Sly Stone and the ‘Burden of Black Genius’
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At their peak, Sly and the Family Stone weren't just the coolest band of their time. They might have been the coolest band of all time. Gender inclusive, multiracial, and impossibly funky, they channeled the wild energy of the 1960s Bay Area into an explosive, inventive mix that changed music forever.

forever and took a brutal toll on frontman Sly Stone. We're talking about a new documentary, Sly Lives. That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. The new documentary, Sly Lives, is a rich examination of, as the film's subtitle puts it, the burden of black genius.

Directed by Questlove, it mixes gorgeous, unsettling archival footage and interviews with Andre 3000, D'Angelo, Q-Tip, and the members of Sly and the Family Stone to assess how the band rose and fell. In a sense, it feels like a sequel to Summer of Soul, another Questlove doc, and

that showed a music festival in Harlem in the late 1960s. And I remember watching that film's many beautiful performances, but the highlight for a Bay Area nerd like me was the appearance of Sly and the Family Stone. They look like they flew in not from the West Coast, but another planet, and they absolutely killed their set. Sly is dressed in a crazy black velvet getup, it looks like. They've got a white drummer, a woman is playing trumpet.

it's worth emphasizing that their composition and look would still be startling today and so much more so in that world. One cannot help but watch the Sly and the Family Stone performance and think, how did they get to this place that no one else did or could find? Why did it work? And this film, Sly Lives, feels like at least a partial answer to those questions while forcing us to ask some harder ones about our society's expectations and desires too.

We're joined this morning by Joseph Patel, producer of the documentary Sly Lives. He also produced Summer of Soul, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. We're also joined by Joel Selvin, San Francisco-based music journalist and author of the recently republished Sly and the Family Stone in Oral History. Welcome, Joel. Good to be here. Hey, Joseph. Hey, Joel. How are you? Good, man. So let's start with you, Joseph. Tell

Talk to me a little bit about, you know, is this really a sequel to Summer of Soul? Like, you also watched Summer of Soul and thought, how did the Sly and Family Stone come about? Not really. I mean, maybe a spiritual sequel. But, you know, we were working on Summer of Soul. And as it turned out, the rapper Common and his production company had acquired the rights to Sly Stone's story. And he approached Questlove about...

"Hey, I know you're not done with this movie yet, but would you be interested in the Sly and the Family Stone story?" So we didn't really actually talk about it until after Summer of Soul had its run. And there is an incredible interview that kind of frames this film at the beginning. You know, it's kind of after the fall, so to speak, for Sly Stone. Where did that come from and where did you find it? What was it like to first encounter that archival film?

Yeah, you know, that's an interview that Sly does in the early 80s with Maria Shriver. And, you know, to us, it was very indicative of the kind of liberties that people took when talking about Sly's story. You know, she opens the interview by asking him, basically reciting all his accolades, right?

And he's white knuckling the sofa pretty much. And it's like, he's so uncomfortable with those, the recitation of those accolades. And he's so uncomfortable with his success, it seems. And to us, that was just a very, you know, it was very emblematic of the story we wanted to tell. Yeah.

Joel Selvin, let's talk about the early days before all those accolades, before the rise or the fall. He had a radio show. Yeah. And K-Soul. How did you first start to sort of hear about or see Sly Stone?

I think when I first encountered him was on K-Soul. He was a jive-talking, loudmouth disc jockey whose repertoire went beyond the sort of standard of KDIA and K-Soul. You know, you'd hear a Beatles track off the Rubber Soul album in the middle of the Motown stuff. But that's also about the time that

that his band started appearing around at places like Frenchies and Hayward. And you'd hear the ads on the radio, you know, this Friday night, Sly and the Family Stone. So I first saw the band, oh, you know, like 67 or so at a club in San Jose called Losers. Were they good yet?

