tell his story in a new book, which happens to be the first book on Questlove's new publishing imprint. Now, for health reasons, he's not doing live interviews, so today we're fortunate to have the co-author of the book, Ben Greenman. Hi, Ben.

Ben Greenman: Hi, Alison, how are you?

Alison Stewart: His daughter, Sylvette Phunne Stone, goes by Phunne. Hi, Phunne.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for being with us. Ben, you said you've been wanting to make this book for 10 years. What was it about Sly Stone that you wanted to know or what you had not seen written about?

Ben Greenman: I came in first through the door of a fan. I bought Greatest Hits when I was a little kid on-cassette and just wore it out, and was so taken by the energy, and the spirit, and the vision, and the creativity. As I got older and I started to write music books, it was a faint idea at first. It didn't seem possible. 10 years ago, I worked on George Clinton's memoir. George is a close collaborator, friend, inspired by Sly, obviously, sort of the New Testament to Sly's Old Testament of funk. He put me into the Sly camp.

At the time, there was not really footing or infrastructure to write a book for some of the reasons that we can talk about. Arlene Herskowitz, who was Sly's former girlfriend, came back as his manager, called me in 2019, and said Sly was ready. He would do it. She would keep him to it. That's how the book happened. What I wanted to know was everything. It's hard to encounter artistic inspirations, because they're also flesh and blood people with families, with flaws, with hopes. I think he did a fantastic job opening up to this process.

Alison Stewart: Phunne, what was important to you about a book about your father and your family for it to be something that you would support?

Sylvette Phunne Stone: I'm down with supporting my dad's POV on the whole thing. Whatever he was with, I was with it. Can I just say something? My name is not Sylvette.

Alison Stewart: Okay, sorry.

Phunne: it's Sylvette. It's okay.

Alison Stewart: Sylvette, I'm sorry.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: No, it's fine.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for correcting me, though.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: My mom would kill me if I didn't do that. I usually would let it go.

Ben Greenman: Could I have one? It's not really a correction, but it's a amplification up top, is that, all the focus now is on Sly, which makes absolute sense. He's telling the story. Around him is this amazing band, of which Sylvettes' mom is a part, too. There's the Robinson part, I don't want anyone to forget, as well as siblings, Larry, Jerry, Greg, because the story that we told goes past the glory period people remember, like you say, '68 to '74-ish. Sly's story goes on until now.

That initial band, which doesn't get enough credit for being one of the absolute top tier American rock bands. When you think, "Who are they?" People say Beach Boys, doors, birds. This is the one, this blew it up, and this created more freedom in one place than almost any other band. I do want to shout out to the rest of the band just right up top wherever they are, here or gone. That's a central part of this. That's why is certainly the engine but you need a car.

Phunne: Period.

Alison Stewart: The book begins with Sly Stone's early life, born Sylvester Stewart to Casey and Alpha Stewart in 1943 in Denton, Texas, a little bit north of Dallas. Phunne, how much did you know about your dad and your extended family roots?

Sylvette Phunne Stone: I know a lot. They're my family. I grew up in close contact with the Stewart's side of my family. Of course, I lived with my mom, so we always lived mostly in LA and a lot of my family lived in the Bay Area. We'd take trips in here and there. I know all my cousins. I'm pretty close with all my cousins, and I have a favorite aunt, all that stuff like everybody. Is that what you were asking? I feel like I've [unintelligible 00:05:19] the question.

Alison Stewart: Sometimes people in families they tell stories about where they're from and about grandmas and meemaws and all that kind of stuff, and some families don't talk about that stuff. I was just curious if yours is a family that did talk about that. Some elders would be like, "That's none of your business, stay out of your business."

Sylvette Phunne Stone: My mom, she told me so much stuff and she never sugar-coated anything. I know a lot. I know about how my big daddy used to-- maybe I'm getting a little too deep. I'm about to tell some. One great memory I had of big daddy, every time we get together, it'd be like a sing-along. Somebody would get on the keyboard, people singing, and he would go get the washboard and make a little-- a guitar beat off the washboard. It's an old washboard from old school days where they would wash their clothes, and he would play it, and it sounded really good.

Alison Stewart: Nice. Then when when Sly Stone was a kid, his family formed a band called The Stuart Four. Tell us a little bit more about The Stuart Four.

