Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and Gentlemen.
Speaker 1: This is a you know something, just hit me. I'm
Speaker 1: certain if someone does a super cut, all they're gonna
Speaker 1: get is if you just take the first twelve seconds
Speaker 1: of this podcast, it's always gonna start with ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: This is a special. You're all right, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: the opposite. Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: How you That's how you kick it off each time here.
Speaker 2: That's how you get a character.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's to me. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe every episode is my dream episode, or every
Speaker 1: episode is an amazing you know something, there's something unique
Speaker 1: about each episode. Yeah, this is Quest Love Supreme. I'm
Speaker 1: doing the solo stufle. I don't mind this. I wish
Speaker 1: I could do more of these, you know. I will
Speaker 1: say to our listeners out there, if you are committed
Speaker 1: to this podcast, and nine times out of ten, I
Speaker 1: would like to think that you guys have purchased the
Speaker 1: tangible roots albums, complete with a gazillion liner notes. Not
Speaker 1: to mention to follow me on Instagram is to also
Speaker 1: complain about my inside baseball speak, of which I will
Speaker 1: say that this gentleman here is kind of the equivalent
Speaker 1: smacking me on the back of the hand, Like, no, that's.
Speaker 2: A run project right off the top. It's a mix
Speaker 2: of slapping you on the back of the hand and
Speaker 2: patting you on the back of the back, which is
Speaker 2: to say it's a yeah. I mean, they're just different things.
Speaker 2: But no, we inside baseball away at any at any time,
Speaker 2: we just.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, right, but clearly we clearly know that my
Speaker 1: propensity to rabbit hole, yes that's true, and to rabbit
Speaker 1: hole and just to delve off into uncharted territory like
Speaker 1: a person needs a GPS. And I'm actually shocked. There's
Speaker 1: some friends of mine since the pandemic, you know, they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start getting to my my memoir and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And I think they kind of treat it like the
Speaker 1: rap game. Like I'd see them like going off with
Speaker 1: their computers and I'm like, wait, you're doing this on
Speaker 1: your own without like adult supervision, and they're kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the way it should be. And I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: it isn't.
Speaker 2: So you don't make a movie running around It's also
Speaker 2: it's just it's like we have to. It's just Baby
Speaker 2: Jessica and you out of the well, that's.
Speaker 1: See, and that that reference alone is how I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Because you think it's fun, that's great, It's just that.
Speaker 1: Then what and then so this is the fact that
Speaker 1: you mentioned Baby Jessica, who I'm certain now is like
Speaker 1: thirty seven years old. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been greeman.
Speaker 1: If you purchased any of mine what is it now,
Speaker 1: seven books?
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, let me just say I think
Speaker 2: she is thirty seven because I looked up the other day.
Speaker 2: The fact that you hit her age exactly is a
Speaker 2: long wow.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, I'm scared of myself. Wait, baby, I'm looking
Speaker 1: right now Baby Jessica today. See even now we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be talking about sly Stone. Really, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: she's like seven feet tall. She's married with a husband,
Speaker 1: and she's like seven feet tall.
Speaker 2: Well, well, well, the Baby Jessica podcast.
Speaker 1: All right, So let me explain Ben's role in my life.
Speaker 1: You know right before, I mean, if you're a longtime
Speaker 1: die hard Roots follower, you will know that it's takes
Speaker 1: a crazy soul to figure out things in real time.
Speaker 1: And when you're dealing with so many personalities and so
Speaker 1: many I wouldn't know the proper term to call like
Speaker 1: a person with my brain and a person with Tarik's brain,
Speaker 1: and a person like just dealing what he has to
Speaker 1: deal with. Kind of the last three years of Richard
Speaker 1: Nichol's life, of which he knew his exit was going
Speaker 1: to happen, he wanted to be more prepared and really
Speaker 1: prepare us so that his work doesn't go in vain.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Richard Nichols, the longtime manager and sort of
Speaker 1: brain trust of the roots of which you know, his
Speaker 1: ability and his gift to take the creative out of
Speaker 1: me and mold it and to take the creative out
Speaker 1: of Tarik, and really for all of us in the circle,
Speaker 1: even members not of the group, like people that work
Speaker 1: in the circle. It takes it takes a crazy figure
Speaker 1: to figure this all out, like to juggle eighteen plates
Speaker 1: at the same time. And our guest today, Ben Greenman,
Speaker 1: rich basically was like, you know this writer from the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. Richard said that I guess implanning the what
Speaker 1: is called the A Mirror Book, which basically kind of
Speaker 1: while he was in as sort of state, you know,
Speaker 1: he had Leukemian was in the hospital for a long
Speaker 1: time and even though his brain was there, like he
Speaker 1: really wasn't fully functional, but he you know, he can
Speaker 1: still type in text and all those things. And he
Speaker 1: said that there's a writer. I really like it. I
Speaker 1: want him to sort of play my role in your
Speaker 1: life for your books. And I'm like, wait, what books.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, You're going to write books. And then
Speaker 1: every everything that I'm doing now, Like Richard basically put
Speaker 1: on the A Mirror Book of Life, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of his last words on the book was like, if
Speaker 1: you're broke by seventy five, then I can't help you.
Speaker 1: So Richard basically spent the last six months of his
Speaker 1: life planning me in tu Reek's next fifty years, which
Speaker 1: everything on that list I absolutely detested. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: not writing a book quest Love, what the hell's that?
Speaker 1: Quest loves Food, I'm not I'm not investing in food, Like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is that? And literally everything I'm doing now,
Speaker 1: teaching movies, directing, producing. You know, he knew that I
Speaker 1: had a gift to me that I didn't know. So
Speaker 1: this is how Ben Greeman came into our lives.
Speaker 2: Rich is at the genesis of in a weird way,
Speaker 2: at the genesis of this book that we're talking about too,
Speaker 2: which I can I'll get right.
Speaker 1: Well, that's that's what I'm sorry. I gave you a
Speaker 1: long ten minute introduction to basically say that, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, like your best writing style, like
Speaker 1: I saw the New Yorker stuff. But there's book, I
Speaker 1: guess a fictional book. He explain. This book to me
Speaker 1: was sort of like a fictional lines version of Sly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is sort of the weird, the bizarre
Speaker 2: genesis of this project, which is that I was obsessed
Speaker 2: with sling the Family Stones music since I was a kid,
Speaker 2: you know, eight and nine, ten years old. I bought
Speaker 2: greatest hits on cassette. I wore it out. I what
Speaker 2: do you call that little brush at the bottom on
Speaker 2: the metal of the cassette? I when you double stick
Speaker 2: tape it because it falls off and you have to
Speaker 2: put it back off, right. I repaired the cassette so
Speaker 2: I could keep hearing it.
Speaker 1: And what year did you buy this?
Speaker 2: Seventy eight, seventy nine, whatever I was when I was
Speaker 2: seventy seven, seventy eight seventy nine, something like that.
Speaker 1: And you brought it or like was it in your house?
Speaker 2: No, No, I was starting to buy cassettes on my
Speaker 2: first set of cassettes whatever was coming out around then,
Speaker 2: like it was probably Hall and Oates and Elton John
Speaker 2: and I got onto the slot Billy Joel and I
Speaker 2: just got the slide, like I had heard the songs,
Speaker 2: the biggest songs on the radio, and I love the
Speaker 2: cover photo, and the cover photo we can get back
Speaker 2: to as a sort of end cap, because to me,
Speaker 2: that is the kind of metaphor. It's this one guy
Speaker 2: sitting in the car and then all these iterations of
Speaker 2: other people just flowering from his head, and it's a
Speaker 2: kind of amazing metaphor for what the project was. But
Speaker 2: I just heard the music and I loved all the
Speaker 2: hugest hits. And then as I explored, as I got
Speaker 2: to be twelve thirteen, and I was buying all the
Speaker 2: other records, and I just got obsessed. The way I
Speaker 2: put it is that with most pop music, if you
Speaker 2: hear enough of it, if I play you a minute
Speaker 2: and then I paused the song and I say, okay,
Speaker 2: tell me what you think the next ten seconds will be.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, you certainly know, and I know
Speaker 2: in most cases you have a sense of the rhythm,
Speaker 2: you have a sense of the structure. The idiosyncrasies of Sly,
Speaker 2: even within a pop music context, were amazing. Like you
Speaker 2: can hear a minute of thankful and thoughtful hit the pause.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what's gonna happen, you know, from
Speaker 2: down to like the actual rhythms of the song and
Speaker 2: drumming over the machines, to there's a lyrical left turn
Speaker 2: or some bizarre resurfacing of another song. I just he
Speaker 2: was very surprising and very I was fascinated that somebody
Speaker 2: could not be predictable. And then, as I later found
Speaker 2: out in life as well as on the music, so
Speaker 2: my early twenties mid twenties, I thought about writing a
Speaker 2: straightforward biography, just like this is the story. I'm a journalist,
Speaker 2: this is what happened. As I researched it, I would
Speaker 2: find things that upset me, and I was too young,
Speaker 2: and I didn't really know how to do it, and
Speaker 2: I didn't want to do it in that way. I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be the one to say I found
Speaker 2: out all these negative things about this person who I
Speaker 2: idolize and here they are. So I stopped and I
Speaker 2: converted it to a novel, which was a composite really
Speaker 2: of Sly and Marvin Gay, a little bit of Curtis Mayfield,
Speaker 2: dustings of swamp Dog and Deronto and whoever else you know.