Oh, they're phenomenal. I told you before the show that I'm driving down the East Shore Freeway. It's a Saturday morning. I've got KDIA on the radio, and Sly is doing a guest shot. He's already left the radio. He's put out his first album, and we're waiting on the next one. And he plays dance to the music. I tell you, Alex, it's like a portal opened and a new world was revealed to me. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Let's also, Joseph, let's talk a little bit about where some of the kind of inputs, what some of those inputs were, like the production of music. He was producing during this time as well. And we actually have a cut of his, well, let's just play the cut. People can predict somebody to love here. When the true world of joy within bothered him

So, Joseph, you all tell the story of this session in the film. It's kind of, of course, part of it is it's unexpected that this would be a Sly Stone production. Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that you see about Sly when he's young is he's just bursting with creativity, right? And so he is...

Writing his own music. He's producing other bands primarily for autumn records He's a band leader at the Cow Palace you know the backing band for a lot of artists that come through and You know much like Joel said is like his radio shows were also like sort of you know multi-genre and he's introducing people to different sounds besides just the little category that they that they listen to and you know his ability to sort of

you know, be fluent in so many musical genres. He, you know, I don't think it was calculated. I think that's just coming out of him naturally. And I think, you know, the Bay Area is a place where that stuff can be nurtured. You know, I think if, you know, Questlove and I had a sort of theoretical conversation in the edit one day, it's like, if Sly's family doesn't move from Denton, Texas to Vallejo, and Sly doesn't start the band in California or in the Bay Area specifically, um,

does Sly and the Family Stone exist? And probably doesn't. I think there's two parts to this equation. One part is Sly's creativity and his ideas and just wanting to express himself. And then the other part is the environment in which he's doing it. And, you know, Joel knows this firsthand. You know, it's...

Bay Area is a very unique place where you can go up and down the strip and see bands of different stripes and listen to the radio and hear music coming of all different types of genres. And Sly just fit really well into that whole atmosphere. Yeah. Let's listen to him. This is a little cut from the Maria Shriver interview, I believe. It's Sly Stone talking about his musical influences.

Were you conscious of people searching for a different type of music? I was conscious that I was searching for a different type of music. I just dug Dylan and Charles and Ruthie Franklin and the Staples Singers and the Beatles. That's all music. It should all be together somewhere. And I decided if I want to do music, it'll be my music. Stop the tape, man. Let's do it again.

Jill Selvin, for me, listening back to this cut, thinking about, you know, 1960s North Beach, I think is kind of what we're talking about here. Is it wrong to sort of have a misty kind of utopian glaze over the sort of racial politics of that time in North Beach and in the music scene? Especially if you're talking about Sly.

I mean, Sly operated in an absolutely colorblind world. He was the producer of the Bo Brummels, who were like an imitation Beatles. And Laugh Laugh remains one of the great records of 1965.

His initial band, black, white, boys, girls, all that. But it went way beyond that. I mean, his whole thinking was rooted in rock music, not R&B. Oh, he loved Ray Charles. No question, Ray Charles is a major influence on him. But the Beatles and Dylan were too. And that's not like what was common to the black musicians of that day. And that was the source of...

of the real raw power of the Sly and the Family Stone music was that it was rooted in this rock pop tradition. But, you know, he also, Joseph, like came up in the black church, right? I mean, that's where a lot of the training was. That's where a lot of the band is from too, yeah? Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, we have someone in the movie who sort of gives some context around this is, you know, slides of a generation different from his parents. Right. He has a sort of he believes in an idealism, the American dream, the melting pot. And that's not something that his parents generation really believed in. And I think that's probably the starkest contrast. Right. Is that.

Kids of Sly's generation, especially Sly, you know, he was a black kid in a pretty multiracial environment in school. And, you know, he felt like black, white, you know, everybody could live together. And I think, you know, he lived that ideology, especially at a young age. Oh, yeah. His doo-wop group was also black and white and boys and girls. And he always had white girlfriends. Yeah.

He didn't live in a ghetto mentality. His father was a working man, and his mother was very disciplined, and they had a very tight family unit. They were welded into the Seventh-day Adventist church. So this is not like some classic born poor and brought up by his bootstrap story at all. And also someone who was not actually...

and living in, you know, a segregated, you know, what were known at the time as ghetto in like at some parts of the Bay Area where he was living in a multiracial world. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's listen to one cut from what we'll talk about after the break. A somewhat unsuccessful first album. This is Underdog, though. This is one of my all-time favorite songs. We're talking about the new documentary Sly Lives with Joel Selvin, music journalist, author of Sly and the Family Stone and oral history, and Joseph Patel, producer of the documentary Sly Lives. ♪

I'm out.

