Sly Stone: It’s A Family Affair

…Until It Isn’t.

In November 1971, Sly and The Family Stone released their fifth album, “There’s a Riot Goin On”, which included the lead single, “Family Affair”. “Family affair” was Sly and the Family Stone’s biggest hit.

Except it wasn’t.

I don’t mean it wasn’t a big hit. “Family Affair” was a monster. It topped both the Billboard R&B charts for five weeks and the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks. It’s been covered and licensed countless times, and is still, fifty years later, in constant rotation. In a career of enduring hit singles, it was the crown jewel.

What I mean to say is, it was not, by any means, a family affair. It was an all Sly, no Family Stone production.

But put a pin in that. Because first we need to talk about the music.

In terms of genre, “Family Affair” is classic soul, which, in school, we would define as R&B with guitars in the horn spots. It leans heavy on 7th chords. It’s slinky and moody, but highly danceable. And it’s funky, with the Pianet playing chord hits on the one. In terms of definition, though, it’s elusive. It’s vintage Sly Stone fusion, innovation and genius.

To this day, we play “Family Affair” at family functions. We play it when we’re cooking with our spouses or driving our kids to the park. We dance to it when it comes on in the grocery store or at halftime. But lyrically, “Family Affair” is not a cheerful song. It’s dark stuff with a bright tone. It’s a positive attitude in dark times. It’s like if the Isley Brothers wrote “Shout” about an execution.

Nonetheless, the song manages to come off inexplicably positive. I think it’s the Rose Stone vocal, more than anything, that brightens the composition and arrangement and makes it spank. That full volume, chest and head resonating run of seven notes, delivered in varying four note melodies that fit nicely into the relative F Major key, cuts through the rest of the arrangement like a ray of sunshine.

And that vocal presence, that cutting-through, one might argue, is only possible because of the way this record was made. Surprisingly, it was recorded more like a solo demo than a (at that point) traditional band recording based on live performance. The entire track was recorded with overdubs, driven by and synced to a Maestro MRK-2 drum machine. In short, it was recorded the way we record music today.

So the lack of ambiance and embedding in the vocal tracks, and what makes them so present is at least partially due to nothing being live. It’s like hearing a phone conversation over the sounds of everyday life. That telephone feel may also be due to the fact that the vocals likely needed to be EQ’d super mid-heavy, because there was a lot on those tapes.

Everyone in the world has written about the unique master qualities of “There’s a Riot Goin On”. It’s muddy and super tape-y. The murkiness of it, a murkiness that is beyond tape warmth, an actual jarring gloom of underwater artifacts that you can barely make out until they get a little too close to the mic, I’ve read, can be attributed to Sly obsessively overdubbing: stretching and wearing out the tapes while working on the tracks by himself. In a RV.

That’s not recording jargon. Sly made this record in a RV. A recreational vehicle. A camper. A winnebago.

So there’s no drum bleed on the guitars, there’s no room tone or natural reverb…what’s the room tone in a RV anyway?

It was an unusual choice, but I guess to understand Sly’s choice of venue, we also need to understand what was going on with the band. Why was there little-to-no family on “Family Affair”?

Well, it’s a complicated, but familiar story.

Sly Stone grew up in a Pentecostal family, and, like a lot of talented church kids, he began playing early, and proved himself a prodigy. Sly was writing, performing, recording, and even producing from a young age, almost exclusively in the context of family bands. And by the time Sly And The Family Stone took shape, most of its members had been playing together for at least a decade. Brother Freddie and sisters Rose and Vaetta were blood, and it could be argued that bassist Larry Graham, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson and drummer Greg Errico were like blood.

But, of course, Sly was the leader. The genius who oversaw everything from arrangement and composition to costuming and presentation, but the Stones, or the Stewarts, if you prefer, were indeed a family.

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the roughly twenty four months leading up to the release of “There’s a Riot Goin On”. It’s a true Hollywood Story to top all the other True Hollywood Stories. Sly and the Family Stone were riding high on consecutive hit singles, fantastic album sales, and iconic performances at both Woodstock and Harlem Cultural Festival. They were quintessential 60’s fusion, integrated, love generating, stone soul, rock star icons. And then the riot started.