Speaker 2: Just it was like a funk star in large part
Speaker 2: Sly and a large part Marvin Gay, because there I
Speaker 2: kind of mashed up the different aspects of the tragedies
Speaker 2: of their life. That novel it's sold okay, but it
Speaker 2: seemed to find its way to music people. One of
Speaker 2: those people was rich, and one of those people was
Speaker 2: someone in George's camp, George Clinton's camp. So around the
Speaker 2: same time, I think you're a year ahead of George.
Speaker 2: I think your book came out in thirteen and George's
Speaker 2: in fourteen. Pretty soon after we wrote Mometa, I got
Speaker 2: a call that George wanted was looking for a co
Speaker 2: writer for his memoir, and that was also in his equation.
Speaker 2: So he had been like, Wow, the sensibility here is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting, and it's a different kind of storytelling,
Speaker 2: and it's it really seems to be presenting a voice
Speaker 2: rather than just analyzing, and it's I don't know, non
Speaker 2: judgmental about certain aspects of the lifestyle, and something about it.
Speaker 2: He liked it. And then when I met him, I
Speaker 2: just made a couple of jokes and he liked the jokes.
Speaker 2: Like the joke I made is with George. He was
Speaker 2: going through some legal stuff and I said, he had
Speaker 2: all this paperwork and I said, you should print it
Speaker 2: all on underwear and then just wear that on stage
Speaker 2: and sell them and call them legal briefs. And he said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's so funny. He didn't do it,
Speaker 2: but I think he liked that idiotic idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to say, that's such a George
Speaker 1: Clinton thing to that's how you had him.
Speaker 2: It's like entrepreneurial insanity. And he's like, oh and so
Speaker 2: so something about it he liked. So I did that book.
Speaker 2: We did all of our books and George, and as
Speaker 2: I finished up that book, I remember sitting in the
Speaker 2: car with Archiivy, George's right hand guy, and when we
Speaker 2: were finishing up George's book and saying, I'd really love
Speaker 2: to do Slies book. And the feeling at the at
Speaker 2: that point was I don't know, man, like, it's not
Speaker 2: like a super constructed situation. Over there right now. The
Speaker 2: architecture is weird. He's still using obviously at that time,
Speaker 2: which means that most of the goal in an average
Speaker 2: day is to manage that part of life. And I
Speaker 2: was connected to his camp and the people were great.
Speaker 2: They were very nice, and he was very receptive. It
Speaker 2: just didn't come together in a structured way. We would
Speaker 2: make agreements. I think journalists have written about this, so
Speaker 2: I'm not telling tales out of school. But to do
Speaker 2: an interview, someone would say we need a thousand upfront,
Speaker 2: and I would say, no, no, no, no, no, We're talking
Speaker 2: about a partnership on a book deal. I'm not This
Speaker 2: is not how this works. I'm not buying today's you
Speaker 2: know delivery.
Speaker 1: You're basically saying that artists now charged for interviews.
Speaker 2: I think they needed money so he could score. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is just my interpretation, and that they knew, as
Speaker 2: the people who were helping him, that the main goal
Speaker 2: was to get cash for that day. And it was
Speaker 2: very shortsighted and very short term. So we wrote up
Speaker 2: a bunch of agreements and they all collapsed. We'd start
Speaker 2: toadline them to make them more professional, and I'd say, well,
Speaker 2: I'll gree to this, but not to this, and then
Speaker 2: it just never happened. And I would say my wife
Speaker 2: every year, I'm still trying for this. I mean, George
Speaker 2: is still optimistic. He says he'll connect me to this
Speaker 2: new guy who's with him or this person, but I
Speaker 2: don't know. It just doesn't seem like it's a doable thing.
Speaker 2: Then in twenty nineteen, Arlene, who had been Sly's girlfriend
Speaker 2: in the eighties and sort of re entered the camp.
Speaker 2: She had broken up a Sly gone and worked in
Speaker 2: the legal industry, gotten married, built a straight life such
Speaker 2: as it was, and then came back in as a
Speaker 2: kind of management helper. So she was able to help
Speaker 2: him execute certain kinds of correspondence, or to process things,
Speaker 2: or to say to him the practical part. She was
Speaker 2: really strong, I'm like, you can't forget to do this
Speaker 2: thing by Thursday, or if you can't, we got to
Speaker 2: ask for send a note saying we need more time,
Speaker 2: you know that kind of stuff. So she called me
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, and I guess it had come to
Speaker 2: her attention that this book had been on the table,
Speaker 2: and she was very positive about it. And then I
Speaker 2: hung up and told my wife, Oh my god, I
Speaker 2: think it might happen, like there's a real infrastructure. Then
Speaker 2: they disappeared for six months, and I was despondent and
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, well, this is the final nail in
Speaker 2: the coffin. I later learned that when they resurfaced that
Speaker 2: it was because he was getting clean, and she didn't
Speaker 2: think there was any way he could do the book
Speaker 2: if he was still using. Plus he had immediate health
Speaker 2: issues as he was trying to get clean. When he
Speaker 2: got clean at the end of nineteen she called me again,
Speaker 2: so we agreed, We got contract ready, We signed to
Speaker 2: do the book and immediately into COVID and I thought
Speaker 2: COVID would kill it, and it's in the crib. As
Speaker 2: it turned out, COVID really helped it because everyone was
Speaker 2: in one place. She didn't have to go to her
Speaker 2: office every day, so she could be with Sly more
Speaker 2: at his house, keeping him focused and explaining to him
Speaker 2: what it would take to do this. And it was
Speaker 2: a different process than the usual book. If you and
Speaker 2: I do a book, or I do a book with George,
Speaker 2: it's a certain number of long conversations. Because of Sly's
Speaker 2: health and his energy, we were capped at fifteen twenty
Speaker 2: minutes sometimes, so we had to do a lot of
Speaker 2: conversations that were shorter, which I don't think would have
Speaker 2: happened without her, because she would, you know, remind him
Speaker 2: we got to do this for the book, this is important,
Speaker 2: Let's keep doing this. And we got a runway in
Speaker 2: that first six months inside of the COVID cylinder where
Speaker 2: he really committed to the process, which was great. I mean,
Speaker 2: she has a credit on the book for that reason.
Speaker 2: It says created in collaboration with her, because truthfully, had
Speaker 2: she not helped to keep him focused in those early months,
Speaker 2: it could have easily dissipated. And that was how it happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's sort of the backstory. And the weird part,
Speaker 2: like you said initially, is that the weird fiction book
Speaker 2: that came out of my not wanting to confront this
Speaker 2: person's real life ended up very round about leading me
Speaker 2: back to the door of this memoir, so that it
Speaker 2: was It's strange. It's one of those things in life
Speaker 2: that you know, who knows. I like to think that
Speaker 2: Rich knew. My theory is that Rich knew all this
Speaker 2: stuff fifteen years ago and he figured it all out,
Speaker 2: and he had it all mapped, and he's like, Ben
Speaker 2: wrote this novel, but if I do this, a mirror
Speaker 2: will be able to do this, and eventually Ben, we'll
Speaker 2: get back to the memoir. So in my mind, this
Speaker 2: is already planned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you probably knew it was going to happen. This
Speaker 1: is so weird. Even after I finished reading it, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I guess he'll really do Slies book,
Speaker 1: like for real, Like I always knew it was going
Speaker 1: to happen, which I don't know if you ever felt
Speaker 1: like it was never going to happen or whatever, So I.
Speaker 2: Thought it wouldn't. And then again because of the nature
Speaker 2: of his life now, which I didn't really know. I
Speaker 2: had heard all the stories that you had heard, and
Speaker 2: we had heard them all. I didn't know what the
Speaker 2: person would be able to do, and I was really
Speaker 2: pleasantly surprised. I mean, his physical condition is iffy. Mentally
Speaker 2: he was good. I had heard all the stories that
Speaker 2: you had heard of him. One sentencing journalists or you know,
Speaker 2: having an answering machine message that said did you call
Speaker 2: and then it would just hang up on the people
Speaker 2: or whatever. Not a super accessible guy. But I think
Speaker 2: that double gatekeeper thing of George and Arlene made him
Speaker 2: at least provisionally trust the process, which is always his
Speaker 2: issue being ill used or feeling like he was ill
Speaker 2: used by media for so many years and made the
Speaker 2: poster boy of you know, junkie failure and lost promise
Speaker 2: and all this kind of stuff that really bugged him.
Speaker 2: I think he needed to understand that it wasn't coming
Speaker 2: from that side because his back was up. I think
Speaker 2: his back was up for decades in some ways. And
Speaker 2: then to get to the real guy, who can be
Speaker 2: kind of gentle and funny and playful as well as
Speaker 2: all those other things. I mean, he certainly can be
Speaker 2: difficult and stubborn. That provisional trust was really important.
Speaker 1: For those of us that aren't familiar with how memoirs work.
Speaker 1: Is this the same as an autobiography? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: because even when you first approached me, I was dead
Speaker 1: set against it because I was like, well, dude, like
Speaker 1: I just turned forty, Like why am I at the
Speaker 1: end of my life now? Like I'm thinking that autobiographies
Speaker 1: are for anyone that has a six on the left
Speaker 1: digit of their age and they have something worthy to
Speaker 1: look back at. And I'm like why am I looking
Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror, you know, right right after
Speaker 1: undone comes out or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like, I think that the question is more about it
Speaker 2: partly is what you're saying about how much of the
Speaker 2: life that there's memoirs that focus on one aspect of
Speaker 2: the life. Patti Smith's books are a great example, where
Speaker 2: she's going to focus on her relationship to Downtown and
Speaker 2: maple Thorpe at a certain period in her life, but
Speaker 2: it informs the larger story. Autobiographies, generally speaking, are taken
Speaker 2: to be the whole life, as much of the life
Speaker 2: as you can do. But I don't know. There's probably
Speaker 2: a very smart academic distinction that I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just know it from the actual books that I've worked
Speaker 2: on with you and with other people. And the best
Speaker 2: way I can describe the sly one is that I
Speaker 2: did George's and then I did Brian Wilson's book with him,
Speaker 2: and those It's not I wouldn't say in a kind
Speaker 2: of glib way that it's a combination of those two,
Speaker 2: but there are some ways in which it is an
Speaker 2: interesting midpoint between those two. Obviously, I thought, for funk purposes,
Speaker 2: George is the New Testament slies the Old Testament. So
Speaker 2: there's that kind of idea too of your you go
Speaker 2: backwards in time and you do the New Testament version.