Support for KQED podcasts come from Bioneers. Their annual event is coming up March 27th through the 29th in Berkeley. Three days of inspiring speakers, arts, music, movement building, and more. Information at Bioneers.org slash KQED. Xfinity Mobile was designed to save you money. So you get high speeds for low prices.

Better than getting low speeds for high prices. Jealous? Xfinity Internet customers, get a free unlimited line for a year when you buy one unlimited line. Bring on the good stuff.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're talking about the new documentary, Sly Lives. We've got the producer of the doc, Joseph Patel, with us. Also got Joel Selvin, San Francisco-based music journalist and author of the now recently republished Sly and the Family Stone in Oral History. If you want to talk about Sly Stone, which you should probably, you should give us a call, 866-733-6786. The email is forum at kqed.org.

social media, blue sky, Instagram, discord, where KQED forum again, maybe you saw Sly Stone perform back in the day. Maybe you knew him. 866-733-6786. Um, so Joseph, we heard before the break, we heard the song underdog off the first album. It wasn't a huge, I love it. I feel like it holds up over time, but it wasn't a huge smash hit. Right. So what happens after that?

Well, it's funny, right? Like, so that first Sly and the Final Me Stone album, I think the band itself thought it was going to be huge, right? They had been on this sort of, they were playing Winchester Cathedral and three months into their tenure there, they got signed by Clive Davis. But, you know, I think Sly's ideas were a little ahead of their time, probably. Joel, you probably know better than anyone. And, you know, Sly's manager is like, look, you need a hit, right? That first album flops.

and his manager is saying, "You need a hit. You need a hit." And Sly, almost out of, I don't know, sarcasm, frustration, he's like, "Oh, you want a hit? Like, I'll give you 'Dance to the Music.'" And, you know, the title itself is pretty simple. The song is very catchy in a lot of different ways. But underneath the hood, that song is very complicated, and it shows sort of a maestro at work. And I think, you know, one of the things we wanted to do in the movie

is not just tell you that the song was good, not just tell you it was a hit, but show you under the hood how it was sort of constructed with catchiness in mind. Well, first let's listen to Dance to the Music, then we'll do a little analysis of Everyday People. Let's bring on Dance to the Music. So, Joel Sumlin, we're going to keep this music running underneath you here. What do you sort of hear or think about how this song is put together, Dance to the Music, and what makes it work?

Well, it's not just a simple A, B, A, B, C, A, B format. We haven't even got to the voices breakdown and, you know, the introduction of... They're just starting to do the introduce the guitar and the bottom and all that. So it really, you know, Sly's just peeling every layer back and letting you see behind the veils. And the drum beat just is insistent. And Larry Graham...

changed the way faces were played. Just totally. He was a kid, grew up playing with his mother, Del Graham. She played like Errol Garner and sang like Dinah Washington. And it was the duo. And in order to make a loud sound while his mother played piano, he learned to pluck the bass with his thumb. And that, like I say, changed the way electric basses were played. ♪

Okay, let's turn it back up just for a minute so people can listen to that stuff. Oh man, so good. We're listening to dance to the music. We're talking about Sly and the Family Stone. You know, Joseph Patel, you all did a little bit of this work too, like you were saying in the film, around everyday people. Do you want to set up everyday people and then we're going to play the kind of analysis you do in the film? Well, everyday people is, you know...

Probably Sly and the Family Stone's biggest song, right? Most culturally relevant song. It's the song that Sly...

You know, there's a message in the song. We're all the same no matter what we do. But under the hood, like, Sly kind of writes this song in that way too. We have Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis breaking it down in the movie. There's unison vocals on that song, which, you know, Terry's sort of saying is for everybody and what he means is white people. And then there's harmony vocals, which is, you know, comes from the black church, right?

And so Sly constructs this song that combines the two. And so if you're listening to it, wherever you're from, whatever your background, you have an entry point into the song to sing along with it. And that's kind of the genius of Sly is that everything he did was very intentional, but he had the skill set to sort of to do it and to back it up. All right. Let's listen to some of this analysis about everyday people from the documentary Sly Lives.

