performers

Sly Stone was very cool. Shirtless, vested, the languorous family. But he loved the limousines and the helpers.” look, one eye cocked, mouth half-open as if caught laugh­ Sly spent days without sleep. Concerts were an inconve­ ing at his own joke. Freddie, Rosie, Gregg, Larry, Cynthia nience, Journalist Roy Carr witnessed one tour: and Jerry were the Family, and we were the children. “Sly was locked in a hotel room to insure making the The bikers, the stoners, a butcher, a banker, the long­ gig, bpt come show time he wasn’t there. Someone in the haired hippies and the -ed blacks, we were all entourage confessed to seeing him leave through the back People. alone created that mix. And door with passport in hand. After a mad rush to the air­ when he raised two long fingers skyward at , port we found Sly at customs. ‘I’m off to Amsterdam to we went wherever he wanted to take us — literally, go shopping,’ he says. ‘Tell the audience to.-wait spiritually, eventually. Sly showed his scars with the torturous 1971 , Sly & The Family Stone’s music was immensely liberat­ There’s a R iot G ain’ Dm. Gritty and sarcastic, it sound­ ing. A tight, riotous , it was precisely A Whole New ed like a record at the wrong speed. And still he drew Thing. And they were a beautiful sight: rock’s first integrat­ blood. “Sly created a moment of lucidity in the midst of ed band, black, white, women, men. Flair, skin. Fringe and all the obvious negatives and the false, faked hopes,” sweat. Extraordinary vibes for extraordinary times. wrote in his book Mystery Train. The beginning was hopeful — “Underdog,” they sang It was Sly & the Family Stone’s only Number One album. in If 67. But for the rest of the decade the mood was By the mid-Seventies, though, Sly and remnants of the uniquely up: “Dance to the Music,” the single and album, Family Stone ground to a halt. The Fresh album, showed offered unprecedented energy and optimism. Hits like some spark. In 1979, Sly-left . A new kick- “,” “Stand!” and “Hot Fun in the start at Warner Brothers never really took shape. Summertime” were soulful. Positive. Ambitious. Tolerant. Despite the troubles, Sly never lost his supporters. “Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks” was Sly’s true phi­ He resurfaced with George Clinton’s P-Funk AlbStars losophy. And they rocked like nothing else. in the early Eighties. Earth* Wind & Fire paid homage Sly, ex- DJ, early & cbH on their 1990 release, Heritage. W hatever Comes next producer, was the great communicator. He drew us in will be worth watching. deep. The mass eruption that followed demanded Sly take It is mighty clear that Sly & the Family Stone made it the helm as the Great Black Hero — Otis gone, Hendrix possible for black to burst free. O n its too out, passé. But he had roots in African- own terms. Listen to the voices: and a American traditions: as youngsters Sly, brother Freddie revitalized Motown. . George Clinton’s and sister Rose sang with Big Mama Stewart in a Vallejo Parliament-Funkadelie. . Santana. The Isley Baptist church. Playing God was too much. So Sly took Brothers (Part 2|* (Parts 2 and 3). And the the torch, toyed with it and let it crash around him. echoes: , Arrested Development, the Family “Sly was born in Texas country,” says an.:#ld family Stand, the edginess and hope of rap’s front line. friend. “He feared stardom. Having that kind of power No one is really untouched by the music of Sly & the over an audience scared him. He wasn’t raised to be like Family Stone„v Tonight is the payback. All the squares

that. Made his own bed. Was well educated. Wanted a go home. - h a r r y w e i n g e r

t h ir t y

TOP: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES from the go den state