Ben Greenman: When they were little kids, the family and to some degree the church were continuous for creating music, and there was a lot of church music performance in the church. They had a gospel group. People will say, "Oh, it's like the Jackson 5." Except that I don't think Sly sounds anything like that. Already, he had a deepish, gravelly voice. It was a family band. It was the first version. They put a single in the '50s as a gospel singing group, a family group. To me, what's interesting about this is it folds into this bigger point of how when Sly got to be Sly and The Family Stone when that was formed in '66, '67, he's already the most trained pre-rock star in history.

He's a child gospel performer. He's a teenage doo-wop performer who wrote a hit. He's a DJ on the radio at KSOL in San Francisco. He's a record producer and songwriter, and he studied composition in college. To me, what was so interesting about that-- and he has different stories about all these phases. One of the weird things about promoting this book is that I can just say what he says in the book, and then I have my own opinions as a fan separately. One thing that's very clear is that he did everything before he did anything.

There's this preparation, which is hard to even imagine. He was such a high achiever already as an on-the-air talent, creating post-Beatles American bands for record labels in the Bay Area, studying composition, and being a student who just loved his composition teacher and really wanted to learn. The gospel kid, that kid didn't stop learning and just took in everything. Learned every skill that he needed, did voices on the radio as a DJ. It's an incredible story even before there is a band. Then there's the band.

Alison Stewart: I have a couple of clips pulled. I have one of The Stuart Four playing On The Battlefield. Let's listen.

[MUSIC - The Stewart Four: On The Battlefield]

Oh what I wasn't hearing you

Walking around singing

And my Jesus, He drafted me

In the service, He put me in

He took me by my hand

I joined the Christian band

You know that I'm on the battlefield for my Lord

Oh I'm on the battlefield

I'm on the battlefield, for my Lord

The battlefield, For my Lord

Oh, I promise Him that I will serve Him until I die

You know that I'm on

The battlefield, for my Lord

Alison Stewart: Then listen to Teenage Sly's voice. This is Yellow Moon.

[MUSIC - Sly Stone: Yellow Moon]

Yellow moon, Yellow moon

Yellow moon, shining down from above

Please let her know

I need her love

Alison Stewart: Ben, as you said, he's been preparing for his whole life, Where was he in that stage when Yellow Moon was out

Ben Greenman: When Yellow Moon comes out, this is high school is in Vallejo, and it's a weird perversion in a way of what song The Family Stone would become because it was a mixed band. It was Black and white and Filipino. Some of that has to do with the kind of community that Vallejo was. He also was writing, and we know so much about who he influenced, obviously, from Jackson 5 to Temptations, to Prince, to whoever.

This is a period where he's taking inspiration, and he's looking around at Doo-wop, and he's seeing someone like Ray Charles start to broaden the canvas and take on other genres, and just seems to have soaked everything up that he encountered. Apart from being a great creative artist, one of the smartest people I think to ever do this, and just bringing it all in and then figuring out what to do with it. Everybody had the chance to be inspired, I guess, but very few people were to this degree.

Alison Stewart: Not only was Sly forming bands around town, he was studying, as you had mentioned, but he also became a DJ, a well-known DJ in the area. Let's listen to a little bit of archive clip that still exists of Sly on the air. This is actually him reading an ad for a rice brand.

Sly Stone: Now, for the ladies that like to cook groovy rice, if you've never been able to cook fluffy rice before, you can with Mahatma. Mahatma long-grain rice always cooks like a charm, the same beautiful way every time, light, fluffy, and white. The kind your family likes, just the best long-grain rice you can buy. Mahatma costs less than 2 cents a serving. Pick up a package of Mahatma rice and see how long and slender the grains are. Almost impossible to find a broken grain. You can check it out yourself. This is perfect rice. The best long-grain rice you can buy. I'm not jiving, yet it costs less than 2 cents a serving. Get Mahatma, America's best cooking rice from Riviana Foods.

Alison Stewart: We have to have groovy rice fun. What do you think was your dad's skill as a DJ?

Sylvette Phunne Stone: He has just a great, interesting voice. A crazy story is that I grew up on Mahatma rice. My mom never bought any other rice. She was not playing. Look, he sold her.

Ben Greenman: I was going to say I was sold. I got to go get some rice. I'm totally in. [laughter]

Alison Stewart: The name of the-- Go ahead.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: His voice is just captivating, even just being in a room with him. When he starts talking, it's just all eyes on him. I don't know. He just has this magnetic thing.