There's a certain power hearing unison vocals.

Everybody singing the same note, doing the sing-songy nursery rhyme-ish melodies made it easy for the listener to sing along with. That unison creates the vibe that pulls everybody in to that one-minded concept. We got to live together. I am no better, neither are you. Are the same, whatever we do.

but when they sing in harmony oh boy felt like church

That was a cut from the documentary Sly Lives. Folks kind of walking you through everyday people. You know, one of the greatest Sly and the Family Stone songs. You want to add anything to that, Joel? You know, Sly's manager, David Kaeperlech, who was really, you know, he was up there in the wheelhouse with Sly laying down the strategy. He felt that song was the

key Sly and the Family Stone piece because it was the most holistic statement of Sly's humanitarian viewpoint. And David thought that was the whole key to Sly's popular breakthrough was this humanistic attitude. And he did. That was a point in time where that embrace was felt. But at the same time,

There's a sort of, and pardon the expression here, sly innuendo in the lyrics. I mean, you can feel the sort of edge of sarcasm, just the little sneer when he says, well, different strokes for different folks. You know, and let's use that excellent point, Joel, to talk about the subtitle of this film, Joseph and Joseph.

you know, it's called A Burden of Black Genius. And you have some of kind of the most famously burdened current black musical artists, you know, Andre 3000 and D'Angelo, I think kind of

and in a well-known way have struggled with becoming superstars and being both crossover hits, you know, for people of all races and also being black men in America. So talk to me a little bit more about what you think they deliver to the film. I mean, that's exactly right. I think, you know, Questlove, when we were our first meeting talking about what kind of story we wanted to tell, we knew we couldn't tell the complete Sly and the Family Stone story. We had a story to tell.

And I think, you know, and I'll interchangeably use Questlove and Amir. So Amir has gone through this himself, right? Where he's been successful and he's really struggled with that success. And he finds himself self-sabotaging. And he looked around at his peers and he realized they were going through some of the same things themselves. And I think when he traced it back, Sly was sort of the first artist to

That had to deal with that unique set of challenges, right? He's the first and biggest post civil rights black superstar. He reunited black audiences and white audiences for, because, you know, because the songs like everyday people and Joel's right. Like there is a sort of, you know, just at the edge of sarcasm right there with that song, he's very conscious of what he's doing. And, um,

You know, it's not, we didn't want to give Sly an excuse for the downfall that follows. We wanted to allow him to keep his agency, but it's something that, you know, again, is lived experience by Questlove. And he just felt like, you know, in an ideal situation, we could have gotten Sly to talk about it. You know, his health prevents him from being on camera and really, he doesn't really, he can't really talk in full sentences right now. Um,

But we could get Andre 3000. We could get D'Angelo. We could get Chaka Khan. Other artists that serve as proxies because they've been through very similar situations that Sly himself went through. And I think all those people that we use in the film, it was all very intentional about who we wanted to talk about this stuff. And, you know...

Even if you don't know their backstory, what they say is very insightful. But if you do know their backstory, right, if you do know the struggle that comes with your Andre 3000 and you make a song called Hey Ya, right, which is not an optimistic song, right? And it's very sly-like in that way. It's not an optimistic song. It sounds like an optimistic song, but it's not.

And, you know, having to, you know, all his fans want him to perform that song or even people who aren't his fans wanting to perform that song and he doesn't want to rap anymore. Right. What do you do? You make a flute album. Right. You make a flute album. Right. He's preserving himself in a way. He takes the opposite tact. D'Angelo, you know, on his Voodoo tour 25 years ago.

Um, Amir was his drummer and he was, uh, you know, he, he wore direct witness to the struggle that D'Angelo had coming out on stage every day, knowing he had to be in perfect physical condition to take off his shirt and perform. How does it feel to a room full of screaming fans? And he saw firsthand what that burden was like for D'Angelo. So I think there's an extra layer there.

