It may be hard to believe, but it’s possible something noteworthy, even momentous, will take place during the Grammy Awards telecast from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
I’m not speculating about whether Kanye West will perform while mounted on a crucifix. (Best post-Rolling Stone crown-of-thorns cover joke, from Stephen Colbert: “Kanye West stirs up controversy when he dresses up like Jesus: Who does he think he is? Bono?”)
No, I’m talking about a moment that could potentially transcend the shameless self-promotion that is the hallmark of what’s insistently trumpeted as “Music’s Biggest Night” – Sly Stone might show up.
That’s right: Sylvester Stewart, the Rip Van Winkle, or Greta Garbo, or better still, J.D. Salinger of pop music. As they do with the “Catcher in the Rye” author, up-and-comers still go to school on the work that Stone, now 61, created as a young man – or they should.
Stone’s music endures, and inspires – late “60s-early “70s soul-funk-rock conflations like “Dance to the Music” and “Everybody Is a Star.” The latter was sampled by Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots on “Star,” on “The Tipping Point.” But Stone last showed his face in public during an ever-so-brief surprise appearance in 1993, when Sly & the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
This week, though, the Grammys will feature a Sly & the Family Stone tribute with original band members plus an assortment of Grammy nominees, including Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Joss Stone, Maroon 5 and best new artist contender John Legend.
With Stone’s reputation for not showing up when expected, nobody’s guaranteeing that he will absolutely, positively appear on stage for the scheduled medley of his own hits. It’s timed to coincide with the release of “Different Strokes by Different Folks,” a tribute album that credits Stone as producer. Sold at Starbucks since the summer, it will be released in an expanded version to music retailers Tuesday.
“We do believe that he is attending the Grammy Awards,” Recording Academy spokesman Richard Roeker said last week about Stone, who is believed to live somewhere in California. “It seems like the right time. We’re thrilled to be able to do this.”
“I’ll see it when I believe it,” says Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, drummer for the Roots, whose “Star” is on the “Different Strokes” disc. For Thompson, the Texas-born Stewart, who became Sly Stone after studying trumpet, composition, and music theory at Vallejo Junior College in California, is one of the pillars of popular music.
“He was very innovative,” Thompson rhapsodizes. “He took doo-wop harmonies and syncopated them, and added in African rhythms, mixed with hard-ass drums.” Thompson sees Stone as one of his “Yoda figures … the ones that everyone else pulled their ideas from,” along with James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Prince.
In 1967 – after Stone worked as a San Francisco Bay-area DJ and produced bands like the Beau Brummels and Great Society – Sly & the Family Stone emerged full-blown with the debut album “A Whole New Thing.”
And it was. Here was a mind-blowing collective that was racially and sexually integrated, which fused the social and political consciousness of rock’s growing counterculture with the rhythmic abandon of James Brown’s polyrhythmic funk in songs that brimmed with effusive melodies and we-are-all-brothers rhetoric: “Everyday People,” “Sing a Simple Song,” “You Can Make It if You Try.”
Along with the Beatles and Johnny Cash, Sly & the Family Stone is one of those iconic acts that’s hard to dislike.
It’s easy to see why. Those big hits feature an outrageously charismatic front man leading a band punched up by brassy horns, close-knit harmonies, Larry Graham’s propulsive bass, and Greg Errico’s powerhouse drums, which, Thompson says, “could give (Led Zeppelin’s) John Bonham a run for his money.” (They’re collected on last year’s Starbucks-sanctioned “Higher!” collection, or for those who want to dig deeper, the double-disc “The Essential Sly & the Family Stone.”)
For aging baby boomers, Sly & the Family Stone also offers a comforting vision of racial harmony and irresistible uplift, with the prevailing image of a big-Afro’d eccentric exhorting the Woodstock Nation with “I Want to Take You Higher.”
Taken in the context of the segregated rock and “urban” radio formats that divide the pop music consumers of today, Sly & the Family Stone’s all-inclusive positivity seems like a high-water mark of a Golden Age worth pining for.
Of course, the story was never that simple. Arguably, Sly’s most compelling work came with 1971’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” a dark, disturbing vision of dreams gone wrong, with the civil rights era lurching to a halt and the Vietnam War tearing the country to pieces.
Spare, claustrophobic and paranoid, it still generated undeniable hits with “Family Affair” and its lone bit of optimism, “(You Caught Me) Smilin.”‘ And the album exerted a profound influence on innovators such as Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and George Clinton, who would all go on to stretch the boundaries of black music in the “70s.
In 1973, Sly & the Family Stone released one last great album, “Fresh,” which included a haunting gospel makeover of “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be),” popularized by Doris Day. The always-unpredictable Stone – who was once married at Madison Square Garden – was rumored at the time to be dating her.
After that, Stone’s career descended into oblivion: mediocre solo albums, and battles with cocaine addiction resulting in a series of arrests in the 1980s. There has been occasional talk of a comeback: He recorded two songs for the “Soul Man” soundtrack in 1986, and signed a recording deal in 1995. No new music ever surfaced.
But mostly, Stone has been pop music’s most legendary disappearing act, a bona-fide giant who’s lived like a recluse and shunned the limelight. Until Wednesday night?
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