Ben Greenman: Can I say something about the voice? I used to work with the guy who was obsessive and he would constantly come and say, "Who are the best singers of the 20th century," and make me help him make lists. It was Aretha and it was Sam Cook, and it was Van Morrison, and I guess, Sinatra a little earlier. I was always making a case for Sly. First of all, only one of us in the interview today has the same name as Sly and The Family Stone song, I should point out. It's not me and it's not you. Although Alison, you have the same last name. That's a coincidence.

Alison Stewart: Trust me, I tried to work that. I tried to connect it so many years in my life.

Ben Greenman: I have neither the first name of a song nor the last name of the family. I think Phunne's right, that there's something about his voice. It's so commanding and deep, and yet he could do so much with it. On the radio, he would do voices. He would do the traffic in a different voice. There's a clip of a fan club. He would have a DJ fan club where they'd send you a sign 8 by 10 of him. In the promo for the fan club, he would just switch and do a female voice for a second or come back in. There was such an open field, such a sense of experimentation and fun. It's commanding, the voice, and it's also so aware of what it's doing, I think, as part of the other thing. Able to do so many different things.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the new memoir from Sly Stone called Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). It is out now. We'll have more with Ben Greenman and Phunne Stone after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[MUSIC - Sly Stone: Dance to the Music]

Dance to the Music, dance to the music

Dance to the Music

Alison Stewart: Hopefully, now you're in the mood. We're talking about a new memoir from Sly Stone called Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). It is out now. I'm speaking with its co-author, Ben Greenman, as well as Phunne Stone, Sly's daughter. Of course, one of the original members of The Family Stone was your mom, Cynthia Robinson, who played trumpet and sang. Phunne, when did you realize the historical importance of your mom and music?

Sylvette Phunne Stone: As I got older, when you're growing up and you're young and a teen, you know that your parents are important, but you don't really realize it until you really start paying attention and researching. My mom was already important in history, just being who she was as a person, but then when she picked that horn up, it just intensified her position, in my opinion. She's just amazing. I think I was very young when I realized it. Very young, like teens.

Alison Stewart: Ben, what did Cynthia bring? What dimension did she add to the group?

Ben Greenman: It's impossible to think of this group, as I was saying before, without all of these parts, without Larry, without Greg, without Jerry, and Cynthia is so important. As we were saying at the beginning, this is men and women in a band, Black and white, and no one is a bystander. I think that the biggest thing is that these people are all forces. When you hear those records, everyone has a personality. Now, part of it is that Sly wrote songs and they performed them in ways that gave separation. I think this comes from early on when they would play in very early venues like in Winchester Cathedral.

In some songs, there would be showcases. They'd do a Lou Rawls cover and Larry would get a showcase. They would do whatever. I think that the ethos of the band was that, sure, I guess there's a leader, there's a person who's writing a lot of the new material, but they were covering material, but everybody gets to go. It grew that way. For me as a fan, when that changes in the early to mid '70s when it shifts away from that band model, I don't love the music any less. In some ways, I like it more for different reasons, but it shifts away from that energy.

That huge sound that they got that defines that '68 to '71, '72-ish area just never came back in quite the same way, and that's because they kept going. There's records with everybody, but that is an awesome sound, and it's much more contemporary than people think. I think there's a lot of bands from that era that dated differently. This band, even though you can say, "Oh, it's a '60s band, it's the Woodstock generation," every time to me it sounds new. There's so many people in it that are doing so much that the energy is never going to diminish of those recordings.

Alison Stewart: There's a Riot Goin' On, many people put this on their list of one of the best albums of all times. Certainly one of Sly Stone's best. Phunne, why do you think that is? What's special about There's a Riot Goin' On?

Sylvette Phunne Stone: I'm speechless. I think all of his songs are super special. All his albums are special. A lot of people love A Riot's Goin' On for their own personal reasons. I just feel like every album, the way it was set up one by one, it was a book in itself. I think they all are equally important in that way.

Ben Greenman: The thing for me about Riot, it's so interesting, is that he has this sound which we've heard on some of the clips of the trading off vocals and the rhythms, and everyone started imitating it, The Jackson 5 and The Temptations. Then he takes this left turn with something like Riot. When I was younger, that's the record I would've picked. As I've gotten older, I've moved Fresh, and I'm not sure why. This is a personal thing. It seems it's so brilliant.

