Sly Stone meets Tiny Tim?

From the "Random Notes" section of Rolling Stone's December 13, 1979, issue (courtesy of a Paul Simon fan site):

Paul Simon recently wrapped up three weeks of filming in Cleveland for his still-untitled $7 million movie about the personal crisis of a fading rock star. Simon and his onscreen band—Richard Tee, Eric Gale, Steve Gadd (all members of the band Stuff) and bassist Tony Levin—had been performing at such local nightspots as the Agora and Fitzpatrick's, and they capped their stay with a free concert at Baldwin Wallace College, where Simon was joined onstage by John Sebastian and Cleveland songwriter Buzzy Linhart for a three-part-harmony rendition of "Bye Bye Love." Then it was off to the Concord Hotel in New York's Catskills, where Simon planned to film performances by the Four Tops, Sly and the Family Stone and a reunited Lovin' Spoonful.

Eclectic casting seems to be the byword—other musicians in the movie are Tiny Tim, Lou Reed and the B-52's. As Simon told Linhart: "The reason I thought up this movie was to be in the dressing room to hear the conversation between Sly Stone and Tiny Tim."

The movie, released on October 3, 1980, as One-Trick Pony, doesn't feature a one-on-one between SS and TT. Instead, there's a brief bit of comic business as Tiny Tim rehearses on his ukulele and ignores the attempts at small talk made by Simon's character, Jonah Levin. (Can't say I blame him—give the man some space, Jonah!) Neither Sly & the Family Stone nor the Four Tops appear in One-Trick Pony, but a later issue of Rolling Stone mentioned that a concert featuring Simon, the Lovin' Spoonful, Tiny Tim, and Sam & Dave took place at the Concord Hotel on December 21, 1979. That's the one we see portions of in the movie, though the fictional setting for it is a "Salute to the '60s" music-industry showcase in Chicago, not the Catskills.

The character of Walter Fox, played by Rip Torn, is rumored to be based on Walter Yetnikoff, who was president of CBS Records when Simon left the label for Warner Bros. Records. Apparently, neither man was fond of the other, although Allen Garfield's boastful radio-exec character comes off far worse than Fox in One-Trick Pony. Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, a 1990 book by Fredric Dannen, briefly mentions the film:

Simon's contract with CBS came up for renewal ... in late 1977. The negotiations were long and protracted and frequently nasty, but in the end Simon and [his financial manager, Michael] Tannen believed they had worked out all the crucial terms of a deal. They were wrong. "Walter thought we reneged on basic terms," Tannen said. "In any case, the deal fell apart. Walter called me at one point in the middle of all this and said, There's no deal for Paul Simon. I remember that very well. He said, Paul does not have a deal."

In February 1978, Tannen got on the phone with Mo Ostin, and within twenty-four hours, he had an agreement in principle to move Simon to Warner Bros. Warner soon found it had acquired not merely a singer-songwriter but also a matinee idol manqué. Paul Simon wrote and starred in a 1980 Warner Bros. movie, One Trick Pony, which bombed. Sales of the soundtrack album were equally disappointing.

"Shake that, shake that booty, let me go"

That last post was a result of me getting sidetracked from my original goal, which was to compare the lyrics of Sly & the Family Stone's 1974 song "Loose Booty" as printed in the liner notes of their recently reissued album Small Talk and in the CD booklet of the album's Japanese import, which I bought at Tower Records in Atlanta back in '96.

I first heard "Loose Booty" in May of '95, and sometime in '96 I discovered that the opening line was "Shadrach Meshach Abednego," possibly that summer when I first heard the Beastie Boys' "Shadrach," which samples "Loose Booty." But according to the lyrics in Small Talk's Japanese liner notes, the opening line is:

Shake that, shake that booty, let me go

Put the booty right up front, Japan! I like the way you think. In general I'm not very good at hearing lyrics correctly the first time, and if they're printed in a CD booklet I forget again and again to look at them when I'm confused about a particular line. And if I see the lyrics to a song I've known since I was a child but the real words don't match up with the ones I've been singing since 1981, see ya later, real lyrics. I've given those fake lyrics a loving home in my brain too long to abandon them now. Here's the first verse of "Loose Booty," Japanese style:

Well, when you're tryin' to flee from any fakin' grin
Tell you what to do, how to bring the money in
Find yourself some rich dude, let it all hang out
Get into some dancing, do what it's all about

Ha ha, hee hee! Oh, you crazy English-to-Japanese-to-English interpreter—those can't be the right words. "Any fakin' grin"? Good one.

