Sly Stone NEVER Cancels!

Sly Stone NEVER Cancels!

Insert this section between pages 12 and 37.

DETROIT — Sly was due in for a concert November 15th and the word was out that he was gonna show. Not an unusual word, to be sure, save in the case of one Sylvester Stewart. But Sly and The Family Stone, notoriously late and no-show, are always in doubt up to the moment their dynamic presence is felt ... on the stage.

Come to an hour before show time and Gabe Glantz and Bob Bageris, the Eastown conglomerate and promoters of this one (though it’s at the fifteen thousand seat Cobo Arena, not the Eastown) haven’t heard a word from either Sly or the Family Stone. The band was supposed to arrive at the airport (they thought) that evening and when it didn’t . . . Well, at seven with the show due to begin at eight, they called it off.

No riots here, no visible reaction of any kind. A few kids sit outside the box office and chant “Higher”, the media present goes across the street to the plush Pontchartrain Hotel to a Ruth Copeland press party (a bust — you had to have i.d. to drink but Eddie Holland was there). About 9:30, the time Sly would’ve gone on if, Miss Copeland enters, saying that Sly is across the street and is he pissed off.

The next morning, two press conferences are held. We go to the second, the one we were invited to, and David Kerpalick, Sly’s manager seems overjoyed to see the CREEMers. After all, in a roomful of straight media how will we get any writin’ done?

Gabe Glantz is there and . . . well, it might be well-advised to run down who Gabe is and what he represents to the Motor City rock community. Glantz owns just about any decent place in town to see rock and roll, beginning in the neo-beatnik days with the Village, down around the CREEM offices on Alexandrine, ran the Grande Ballroom behind Russ Gibb’s front for years, then moved with Russ into the Riviera across the street. Later, they merged with Aaron Russo and Bob Bageris with the Eastown. The Eastown was kept, Russo and Gibb bought out (by Bageris probably) and so we have the present unlikely coalition.

A few other schemes — Glantz owns a club called the See (or what would have been called the See) which John Sinclair and the Trans-Love wanted to run as an alternative to the Grande sort of, back in late ’67. Unfortunately, when it looked like a threat to the big-time Grande offerings, the lease was pulled out from under them. Same thing happened early this year when dapper Dan Carlisle tried to reinstitute the old Grande. It just chopped too much bread off the Eastown, see?

Anyway, Bageris is his partner now and halfway through things Bob showed up. Sly was fifteen minutes late and Kerpalick ran down a whole thing about how the rock press never gave Sly enough credit for being a true originator of the ’Frisco rock scene (he DID do the Beau Brummels, et. al. for the Autumn label in 1966 or thereabouts). He suggests we rap more with Sly. We’re ready, Charlie and Ric trigger-fingered and me with pen in hand ready to scribble down pertinent witticisms from the Great Man.,

Kerpalick also said that “Sly has never cancelled a date. I have cancelled some dates for various, important reasons but Sly has never not shown for a concert. He’s been late but ...”

That Wasn’t the case on November 15th, though. The band had driven up, not flown, from Illinois, communications links were missed and unfortunately the show got called off. Sly enters at 1:15, saying “I just came in here to have fun and if I don’t we’ll all be depriving ourselves.” We try and talk to him then. But he decfdes to lace into a sour-faced newsman to his right, running down his usual “Everyday People” line. A tad of naivete, perhaps, but he may be communicating, who knows?

“Sly arrived at 9:15, ready to go on as previously arranged,” Kerpalick says at long last. Kerpalick is dwarfed by Sly’s stature, his moderately hip businessman’s plumage overshadowed by the sartorial outrage that Mr. Sylvester Stewart perpetuates to all these straight, half-bored newspaper people. “The program was cancelled because the promoter decided to cancel it,” Sly says, continuing his confrontation with the sour faced journalist all the while. “A breakdown in communications,” Gabe calls it.

Bageris meanwhile is sitting next to me in a chair, in apparent good spirits. The concert will go on Friday night, instead of being a total wipe-out. Well, I ask Sly, is there any truth to the rumor that you are, uh, well that you have problems showing up on time because of drugs?

“No, man, people attribute anything that is not of the norm to drugs. You know that and I know that. I just like to sleep late. But I’m getting better.” It is true that this is Sly’s fourth cancellation in Detroit in the last year.

A tad of conversation about the new record —“Our Cops Wear Guns” is to be the name of one of the tunes. What does that have to do with? “It’s nice to say one thing,” he says, oh-so-carefully, “that is the truth that means many things to eighty zillion people.”

“All we’re doing is telling the truth to the best of our knowledge at the time. For example, if all of us in this room were to be harassed by something unnecessary, that would be on my mind.” And you know, he really means it. There’s a certain amount of annoyance that that kind of attitude, that kind of carriage (particularly in a man as self-assuredly black as Sly) must inspire in those less free from conventional cares. I know, it does in me. But all in all, he is a kind of post-revolutionary person. Not that he has overcome a certain sort of decadence but that’s the price you sometimes pay for being thoroughly liberated.

“I was ready last night. I bought a new organ to be ready. If it don’t come off the way I want it that’s my fault. But I’m gonna try. In Chicago, we couldn’t get within six blocks of the place. That’s the truth. We were 45 minutes early. The mayor issued a statement that said we were on time.”

“Please don’t write anything bad,” Sly said in the middle of the press conference. “That wouldn’t be right. I’m not trying to be sarcastic and that’s kind of hard to take sometimes.” It is indeed but then again, no one can take anything away from Sly Stone as a performer for what he does offstage. Not in the end. And, as always, if that many people love the dude so much that they’ll put up with lateness, if that many people love his music that much, then the guy is doin’ somethin’ proper. And that, I expect, is enough, to know that you are doing something about things, that you ARE communicating something. If it is naivete, then the only thing to do is hope that the message matures with the times. And if not, it’s more our fault, essentially, than it is Sly Stone’s.

(Ed. Note: Sly did indeed show up for the next concert (maybe he really doesn’t miss ’em without notice) and, as could be expected, the show was excellent. And, of course, Sly once again mesmerized the audience with his onstage riff; one way or the other the dude is an immensely powerful performer. One would only hope that incidents like the above don’t ruin his career, from internal OR external considerations.)