You know, when we have, you know, these artists who are in the film, they're giving insight, but they're also serving as proxies for Sly. Yeah, man, they are so good in the film. So such like rich analysis of both their own lives and Sly's life. Let's listen to another song, kind of typifies kind of the changing political climate around Sly and the Family Stone. Let's hear Stand Up.

You want all real. You too.

Listen to the stand there. You know, it comes out in 1969, I think, right, Joel Selman? And obviously the political climate of the country at this moment is...

Well, maybe it's starting to get more familiar in our modern day. But 69 known as kind of a year of tumult and change. And how did Sly and the Family Stone kind of respond to all that that was going around them? Well, everyday people in Stand are Sly and the Family Stone before Woodstock. And that is their humanistic address to the Woodstock nation.

They really weren't part of the black culture at that point. Their audience was almost entirely white. And it was Sly's dominance of the Woodstock generation that brought him respect in the black community. It was like, hey, look at that. But the music...

I mean, it just was so pivotal. Everything changed after Sly and the Family Stones' stand album. I mean, Motown completely changed. Barry Gordy, the founder of Motown, brought the stand album in to a record company meeting and said, this is the future of music. And Norman Whitfield turned the Temptations into an imitation Sly and the Family Stone. Papa was a Rolling Stone artist.

Miles Davis was incredibly affected by Sly Stone. Herbie Hancock, incredibly affected. The biggest selling jazz record in the world is Headhunters. And there's a track on it called Sly. And it's not an accident. I'm trying to sound like Sly Stone. It's funny. We actually have a scene that was cut from the movie.

We do talk about Miles' obsession with Sly. Jerry Martini talks about it. But there's this little scene where Rusty Allen, the bassist who replaces Larry Graham when Larry leaves, he points out a section of the Jack Johnson album.

where Miles does a riff that is his version of Sing a Simple Song. It's like an inverted riff and he does it like note perfect, timing's perfect. And unfortunately we didn't leave that in the movie, but it is one of those things where it's like, you know, Sly had a profound effect on so many of his contemporaries. Here's the thing about Stan though, which I think is really funny.

Stan sounds like an anthem, a resistance anthem, but it's actually, and this is sort of part of Sly's genius, it's generic enough where everybody can sort of project their own cause onto the song, right? It's not very specific about what cause it's an anthem for.

And so I feel like that's also part of Sly's ability to sort of cast a wide net and make everyone feel like they're invested in this song. Because it's just generic enough where he doesn't actually really talk about anything. You're so right, Joseph. And like you say, that's no accident. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another sort of Sly genius bit, we're going to listen to some Family Affair, which even just in the name feels like it's got sort of a...

dual connotations, the way it kind of plays as a, I don't know, almost kind of this R&B bluesy kind of ballad, but it's also pretty dark as you kind of listen through. Oh, it's totally dark. And there's no band on it. It's just Rose Sly and Billy Preston. Yeah. Yeah. Let's bring that up. Let's bring in Family Affair here.

We're talking about the new documentary Sly Lives with Joel Selvin, San Francisco-based music journalist. You can pick up his book, Sly and the Family Stone in Oral History. We're also joined by Joseph Patel, producer of the documentary Sly Lives. He produced Summer of Soul II, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The number here is 866-733-6786. We're going to get to more calls after the break. You can also email us about what Sly meant to you at forum at kqed.org. Let's listen to some Sly and the Family Stone. This is Family Affair. We'll be back right after the break. Somebody you just love to burn. Loves the both of them. You see it's in the blood. Both care. Good and bad. It's thicker than the mud. It's a family affair. It's a family affair. It's a family affair.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the new documentary Sly Lives, joined by Joseph Patel, producer of The Doc, and Joel Selvin, a San Francisco-based music journalist who wrote a book, Sly and the Family Stone in Oral History. On the way into the break, we heard the song Family Affair, and Rick in Citrus Heights wants to talk about it. Welcome, Rick.

Yes, thank you. That and also the song Stand are my two favorite songs of Sly and the Family Stone. It reminds me, the Family Affairs song reminds me of my family, that the way they used to be before we went our own separate ways for reasons I won't mention. And then...

