By Harvey Kubernik Copyright 2025
The Sly and the Family Stone original documentary, SLY LIVES! (Aka The Burden of Black Genius) is now airing on Hulu. It’s directed by Roots’ founder and Oscar-winning filmmaker Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.
Interview subjects include Andre 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rogers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, George Clinton, Dick Cavett, Ruth Copeland and Clive Davis. Other guests are his bandmates in Sly and the Family Stone — Jerry Martini, Greg Errico, Larry Graham and the late Cynthia Robinson — and family members Sylvette Phunne Robinson, Novena Carmel and Sylvester Stewart Jr.
The official description reads as follows: “From Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, the Oscar-Winning Director of Summer of Soul, SLY LIVES! (Aka The Burden of Black Genius) examines the life and legacy of Sly and the Family Stone, the groundbreaking band led by the charismatic and enigmatic Sly Stone. This film captures the rise, reign and subsequent fadeout of one of pop music’s most influential artists, but also shines a light on how Black artists in America navigate the unseen burden that comes with their success.”
I’m also really excited about an upcoming April Record Store Day release the vaunted High Moon Records label will be issuing, Sly and the Family Stone Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967.
Triple Grammy-nominated reissue specialist Alec Palao assembled this album that showcases Sly Stone’s band just prior to their signing to Epic Records in 1967.
Around his late 1964 and 1965 era recording studio endeavors with the Beau Brummels, Bobby Freeman and the Great Society, with vocalist Grace Slick for Autumn Records, Slyvester Stewart had a popular radio shift in the Bay Area. He had gone to radio school and then forged a program format of soul and rock sounds that influenced future hitmakers.
“Sly Stone was the most popular DJ among all my friends when he was on KSOL radio,” Emilio Castillo, bandleader for Tower of Power wrote to me in an email. “He played the best soul music and had a really great radio personality. We loved him!!! He started playing at a nightclub called Frenchy’s in Hayward near me and we would sneak in every weekend because we were underage. They played before and after hours so there were many sets to listen to and they always put on an exciting show. We stood to the side and watched closely in absolute awe!!!”
“The Winchester Cathedral tapes first came to light over two decades ago,” Palao emailed me in February 2025.
“Rich Romanello, the owner of the club and the Family Stone’s erstwhile manager, had made the recordings hoping to capture some lightning in a bottle, as the band’s cathartic after-hours performances had quickly become the talk of the San Francisco Peninsula in early 1967, just a few short weeks after the band was formed. Romanello had essentially forgotten about them until Sly researchers Edwin & Arno Konings contacted him in the early 2000s.
“The reels located, Rich brought them over to my home studio to see if the sound could be resuscitated for a potential release. The recorded performance was dynamic and undeniably exciting, but there was an essential flaw in that the vocals seemed to be absent. Disappointed, we left it at that, but sometime later I went back to the tapes and, using a different machine to transfer them as well as the careful application of audio restoration software, I was able to recover enough of the vocals and create an acceptable presentation.
“Sadly, Rich had passed away in the interim, but he always advocated for a release of this historic material upcoming al, which forms a tangible memento of his stewardship of the band at the very start of their career. The Winchester recordings are a significant discovery in that they showcase a one-of-kind outfit that was already at the peak of its powers, long before it became internationally famous. Even though the set is comprised of contemporaneous soul covers, Sly is fully in command, while the unique arrangements and tighter-than-tight ensemble playing point clearly to the road ahead, and the enduring influence of Sly and The Family Stone’s music (indeed, the recordings are featured extensively within the new Questlove-helmed documentary, SLY LIVES!). The deluxe RSD version will be supplanted by a regular vinyl release, as well as a CD with extra material, in early summer 2025.”
Sly and the Family Stone Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967 houses “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “Skate Now,” “Show Me,” “What Is Soul?,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Pucker Up Buttercup,” “Saint James Infirmary,” and “I Gotta Go Now (Up On The Floor) / Funky Broadway.” The summer 2025 CD and digital release will have the bonus track “Try A Little Tenderness.”
In 1967, Columbia/Epic Records music executive and talent scout David Kapralik, who brought Barbra Streisand to the Columbia label, steered Sly and The Family Stone to Epic Records after seeing them perform at the Winchester Cathedral in Redwood City in Northern California. Clive Davis was then helming the Epic label and became an advocate of Stone’s musical vision.
In my 2007 interview with Clive Davis, he praised the budding musical scene of San Francisco in 1966, and attended the June 16-18th 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival where he signed Big Brother & the Holding Company to the company.
“At Monterey in June 1967, I was really just getting my feet wet. I was in the business side of it for a year. I was working with Andy Williams, the young Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan, and signed Donovan to Epic in 1966. I was observing.
“I was seeing the business change. I was seeing music change, but I was waiting for the A&R staff to lead into these changes that were showing evidence in becoming important in music.
“In June I really came to the Monterey International Pop Festival not knowing what to expect, but seeing a revolution before my eyes. I was very aware that contemporary music was changing.”