During the recording of “There’s a Riot Goin On”, Sly was renting John Phillips’ Tudor mansion at 783 Bel Air Road. The house was already infamous under Mamas and Papas management. But, as legend has it, Sly took it to a whole new level, reconfiguring the house for 24/7/365 partying and orgies and filling it to the rafters with celebrities, hangers-on, groupies, cocaine, angel dust, and enough automatic weapons to arm a midsize militia.

When they coined the phrase: if these walls could talk, they may well have been referencing this specific house. Eventually, of course, John Phillips Would evict Sly Stone for non-payment, and was apparently appalled at Sly’s lifestyle and condition.

Listen, If John Phillips is appalled by your debauchery, shit is out of control.

And it sounds as though it really was out of control. Sly and other band members had become reliant on PCP, among other substances. There was infighting, their album was late, they were missing shows, they were bleeding money, and in my humble opinion, they were being torn apart by outside forces and saboteurs both inside and outside of the industry.

Sly himself was becoming increasingly paranoid and erratic. In his personal life, he was gradually replacing his blood family with a new chosen family…and I mean chosen family in the cosa nostra sense. And in his professional life, he was effectively replacing The Family Stone. Greg Errico was the first to go, replaced on “Family Affair” by the aforementioned drum machine. Larry Graham was next. Fans immediately noticed his absence on “Family Affair”. The signature slap technique, which Larry called “thump and pluck” was replaced by Sly himself playing the bass part on “Family Affair” with a pick. Personally, I like playing bass with a pick for more aggressive styles. I like the tightness and attack of a pick…but I rarely say that in front of a real bassist.

Anyway, by the time “Riot” was released, the only Stone family member who was prominently featured was Rose. The band appears throughout the album, but more like session musicians than members.

Now about that RV…

In the early 1970s, Sly Stone was at the top of the food chain. He had access to the Bel Air home studio, and, more importantly, the finest studios, engineers, producers and technical staff in Los Angeles and the world at large, but he chose to spend his time on a mobile recording rig in that RV.

And it paid off. The album that came out of that camper is one of the greatest recordings of popular music ever. Of course, Sly had been producing professionally since his teen years. He obviously knew sound and technique, and I suppose, at that time, maybe the RV was the place he felt safest and most focused. Enclosed on all sides, able to flee at any point, in a small, isolated, controlled and controllable, untethered environment. I don’t know.

Can you imagine the scene though? I mean, really imagine it. Sly Stone is parked in Bel Air, or driving around LA in a Winnebago, packed with with instruments, recording gear, guns, drugs, and of course, the world’s finest musicians. And when I say the world’s finest musicians, I’m talking Billy Preston and Bobby Womack. Family Affair features Billy Preston on the Pianet and Bobby Womack on guitar. They were the most prominent contributors on the entire album. In every sense, this is a set of circumstances that could never coexist in today’s world.

I really wish we knew more about this time, but I think there will likely be a good chapter or two in Sly’s upcoming memoir.

As for the meaning of “Family Affair”, everyone and their mother has pontificated on it. Some people think it’s about the disintegration of the band. Some people think it’s a commentary on Sly’s biological family…which is…in large part, interchangeable with the band. Some people have said it’s about systemic American inequality and the deferred dream of civil rights. Others believe that it’s a response to the Panther Party’s rumored demand that Sly dissolve his integrated band. Still others think it’s a Hunter S. Thompson style commentary on the receding tide of love generation progress.

As for Sly himself, when asked about the song’s meaning, he was characteristically elusive, saying:

“Song’s about a family affair, whether it’s a result of genetic processes or a situation in the environment.”

And I like that. I like it because it’s open to interpretation.

Just like the Sly and the Family Stone catalog as a whole, the “Family Affair” lyrics ring true for most of us. They’re universal and intersectional. But they’re also absolutely Afrocentric. This is one family saying things that we can all relate to, but that only black America understands in a deeper sense, and that, in its specificity, only the family can GET get. It has one meaning at Woodstock, two meanings at Harlem Cultural Festival, and three meanings at 783 Bel Air Road.

Which is why I always come back to Rose’s vocal and to Sly’s Christian upbringing when talking about these lyrics. Things are bad. Things have gotten dark. We find ourselves in an impossible situation and transitioning from trying time to trying time with no end in sight. But when we hear those four words, repeated in similar melodies, and that voice cutting through the mix, we know, no matter how much pain there has been, how much drama there is, or how much uncertainty there will be…we’re all still here. And you know what? We’re getting through it. And even if we’re not currently together, we are bound together.

Sisters, brothers and others, it’s a family affair.