I Want to Take You Higher_ The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone - Jeff Kaliss [69]
SLY MAY HAVE LONG AGO left the regular religious practice of his childhood, but it's not clear that religion ever totally left him. Rustee Allen recounted to Joel Selvin how Sly had once told him, "I've done so many shitty things, God's not gonna take me in now." But several of Sly's siblings have been ready to take him back to the faith.
The Evangelist Temple of the Church of God in Christ rests on a sunny corner of a large thoroughfare paralleling Route 80 on the western edge of Vallejo, not far from where K. C. and Alpha Stewart raised their tuneful offspring a half-century ago. The secondborn son, Frederick J. Stewart, aka Freddie Stone, came into the new millennium as pastor of the temple, and his youngest and closest-living sister, Vaetta, aka Vet Stone, is a regular congregant. At her house, among the newer, tonier developments on the northeast corner of Vallejo, Vet explores what she sees as the uniformly positive effects of growing up in a Christian household. "My siblings are Christians, and as a Christian you can't harbor anger and hate, confusion and things, and remain a Christian," she testifies. "We were raised so that if there were a difference, we would go to each other and resolve it. We kept communication open, and that's still going on, let me make that very clear."
Vet also points out that she hears many of her brother Sly's lyrics as congruent with the family faith. "As a matter of fact, the lyrics to `Everyday People,' they're being sung, as we sit here, on BET [Black Entertainment Television] and many gospel stations. They sing the identical lyrics Sly wrote. And I'm sure when Sly wrote that, he wasn't thinking that the gospel stations were gonna pick it up. But I could be sitting here on Sunday, looking at Bobby Jones Gospel [on BET], and here comes this group, very young, singing `Everyday People," and I think, `Is this fantastic or what?"' Vet herself had come to the Family Stone to do background vocals, forty years ago, directly from singing with the Ephesians Church of God in Christ, in Berkeley. Her family faith also deserves credit, Vet believes, for maintaining her eldest brother through his times of trouble, regardless of his responsibility for bringing the trouble on himself and whether or not he himself acknowledged divine intervention on his behalf. "I believe that God has had His hand on my brother's life through his whole life, as well as He has it now," she says. "I believe that my brother's life has been completely protected, and through the prayers of my mom and dad, God honored that. And I know that my mom and dad prayed for Sly, so for that reason I don't believe there's anything I could have done [for Sly] better than God." What she did do, of course, is to facilitate Sly's return to Northern California. Her mother, Alpha, would have been happy to know that although Sly is not a frequenter of his brother's church, as Vet is and she herself was, he's now at least within a short drive of what might remind him of how musical and joyful communal worship can be.
THE EVANGELIST TEMPLE is a joyful place for the curious to visit, as this writer did at Vet's invitation, on a sunny Sunday morning in the fall of 2006. The man credited by his peers as an enduring icon to aspiring lead guitarists now looks the part of a church elder, balding and wearing glasses, but his preparation for his church's weekly celebration is uniquely evocative of his former lifestyle. He straps an electric guitar over the robes of his office, and is fitted with a headset by his daughter, joy, a lovely reflection of her mother, Melody, who sits attentively in her pew. On the wall behind Freddie (officially Pastor Frederick J. Stewart) are posted the four sections of the service-Prayer, Praise, Worship, and Power-and