Speaker 2: With George, you get p funk and highly conceptual narra
Speaker 2: driven funk, and a lot of characters and a real
Speaker 2: good awareness of how cartoons work in Davy Crockett caps
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. George's version and then
Speaker 2: sly version was the version that was the Old Testament
Speaker 2: that's maybe a little bit more earnest and yoke to
Speaker 2: the time and had to burn out so something new
Speaker 2: could exist. So I thought about George a lot. And
Speaker 2: then Brian Wilson was somebody who had very clear mental
Speaker 2: illness that he was struggling with as well as substance problems.
Speaker 2: I think for Slyes more substance issues, but it really
Speaker 2: changed the shape in the nature of his memory. And
Speaker 2: so in the Brian book we said, right at the beginning,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have to deal with that forthrightly. We're gonna
Speaker 2: have to talk about in some way how memory works
Speaker 2: and doesn't work. Because you, for any of us, I mean,
Speaker 2: you were young and you have a great memory, but
Speaker 2: the fact of the matter is I don't remember many
Speaker 2: many things of my own life, and I'm I live
Speaker 2: a relative of the clean, boring life, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot that I just can't recover as I get older.
Speaker 2: Let alone, if you're eighty and you had sixty years
Speaker 2: of fame and drugs, it's not the worst drug in
Speaker 2: a way, is fame. And so I really wanted to
Speaker 2: think through that with him. And so going back and
Speaker 2: asking an eighty year old to reimagine what was the
Speaker 2: sixty year old you? What was the forty year old you?
Speaker 2: What was the twenty year old you? That's a bizarre exercise.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first question that you asked him?
Speaker 2: The first question that I asked him when we were
Speaker 2: writing the proposal was I was just trying to loosen
Speaker 2: him up, and I asked about Woodstock and it didn't
Speaker 2: take because it was I don't think it's that interesting
Speaker 2: to him in some way, because there's the life lived
Speaker 2: and then the life remembered. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: he knew, you know, you just played the gig and
Speaker 2: then later it's a legend.
Speaker 1: Like did he not know that that was the paradigm
Speaker 1: shift of his life?
Speaker 2: He knew the next day. He knew the concert was
Speaker 2: a big deal. But one of the things he said
Speaker 2: that was interesting is that when the movie came out
Speaker 2: the next year and he was a movie star, that
Speaker 2: was a secondary acceleration that maybe people now don't fully
Speaker 2: understand that they Yeah, the movie for us is the concert.
Speaker 1: The movie is what Mae Woodstock Woodstock. I don't think
Speaker 1: Woodstock made woodstuck at all. I totally agree, and I
Speaker 1: think the idea of Woodstock.
Speaker 2: He felt that in the moment, like to us, we
Speaker 2: see through the movie like your film, to the event,
Speaker 2: and so we're we're thinking, we're seeing how important the
Speaker 2: event was. What we're actually seeing is that the movie
Speaker 2: brought it to people's attention. The first question I asked
Speaker 2: him where I got a real answer was we were
Speaker 2: just kind of loosening him up, and I said, just
Speaker 2: tell me a random story, just something funny that happened.
Speaker 2: And he told me a story that I didn't think
Speaker 2: would make the book at the time it did, which
Speaker 2: is about giving a stolen car to Eda James, where
Speaker 2: he I didn't know she was part of the story.
Speaker 2: I mean, I knew that was another drug troubled you know, superstar,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I wasn't aware of any crossover between them.
Speaker 2: I knew weird crossovers like her singing you know Paul
Speaker 2: Simon songs, or laying on the floor of the studio
Speaker 2: as people would walk by for sugar on the floor,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I didn't know that she can slide crossover.
Speaker 2: And evidently they were friendly and she dropped by and
Speaker 2: they were hanging out and probably using and she asked
Speaker 2: if she could borrow a car, and he said, no,
Speaker 2: I'll just give you one. So he went out and
Speaker 2: he gave her a car. She was driving with a
Speaker 2: boyfriend to Texas. I believe I may get some details
Speaker 2: of this wrong. It's in the book. And then he
Speaker 2: gets a call a couple weeks later and they're in
Speaker 2: Texas and she says, I got pulled over. The car
Speaker 2: was stolen, and he's like, oh, I didn't know that,
Speaker 2: And he said, you didn't mention me, did you, And
Speaker 2: she said, no, no, no e. The boyfriend I was
Speaker 2: driving with like, he was very straight about it, but
Speaker 2: didn't mention you. He just said, we bought this from someone,
Speaker 2: We had no idea, we have the right papers. And
Speaker 2: then I said, so, you didn't know it was stolen.
Speaker 2: He's like, no, I probably knew. I just got a
Speaker 2: lot of cars. I didn't think of come up, like,
Speaker 2: you don't think that that's gonna happen. You just the papers.
Speaker 2: I don't know how it worked back then in California,
Speaker 2: but whatever the fake papers were to make it look
Speaker 2: like title had been transferred, he thought they were good enough.
Speaker 2: And so it was a very random story to me,
Speaker 2: and I thought at the time, I don't think this
Speaker 2: is gonna make it, because I don't really know where
Speaker 2: this fits into the larger story. It turned out that
Speaker 2: it did fit into this kind of craziness period where
Speaker 2: fame just takes you. You don't have introspection. It's like somebody,
Speaker 2: I try very hard not to read for any of
Speaker 2: our books. If I do with you a book I
Speaker 2: do with anyone else, not to read any reviews, because
Speaker 2: in my mind, you can choose who you are as
Speaker 2: a writer, as a musician, as a filmmaker. I try
Speaker 2: not to read anything because I think once I'm done,
Speaker 2: I kind of don't care about people's opinions, and I
Speaker 2: know some will be good, some will be bad. Sometimes
Speaker 2: people will get it, sometimes they won't. But one slipped
Speaker 2: through and it was kind of irritating. And I won't
Speaker 2: say where, And I don't begrudge. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: care if people can like things or not. Some people
Speaker 2: are loving it and some people have problems with it. Right,
Speaker 2: somebody talked about the middle and how they felt like
Speaker 2: the middle was kind of They didn't say uninsightful, but
Speaker 2: they said, this is just like rehearsing or restaging talk
Speaker 2: show appearances. In my mind, there was a real good
Speaker 2: reason for that, because when you get mega famous like
Speaker 2: he got mega famous, so much of it is you're
Speaker 2: seeing yourself how you are seen. You're trying to control
Speaker 2: the stories that are told about you and thinking every day,
Speaker 2: well is that me? Is that true? And I'm sure
Speaker 2: even like I mean, look, you're famous, you know, And
Speaker 2: then you think back to him on the couch next
Speaker 2: to Muhammad Ali, and you think, I'm paraphrasing what you
Speaker 2: would think. You think I'm famous now in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: think of being those guys in nineteen seventy five, when
Speaker 2: there's three channels, there's a finite number of black celebrities,
Speaker 2: and these are the two arguably biggest. I mean, maybe
Speaker 2: Stevie wonder, but at that time, at that place, this
Speaker 2: is a fame of like I can't even fathom it,
Speaker 2: you know, to be Muhammad Ali in sly fighting over
Speaker 2: what the responsibility of a black entertainer is on Mike
Speaker 2: Douglas is like mind boggling to me. So I think
Speaker 2: that he really wanted to and he was interested in
Speaker 2: seeing old appearances, going back and looking at old performances.
Speaker 2: He really wanted to think, well, what was it to
Speaker 2: be me?
Speaker 1: Then you're saying that he looked that he had to
Speaker 1: recap and watch old interviews and all that stuff to
Speaker 1: sort of jog his memory.
Speaker 2: Well, that's not just jog memory. Even before me, he
Speaker 2: would do it, he Arlene said. He always was kind
Speaker 2: of interested. I think to try to be to whatever
Speaker 2: degree someone is a student of their own existence. Like
Speaker 2: he would always watch when things started to appear on
Speaker 2: YouTube twenty years ago. He'd be really interested. He'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's the midnight special show when we watch, Oh, I
Speaker 2: remember there was this camera person who kept darting back
Speaker 2: and forth and tessing me off, you know, like I
Speaker 2: couldn't focus, or oh I remember there was a person
Speaker 2: in the audience that I thought looked like this person
Speaker 2: not to jog his memory, but to think I was
Speaker 2: so documented for a period of my life in print,
Speaker 2: on radio, on TV. What was that? It just was
Speaker 2: so weird, you know, like was that even me? It's
Speaker 2: a kind of interesting existential question. And then folded into
Speaker 2: that the fact that he took arguably the most private
Speaker 2: thing being getting married, and he did it in the
Speaker 2: most public forum that you could ever imagine. So he
Speaker 2: both embraced and was at the mercy of a lot
Speaker 2: of this kind of fame thing. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously when you and I talk, you have many versions
Speaker 2: of this all the time, and so I also wanted
Speaker 2: to be very clear in the book that certain things
Speaker 2: could not be remembered clearly. And sometimes he would say, well,
Speaker 2: I've heard this story from other people. That's not how
Speaker 2: I remember it, you know, I heard that this is
Speaker 2: how this went down, or this is what happened at
Speaker 2: this place. I don't either I don't remember it or
Speaker 2: I remember it differently, And it is all part of
Speaker 2: the story. But when you write a memoir, you're not
Speaker 2: doing journalistic research in the sense that I'm not asking everybody,
Speaker 2: I'm asking him. And so same thing with Brian when
Speaker 2: I did Brian Wilson's book, Mike Love had a book
Speaker 2: coming out at the same time. Well, Brian's book was
Speaker 2: Brian's version, Mike's book was Mike's version. They differed on
Speaker 2: quite a bit because they remember it differently for a
Speaker 2: variety of reasons. So, yeah, that's the interesting thing to
Speaker 2: try to kind of.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question. What if you're given
Speaker 1: a recollection that you know didn't happen in that particular way,
Speaker 1: and I mean something factual, like you know, so Riot
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen seventy four, and like, do you
Speaker 1: correct the person like no, I actually came out in
Speaker 1: seventy or.