If you put on in time the first song off of Fresh, and he's commenting on not just his own life or the world or the people around him, but everything. The lyrics are-- I'm speechless talking about what they are. They're so compressed, and smart, and so many puns, and they twist and turn, and they put you in his mind, and it's not like other minds. There's a Riot is great, but it's a mood piece. I didn't say nothing bad about it. It's a wonderful record, but I think Phunne's right that he moved quick. If he was on something and people started to get to it, he was already on to the next.

Alison Stewart: While we're talking about the music business, Ben, it was clear that it was a predatory business. In what way did that impact Sly Stone's career and his ability to make money and to generate wealth?

Ben Greenman: It's impacted everyone and it impacted him. I've been joking, and I don't know if people agree. This isn't his words. This is my opinion, that fame is the first drug, and all the other drugs are the antidote, because when you're such a sensitive smart person, and you get pushed into this world, it's unbelievable. I'm getting tired from doing, just because Sly is not able to and doesn't feel well enough to do press, I'm getting tired from doing book promotion. Imagine 200 days a year on the road, and the record company yelling at you for a new record. You don't want to disappoint any of your fans because you love them, because they love you.

Yes, it is predatory. Some people did things that were wrong, the practices were strange early on, but just the overwhelming crushing pressure of trying to live up and be that guy, and being smart enough, by the way, to create a persona to take a lot of that flack. That's a big move. Dylan did it, Sly did it. I think he did everything he could, and he knew everything, and yet the pitfall still happened.

If the smartest person couldn't avoid them, I don't know what to say. I think it's in some ways a wonderful business because it brings us art, it changes our lives. In some ways, it is a snake pit. I'm sure Phunne growing up with two parents who are in this business knows more even than Sly told about using people as commodities, pushing people around, taking their work away from them. Everything happens, and you have to just survive in it, and Sly survived it.

Alison Stewart: Sly is very frank in the book about having some tax problems, about drug use. There's one story I'm going to ask you to tell real quick because it takes place in New York Story. The story that he goes into Harvey's Electronics here in New York City [laughter] and winds up-

Ben Greenman: I love that story so much.

Alison Stewart: -in a little bit of legal trouble. Real quick, tell us that story.

Ben Greenman: Real quick, he goes in. They're playing-- The Garden is his second home, and they love playing there. They're there on a tour. In the day of the show, he's wandering around. He's dressed up as a cowboy, and he wanders into the electronic store, and he has this toy pistol. He knows Sammy Davis Jr. is going to be at the show later, and he knows Sammy Davis Jr. from being a guest on Westerns loves these quick draw competitions, so he starts practicing. He's probably a little bit out of it, but also there's a weird sweetness to it in a weird way. He knows his friend is coming, and he knows his friend's going to want a quick draw.

The guys in the store are like, "Whoa, whoa, what's the gun in the store? What's going on?" They come, and the guy from the store calls the cops, and they come in. It's explained, it's worked out, but just that, to me, he's such a funny comic. His sense of humor is so advanced, but he tells that as a joke. He knows that it was a serious consequence, but I buy it. It's a great story, and then it's reported in the papers, so kind of deadpan. "Rock star Sylvester Stewart, known as Sly Stone," but if you say it from inside, it's all this weird energy. It's a quick draw. Imagine, it's a quick draw to beat Sammy Davis Jr. in a quick draw later that day. None of us have that experience, I certainly don't.

Alison Stewart: Telling you, there are a lot of stories like that in this book. The name of it is Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf). It's a memoir from Sly Stone. Thanks to Phunne Stone, his daughter, and Ben Greenman for joining us. Appreciate your time today.

Ben Greenman: Thank you for flying into our lane.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: Thank you for having us.

Ben Greenman: Yes, thank you so much, Alison.

Sylvette Phunne Stone: Yes, woot, woot.

Alison Stewart: Woot, woot, let's go out.

Ben Greenman: You did it, Sly.

Alison Stewart: You know what?

[Music - Sly Stone: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)]

Lookin' at the devil, grinnin' at his gun

Fingers start shakin', I begin to run

Bullets start chasin', I begin to stop

We begin to wrestle, I was on the top

I want to thank you falettinme be mice elf agin

Thank you falettinme be mice elf agin

 

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