Slyvester Stewart emerged from the creative climate of San Francisco.
“I think San Francisco was full of all these people who were talented and who were expressing themselves or their rights or playing music,” explained Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane to me in a 2010 interview.
“I think San Francisco has a lot to do with that. I don’t know if it’s the geomagnetic forces of the earth and the ocean but something went on there. It’s a lot different than the rest of the world.”
“FM radio was one of the many things that showed up and was going on in those days,” added Balin’s bandmate Paul Kantner.
“So many things were going on you didn’t take that kind of notice of them. You just assumed that was going on. All right! And go with it. We didn’t analyze it. We didn’t think to wonder about it. It was just another thing that was going on along with the music, the clothes, the book stores, the poets, the artists, there was a plethora of things and you did not have time basically to take it all in. It existed. It’s part of a whole. In San Francisco we had no restrictions. All we had to do was roll with it. I liken it to white water rafting. There was so much going on you didn’t worry about what was around the next curve. Or what are you going to do on the third curve. ‘Cause you’re right in the river.”
“In 1967 I got a chance to record on an album for the first time,” reminisced Chris Darrow co-founder of The Kaleidoscope, who encountered Sly Stone when he was cutting his group’s debut LP, A Whole New Thing.
“The Kaleidoscope was recording our first album, Side Trips, on the first eight track recording machines in America, and in the same studio that Benny Goodman and many of the greats had recorded before. It was all very new to me and I would sometimes arrive early to hang out at the CBS Studios on Sunset Blvd., and just roam around. Moby Grape recorded in the next studio over, sometimes the Byrds, and Donovan, who I met later, worked there as well. The studio served our label, Epic, of course Columbia and also Okeh Records, the R&B label headed by the great, Larry Williams.
“One day on my searching I ran into an interesting black man in the hallway. He had the look of the ‘cool’ jazz musician of the day. He could have been a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet, with Milt Jackson, John Lewis and Percy Heath, the way he looked. He was friendly, but also dead serious, and carried a slim briefcase. The man said he was a jazz DJ from San Francisco who was obviously also a musician,” continued Darrow.
“We walked into one of the unoccupied recording studios in the building; he sat down at the grand piano, pulled out some lead sheets and started to play. It was then that I took my leave. His name was Sylvester Stewart, ‘Sly Stone.’
“By 1969 Sly and the Family Stone had become a huge act and I was into recording with my new band the Corvettes and rehearsing at the house of our producer, Mike Nesmith. Michael was obviously very successful after the Monkees and he had just made a production deal with Dot Records.
“The house had a number of rooms, a studio, an indoor/outdoor pool, 13 cars in the large drive, a trained guard dog and an electric gate. The house was on the top of the hill off of Mullholand Drive and had a great view. There was always cold Dos XX in the refrigerator by the pool. One day Nesmith announced that the house had once belonged to Sly Stone. Full Circle! ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ is my favorite Sly Stone song.”
In July 1968 I went to The Kaleidoscope venue in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd with my pal Bob Kushner for a show featuring Sly and the Family Stone, Canned Heat and the Sons of Champlin.
In February 2025 Bob telephoned me after hearing about the documentary on Sly.
We might have initially gone to The Kaleidoscope in ’68 to watch Canned Heat, who were terrific, but we were just amazed by the energy and showmanship Sly and his musicians displayed. From the revolving stage they hurled tunes at us like audio swords, including “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and “Are You Ready?”
During 1968 I bumped into Sly and his entourage at the Shrine Exposition Hall in downtown Los Angeles. It might have been a Frank Zappa gig. In a brief exchange with Sly, I cited “Dance to the Music,” which was all over AM radio stations. I pointed out that his horn arrangement was similar to the chart on Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle.”
Stone smiled and replied, “good ears…”
Bobby Womack was a dear friend of mine and a neighbor. I first met him in 1965 as a young teen. Bobby recorded with Sly and occasionally toured with him. Bobby and Ike Turner are the guitarists on 1972’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On.
When Bobby passed away in June 2014, The Hollywood Reporter asked me to write a tribute to him. Some Kind of Wonderful: Remembering Bobby Womack. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com › …
In 2007, Bobby and I talked about Sly Stone. Womack last century forbid me to ever go to Sly’s home in Bel-Air. “Man, if I ever learn you went up there, Black Santa ain’t giving you a present…
“Me and the songwriter Jim Ford became brothers and went to each other’s houses all the time. We did ‘Harry the Hippie,” reminisced Bobby.
“Not just to write but to hang out and eat. I spent a lot of time with Jimmy but that’s when I knew that drugs were a serious bad thing for a serious creative person. Jimmy introduced me to Sly Stone. Another Pisces, like you. I was just going through divorce at the time and Jimmy said we should meet each other. ‘You’re both Pisces and you all gonna relate.’ But he would always say, ‘never go over there without me.’ After a while I couldn’t see myself always calling Jim Ford, ‘I’m goin to Sly’s.’ He may not feel like it that night.