Speaker 2: To some degree, I would correct them to some degree.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't you here's the problem you're You're
Speaker 2: I serve at the pleasure of the king. I'm co writing.
Speaker 2: It's not about me, It's about that person. And so
Speaker 2: they are. They tell me, either overtly or sometimes they
Speaker 2: don't articulate it overtly, but they explain that they want
Speaker 2: to tell their whole life and sometimes that this book
Speaker 2: was definitely not like this. But sometimes books are score
Speaker 2: settlers where they say I got to get back at
Speaker 2: that guy who wronged me. Sometimes they say, I want
Speaker 2: people to understand how.
Speaker 1: People would do that. Yeah, I mean a Gene Simmons thin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he not really, I mean I think Gene.
Speaker 2: I think Gene was not a score settler. I think
Speaker 2: Gene's it just as a side note, he wanted to reiterate. No,
Speaker 2: I don't I didn't find him that petty, but I
Speaker 2: think he always wanted to reiterate that Kiss had a
Speaker 2: clean half and a not clean half. You know, there
Speaker 2: were members of the band that drank and used, and
Speaker 2: then there were two members of the band that did not,
Speaker 2: And Jane was one of the.
Speaker 1: Clean and Tho he was a.
Speaker 2: Non user, straight edge, And so in his mind he
Speaker 2: wanted to be clear that a lot of the decisions
Speaker 2: got made just the way the decisions got made. To say, yes,
Speaker 2: a lot of things were equal. We were abandoned in
Speaker 2: some ways, we were not abandoned equals because when sane
Speaker 2: strategy had to happen that you know, I did that,
Speaker 2: But no, I mean I think everyone gives you a charter.
Speaker 2: So for example, Mometa, when you and Rich talked to
Speaker 2: me about it, it was exactly what you said A
Speaker 2: few minutes ago, I'm forty what am I doing? And
Speaker 2: so as we strategized that through, we came to this
Speaker 2: idea of the meta, which was, well, let's make a
Speaker 2: book and blow up a book at the same time.
Speaker 2: Let's do a book. But Rich will be in there
Speaker 2: telling you this didn't happen in New York. What are
Speaker 2: you talking about? We were in California, don't you remember,
Speaker 2: And we put a Rich getting on you about memories.
Speaker 2: Riches in the book is a kind of like second voice.
Speaker 2: We also put in emails between me and the absurdly
Speaker 2: similarly named Ben Greenberg, the publisher, where we were talking
Speaker 2: about where I would say to him in an email,
Speaker 2: and they were the real emails where I would say
Speaker 2: to him, Amir is an amazing memory. But one of
Speaker 2: the things he's worried about is do people care what
Speaker 2: records he was listening to in ninety two? And then
Speaker 2: he would write back and say, yeah, of course, maybe
Speaker 2: we could do them as a sidebar, and then we
Speaker 2: would do that. So every book has that kind of
Speaker 2: pre planning stage. I feel like in this book, I
Speaker 2: think he knew, of course, that there were things that
Speaker 2: were fuzzier to him and things that were sharper I
Speaker 2: was surprised by how sharp they were. Things that were sharp.
Speaker 2: Like he sometimes would say, oh, we were staying in
Speaker 2: this hotel in New York and the eighteenth floor, and
Speaker 2: I would say what, and he remembered the room number,
Speaker 2: you know, and then like maybe the next time you
Speaker 2: would have to kind of say to him. You'd say, oh,
Speaker 2: remember the show on Milwaukee just before Grant Park and
Speaker 2: he would say where, And then you'd say Milwaukee, you
Speaker 2: played the show and and then he would say, oh, Ryan, right,
Speaker 2: I remember it's the one where they brought me out
Speaker 2: in the boat. Okay, fine, so then we're there. A
Speaker 2: lot of it is that you got to situate it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's a strange task. You don't
Speaker 2: just say to somebody nineteen seventy three go. They're like,
Speaker 2: maybe you would you have that kind of memory, But
Speaker 2: like you don't say to somebody nineteen seventy three go
Speaker 2: and they say, okay. So on January first, I remember
Speaker 2: I was buying a room and at this dollar, it's
Speaker 2: not unless you're Mary Lou Henner, you can't really do.
Speaker 1: That right exactly, So most people.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, so I would correct I guess just
Speaker 2: the quick answer to the question is, yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: want the person to be in embarrassed if he slipped
Speaker 2: up and said while I was doing stand in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: yeahly that But like some things are some things are
Speaker 2: interesting why they're misplaced, and then you might leave it
Speaker 2: slightly misplaced because it's interesting why he sees it that way.
Speaker 1: So I believe maybe in nineteen ninety six, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: maybe there was an author. His name is Joel Salvin,
Speaker 1: and he released an oral history book basically talking to
Speaker 1: everyone in Sly's world except for Slye. And this includes
Speaker 1: like Bubba, like you know, like what they would call
Speaker 1: the handlers. And it's sort of weird because I took
Speaker 1: Selvin's kind of book as law, and now that I'm
Speaker 1: doing my own unearthing with this slide documentary, I'm now realizing, like,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, maybe this person wasn't a villain
Speaker 1: that I was led to believe. Like I kind of
Speaker 1: came into my own research, would Sly you know, sort
Speaker 1: of holding Selvin's oral history book, which is a very
Speaker 1: considerary and kind of fiery story, like that version of
Speaker 1: Sly's life to me, was like the last half of
Speaker 1: Boogie Nights if you will. Do you know if he
Speaker 1: was at all aware of that book or what his
Speaker 1: response was.
Speaker 2: I think he definitely was aware. And I had the
Speaker 2: same weird process that you did, but maybe in reverse,
Speaker 2: which is that as a mega fan, a super fan
Speaker 2: of flies, I read everything in its day. So I
Speaker 2: read every article, every oral history, every I would find
Speaker 2: scraps of things on the Internet where somebody's like this kid,
Speaker 2: John Dax, who we mentioned in the book because it
Speaker 2: was an interesting thing, he had a fan site. I
Speaker 2: think he was a student, so I flew him out.
Speaker 2: Was trying to figure out He had this label Fatta
Speaker 2: Data at the time, and he was trying to figure
Speaker 2: out can I release my own records on the internet?
Speaker 2: What is the Internet? So he flew John out, and
Speaker 2: so I just tracked all that stuff. I think I
Speaker 2: actually interviewed John for a magazine at the time because
Speaker 2: it was so fascinating, and I was obsessed with Sly
Speaker 2: for this book, I had to try to strategically forget
Speaker 2: all that. Now it's all in my mind, so I
Speaker 2: have all those stories in there. Anyway, when I was
Speaker 2: talking to Sly sometimes I would ask him, not ask
Speaker 2: him directly about the stories, but I would say exactly
Speaker 2: what you just said, like, oh, there's this, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a version of this where so and so had
Speaker 2: a gun at this place. And he would either pick
Speaker 2: up in the thread of it, in which case it
Speaker 2: was really interesting because it would mean that he did
Speaker 2: remember it. Sometimes he would say, oh, I know that
Speaker 2: person told that story, but that's not how it happened,
Speaker 2: which would keep me into the fact that might not
Speaker 2: have been literally Joel's book. Maybe someone told him that
Speaker 2: after the book came out. Oh, Eddie Chin saying that
Speaker 2: this thing happened or whatever, and so, yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: I think he definitely. One thing to think about the
Speaker 2: oral history is that it's a reflection of stories that
Speaker 2: were being told. It's not. I mean, Joel did a
Speaker 2: great job. I really liked that book for what it is,
Speaker 2: But as you say, it's a snapshot. Those are stories
Speaker 2: that people were dining out on, some of them for decades. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Like if you were if you were Bobba, you were
Speaker 2: telling that story to every girl you met and every
Speaker 2: person who you were waiting in an airport with, you know,
Speaker 2: like that was your thing. Then Joel does the project,
Speaker 2: and you also tell it in the book where it
Speaker 2: becomes formal.
Speaker 1: Your stick you're fat.
Speaker 2: I mean, because that's their claim to fame. One thing
Speaker 2: I find with all these books is that everybody remembers
Speaker 2: being with famous people, but famous people don't remember being
Speaker 2: with anyone, meaning.
Speaker 1: That oh my god, you know you you know. But
Speaker 1: there's a billion people that come up with these like crazy,
Speaker 1: crazy like recollections of things that we've done, and all
Speaker 1: I can be is like, oh yeah, and they're just like,
Speaker 1: you don't remember, do you? And it makes me feel
Speaker 1: bad because I feel like, then in their eyes, I
Speaker 1: seem inauthentic, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's not inauthentic, it's the opposite. I mean I think that.