I stand, you know, as a person with multiple disabilities, including developmental, intellectual, I am involved politically so I can keep the services I have and make them better. And so that's why I like that song, Stand. So thank you very much for taking my call. Hey, thank you, Rick. Really appreciate that. Let's also, let's bring Joe in West Sonoma County while we're at it here. Hey, welcome, Joe. Hey.

I wanted to talk about Bly's youth. I met him when he was 14 or 15 years old, and we played in a band together. Should have stuck closer by Joe, you know?

He changed my life because he was playing in a band called the Five Souls, which was the band of Vallejo at that time. He was pretty young, but when he got hooked up with the KYA stuff, he left the band. So he said, hey, you want to come in and join the Five Souls? And he was a guitar player.

The guitar player, Ted Butler, he was the bass player, became the guitar player, I became the bass player, and it changed my life. Anyway, I met Sly when he was young, and I also saw him when the band quit.

I was playing at the Playboy Club, and I brought my band across the street to meet him. And Sly was there, and Larry Graham was doing his debut for his new band. And I got to talk to Sly at the time that things weren't so good with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we played a job once at...

at Aerojet Nucleotics in the East Bay. And I got the job. Just me, him, and Lewis Banks was a kid he grew up with. He was a drummer. And we just killed him. You know, it was like we had about a 500...

We were playing mashed potatoes, and at the end of mashed potatoes, there's a little place for a little riff, a little verbal riff, and every time he'd come up with a new one. And so he was a very important person in my life. I went to school with him for two years at the college with Dave Froehig. Yeah. Joe, man, thanks so much for sharing that. It's...

It's important to remember, I think, sometimes with an icon like this, that they really were 15 sometime. They really were, you know, just bopping around the Bay Area trying to figure out what to do with their lives. You know, you can't necessarily predict that someone's going to become like a global superstar, you know? There are a lot of people that remember Sly from Vallejo. One of them was the late, great John Turk, who was for years and years and years the musical director of the Glide Memorial Church. Wow.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, he was in high school with Sly. I remember very well. I remember Sly's green car because Sly had his own car. Wow.

There's a couple things I want to say real quick sure is if you want to go deeper on sly and the family stone You should definitely check out Joel's book. It is extra, you know written at a time when the memories are still fresh in everyone's heads Which is you know, it was 30 years ago Joel 35 years ago. Yeah But the memories are still fresh in everyone's head and it's a very sort of complete oral history of the band both the good and the bad and

And the other thing is, you know, the Bay Area being this place where Sly and the Family Stone could actually be created and where Sly could really thrive, right? I think that's something that's part of the DNA of...

the Bay Area still, hopefully. I don't know. It's been a minute since I've been in San Francisco. But, you know, I think that should not be overlooked in this story, right? I think Oakland, San Francisco, it's just such a special place. You know what I think about, Joseph, is at the same time that Sly and the Family Stone was sort of coming up in the San Francisco scene,

So is Santana. Right. Yeah. Another multiracial band drawing from all kinds of bizarre sort of unexpected resources and coming up with an incredible source of power and energy. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think about those two all the time together.

Speaking of Bay Area, by the way, one listener writes to say, please tell Joseph Battelle his Freakmont crew is listening. Washington High alum are crazy proud. Amazing. We hear. Also, shout out to my mom and my sister. Oh, yeah. All right. We got to talk about some downsides, some fall here. This is, I have to say, this is one of the most, the downfall for Sly in your film is something

some of the hardest-watched footage I've ever seen of a musician as he's trying to sort of maintain relevance. Like, what happens to him in short, Joseph? I mean, you know, it is sort of a...

the contours of a classic rock and roll rise and fall, right? It's the drugs. Uh, Dream Hampton has this line in our film where she says, you know, the biggest way an artist can self sabotage is, is by ruining relationships. And I, so I think that's another part of it too. Um, you know, I think again, we wanted to find a balance between having some empathy for Sly, um,

And also having him have agency, he made his choices, right? But really it's drugs and it's anxiety and it's insecurity and it's a paranoia, a growing sense of paranoia. And they all kind of compound each other. And, you know, Greg leaving the band during the recording of There's a Riot Going On, that's the first domino to fall where this sort of, you know, idyllic sort of situation that Sly has built for himself is starting to crumble.

