I Want to Take You Higher_ The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone - Jeff Kaliss [32]
Sly himself wielded the bass on "You Can Make It If You Try." The propulsive, intoxicating "I Want to Take You Higher" only made it to number 60 on the singles charts (on the flip side of "Stand!"), but it was to return to prominence later, on the strength of its inclusion on the set list at Woodstock.
The Stand! album itself, which reached number 13 on the Billboard pop charts in April '69, held experimentations and revela tions beyond what was manifest in its individual chartable hits. They included Sly's use of the vocoder, an early synthesizer that had the effect of making his a voice sound like an eerie, trippy electronic instrument. The album's second track began with the dual advisory, Don't call me nigger, whitey /Don't call me whitey, nigger. This polemical reference to racism, very rare in Sly's lyrics, effectively blocked airplay, but the song highlighted Rose in a soulful plaint, partnered by Freddie's roiling wah-wah guitar. An atypically dense evocation of Hendrix-like blues rock, it sounded a rightful reaction to recent strife, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. a year earlier. "Sing a Simple Song" broadcast a very different, sunnier sentiment in funky syncopation. The psychedelic blues instrumental "Sex Machine," at fourteen minutes, far outlasted most rock album tracks of the time, and prefigured the jam band format of coming years. Freddie reflected later that he'd rehearsed laboriously for this jam, but ended up being allowed to improvise on the spot.
Stand! contained yet more remarkable tracks and held on to the charts for over a hundred weeks. It served to solidify the Family Stone's unique synthesis of vocal-centered R & B with guitarbased rock. "Oh, man, that was the greatest-our greatest album, without a doubt," Freddie later opined to Guitar World. "It's my favorite because we were still fresh and hungry and sharp." If the band had disbanded at this point in time, it would have already scored a secure place in rock history.
Over what fans perceived as a long two years before the advent of another album, the Family Stone watched itself be illuminated and ultimately transfigured by the spotlight of success. Jerry commented on the peaks of this period for The Skin I'm In, saying, "The feeling that we'd gone Big Time made us feel really good. First-class tickets, limousines, instead of Sly and I driving the truck and Big Daddy in back with the van." How the band members moved through this phase of their youth was of course affected by their celebrity. Those who were married experienced strains on those bonds, and whether married or single, there were increasing opportunities for carnal indulgence, as referenced in Life's final track, "Jane Is a Groupee": She's got a thing for guys in the band / Every musician's biggest fan ... Claps her hands, without a doubt / Has no idea what the song's about.
There are reports of other females in Sly's life whom he may have considered more significant. The reunions with his first love, Ria Boldway, are accounted for later in this story. It appears that Anita, Sly's fateful companion from the Pussycat in Las Vegas, accompanied him to New York and on some of the group's early road trips. Stevie Swanigan, known as Stephani Owens when she was later interviewed by Joel Selvin, was brought in by David Kapralik in the fall of 1968 to work as secretary and personal assistant to Sly and the band. She revealed to Joel, "We had some intimate times, I will say that, but I was never [Sly's] girlfriend, I was more his conscience. I never took on the attitude of being his woman, because it would have made me less effective in the things I was supposed to do.... I was in and out a lot, because he wanted our relationship to be one where he could control me as another individual, as a woman. [But] I wanted him