Speaker 2: So I tried, like I said, to not I think
Speaker 2: your film is very different. And we talked about this before.
Speaker 2: We keep a wall between them because one is Sly's
Speaker 2: version of what he remembers in his events. And then
Speaker 2: you're obviously reaching out like Joel did, but in a
Speaker 2: different way to a variety of people. First of all,
Speaker 2: everybody is literally a different perspective. You're standing here, they're
Speaker 2: standing there, They're looking this angle you're looking this angle.
Speaker 2: So they might say, oh, it was the day of
Speaker 2: that helicopter crashed because they see the helicopter going down
Speaker 2: on this side. You never saw, so it's not part
Speaker 2: of your experience. Everyone, if anyone ever met Sly, they
Speaker 2: they know it, they remember it, it's meaningful to them,
Speaker 2: and they start to build from it. He only remembers
Speaker 2: a fraction of those. He remembers some when he was young,
Speaker 2: when the people were more famous than him. That's interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, like if he was writing Come On and Swim,
Speaker 2: he's dealing with people. He's a kid. He's dealing with
Speaker 2: artists and producers and label executives who are above him.
Speaker 2: So those memories are clear in a certain way. But
Speaker 2: at some point there's no traction on most of these stories.
Speaker 2: And sometimes, like you just explained, you can recharge that
Speaker 2: memory if you give context and you say, oh, no,
Speaker 2: this was just before that show where the cops came
Speaker 2: in and arrested you, and he'll say, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that lady on the court. I do remember that conversation,
Speaker 2: but what did we talk about? And then other times
Speaker 2: they these people are possessive of those stories because they're
Speaker 2: so important to them. I have my own version of that,
Speaker 2: which is Eric Bagosian, the playwright and monologist, and he
Speaker 2: was an actor. He was in talk radio with Oliver Stone.
Speaker 2: Movie years and years years ago. I was a young
Speaker 2: reporter and he came to Miami to do some kind
Speaker 2: of event and I went to his hotel and did
Speaker 2: the interview. This was a junket and we had extra time,
Speaker 2: and on the spot, I thought it would be funny,
Speaker 2: just just I don't know why. I just thought it
Speaker 2: would funny to go out on the balcony of his
Speaker 2: hotel and take a bunch of pictures like we were
Speaker 2: friends on vacation. So we held beers and we looked
Speaker 2: like we were laughing, and he pointed out and I pointed,
Speaker 2: in just stupid shit. Ten years later, I was in
Speaker 2: New York and he had a book signing and I
Speaker 2: took those photos and I went to the book signing
Speaker 2: and I got to the front and I a purpose,
Speaker 2: like as a performance, I said Eric, And he looked
Speaker 2: at me and clearly he didn't have any idea who
Speaker 2: I was, and he said I'm sorry, and I said,
Speaker 2: I looked Crestfall and I said, Eric, it's me and
Speaker 2: I showed him the pictures that I said, we're friends.
Speaker 2: You don't remember, and then after like ten sears, after
Speaker 2: ten seconds, I said, I'm just walking with you. I
Speaker 2: was a reporter in Miami and we took these pictures.
Speaker 2: I thought it was really funny and like a good
Speaker 2: illustration of this. And then the funny anything I was
Speaker 2: thinking about the other day is he has almost certainly
Speaker 2: forgotten that, because even that, which to me is like
Speaker 2: the end of a great story, to him was probably nothing.
Speaker 1: Again, do you remember that moment at all?
Speaker 2: I think when I showed in the pictures and I
Speaker 2: explained to him, He's like, yeah, I do, I do remember.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he was telling the truth. He
Speaker 2: probably did, but then he's probably forgotten it all over again.
Speaker 2: And so it's it's such an interesting thing with fame.
Speaker 2: And this is what I was saying before about Sly
Speaker 2: at the height of his fame, because you almost become
Speaker 2: one of those people you don't remember meeting. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's too spacey a way to
Speaker 2: put it, but when you are who's famous everywhere all
Speaker 2: the time, you don't necessarily remember. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: you don't, and you have the best memory of anybody.
Speaker 2: I know every stage you've been on, every media you did,
Speaker 2: every person you saw, every radio you know, conversation you've had.
Speaker 2: You remember a lot of them. But how can you
Speaker 2: remember them all they blend together? You need space for like,
Speaker 2: what are the names of the people in my family?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's the setback. Like I can tell
Speaker 1: you the entire season thirteen color scheme of the way
Speaker 1: that the Soul train lights blinked. But if you were
Speaker 1: to put me right now in front of like all
Speaker 1: my first cousins.
Speaker 2: Yep, I think that's exactly that. And the weirdness of
Speaker 2: flies memory. The other thing, just the last thing I'll
Speaker 2: say here is that as a fan, one of the
Speaker 2: things that I wanted more of and didn't get, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say I was disappointed. And you said something about
Speaker 2: this recently that really struck me is that I wanted huge,
Speaker 2: brilliant insights about how every song was created. The one
Speaker 2: thing I've realized over time is that artists make the work.
Speaker 2: They don't necessarily analyze the work. If you're Elton John
Speaker 2: or Paul McCartney, or you're Brian Wilson, which I know,
Speaker 2: and I say, hey, let's talk about album and this song,
Speaker 2: and they say, oh, is that song on that album?
Speaker 2: I thought it was on this other album, And I think,
Speaker 2: oh my god, they're old, they're faltering. They don't know
Speaker 2: which record this song was on. The truth is that no,
Speaker 2: they just made the song and a bandmate or a
Speaker 2: producer or a label executive or somebody said, let's up
Speaker 2: put that out this year, let's hold that for this
Speaker 2: thing because we think it pairs well with this, or
Speaker 2: who knows it's a B side, and later it's released.
Speaker 2: They're not the marketers of their own life. To some degree,
Speaker 2: they aren't. Some degree they're not. And I've known this,
Speaker 2: even with you for doing liner notes, Like you said,
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the things you remember perfectly. And then
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll say, oh, wait, let me check. I think
Speaker 2: that came out on this compilation. I'm not positive. Hold on,
Speaker 2: let me check. And then you check and you come
Speaker 2: back and you say, yay, yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker 2: I remember now. So that's really interesting. The artist is
Speaker 2: not necessarily the best critic of the artist's work. That's
Speaker 2: left to ner me to listen to every record and say,
Speaker 2: oh man, did you hear that thing? And let me
Speaker 2: have it all? He drops his voice out for a
Speaker 2: tenth of it. He was just making the record, So
Speaker 2: it is that's very interesting, and I've learned that with
Speaker 2: every creative artist. I think some are more You and
Speaker 2: Little Stemen are more on the analytical side, just because
Speaker 2: of personality, meaning that you do both things. There is
Speaker 2: a part of you that is analyzing as you make.
Speaker 2: Then there's people maybe and.
Speaker 1: George, why I get accused of that. There's a part
Speaker 1: of me that things about mine. I think that's That's
Speaker 1: one I think about my Wikipedia entry as I.
Speaker 2: Creates, just why you're making a choice, Like like, it's
Speaker 2: not like I don't go to this. I don't consider
Speaker 2: it to be like this person who's a primitive talent.
Speaker 2: One thing about Slide that struck me throughout is that
Speaker 2: this is the most trained rock star in the history
Speaker 2: of rock stars. Before Sliding the family Stone. He's a
Speaker 2: producer of hits, a DJ, a hugely popular DJ, and
Speaker 2: a composition student. So when you go to like Beetlestones,
Speaker 2: who kinks you know whatever, John Fogerty, Dylan anybody else,
Speaker 2: those people were like naive stumble in with their guitar
Speaker 2: like elements like the Woods. You know, this guy was trained.
Speaker 2: This is like a professional person before the band ever.
Speaker 1: Hit, Arlene said, three hundred interviews.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the things that happened is that
Speaker 2: because of his energy, as I said, for you, you know,
Speaker 2: you can talk obviously for ninety minutes at a time.
Speaker 2: His energy, and I think just the newness of the process.
Speaker 2: And frankly, I don't know if this was the case
Speaker 2: for you as much, but it's traumatic to do a
Speaker 2: life story. You are revisiting things. You're thinking of old
Speaker 2: girlfriends and old friends and oh shit, I love that
Speaker 2: house right, Oh my god, that house, and they can
Speaker 2: just think about that. So the way it worked out
Speaker 2: is that we did fifteen to twenty minute sessions for
Speaker 2: the most part. Sometimes he would beg out early say
Speaker 2: I don't feel well or I'm tired. She'd go back.
Speaker 2: I'd say to her, then you got to go back later.
Speaker 2: He was right on the brink of talking about Jim
Speaker 2: Brown coming to the apartment in LA and calling the
Speaker 2: girls out, and he had to go out and tell
Speaker 2: Jim Brown go away, these aren't your girls, or you
Speaker 2: know whatever. The story was he started telling that and
Speaker 2: he didn't finish. Can you go back later and get that?
Speaker 2: And she'd say, yay, I could do that. So she'd
Speaker 2: go back. While she was talking to him about whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, planting planters outside of his house, she'd say
Speaker 2: to him, can you tell me the James Brown story again?
Speaker 2: And she'd get tape on that and send it to me.
Speaker 2: So she would sometimes go back and complete. We ended
Speaker 2: up with hundreds of sessions. They're just very short and
Speaker 2: not very short. They're fifteen to twenty five for the
Speaker 2: most part. Sometimes he'd got a lot of energy, and
Speaker 2: sometimes he'd get one question in and something would bug him.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing is he'd get in something would bug him,
Speaker 2: he'd stop, and then the next day or the day after,
Speaker 2: I would see what it was that would bugg who
Speaker 2: was bugging him, because he'd have a really interesting story
Speaker 2: about Rudy love or something, you know, like just go
Speaker 2: back to him. So, yeah, that's so a lot of short.