Yeah. Well, he was traumatizing those people by then. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like you say, it's a combination of ego. It's a combination of drugs. But I'll tell you something, Joseph, that Rusty Allen said to me, because you've got to realize that Sly was raised in this

ultra-religious upbringing. And Sly told Rusty Allen that he'd done so many bad things to people that God would never take him back now. So when you get to that place, like you're beyond, beyond. Any behavior is excused. Anything is okay because God will never take you back. Mm-hmm.

And what's interesting too is we also interviewed the children and they each have their story. So I had three children with three different women of, um, and you know, they each,

didn't have really the father that, you know, that you would expect. And, um, and he didn't mention the dog. Oh yeah. We didn't talk about the dog, but, but the, but the three kids, each of them had a reason to really hate their father, right? He was not there and they put them through, you know, they, he put them through a lot, but in the end, sort of a, you know, our film at least is a bit of a redemption story. They each adore him.

You know, they were able to reconnect with him. I think, to some extent, I think this is where Joel in our film, you know, diverges, is that...

that we do try to redeem Sly towards the end. Vernon Reed really says it. He's like, Sly has given us so much. We owe more to him than he owes to us. Let's talk about what music owes to Sly and the impact that we really see in his music. I mean, the way the film tells it really is Sly comes back into the culture through the sampling of hip-hop producers. Yeah, Joseph?

Yeah, that's one of the ways, yeah. Yeah. Well, talk to me about it. I mean, once you start to lay out all the samples, it gets pretty impressive how many of them were adopted by really major hip-hop artists. Well, the Sing a Simple Song drum break that Greg has in the song that Sly wrote is like one of the, if you were to put 10 drum breaks in a mountain to save from the apocalypse, that's one of them, right?

Um, I think at one point Questlove just sort of fooling around when we were in pre-production made like a 40 minute mix, uh, you know, hyper mix of every hip hop song that is sampled that drum break. It was like 120 songs or something. Um,

But like, you know, the thing about hip hop kids when they're looking through their parents record collection at the beginning stages of hip hop, they're not, they don't know the history of Sly, right? They don't know the order in which the albums came out. They don't know that this song from Small Talk wasn't regarded as a critical hit, right? Or wasn't a popular hit.

Like they, you know, time is a flat circle for hip hop kids. And so they're just sort of picking what they like and what they're responding to. And that's sort of, there's a purity to that. Right. Um, in hindsight, some of Sly's later records actually have some really good songs on it. Small talk. I would, people say Fresh is the last great Sly the Family Stone album. I think small talk is actually a pretty great Sly the Family Stone album. At the time it came out, people saw it as a, as a disappointment.

And hip-hop kids sort of resurrect that. They're just looking for the grooves. Yeah, yeah. Let's bring in Dale in San Francisco. Welcome, Dale. Hello. Hey, go ahead, Dale. You're on.

Well, yeah, just a quick shout-out to Joel Sullivan. I was in his rock and roll class at San Francisco State in 1982. Wow. Not that I wasn't a fan before then. That's probably why I took the class. But I just wanted to comment on one of my favorite songs, Everybody is a Star, and the melody on that. It's like it's up there with Burt Bacharach or McCartney. And I don't know if that ties in with his...

interest in pop, but it's a great song. Yeah. Joel, we have this song queued up for you too. You want to talk a little bit about this song?

Well, it was, you know, another reflection of that humanistic attitude, but it was kind of the last gasp. I mean, I think of this song coupled with Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself Again, which is the turning point in Sly's attitude. All right, let's listen to a little bit. Till the sun that loves you bright When the system tries to bring you to shining

You don't need darkness, but you think you're right. Thanks so much for that call, Dale, and the excuse to play that song. Appreciate that. Joseph, I wanted to get in on some of the later sound and what it ends up sounding like. Why don't we start out playing Can't Strain My Brain, and then we can talk a little bit about it. ♪

♪

Oh, man. What a song. It almost has that high records feel, you know? Oh, I mean... Peoples and Al Green, you know? But also, like, that first 30 seconds of that song sounds like voodoo from D'Angelo. Yeah, that's right. You know, it's like you hear that sort of echo through time. Absolutely. Well, and it's, you know, there's so... I don't know if I'm using the right record terms here, but there's a lot of spaciousness on this song, you know? You're just kind of sitting in a studio listening for, it feels like, as opposed to being really...

tight and sharp. You know, Vernon has this interesting observation in our film where, you know, and a lot of this starts with there's riot going on when Sly is really recording by himself, right? He's sort of holed up in his Bel Air mansion doing a lot of drugs. You know, members of the band are coming in to do their parts that Sly has already written for them. But a lot of Sly's songwriting becomes about me and I.

