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the reputation he'd created as "The Wild Man of Pop," prompting audience expectations of his guitar acrobatics, inverting the instrument, licking the strings lasciviously, and maybe destroying the guitar onstage, all the while coaxing hallucinogenic wails of feedback from stacks of amplifiers. It may have challenged Jimi that Sly and his up-and-coming act were being perceived more as entertainers and musicians than as a psychedelic freak show. This contrast may have helped influence Jimi, in his last years, to turn away from the pure guitar theatrics that helped launch his career and move toward the more soulful palette displayed on Electric Ladyland and Band of Gypsys.

"And what Sly did, the first show on that Saturday night," Al reminisces about the Fillmore face-off, "he literally marched the band off the stage [while doing the hambone], through the aisles, and marched the entire audience out onto Second Avenue before the second show was about to begin.... Traffic had to be halted for about an hour." In addition, Jimi had to allow for a forty-fiveminute interlude instead of the usual twenty-minute break before he took the stage, to give the crowd enough time to cool down.

During a period where he and Jimi were dating the same woman, Al had a chance to assess the guitar legend's personal take on Sly. "I think there was some competitive spirit within," says Al, "but I know there was great respect....I know that [Jimi] admired Sly's music and wanted to go beyond the power trio [the configuration of his Experience act."

The Family Stone's reputation for eye-and-ear-filling entertainment justified a booking in London in September 1968. But hints of troubles to come ended up dooming the mini-tour. Sly refused to begin one show when he was offered what he considered an inadequate substitute for his own keyboard, delayed in transit. Then Larry Graham got busted for possession of a joint, which he'd taken from Jerry, despite Jerry's warning to dispose of it before passing through customs. The flustered group returned to the States and to the recording of the optimistic "You Can Make It If You Try," the earliest track of what would become the fourth album, Stand! Production of the record continued on into the first part of 1969, with the band shuttling between New York and San Francisco, partly to work at the latter's Pacific High Recording Studios and partly for the Stewart siblings to keep in touch with their genetic family and its local church.

The first hit off the new album, released in April '69, was "Everyday People," an anthem in which Sly clearly stated that My own beliefs are in my song, seemingly inspired by the ethos of '60s San Francisco. Referencing awareness of the era's variety of race, class, and lifestyles-different strokes for different folks-the song maintained that I am no better, and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do. Larry sustained a one-note pulse under the message, later telling Guitar World, "I'd never done that before.... That's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." The song's sentiments matched the hopes of the generation they were aimed at, to expand and maintain egalitarian ideals and tolerance. And with this song, the band, which seemed to be not only singing about these hopes but actually living them, was rewarded with its first-ever place at the top of the pop hit singles chart, for a month.

The title track, "Stand!," was the next to land on the charts, though not as high. It opened with a dramatic roll from Greg Errico and featured yet another of Larry's powerfully percussive bass figures. In a rare move, the coda for this song was recorded separately by Sly with studio musicians after he decided it needed more brassy drama, befitting its lyrical declarations: You've been sitting much too long / There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong and There's a midget standing tall /And a giant beside him about to fall. Sly was beginning to distinguish himself among pop songsmiths for the subtlety, imagination, and sometime humor