It’s the pot of gold at the end of Route 66; home to the more significant innovations in music than anywhere in the cutest girls in the world; the place you’d rather be when world. More than simply a destination for dreams, California all are brown and the ski is gray; where it nev­ is home for a dazzling variety of indigenous sounds, echoed er rains and a certain hotel always has room for the pret­ and enhanced by the legendary locale itself. ty, pretty people. It’s where you come when you’re going Where else, for example, could have found right back/where you started from. inspiration for what remains the single jnost potent evocation It, of course, is California, that mythic state of mind, where of all things Californian? For the rest of the world, the Beach life is .sweet along palmy streets paved with broken dreams. Boys are California, in all its eternal youth and halcyon hedo­ It’s where the world rims out, merging with surf and sun and nism. There is simply no body of work#®, closely associated sky into a fanciful paradise, of winsome charm and wishful with its point of origin as the sound and substance of these thinking. From the desert to the sea to orange groves rolled 1988 Hall of Fame inductees. ’ sonic simula­ flat by freeways, it’s California now and forever... amen. tion of may have initially ridden the crest of a craze, Notwithstanding Bltfis when it sillies, ©r autumn in New but early Sixties hits like “Surfin,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfin’ York, California is maybe the most celebrated locale in the USA” and “” (complete with a West Coast geog­ history of popular musjc. -pluckers sang her praises on raphy lesson from “Huntington to Malibu”) have endured as their way to gold fields and heartbreak. Oakies ached for her anthems to that most alluring element df the California citrus-scented bounty, and every surfer worth his salt can sing lifestyle -Ipiie promise of a free ride. a salute to her gnarly tubes. The same might be said for their drag strip drajnas and high For big band warbler Irving Kaufman, “California and school confidentials. But such is the -group’s identity as a You” was all he needed to put together his first hit in the freez­ Zeitgeist that is virtually impossible to ing Gotham winter of 1914. Ten years later “California Here imagine “Rhonda” or “” residing anywhere else. I Come,” first heard in a Broadway musical called Bombo, If not always “,” then certainly “Fim, Fun, reaped gold for, respectively, A1 Jolsoa, George Price and Fun,” could well be California’s official motto. It’s a connec­ California Ramblers* In 1931, Red Nichols & His Five tion that- sparked again in the hit flick ShampQ® when Pennies cashed in with “California Medley.” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” became the ironic lament of Beverly But it’s more recently that California — the dream, the Hills’ bored and beautiful. reality and the shimmering mirage between the two — has The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean and a dozen supersonic surf come into musical maturity. Since the dawn of rock 8c roll, bands fashioned a universally recognized dozens of tunes touting Califon^a/si- elusive essence have out of high harmonies and Strats. But the state has hosted made the char®. Among tk^many: L eil^irore’# such a wide variety of musical evolutions and revolutions that .^California Nights,” the Rivtefas’ “California Sun,” the lines quickly begin to blur: what began there was soon “California Dr earnin’” by the Mama’s & the Papa’s and everywhere. For much of the best music of the rock & roll era, “£aUfornia Soul” by the 5th Dimension. it really did happen in California first. The list goes on (who can forget “California,” Debbie The prime example, of course, is the sublime and surreal Boone’s plaintive 197.8 follow-up to “You Light Up My epidemic of innovation known as the . Life but California’s place in rock reaches far beyond a While lumping together such as absurd profusion of music litany ®f Golden State come-ons. It’s a place that has nurtured under a single rubric may be an audacious conceit, this much

from top left: ; quicksilver messenger service;

forty five from the S olden state

is known: the outbreak was largely confined to the San everyone else, ever. ’s eclectic Francisco Bay Area in the mid-Sixties, it was no respecter of roster neatly captured the time and place, thanks largely to race, creed or color, and no one has ever been the same since. Autumn’s A&R chief, and this year’s Hall of Fame inductee, What’s striking, at this distance from California’s psyche­ Sly Stone. The label waxed a dazzling array of native talent, delic epicenter, is the music’s commercial impact. Of San from faux-Edwardians to , Francisco’s pantheon of pioneering early bands » the whose lilting “Sit Down I Think I Love You”4s a sparkling , , Quicksilver Messenger example of the sheen the California sound lent to the most Service, Big Brother & disposable pop ditties. the Holding Company According to the f^m ost went on to wag, there is no achieve genuine main­ “there” in Oakland, stream success. It was, yet San Francisco’s of course, another has forged a example of California modest yet significant trend-setting, but more musical presence with to the point, the San some key California Francisco Sound was artists. The #1 another heady whiff of El Cerrito’s own the creative audacity Creedence Clear.-water that had always hung Revival rightly belongs over the western edge. to fans from Lodi to The transcendental the bayou,thanks to folk tales of California’s nine Consecutive Top native’s the Grateful 10 singles. But sounds Dead, heard on such more representative of essential as San Francisco’s down- If 7 0 ’s 'Workingman’s home sister can be D ead and A m erican found in the East Bay Beauty, evoked imagery Grease of Tower of of an Acadian Califor­ Power and the dazzling nia. The “Dire Wolf” diversity of Sly & The prowled the pine forests Family Stone.faphe of the High Sierras; “A clan’s canny funk-rock Friend of the Devil” was on the lam in the high desert. concoctions, most conspicuously 1968’s “Dance to the But it was the ringing, echo-drenched early hits of Jefferson Music” and “Everyday People,” pointed to the mix-and- Airplane that best represented California to the rest of the match cultural mélange for which California was becoming awakening world. 1967’s “Somebody to Love” remains a renowned. Different strokes for different folks, indeed ... cornerstone of ’s contribution to pop mainstream. and Sly knows most all of them. The acoustic strumming, the silver dagger sentiments, Grace Down South, had long since established Slick’s slashing vocals backed by Marty Balin’s polished har­ itself as a mecca, a hit-making factory the mony — the song neatly summed up the intense fusion of folk equal of any. From Johnny Otis to , Lou and rock that had been underway in California for years. Adler to Peter Asher, Jerry Leiber to Mike Stoller, the As for the rest of the motley Sixties crew rocking Babylon best behind-the-boards talent in the business did their By the Bay, the mind boggles. After all, wasn’t that the point? best work in the city’s studio hive. The San Francisco Sound was about being different, from L. A.-based Specialty Records boasted a distinctive West

