• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Epic's Al DeMarino is still eager to clear the record about the Chicago fiasco. "There was racial tension against the police force well before this day was scheduled," he claims. "In fact, bricks were found, chains were found, bats were found, prior to the band coming out. So they didn't cause it by not performing, it was caused by tension before.... And Irv Kupcinet, a great writer in Chicago [for the Sun-Times], was the only one who came forth days later and said, listen, this has nothing to do with Sly & the Family Stone.... I gave a radio interview to Gene Loving, a major disc jockey ... and explained everything to him, because he cared enough and wanted to know the truth. And I referred to Irv Kupcinet's column."

Later that summer, Sly left the accusations (but not his selfindulgent habits) behind and made an extensive sweep through Western Europe, including a stop at the Olympia, Paris's oldest music hall (where he would stage a comeback, with Vet, thirtyseven summers later). The expatriated Ria Boldway was alerted to Sly's visit and got to experience him in a context very different from the hometown boy she'd hung with; Sly was now an ascending international celebrity.

Ria had moved to Paris in 1968 to study at the American College, learn French, and start a performing career. Attractive, talented, and quickly bilingual, she landed a role in the French-language production of Hair: The Tribal-Rock Love Musical, which had been luring younger audiences to Broadway with its pop-oriented score and episode of onstage nudity. For a long time, Ria kept herself deliberately ignorant of the Family Stone's path to fame and fortune: "I didn't buy any of his stuff." Even now, "I've still never read any books written about him, because I thought it would hurt way too much," she says. But back in Paris, "I remember one day going over to my friend Paul's flat, we were all going to study music for this anthropology course. And Paul said, `I got this new album, let's put it on. And I almost died! It was Dance to the Music.... I thought it was wonderful."

Ria thus came to Sly bearing kudos, but she noted that after she told him about being featured in Hair, there was no complimentary reciprocation. "You know, what really hurt was he never said he was proud of me for being in the most successful play in Paris, which was comparable to being on the New York stage for three and a half years. He just didn't acknowledge it.... The whole [Family Stone] band was invited to come and see our show, we gave them tickets and treated them like royalty. I was given [a variety of roles] to perform that night, specially for my friends. And he didn't come."

The disappointed Ria had to admit to herself how far Sly had wandered along the metaphorical road she'd seen him moving down four years earlier, in the white convertible with Carol Doda. Still, the old flames spent much time together during Sly's week in the City of Light. "He was fairly unreachable, as far as depth of emotion and real contact went," she reports. "He was that way with everybody.... As far as I could tell, he didn't have private conversations with anybody anymore. He didn't hang out with the group, stayed by himself, pretty much a different person." The rest of the Family Stone, in turn, "was looking down in the mouth, the whole band." Nevertheless, despite a now-familiar hour's delay in starting, Sly and the ensemble were able to mount "a damn good show" at the Olympia, with Ria cheering from the audience. "The staging was beautiful, the costuming was excellent," she says. "Very much the whole Hair thing, the whole hippie movement thing. And the vocals were excellent."

Looking back on the after-show activities at Sly's hotel, Ria realizes how naive she was then about the chemical influences on his behavior. "Sly said, `Hey, Ria, can you get me some coke?' And I said, `Man, it's kind of late, but I'll try.' I called up the frigging concierge and was trying for about an hour to