But you tried, and that's what matters. C'mere so I can give you a condescending pat on the back. Now let's look at the official lyrics:

When you're tryin' to flee from
Any fakin' grin
Tell you what to do fun
Get in the frame of mind I'm in
Find yourself some room to
Let it all hang out
Get into some dancin'
Do what it's all about

See, Japan? You were way off with your ... wait a second ... "any fakin' grin" is correct. And Sly's "tell you what to do fun" lyric is something I would've laughed at you for passing off as real if you'd used it first. I guess I owe you—

No! Never apologize, Robert. Remember Pearl Harbor. Use that anger. After all, the greatest generation won't be around to use it much longer, so it's up to you—I mean, me—to keep the flame of hate burning for them. (Mental note: Once this post is finished, buy a brand-new Honda Accord and drive it into a tree. That'll show 'em.)

Here's the second verse in the Japanese CD's booklet:

I can be confusin', any given day
If you feel like losin', get on, find the way
Stuff will be amazin', here is all you do
How minutes turn in days in doing what I do

"Stuff will be amazin'"? Stuff is amazing, Japan. The Bible says so, but since you're already unfamiliar with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Jesus's wisecracking uncles, why should I bother to tell you the exact book and chapter where you can find the quote? (Fine, I'll give you a hint—Book of Fallopians, somewhere in the middle.)

Now the original lyrics:

Life can be confusin'
Any given day
And if you feel like losin'
Get on out the way
Results will be amazin'
Here's all you do
Minutes turn to days in
Doin' what I do

I'm losing patience here. Sly, if you don't throw me a bone soon I'm going to write a biopic and pitch it to Cuba Gooding Jr.

Do I have your attention now? His dad was the lead singer of the Main Ingredient around the same time you were at your peak. He could probably fake your stage moves well enough. It's in his blood. So don't think my threat can't become reality. Mr. Daddy Day Camp will play you on the big screen if you cross me.

Here's the final verse from the land of the rising sun:

Now I got to get on, see you in the mind
I want to stay your friend, oh, leave the blue behind
Only till you send me, watch me, all you're free
Feel good to relax it, shake it on like me

Japan, this is Sly Stone you're interpreting. He's a great lyricist. And in his heyday, refrigerator-magnet poetry didn't exist. All you're presenting here is jibber-jabber. Sly, please show these naive islanders how it's done:

Now I got to get on
See you in the mind
Don't want to see you fret on
Leave the blue behind
You owe it to yourself and
Plus and all is free
Feels good to relax and shake it off like me

"Don't want to see you fret on"? "You owe it to yourself and / Plus and all is free"? What the hell does any of that mean?!

I give up. You win, Japan. I mean, you already conquered American culture in the 1980s with your cars and your electronics and your huge corporations like Sony, which bought out CBS Records and subsidiary labels like Epic Records, which of course Sly and the Family Stone used to be on. And now Sony is reissuing Sly's albums with brand-new liner notes and reprinted lyrics and ...

Oh. Muh. Guh.

I've been had.

Will the real Sly Stone lyrics for "Loose Booty" please stand up? Do you even exist? I really am going to have to listen to the song closely for once just to make sure the Small Talk reissue's lyrics are correct. Proofreading isn't high on the list of record labels' priorities these days. Maybe that's because just trying to stay alive in the age of declining CD sales is the top priority.

I have to hand it to you, Japan. It would be an honor to receive a condescending pat on the back from you. Plus I paid full price to see Sony's Spider-Man 3 back in May, and I didn't get my money's worth. Then again, Sony spent something like $400 million just to get that bloated sequel into theaters, and it'll take a long time for them to earn a profit from it.

Let's just call it even, shall we? I need to wrap this up and get down to the nearest Honda dealership.

Sly's back.

"I do regular things a lot," he says. "But it's probably more of a Sly Stone life. It's probably ... it's probably not very normal."

News of Vanity Fair's interview with Sly Stone for its August issue appeared in early July, I think. I meant to write about it at that time and tie it in with what you were originally going to see below, but now that's a separate post. (Confused? I feel for you.) So pretend it's still early July for a second ...

HEY, SLY STONE IS BACK!

Okay, now you say, "Wow, that's big news, Robert!" It sure is! And you heard it here first!

Yes, Sly Stone is back, and not just for an odd Grammy Awards appearance like the one he made last year. The VF article mentions the trainwreckiness of that appearance, which was meant to be a full Sly and the Family Stone reunion in the planning stages but ended up featuring the Family Stone minus one (former bassist Larry Graham called in sick at the last minute) vamping behind current music stars like Maroon 5 and Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas, plus older rockers like Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry.

