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for my paycheck ... and he liked the results, the way it sounded." When Sly was late for a recording session or anticipated not showing, he'd phone Tom from his vehicle, on a cumbersome early model pre-cell portable phone. And Sly confided that Tom had been the first white man whom his mother, Alpha, had allowed entrance to her home unescorted by one of her offspring. (Frank Arellano had been afforded that privilege years earlier, but he could claim mixed race). "I think [Alpha] got the sense that I wasn't there to rip her son off, that I was there to try to help," says Tom.

In turn, Tom maintained his diligence in catering to his client's whims and demands. "I remember we were at the Record Plant, and he was doing a guitar part. He got about half of it done, and he said, `You know, I really wanted to use my new guitar. The problem is, it's in L.A. Let's go to L.A. " Tom continues: "We pack up, we go. So I get the song and say, `You wanna start at the top?' He says, `No, no, let's just punch in where we were at.' I say, `It's a different guitar, Sly, it's gonna sound different.' He says, `That's okay, just do it.' So we do it, and it turns out to be a really unique change in the song. The first [guitar] was real clean-sounding, like a jazz guitar, and then the guitar in L.A. sounded more rock 'n' rollish, more distorted.... You gotta take things and work them to your advantage." (Though Sly as a guitarist was associated with the jangly Fender Telecaster, in the period of Riot, and after, he'd taken to using the fatter-sounding Gibson Les Paul in the studio and onstage. He had both these instruments custom decorated with swirling adornments.)

Among Sly's paramours after Riot and during the making of Fresh was Kathy Silva, a lovely Hawaiian-born aspiring actress and model about ten years his junior. She'd romanced him in the company of her older sister, April, and had befriended Maria Boldway during Ria's last stay with Sly. In 1973, Kathy bore Sly a son, Sylvester Bubba Ali Stewart Jr., and the common-law family of three posed for the cover of Small Talk, released the following year.

In that photo, and in the record's concept and execution, it almost seemed as if the high-kicking, high-living rock rioter was ready to come down to earth. Some of Small Talk's material celebrated love and family life: "Mother Beautiful," "This Is Love," and the title tune. Casual studio conversation was audible between and during the pieces. There were classical trappings (solo violinist Sid Page was credited as a Family member) and contributions from old friends, including Rose, Freddie, Jerry, and little sister Vet, as well as more recent helpmates Pat Rizzo, Rustee Allen, and drummer Bill Lordan, who'd replaced both Andy Newmark and (temporarily) Sly's drum machines.

Bill, later to find longtime high-profile work with British bluesrocker Robin Trower, described for the Trower Web site his enlistment into Sly's band in 1973: "I was at Paramount Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, waiting to meet Bobby Womack. Sly walked into the studio with his entire entourage [and] one of the bodyguards, Bubba Banks, who was Sly's sister Rose's husband, came out of the studio and asked if I was a drummer, because he had seen me sitting there with sticks in my hand.... He asked me if I would like to come in and play on some tracks that Sly was working on at the time. I said that I would.... So, I went into the studio with Bubba, where I met Sly, and Sly told me to `Go out behind the drums and put on the headphones and see what you can come up with. There were two songs that night, `Livin' While I'm Livin' and `Say You Will,' which are both on the Small Talk album, which I later recorded with Sly. When the [first] track came to an end, I looked up and saw that in the control room there was all this commotion. So I got up from the drums and went in to see what was up. That's when Sly turned to me and said, `You are in the Family Stone.' I got the job, but I didn't know that I was audition ing for Sly, who did not have a regular, full-time