Speaker 1: Sessions you've done, George Clinton, You've done sly. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: briefly mentioned, but like you know, the Little Stephen story
Speaker 1: is probably my favorite, only because when you hear the
Speaker 1: audio book, you know, it's it's really like he's talking
Speaker 1: to you, you know, that sort of thing, and Brian
Speaker 1: Wilson like, what else is left for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, little Stephen was great. And that's a case
Speaker 2: where I'm credited as an editor, not a co writer,
Speaker 2: because he's a real writer. He writes political pieces and
Speaker 2: he writes, you know, songs, obviously. But so his take
Speaker 2: on it, when we were talking before about what a
Speaker 2: memoir is was a little different when you say, how
Speaker 2: can you do this without adult supervision? In his mind,
Speaker 2: he is the adult supervision because he's and he also
Speaker 2: has that part of the brain we said, where he's
Speaker 2: an analyst of himself as he goes. But he was great,
Speaker 2: and he his whole point was, well, what does any
Speaker 2: of this mean. We're doing all these things, We're making songs,
Speaker 2: we're touring like the world is in crisis, dude, Like
Speaker 2: we gotta we gotta figure this out. And he also
Speaker 2: was he's a historian, obviously, you know, he's done rock
Speaker 2: and roll Hall of Fame stuff. You know, he's a
Speaker 2: real serious historian of everything. So he was really interested
Speaker 2: in how rock and roll changed through the sixties and
Speaker 2: then the monoculture exploded, and you have all these subcultures,
Speaker 2: and what does that mean. It doesn't just mean that
Speaker 2: you're a boomer classic rocket here. You're actually looking at
Speaker 2: a time when there was one thing that affected everybody
Speaker 2: and then that stopped happening. In terms of for me,
Speaker 2: I just don't know. I mean, there's so many I
Speaker 2: want to do plenty of memoirs outside of music as well,
Speaker 2: but in the music space. I think about the great books,
Speaker 2: the memoirs that I love, and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm allowed to say omatic because
Speaker 2: we did the book, but that's.
Speaker 1: A great I forgot about us a certain take.
Speaker 2: Dylan's book Chronicles, Neil Young's book Shaky, Keith Richard's book,
Speaker 2: Patty Smith's book are great. Ray Davies, Oh there's a
Speaker 2: million miles Davis. When I was thinking about the kinds
Speaker 2: of things I would like to do, the three that
Speaker 2: kind of rose in my mind are The Mingus Beneath
Speaker 2: the Underdog a great book. I mean, it's outspoken, it's angry,
Speaker 2: it's hurt, there's a lot of you know, injury in it,
Speaker 2: and it kind of pairs like if you're dining with
Speaker 2: the assum Mingus book Tonight at Noon. It's named after
Speaker 2: a Mingus song. It's her story about her life with
Speaker 2: Mingus and that she didn't do until the two thousands,
Speaker 2: but she was with him from I think sixty four
Speaker 2: to when he died, and it's about maintaining the legacy
Speaker 2: and trying to get your head around this incredibly difficult,
Speaker 2: brilliant person. So that would be as if then Arlene
Speaker 2: wrote a book or whatever you know about this, like,
Speaker 2: this is how this person saw but let me tell
Speaker 2: you what it was to make this person happy in
Speaker 2: their life or try to keep them from being their
Speaker 2: own worst enemy or whatever. It was right the vill
Speaker 2: of Albertine, viv Albertine. It's called She's from the Slits,
Speaker 2: the punk band. I think her book is called Close
Speaker 2: Close Closed Music Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, and it's great.
Speaker 2: It's it's such a good book about how you get
Speaker 2: inside and outsider. You know what it means to be
Speaker 2: like a perennial outsider and pullink and fashion and everything.
Speaker 2: And then but in the book you have to bring
Speaker 2: people in in, So how do you do that? That's weird.
Speaker 2: There's an element of that with Sly where Sly is
Speaker 2: such a singular person and such a glorious weirdo in
Speaker 2: a way like I use that word of people think
Speaker 2: I'm being critical, but I'm not. I'm being complimentary.
Speaker 1: No, that's a compliment.
Speaker 2: Compliment. There's an interview in the book and the guy
Speaker 2: from the Guardian ended up interviewing me about this book,
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, I make a cameo in your
Speaker 2: book because I'm the journalist that Slide called and said
Speaker 2: he wanted an all albino rock band, and so I
Speaker 2: was laughing with him about it, and Sly's theory was
Speaker 2: that that's how you eliminate racism with an all albino
Speaker 2: rock and that kind of wavelength. The viv Albertine is
Speaker 2: a version of that, but just being so singular, there's
Speaker 2: no one like you, and how do you then you
Speaker 2: become embraced. And then the third when I was thinking
Speaker 2: of him as this very strange book, there's this twentieth
Speaker 2: Central composer named Alec Wilder, and he was a classical composer.
Speaker 2: He did some film and some musicals and some popular
Speaker 2: song and I think the book is called Letters I
Speaker 2: Never Mailed, So the whole book is letters he wrote
Speaker 2: to people in his life who he was too afraid,
Speaker 2: never never said. And there's this it's a really interesting book.
Speaker 2: And there's this Frank Sinatra letter where they were friends
Speaker 2: and then Frank became Frank as famous as Sly becoming
Speaker 2: Sly and just walled off, couldn't deal with anybody. So
Speaker 2: he writes this very moving letter like how he just
Speaker 2: wants to hang out with him and laugh and laugh
Speaker 2: at how people are stupid and you know, just wanna
Speaker 2: be his friend. And it ends with this line, which
Speaker 2: is just so moving. He says to Sinatra, believe it
Speaker 2: or not, I'm still available. All it needs is your
Speaker 2: request and my survival. That's the end of the letter
Speaker 2: to Frank. And I just thought, like, it's such a
Speaker 2: great book because it's all the things that you don't
Speaker 2: get to say to people. And so I think a
Speaker 2: lot about this. There's stars that I want to work with. Still,
Speaker 2: you know, it would be great if whoever, if Stevie
Speaker 2: Wonder really did a real book, if Jagger did a memoir,
Speaker 2: if you know, I mean a lot of people did
Speaker 2: first ones that they got older. Maybe you'll do another book,
Speaker 2: another memoir. I mean you've done seven. Maybe another proper memoir.
Speaker 1: Maybe I got to live a life first.
Speaker 2: First you'll be eighty, then one.
Speaker 1: I've exhausted the first forty years. So they but in.
Speaker 2: Terms of like the whales of stardom to get to
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people have done books. It's
Speaker 2: just interesting. I started to think with this sly book
Speaker 2: that there are so many different kinds of books. When
Speaker 2: I first went to him with this project, and I
Speaker 2: was thinking, because he's such a weirdo, well what if
Speaker 2: he pitches me back a book that he says, it's
Speaker 2: just a thousand sentences broken and I'm just gonna say
Speaker 2: a phrase and then you write that down and that's
Speaker 2: the whole book, and I won't do anything else. And
Speaker 2: I would have to say, like, yes, sir, mister Stewart,
Speaker 2: because you know, like I'm not so one of those
Speaker 2: There's this line that it sounded like it's a line
Speaker 2: that he knew he had said before, but it's so great.
Speaker 2: It's like it sounds like the kind of thing you
Speaker 2: say and then you think that was smart later you
Speaker 2: say it again. And we used it as the last
Speaker 2: line where he said it's something like human beings we
Speaker 2: come and go. Some of us have not gone yet,
Speaker 2: and it was just such a wait.
Speaker 1: Is he still full of those idioms?
Speaker 2: Yes, but I think that here's a there's a tension
Speaker 2: there he is. And then part of him is like
Speaker 2: I said it already.
Speaker 3: Like like you know, yeah, like so one quick code
Speaker 3: to the songs that sometimes I would ask what songs
Speaker 3: meant and he did this thing that kind of frustrated me,
Speaker 3: But the more I went on, it fascinated me.
Speaker 2: Where he would say this, the song means what the
Speaker 2: song means, like everyday people, What does that mean? That's
Speaker 2: what it means everyday people. And I would think, are
Speaker 2: fucking with me? Like come on? But then when you
Speaker 2: think about it, he's kind of right that when you
Speaker 2: get to boil down, you know, he has a whole
Speaker 2: new thing and it's a very complicated record doesn't hit.
Speaker 2: Then he does dance to the music and he realizes
Speaker 2: the kind of genius of simplicity. You know, he resists
Speaker 2: that song a little because he thought it was kind
Speaker 2: of dumb for his pay grade, you know whatever, like
Speaker 2: it's a hit? What am I doing here? Like I'm
Speaker 2: not the twist.
Speaker 1: So he's the master of simplicity, and we overlook it really.
Speaker 2: In simplicity in some of those songs. I like the
Speaker 2: complexity too. I mean, I like, I don't know if
Speaker 2: we have time to talk about, you know, the couple
Speaker 2: favorite songs, but in time is like not simple and
Speaker 2: it's a fantastic song and everyday people is simple. But
Speaker 2: he would say to me, the song means what it means,
Speaker 2: and I would think, God, you know, you gotta like
Speaker 2: song and dance me a little or tell me something.
Speaker 2: But then I thought, well, yeah, that is kind of
Speaker 2: what a painter would say or a sculptor would say,
Speaker 2: or is like, it's not your job to go and
Speaker 2: analyze it.
