Sly Stone had a weird, wild career. A successful Bay Area DJ when he formed the Family Stone in 1966, the man once known as Sylvester Stewart quickly became one of the leading faces of funk. With black, white, male, and female members, Sly & The Family Stone stood for racial unity, sexual equality, and the brotherhood of music. But behind their catchy, hopeful melodies lay a mountain of turmoil that would eventually undo the group. When hard drugs (particularly PCP and cocaine) entered the picture around 1970, their musical mood changed significantly, and it was a short trip from there to the gutter.
For The Record: Sly & The Family Stone is built entirely on first person quotes from the people who were in and around the band during its heyday. This narrative format is both the book’s strength and weakness: the story doesn’t get bogged down in unnecessary biographical details, but conflicting points of view are left unresolved.
Of course, the central figure of the tale – Sly himself – is not involved in the dialogue, and this is where a narrator could really help things along. A little context for Sly’s misadventures, along with a grounding of some of the tall tales told here would go some way towards making this a more insightful biography of the band. But as it is, the book takes on the tone of a lurid game of show-and-tell. For example:
“When Sly did the PCP… he was just out of it. He was doing shit you would expect to see in some kind of institution for mentally retarded people. He and Freddy (Sly’s brother) walked around the house all day like zombies. I started sleeping with a pistol.” – Hamp “Bubba” Banks
and…
“I was through. Guitar was out of key and I couldn’t tell it until forty minutes into the set. Everybody else was sounding bad. No purpose, nothing happened, there was no magic. Nobody wanted to do it. Nothing held together.” – Freddy Stewart
In the end, all this talk doesn’t really lead anywhere, except to the conclusion that the members of the Family Stone barely knew Sly at all, and certainly had no idea what made the man tick. The paradox of For The Record is that by the end of it, Sly Stone seems more of a vanishing enigma than ever before. If you come to this book with the expectation of getting to know more about the man and his band, prepare to walk away disappointed.
Tags: Books, Joel Selvin, Sly & The Family Stone