Where the early work is about us and we. And you see that in the song titles. And it's an interesting observation.

Yeah, and that's the pivot point is that thank you for letting me be myself again, too. You're right. That's good. After Stand, they're all Sly Stone solo albums. There may be other musicians involved, but they're peripheral. And it's Sly that's designing every note on the record and commanding the vision. Mm-hmm.

A bunch of comments coming in here. Jed writes, great show. Love Sly. Influenced Miles Davis sartorially and musically. Also Jimi Hendrix. Of course, those influencers were a two-way street. James Brown figures in there. My personal favorite from Sly and the Family Stone is Family Affair. Another listener writes in to say, since we stay on public radio, I'd love to encourage listeners to listen to his daughter Novena. Novena?

Novena. Novena. Leading The Morning Becomes Eclectic show on KCRW based in LA. Sorry, Alexis. I know it's a similar time slot. I mean, you can just listen to the podcast. It's fine. They play more music on KCRW than KQED. That is true. That is true. Except on Fridays. We're just letting it rip with music here. So...

So how does this story end insofar as it has ended? And I'll take both your answers in miniature. Where do you think Sly's story is or ends right now? Joseph, you want to go first? Joel, you go first.

Well, he's in poor health, but it's been summed up now. It's been summed up in the autobiography that Questlove published and Sly worked with Ben Greenman on. Ben's becoming an expert at pulling autobiographies out of unlikely candidates.

And this movie, plus the Summer of Soul, I mean, we have now calculated the merit of Sly's legacy and commemorated it. So he can fade away now secure in the knowledge that his worth has been measured. What do you think, Joseph?

You know, we called this movie Sly Lives because he's still alive. And, you know, to be honest, we didn't know if that was going to be the case by the time we finished the film. His ideas, his music, that all still lives on whether he's here in physical form or not. I think the point of our movie is

And I think this is you know specifically coming from quest love is you know showing? The creative geniuses that impact and give us so much and influence our lives and influence the music we listen to That means so much to us show them a little grace show them a little empathy Give them the space to fail give them the space to find themselves find their voice get back on their feet Yeah, Joseph. Have you ever noted the irony of?

of David Kapolek and Sly starting a music publishing company and calling it Daedalus Publishing. Yeah.

Thanks, y'all. We have been talking about the new documentary about Sly and the Family Stone called Sly Lives. Been joined by Joseph Patel, producer of the documentary, also produced Summer of Soul, both so worth seeing. Thank you so much, Joseph. Thank you so much for having me. We've also been joined by Joel Selvin, San Francisco-based music journalist and author of the recently republished Sly and the Family Stone in oral history. He's also going to be at the library in Hayward, I believe.

That's right. This very weekend. I have a public appearance on Saturday afternoon. That's right. 3 p.m. Fremont Bankroom, Hayward Public Library. Thanks so much for joining us, Joel. Thanks, Alexis.

The 9 o'clock hour of Forum is produced by Grace Wan, Blanca Torres, and Dan Zoll. Our interns are Brian Vo and Jesse Fisher. Thanks for pulling these cuts, Jesse. Jennifer Eng is our engagement producer. Francesca Fenzi is our digital community producer. Judy Campbell is lead producer. Danny Bringer is our engineer. Katie Springer is our operations manager.

at KQED Podcast. Our vice president of news is Ethan Tov and Lindsay, and our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. You've got some homework this weekend. Go see the film on Hulu, or if you've got the right kind of Disney Plus subscription, you can see it there, too. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Form Ahead with Leslie McClurg. We'll be We'll be We'll be Longest ride

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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