Speaker 1: You made it. It's my job to then say what
Speaker 1: it means, not yours.
Speaker 2: And then in this book, I can't even say a
Speaker 2: lot of that, like he Weirdly, the mid seventies records
Speaker 2: he was a little bit more analytical, because I think
Speaker 2: they were more like kind of mission records like heard
Speaker 2: you missed me from the top down or back on
Speaker 2: the right Track from the top down. They're kind of
Speaker 2: mission records like hey, I'm still here right so they
Speaker 2: have a message, and those he was able to say
Speaker 2: a little more about that, even though he didn't always
Speaker 2: like it. I think back on the right track, there's
Speaker 2: a kind of like a cleaned up slide, like a
Speaker 2: Smiley cleaned up Vesta slide that he thought, like, man,
Speaker 2: how many the headlines for that album are all kind
Speaker 2: of insulting like a well behaved sly Stone.
Speaker 1: He's like, come on, for those that might be listening
Speaker 1: that are new to sly or whatever, briefly tell me
Speaker 1: what are your three favorite SLI songs?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, as you know, it's an impossible task.
Speaker 1: That's why I always limited it to three, because.
Speaker 2: I can't deal with the big hits. They're too big
Speaker 2: to get my head around.
Speaker 1: No one deals with the hits real real music fans
Speaker 1: like the Filler.
Speaker 2: So I'd say, okay, if I had to pick three,
Speaker 2: I'd say we Love All, which is an outtake from
Speaker 2: It's a sixties high psychedelia high Echo. But it's he
Speaker 2: writes the lyrics that later I would come to see
Speaker 2: as these very compressed, weird sly lyrics like like the
Speaker 2: Funk get Stronger type lyrics where he says it's like
Speaker 2: he does everything, and he says unlike the police and
Speaker 2: his gone, unlike the judge and his son, unlike the
Speaker 2: local meter man, unlike the late scam, and so they
Speaker 2: are listing out all these things that aren't embracing of everything,
Speaker 2: and that song is such a big, weird spacey sixty sound,
Speaker 2: lots of echo, and so that's really interesting. It doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like anything else they were doing at the time.
Speaker 2: Very spare in some ways. Second one is probably Sylvester,
Speaker 2: which is this tiny little.
Speaker 1: Thing that's not even second right.
Speaker 2: It's this fragment on the last proper album that he
Speaker 2: did on Input. The one way, it probably was a
Speaker 2: piece of tape that someone recovered at the thing. He
Speaker 2: his memory of it was he remembered making it and
Speaker 2: he remembered what it was about, but he didn't he
Speaker 2: wasn't one hundred percent sure that it made a record,
Speaker 2: because he's like, yeah, that that little thing I recorded,
Speaker 2: And it's this incredibly weird similar to a lot of
Speaker 2: the songs he made when he was then not famous.
Speaker 2: There's really weird meditation on Identity where he's going past
Speaker 2: a mirror and he sees himself and his mother remembers
Speaker 2: his name, and it's very very intense really for what
Speaker 2: it is. But it's just him playing a little electric
Speaker 2: pan on singing for thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: That's one of my three.
Speaker 2: It's great. And then the third one was a tie.
Speaker 2: I think in my mind between what was I thinking?
Speaker 2: In my head? Which is the second song. I like
Speaker 2: it for this reason.
Speaker 1: I'm mad that I can't resist it. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm mad. I hate. I hate that only comes from
Speaker 1: I'm mad I can't resist it. And yet those lyrics
Speaker 1: are little, are are very clever, and I hate that.
Speaker 1: I like that song for me.
Speaker 2: The reason that I love it is that in my
Speaker 2: head because when you say what was I thinking, we
Speaker 2: know where it's happening. It's in your head. That's where
Speaker 2: people think, right to add that little part. Whether it's
Speaker 2: redundant or brilliant or drug album, I don't know for
Speaker 2: sure in my head which in the song when you
Speaker 2: hear it becomes this bizarre hook like you can't you
Speaker 2: can't get it out of your own head. And it's
Speaker 2: very catchy and it's kind of simplest but psychologically complicated.
Speaker 2: So I don't know's I have a weakness for that.
Speaker 2: But then then when I picked he recorded throughout his
Speaker 2: absence and he and a lot of them are bedroom demos.
Speaker 2: And then some of them he would run into a
Speaker 2: friend or a co creator who would say, oh, I
Speaker 2: like that, let's do that. So in the eighties when
Speaker 2: he would have a song with the barka is a
Speaker 2: song with Earthwind and Fire. He had the Jesse Johnson
Speaker 2: song obviously, which is not an original. That's a song
Speaker 2: he comes on to as a duet. There's a song
Speaker 2: called the Yellow Light that he did that kind of
Speaker 2: trickles out on this giant Funkadelic record called First You
Speaker 2: Got to Shake the Gate. It's a triple record from
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen ish and it's heavily treated vocals and just
Speaker 2: like this weird groove song and he's probably saying something
Speaker 2: but I can't make it out, and he can't make
Speaker 2: it out anymore, and it's just like this bizarre experiment
Speaker 2: and kind of incomprehensible, really deep funk that I love.
Speaker 2: It's so weird, weird, and it just appears. It's like
Speaker 2: those funking Elic records. Those late ones are like party records,
Speaker 2: like for how late do you have to be before
Speaker 2: You're absent? Where George was just pulling in everyone. You
Speaker 2: believe it was song and uh, you know whatever, there's
Speaker 2: some old songs, some old zap demo and here somebody
Speaker 2: finish it. So they're kind of like compilations, not the
Speaker 2: family series, but the big records and so that one,
Speaker 2: so so, what are so so? Sylvester's one of your three?
Speaker 2: And then what are your other two?
Speaker 1: I like, I love Life of Fortune and Fame. I'm
Speaker 1: very upset that my version of it on the roots
Speaker 1: is Game Theory was passed up like my I have
Speaker 1: a version of it where I did all the music
Speaker 1: myself that I think is light years ahead of what
Speaker 1: wound up being the title track of Game Theory. They
Speaker 1: basically took my track and in added other stuff to it,
Speaker 1: which whatever. So Life of Fortune and Fame and you know,
Speaker 1: we're probably even now one of the reels. We cannot
Speaker 1: find any of the reels from the Life sessions. And
Speaker 1: I gotta know what happens at the end of I'm
Speaker 1: An Animal. I'm an Animal. It's just a weird song,
Speaker 1: and so it's not like I'm gonna and I've asked
Speaker 1: the band members about it, and they don't have many
Speaker 1: memories about you know. Again, it's just like we won
Speaker 1: the studio and we recorded it, but for me, that
Speaker 1: song says everything about Sli's weirdness. It's like a kid
Speaker 1: sing along, but it's also psychological, like psychedelic. And you
Speaker 1: know Larry is doing exemplary work on his base that's
Speaker 1: not thumb related. And you know Cynthia shows off her
Speaker 1: jazz chops like a lot's happening in that song, which
Speaker 1: is a filler, but it's still super brilliant to me,
Speaker 1: so I like it a lot.
Speaker 2: I love that song too, and I think same thing
Speaker 2: where people it's a long time ago, people don't remember
Speaker 2: what you're hearing on the reels. Is sort of lost
Speaker 2: the time except that it's recorded. To me, that song
Speaker 2: and this is just me as a fan is I
Speaker 2: always thought those are kinds of reaction songs to dance
Speaker 2: to the music in a way, in a way, and
Speaker 2: that to me, I always heard that song as like,
Speaker 2: I'll do what you want. I'll song and dance. I'll
Speaker 2: be your song and dance man. And then he has
Speaker 2: something in there. I forget the exact line where he
Speaker 2: says my conscience will die I'll be an an. I
Speaker 2: think he says my conscience. Does he say my conscience
Speaker 2: will will die?
Speaker 1: Off something my conscience is my guide or now I
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 2: I might hear wrong. I might, and maybe the lyric
Speaker 2: is vague, but I always heard it as this weird
Speaker 2: thing of him saying for my purposes, of him saying
Speaker 2: I'll dance. What is it? I'll dance like a kangaroo,
Speaker 2: so to me, And when I thought about it, I
Speaker 2: love that song. It was always like him saying, I
Speaker 2: did hold only thing. I'm a composer. I studied composition.
Speaker 2: I I'm working in the rock space and the pop
Speaker 2: space and the soul space in the whatever the funk
Speaker 2: space is becoming, but I'm a composer. And then it
Speaker 2: kind of falls flat. And then it's like, as we know,
Speaker 2: dance to the music is a massive hit, but also
Speaker 2: kind of a walk in the park for him in
Speaker 2: a little annoying like why is that how I have
Speaker 2: to introduce myself to America? That don't you know who
Speaker 2: I am or what I'm capable of? And so a
Speaker 2: lot of that tension of that third record is I
Speaker 2: think those two things, and like.
Speaker 1: Life is him fighting back like I'm smart and you're
Speaker 1: gonna take me on my own terms and it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Totally, and a lot of musicians that's their favorite record
Speaker 2: life because it's so It's kind of like what I
Speaker 2: was saying at the very beginning, just to bring this
Speaker 2: full circle, which is that you try not to make
Speaker 2: the work and you don't care about its reception. I
Speaker 2: don't care. I mean ego care, but I don't really
Speaker 2: care to eat about it. You make your thing, right.