“So, I’d say ‘I’m going over there. It can’t be that bad…’ Believe me, he had a lot of power, but sometimes when it becomes power in a negative sense, I don’t care how talented he was.
“I will never forget one day we were driving and I told him, ‘I gotta make this gig.’ And he said, ‘if you don’t do the gig they will forget about it the next day. And you move on with life.’ And his road manager said, ‘Man, don’t ever walk off a date. That’s what’s gonna get him in trouble. If you promise somebody, you’re gonna be there, be there. And I’ll get them to stop this car right now so you can make your date.’
“Sly was in the hills. But the thing I understood about him was that Sly was one of the sweetest guys in the world but he’s let the negative side of this business turn him into another person that he’s not. I noticed it when he was the biggest thing that came along. Before Earth, Wind & Fire,” Womack summarized.
“My five older half-siblings were born in Casablanca and raised in Marseilles and Kiryat Gat,” emphasized the author and novelist Daniel Weizmann.
“They started to arrive in America around ’67 and, one by one, quickly went the hippie way. More than any other single LP, Sly’s Stand! was a constant on the family turntable.
“Even at 4,5, I connected with the ultra-groovy ‘Sex Machine’ and ‘You Can Make it if You Try’ and the rest — one classic after another. I’ve sometimes wondered why that record in particular spoke to them so deeply. After all, they were North Africans, refugees from the Jewish ghetto, literally from another world. But I think the answer speaks to the nature of Sly’s power.
“Without sacrificing one atom of his Black American identity, Sly just made everybody feel invited. Long before hot button inclusion, Sly just included, in his sound, his ensemble, his message, all of it, and my sibs — dark-skinned and war-torn, expelled from the Arab world and discriminated against and condescended to in the Ashkenazi world — instantly saw a space they could call home. Plus, the record includes ‘Don’t Call Me etc,’ of course — and though my sibs were just starting to learn English, they got the gist: Here in the New World, there was a version of the strain and sorrow they had known back in the Old Country.”
“I just watched the excellent documentary directed by Questlove SLY LIVES!,” marveled Greg Franco, bandleader of Rough Church and Man’s Body.
“My biggest takeaway from the story that unfolds about Sylvester Stewart is that he is a multi- generational guiding light. He brought colorblindness into music. It was a blessing and I’m glad that his music was the inescapable soundtrack of my young life. His genius is real, but also remember that he was brought up in a unique multi-cultural part of America. His parents were devout to the Church of God in Christ, and they encouraged his pursuit of music. His brother Freddie and sister Rose would end up in his musical groups, as did friends, neighbors, whether they be in his family or not, black or not, all were welcome in his band. Sly and the Family Stone were the first interracial and mixed gender band.
“This all happened in Vallejo CA., and this is no accident. This community didn’t actively keep people apart. Sly was born in Denton Texas, where racial mixing was not encouraged. It’s possible that in Texas, the music Sly would have created would not have had this racial collaboration special sauce. We have to thank the genius community in Northern CA. as well for creating the environment of inclusiveness, for Sly to thrive in.
“Being a music lover first and not married to just one genre, Sly as a local DJ would play music such as James Brown or Marvin Gaye, but he also spun The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, showing a wider and progressive play list than most. Most importantly it was appreciated with no difficulty where he lived. The question put forth to various interviewees about if ‘Black Genius’ is a real thing, and if Sly was a Black Genius. It certainly is a real thing, but if I were asked this question, I would say he’s plainly an American genius, created from the best part of us. He comes from the supportive slice of progressive America we used to take for granted.
“He grew up in time where we now oddly we look back and wonder if it was all a dream. I felt very inspired watching SLY LIVES! I am a lifelong musician.
“Sly again, was for most a DJ who had this insatiable curiosity that is necessary to become the music icon he became. He went on to produce not only himself, and other black artists, but non-black artists such as The Beau Brummels and The Great Society, with Grace Slick.
“Sly wouldn’t have been able to conjure up such psychedelic soul masterpieces like ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ and ‘Stand’ without his embrace of a wide palate of modern music. Before the word crossover was a thing, Sly simply made music that defied the separation of the race records era.
“Thank You Sly Stone for being yourself, for being a real musician, a real arranger, writer, and importantly a DJ and music lover without prejudice. I saw the parts of the story about Sly the person too, the husband, the father, with real life problems and I see him going down the dark rabbit hole with many challenges, but I also see that sparkle, that energy and love of his craft. I resonate more with that side of it, because the end result of his work is that it inspires to this day, and produces great art.
“The Woodstock generation promised ‘Everybody Is a Star,’ and I love ‘Everyday People,’ and that is forever inspiring. In this modern age of re-separation of people based on religion, race, immigration status, sexual orientation, and economics, the message is clear, we need less of all of that, and more of what Sly and the Family Stone modeled in their group. Music is not for one color, it is for everyone, we all can claim a part of his American genius and his musical history.”
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015’s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016’s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017’s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll Television Moments) is scheduled for a 2025 publication.
Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.
During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing Martin Scorsese’s documentary on The Band, The Last Waltz).