It was essentially a commercial for Epic/Legacy's Different Strokes by Different Folks, a remix/covers album featuring Will.i.am, Maroon 5, and Tyler, among others, recording their versions of the Family Stone's hits over huge chunks of the original songs. Originally released in Starbucks stores in July 2005—and given one of the angriest reviews I've ever seen on allmusic.com, whose writers generally adopt an encouraging tone of "You'll get 'em next time, slugger!" when they don't like an album—it was rereleased with two bonus tracks on February 7, 2006, the day before Sly's crowded Family reunion at the Grammys. When the new edition of Different Strokes came out, allmusic.com's original angry review was replaced with one by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, one of the site's more evenhanded critics.

There was no way to tell that the Family Stone was onstage at the Grammys that night. There were a few lingering shots of keyboardist Rose Stone, Sly's sister, and brief glimpses of drummer Greg Errico, but that's it. Trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, saxophonist Jerry Martini, and guitarist Freddie Stone weren't given any camera time as far as I could tell, not even when Sly appeared near the end of the tribute sporting a blond Mohawk and huge sunglasses. He mumbled his way through parts of "I Want to Take You Higher" and played a few notes on his synthesizer, but right when it looked like his old confidence was returning, he walked to the front of the stage, pointed the microphone at the audience, sang "baby baby baby," then waved and made his exit. Sly Stone's comeback lasted all of two minutes.

It was definitely him onstage that night, but it was hard not to feel like you were seeing a ghost (or a robot). At that point it'd been about 23 years since Sly had released an album, the underrated but still somewhat dull Ain't But the One Way, and 13 years since he'd last made a notable public appearance, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony honoring Sly and the Family Stone. But Sly didn't perform with the band at the January 12, 1993, ceremony, and according to Martini, he wouldn't even make eye contact with some of them.

Sly was assumed by many to be a recluse the past quarter-century, the Howard Hughes of R&B legends. Others thought he'd finally fried his brain from too many drugs in the '70s and '80s or that he'd died sometime in the '90s. But in Vanity Fair the man otherwise known as Sylvester Stewart gives his first interview in over 20 years and says he's ready to record new songs. (He's already been touring Europe this summer with a new version of the Family Stone. He looks sort of like a turtle these days, but that alternately inspiring and chilling voice of his is still intact, if not quite as powerful as before.) If you're a fan it's easy to say, Why record new songs? Sly's been gone for 25 years, and it's not like the last 6 of his recording career produced a lot of great music.

It's true. I bought 1976's Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back as an import back in college and sold it a year later. Sly bottomed out on that album, but Back on the Right Track (1979) and Ain't But the One Way (1982 ... or '83—I've seen both years listed in various places) each have their moments, including the best Sly and the Family Stone song not penned by Sly, Ain't But the One Way's "Ha Ha, Hee Hee," written by saxophonist Pat Rizzo. Its lyrics can be interpreted as an acknowledgment of Sly's downhill slide and a prediction of his early retirement. With Sly singing Rizzo's words, it's almost as if he's delivering the eulogy at his own funeral. "Ha Ha, Hee Hee" includes this eye-opening verse:

Ha ha, hee hee
Nothing to do
You beat the genius in you
But who cares if you are through
Or do
You'll never miss it

And he didn't seem to miss it, at least not until recently. There were rumors in 1995, the year I became a fan, that he was recording a new album, but nothing surfaced. Like I said, it's easy for fans like myself to cringe at the thought of new songs being written long after the fire is assumed to have died out, but since those last three albums left a lot to be desired, it's not like this is the equivalent of the Beatles holding a press conference in 1979 to announce that they're reuniting to record a better swan song than Abbey Road. I still haven't heard Sly's one official solo album, 1975's High on You, except for the songs "I Get High on You" and "Crossword Puzzle," both of which are strong enough and funky enough to warrant a High on You reissue from Sony/Legacy, which rereleased every Sly and the Family Stone album up through 1974's Small Talk back in the spring. Sony/Legacy's logic is that the original version of the Family Stone broke up after that album, therefore the "classic" period ended at that point. Maybe so, but it wouldn't have hurt to reissue every album Sly made for Epic Records back in the '60s and '70s, including High on You and Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back. I'm sure some eager rock journalist out there would've been happy to write the liner notes for either reissue.

Sly's new songs could turn out to be a waste of time, and he probably won't be able to reunite the original Family Stone in its entirety, but this is Sly Stone we're talking about. He's a towering figure in rock and soul history. And he's still here with us on earth, even if he lives on a different planet altogether in his mind. I'm willing to listen to whatever he ends up recording.

Below is a Sly and the Family Stone medley from ABC's Music Scene, probably from the fall of '69. The band performs parts of "Dance to the Music," "Hot Fun in the Summertime," "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey," and "I Want to Take You Higher." I especially love the reaction of the girl in the audience at the 3:55 mark during "Hot Fun." Sly and the Family Stone's music tends to have that effect on people, even today.