Speaker 2: That is the rare case where someone's so smart is
Speaker 2: able to share with you. Well, no, it kind of
Speaker 2: does matter, or at least when there's a tension created
Speaker 2: between all my people telling me how Tayomi Saro loved
Speaker 2: the first record, you know, fell over himself, and yet
Speaker 2: the audience didn't embrace it. Then I do this record
Speaker 2: and the audience embraces it. Music people are like, eh,
Speaker 2: not the first record, right, And so you got to
Speaker 2: get back to that space. And finally Stan synthesizes everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I don't know how you feel
Speaker 2: about this and what you're finding, but I find some
Speaker 2: of the most fascinating answers about Like he said something
Speaker 2: kind of weird and cool, like you couldn't be an
Speaker 2: artist in nineteen sixty eight and not make stand in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine. You know, like you're an antenna when
Speaker 2: you're an artist, so you're seeing and hearing everything, you're
Speaker 2: bringing it all in. And I thought that was kind
Speaker 2: of fascinating. And that speaks to what we think about Riot,
Speaker 2: which is that is it his depression and his darkness
Speaker 2: or is it the sixties hangover that he's channeling, or
Speaker 2: is it a mix of those things?
Speaker 1: Is it? I'm still trying to come to grips with
Speaker 1: my feelings on Riot, because you know, the one the
Speaker 1: one theme of this movie that I'm doing, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, something happened in those two years that threw
Speaker 1: Sly off and the result is Riot. And everyone just
Speaker 1: keeps talking about how beautiful this record is, how it's
Speaker 1: their bible, how it's and for me, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like if you listen to Space Cowboy, that to me
Speaker 1: is that's my uncle Willie just pissing his pants drunk,
Speaker 1: like not just giving zero fucks, And I want to
Speaker 1: know what he's rebelling against.
Speaker 2: So is life? We can end with this, Is life
Speaker 2: your favorite as a musician, That's the one that you
Speaker 2: get the most kind of joy, excitement, frustration, productive frustration
Speaker 2: from it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean life, Life is the first non greatest
Speaker 1: Hits record that I gravitated towards. It just sounded fun
Speaker 1: like Dynamite. You hear Great going crazy on the drums,
Speaker 1: and it sounded funny to me, And like Dynamite, sounds
Speaker 1: like Greg falling down the stairs, you know, like the
Speaker 1: Chevy Chase.
Speaker 2: I think Great Beats record too. I mean that for
Speaker 2: for a lot of reasons, right people, people.
Speaker 1: Can go to love you like I love.
Speaker 2: So what's so funny is that the musician writer divide,
Speaker 2: I think is exactly illustrated here, which is that I
Speaker 2: moved off of Riot at some point and went to Fresh,
Speaker 2: and I kind of stayed on Fresh. And the reason
Speaker 2: I stayed on Fresh is that in time, you know,
Speaker 2: you put that record on. That first song is just
Speaker 2: like an unbelievable piece of writing. The density of puns
Speaker 2: and his getting his head or around two years too
Speaker 2: long to wait, you know, his own frustration with the
Speaker 2: label waiting for him switch from Coke to PEP. I mean,
Speaker 2: that thing is like I've never seen or heard lyrics
Speaker 2: like that, And then it's in the service of these
Speaker 2: very complicated you know, you're stretching out, stretching out, but
Speaker 2: not really losing form. Yet they're not like jams. They're
Speaker 2: still songs, but they're weird songs. Frisky is a.
Speaker 1: Weird Frisky was probably the first last song that I
Speaker 1: sang as a kid. Yeah yeah, and then it.
Speaker 2: Has one extremely straightforward if you want me to stay.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I asked him about that, is that He's like, no,
Speaker 2: that's what it is, if you want me to stay?
Speaker 2: Like does my audience and the people in my life
Speaker 2: want me around? I hear a lot about how I'm
Speaker 2: a problem miss shows like you want me to do this?
Speaker 2: And so in going to Fresh, I always thought, in
Speaker 2: a way my theory, which he didn't necessarily agree with,
Speaker 2: is that I think Fresh is a darker album than
Speaker 2: Riot because it's a forced smile. Because Riot hits and
Speaker 2: everybody's like, whoa, I don't know what to do with this,
Speaker 2: Like Family, it's a huge pop hit. The records sold great,
Speaker 2: but people listen and it makes them uneasy. It's too spare,
Speaker 2: it's too sparse. There's some throwaways like you say that
Speaker 2: get caught up in the legend, but they're not really
Speaker 2: in my mind full songs even maybe some of them.
Speaker 2: Then you go to Fresh, and I think it did
Speaker 2: so well riot that Fresh is like the afterglow. But
Speaker 2: to me, it's kind of fake happy, and I love that.
Speaker 2: It's such a weird and in case Asurah is so weird,
Speaker 2: it's like such a bizarre cover. He left the mistake
Speaker 2: in you know the Mistake. It's so I think it's
Speaker 2: so interesting in that period. And then of course as
Speaker 2: we go there's a lot of songs I love and
Speaker 2: a lot that I've learned to appreciate for different reasons.
Speaker 2: But it's so funny to me that around that heart
Speaker 2: of greatest hits, And I think this is probably true.
Speaker 2: Musicians might lean a little earlier when it's the whole
Speaker 2: band and it's everybody doing everything at the highest end,
Speaker 2: and then writers might lean a little later because he's
Speaker 2: starting to think it through in a different way, like
Speaker 2: he you know, he's that song. Fresh also has quotes
Speaker 2: of earlier songs like there are He starts to work
Speaker 2: in bits of earlier songs, like he did with the
Speaker 2: slowdown thank you Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Just dance to the music in There's. You know, he's
Speaker 1: very self referential to this. We can get lost in
Speaker 1: sly circles to Lekals come home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they keep on dancing, is exactly. And then do
Speaker 2: you remember nineteen ninety one or so, Epic put out
Speaker 2: Fresh and they put out the wrong version, right, they
Speaker 2: took all the wrong masters. And I was after college
Speaker 2: at that time, and I remember going to get it
Speaker 2: and thinking, listening to it and in times mostly the same,
Speaker 2: think if you want me to stay, it's mostly the same.
Speaker 2: And then whoever was pulling the reels pull the wrong one.
Speaker 2: So every song after that's different.
Speaker 1: No, I won't mean to say is different. The answer
Speaker 1: is way different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, they interest different, right, And then but
Speaker 2: I remember listening to Babies Making Babies, which is a
Speaker 2: whole different song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's way better.
Speaker 2: And thinking, oh my god, like because again, when he
Speaker 2: reconstructs all that, he's being asked to reconstruct the album
Speaker 2: that came out right that we know of, and like
Speaker 2: you say, you go back and hear the other frisky,
Speaker 2: the other thingful and thoughtful, the other skin I'm in.
Speaker 2: All these things that are different, takes different vibes, different feels,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, that's really the process. Pieces is interesting,
Speaker 2: and he did do some of it, Like there's one
Speaker 2: cool story where he's recording and he doesn't like the guitar,
Speaker 2: and he tells the guy who's recording, I need a
Speaker 2: different guitar, and the guy says okay, and he's waiting
Speaker 2: for Slide to go get a different guitar. So I
Speaker 2: was like, no, the one I wants down in La.
Speaker 2: So they have to close up shop and go down
Speaker 2: tell he gets the right instrument, and the guy says,
Speaker 2: so i'll patch you him form the beginning, and so
Speaker 2: I was like, no, no, just in the middle, and
Speaker 2: the guy says, what's going to sound totally weird. One
Speaker 2: sound here and then in the middle it switches. I
Speaker 2: don't think that's right, and sly says, trust me, and
Speaker 2: slies right. I forget which song, but it's it just
Speaker 2: creates that weirdness where he had this vision of what
Speaker 2: to risk and what to change and what to take
Speaker 2: chances on. And that's how we got all this music.
Speaker 2: And he can tell the story and you can figure
Speaker 2: out what it all means.
Speaker 1: Well, there it is, ladies and gentlemen, you can see
Speaker 1: for yourself. Ben Greenman's book with sly Stone, thank you
Speaker 1: for letting me be myself again said and spelled, and
Speaker 1: it's and it's Manda Green Glory out October seventeenth, on
Speaker 1: our publishing. Now that I now that our company's real,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say the way Prince would.
Speaker 2: Annunciated to do the actual bird caller.
Speaker 1: Now I'm tired of doing it. I've been doing it.
Speaker 1: Now just kind of flatten into our instead of oh,
Speaker 1: I'm tired of yelling it. But thank you for talking
Speaker 1: to us, man, I really appreciate. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: congratulations on this, on this awesome book, man, Thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you, And I want to congratulate sly On
Speaker 2: Arlene as well for making this happen. And you're the publisher.
Speaker 2: And here we go into the world.
Speaker 1: Here we go, by the way, ladies and gentlemen. We
Speaker 1: don't do this this often, but you know this is
Speaker 1: a special moment for us. So as a bonus to
Speaker 1: this episode, we're proud to present a clip from an
Speaker 1: unreleased Slidestone song called coming Back for More. And this
Speaker 1: was recorded, I believe in the mid eighties, and it's
Speaker 1: set up by the song's engineer and the book's co author,
Speaker 1: Arlene Hirschowitz, whose voice you're going to hear before the snippet.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it and we'll
Speaker 1: see you next go around on quest Love Supreme. Thank you. Hi.
Speaker 4: This is Arlene and I was Slyes recording engineer in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty five. He used a Yamaha d X seven
Speaker 4: and a rolling drum machine to create the song coming
Speaker 4: Back for More. At this time, sly was trying to
Speaker 4: figure out whether he was going to come back into
Speaker 4: the limelight or not, and so he always put his
Speaker 4: thoughts into his songs. I hope you like the song
Speaker 4: as much as I do.
Speaker 2: Feels so high, touch the sky, the sky.
Speaker 1: Finally growing the signs. It makes it easier, too black.
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