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a few minutes south of Vallejo) got their wailing rocker of a protest song, "Fortunate Son," onto the charts in the autumn of 1969. Other successful antiwar tunes included John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance," in'69, Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun," and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "Ohio," both in '70. From the sector of soul and R & B, there were Edwin Starr's "War" and the Temptations' "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)," also in '70, and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" the next year. Sly & the Family Stone sang even less about war than they did about racism, though their apparent promotion of life and self-realization allowed them to keep company with artists making clearer statements of resistance.

Allusions to drugs, marijuana in particular, can be discovered in the lyrics of some of the songs on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced, and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Drugs aren't specifically referenced in any of Sly & the Family Stone's lyrics, although they certainly figured in the band's creative process long before the making of Riot, and over-indulgence in harder drugs affected the production of that and later albums.

"We were a pot-smoking, wine-drinking band until cocaine was introduced," Jerry Martini pointed out to Joel Selvin. This change of habits was not to be taken lightly. Marijuana, relatively inexpensive and available, might be said to have furthered some of the ideals promoted in Sly's earlier lyrics, including the relaxation of differences, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of social and personal love. For Sly's and the Baby Boomers generation, powders and pills generally came along later and at a greater cost, literally and figuratively.

Cocaine and amphetamines could also function as a means toward the end of sustaining high energy and production. None of this, of course, could guarantee a great musical experience. The celebrity and money, which peaked for the Family Stone after Woodstock, meant that the band members could attract sources of cocaine and afford to maintain serial highs, as well as to obtain prescription drugs. Jerry told Joel that the band at one point had in tow a physician who "was really impressed with the music business [and] felt that Sly needed ... psychosedatives.... You wake up, take Placidyl, which [Sly] got from his doctor. Then, you snort enough cocaine until you can talk straight. It was like this up-anddown roller coaster." There were reports that at some point, Sly may have had cocaine prescribed for relief from an ulcer. Stephani Owens told Joel Selvin how, during her early days of service as a personal assistant to Sly, he'd shared some pharmaceutical cocaine with her. "As it turns out, he was getting his drugs from the dentist," she said. "Then I found out there was a doctor in New York that would give him and anybody in the group prescription drugs, yellow jackets [downers], etcetera."

Sly seemed to be finding it difficult to get off the roller coaster in time to make it to his bookings, nearby and on tour. "He used to cancel, which also used to piss me off," Jerry related for Joel. "He would have six months of fantastic bookings, then, at the last minute, he would cancel them. He was incapable of going on the road, as he had for the last twenty years. Incapable of functioning as a traveling musician, doing what he could do so well." "He was never on time," said Stephani in Mojo magazine. "It was always an effort to get the band to the gig and get them onstage on time.... It was mostly Freddie and Sly because even when the rest of the group would catch a commercial flight and do what they were supposed to do, with Freddie and Sly, I would be trying to find a private plane for them to go on." Sly gave his own explanation later to Vanity Fair about his perennial tardiness for gigs, suggesting that promoters and roadies encouraged this behavior so that they could profit from it: "I got tired of going to concerts where I'd have to pay a bond, pay money in case I didn't show up," he admitted.