fort y s X from the g o den state

Coast R&B sound with artists the likes of , thing out of Travis AFB, flying over Larry Williams, Lloyd Price and others. Producer and tal­ Hollywood.The California Sound would continue its pris­ ent scout extraordinaire Johnny Otis was the spark plug matic refractions of time and place, chasing down a dozen for dozens of homegrown hits. Among Otis’ most endur­ variants on the theme of charmed living — from the soul of ing discoveries: California native and Hall of Fame Boz Scaggs to the simmering barrio rhythms of Santana, inductee , who recorded for the Bihari War, Malo and other exemplars of Chicano cool, to the hard brothers’ Mo-dern Records, another L.A. enterprise. rock candy of Van Halen, the state has room for it all. While flowers in the But it’s the freewheel­ hair were de rigueur ing, fringe-jacketed for San Francisco, singer-songwriter who something more omi­ has emerged as the nous was sprouting to state’s most identifiable the south, where the musical standard bear­ Beach Boys’ balmy er. The earliest incarna­ reveries had given way tion of the sensitive to smog-and-neon pas­ troubadour can be sion plays, with sound­ traced to such second track courtesy of the generation folk-rockers Doors. On the 1967% as Buffalo Spring-field, break-on-through an uneasy alliance of debut album the group soloists where the song posited a wholly dif­ w as th e th in g . The,7, ferent California land­ group’s first hit, “For scape — one, in its WhafTt’s Worth,” was vividness, as complete a chronicle of the Sunset and compelling as Strip riots, and they or psyche-* would incubate a num­ delic soul. Their rapa­ ber of variations on the cious visions #if. an theme, including the urban wasteland shot b u co lic rev eries of.-' through with lurid Crosby, Stills 8c Nash transcendence, served and Neil Young’s the grateful dead,1969 as a road map to Cal­ ranch-style rock 8c roll. ifornia’s soft and seamy underbelly. There were some Founded in Los Angeles in 1971, ’s ten-year run spooky characters out there in the charred hillpjbeyond yielded five Number One singles, including such paeans to Tinsel Town, and The Door’s moody grandeur lit more fast-lane living as “Hotel California” and “New Kid in than one weird goldmine scene. This, too, was Town.” Here, California was the stage setting for cryptic cau­ California ... a place where madness lurked in the shad­ tionary tales that found innocent country boys and brazen city ows of a Hollywood bungalow. girls locked in a hot, star-crossed embrace ... small wonder It was an echo heard in the melancholy ballads of Love, earnest songsmiths flocked to Los Angeles in the band’s wake, Arthur Lee’s quintessential Lotus Land dandies, whose lan­ all in search of that elusive Tequila Sunrise. What a wdy to go. guid laments expressed the detached cool of an L.A. in love California has, finally, always been that kind of place: wide with its own wan reflection. The Byrds, on the other hand, open to the widest-eyed naif, consort to the dream weavers, defined their California-ness in Right Stuff rock 8c roll, all Jet Our Lady of Perpetual Indulgence. No wonder no place has Age symmetry and supercharged twelve strings, like some­ ever sounded quite the same. -DAVIN SEAY