Hearing Sly and the Family Stone’s Stand! With five and a half decades of hindsight, it reaffirms why the man born Sylvester Stewart had such an influence over other estimable artists of the time. Jimi Hendrix (Band of Gypsys), Miles Davis (Jack Johnson), and Herbie Hancock (Headhunters) all paid deserved tribute to the man, directly or indirectly, in some of their most notable work of the Seventies.
Having soaked up plenty of pop-oriented savvy as a disc jockey in San Francisco, the bandleader for the Family Stone then combined his natural discerning instincts with lessons learned by producing other people’s records on the Autumn Records label. This experience subsequently allowed him to ignite a communal camaraderie with his band right in step with the late Sixties times: the racial integration of the seven-member group reflected their eclectic fusion of musical styles.
The colorful cover images on the front and back covers of Stand! further mirrored that range of influences (from psychedelic to funk to gospel) and the energetic musical progression therein. Comprised of (just) eight tracks, four of the LP’s cuts were released as singles, and they are, not surprisingly, the album’s highlights. Appropriately, the title song commences the proceedings, its sing-song verses rising above mere platitudes by dint of their infectious nature amplified by a heavily rhythmic outro.
“I Want to Take You Higher” is more of the same, the rounds of different lead vocals including the voice of Stone himself as well as siblings Freddie and Rose plus bassist Larry Graham (innovator of the slap technique on his instrument and future founder of Graham Central Station). Bouncing up and down on the galloping beat brings the ensemble to just this side of frenzy by the end of the track: it’s little surprise drummer Greg Errico went on to play for the beat-oriented fusion pioneers Weather Report.
Based on its stop-and-go syncopation and multiple horn breaks, “Sing A Simple Song” is as dramatic as anything here, including “Everyday People.” The latter might otherwise be the definition of predictable if it weren’t for the catchy changes interwoven in the most dense arrangement on Stand!; the expression of togetherness in Sly’s shout of ‘We got to live together!’ fittingly rises above it all.
Thanks in part to his own production, Sly and the Family Stone maintains as equitable a balance of voices and instruments as the frontman does with the words and music in his original material. A practical demonstration of the equality which he and his band professed would seem to be at odds with “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey,” except this very second cut here lays out mirror images of community punctuated by persistent horns.
Political aspects (s) of Sly’s music, such as those, were hardly lost on his contemporaries, even if most of the lyrics to that latter cut were almost unintelligible and sung through a vocoder. And while “You Can Make It If You Try” seems far more of an outmoded idea now than over a half-century ago, the aspirational nature of the sentiment remains worthy of some contemplation (this in marked contrast to the self-indulgent and redundant exhibition of The Family Stone’s individual and collective talents during the thirteen-minutes that is “Sex Machine”).
The creative and commercial success of Stand! positioned Sly and the Family Stone to proudly present itself as an illustration of a thriving community (even if only briefly). At the same time, the long-player also constituted an accurate studio summary of the Sly and Family concerts by encompassing all the high-spirited elements the ensemble would bring to the stage in its best performances.
The timely release of a standalone single, “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” nurtured the celebratory sense of audience/performer bond. Preserved for posterity on film from their appearance at Woodstock in 1969, this pinnacle of recognition only rendered more precipitous Sly’s subsequent fall from grace.
It was a downslide foreshadowed by the cancellation of an in-progress album intended to succeed Stand!. Originally conceived to include the aforementioned single plus “Everybody Is A Star” and “”Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”–the LP was never completed, and the three tracks were instead included on the band’s 1970 Greatest Hits compilation.
Late arrivals and abbreviated performances at concerts in coming months eventually plagued Sly’s reputation (with more sordid activity follow). Such flagrant erraticism was in stark contrast to the well-oiled road ensemble captured on the four-CD archive package of 2015 Live At The Fillmore East: October 4th & 5th 1968.
Even so, the 1971 release of There’s A Riot Goin’ On was a shock. The tight funk of the record generated a cloistered, foreboding atmosphere interrupted only by the decidedly more relaxed and inclusive “Family Affair.” Fortunately, Sly balanced it two years later with the much brighter counterpart Fresh, so applying some astute hindsight via that record–as well as the four-cd anthology Higher of 2013–and the milestone of Stand places in proper perspective the entire sequence of events that led to the rise and fall of a musician who still remains an icon of contemporary music.
Years of erratic behavior in the wake of his breakthrough with the group have not tarnished his legacy. After all, Sly and the company’s popularity did not occur in a vacuum, i.e., an overnight sensation, but as a logical and natural extension of focused artistic ambition. Whether or not the autumn 2023 publication of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) was intended as such, the man’s autobiography worked as an anticipatory commemoration of the anniversary of this watershed recording.
Meanwhile, the extra content in a 2007 expanded CD reissue of Stand! works as an ideal companion piece to the book. In addition to five more tracks of music, the juxtaposition of a wider array of photos plus British journalist Barney Hoskyns’ erudite prose reemphasizes how emphatic the call-to-action its title was intended to be.
