Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – Sly and The Family Stone (1969)
WIS pays tribute to Sly Stone with the tipping point in his pioneering career, when his funky party sound began to morph into something darker.
The death of the trail-blazing funk and soul musician Sly Stone this week was marked with acres of virtual newsprint and I don’t see why WIS shouldn’t join that party. And partying was what Sly & The Family Stone were famous for. They blended soul, gospel and psychedelic rock with political lyrics, creating a riotous uplifting funky sound that filled dancefloors in the late sixties and defined how dance music would develop in the decades ahead.
Born into a Pentecostal family in 1943, he was singing gospel music with his young siblings in the early 50s. By the middle of the next decade, he was a renowned musician, producer and DJ in San Francisco but it was when he and his brother merged their respective bands in 1966 that things really started happening. Sly and the Stoners met Freddie and the Stone Souls and the familial outcome was Sly and The Family Stone, arguably the first racially integrated, mixed-gender major group in the US. Sly and Freddie’s sister Vet sang backing vocals and their other sister Rose played keyboards and sang with the group from 1968 onwards.
After a bit of false start in 1967, the title track to the band’s second LP Dance To The Music smashed into the top ten in both the US and UK single charts in early 1968. With a funky bass, a rock guitar, a gospel organ and four (count ’em, FOUR) lead singers, it launched psychedelic soul on the world. By the turn of the year, the plea for peace and equality that is Everyday People gave the band their first US No1 single in February 1968. The “different strokes for different folks” message only made No36 in the UK, foretelling that the band’s cultural appeal, and hence commercial success, would lie on the other side of the Atlantic.
The single was followed by the band’s fourth album Stand! considered to be the artistic high point of the band’s career in addition to their most commercially successful. As well as the mid-tempo, one-bass-note pop joy of Everyday People, the album featured the much-covered (and much-sampled!) single b-side Sing A Simple Song – listen to trumpet player Cynthia Robinson roar that intro! The LP also contains the full-on funk party blast of the astounding I Want To Take You Higher. That tune was playlisted back in WIS 20 Oct 23 as I had just seen the Questlove documentary film on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival called Summer of Soul where Sly and the Family Stone ended their headline show with a blistering performance of it. The success of the Stand! LP got the band on the bill at Woodstock in August 1969 and their rapturous 3.30am set was closed with the same tune. Neither are on YouTube so here’s the band looking amazing while performing I Want To Take You Higher live on the Ed Sullivan Show in December 1968. Cynthia Robinson’s trumpet and Gregg Errico’s drumming are immense and Sly and Rose dashing into the startled TV audience and getting the besuited gents to clap along is hilarious.
For The Family Stone, 1969 was the high in so many ways. In 1970, Sly moved away from the family to LA and assembled a dangerous and destabilising entourage, beginning his well-documented slow descent into addiction and paranoia. But, as 1969 drew to a close, the band released what was to be their second US No1 – a double A-side single comprising the soulful, orchestrated Everybody Is A Star and the bass-driven monster that was Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). Bass player Larry Graham had been experimenting with his slap-bass sound during The Family Stone’s recent recordings, but for Thank You he added a percussive effect by plucking his strings. With wah-wah guitars and bursts of wailing brass added to the mix, it gave the recording a unique, slightly unsettling sound. Although the lyrics contain references to previous uplifting songs like Dance To The Music, the overall mood is darker with twitchy lines about guns and the devil. The end of the second verse gives the sense that the raucous celebratory days were ending.
Thank you for the party
But I could never stay
Many things on my mind
Words in the way
I’m not including this pre-recorded performance video of the band playing Thank You on the Dick Cavett Show in 1970 for the audio but simply to marvel at how much Sly looks like Prince, particularly with that giant hat pulled down over one eye. Quite uncanny.
Sly would go on into the 70s as the band fractured around him due to his chaotic lifestyle, recording mostly on his own despite the records being credited to the full band. Although disturbed and disorientating compared to his earlier work, the 1971 album There’s A Riot Going On was still praised by the critics. It produced Sly’s final No1 single in Family Affair which also made the UK top twenty. It’s hard to imagine a bleaker US chart-topper with its claustropobic distorted sound and deeply fatalistic lyric. The only band member singing is his sister Rose on that chilling chorus refrain.
The single was a last muted hurrah before Sly’s career accelerated downwards as his coke addiction worsened. He disappeared from music and when royalty difficulties ensued, much of his later life was lived in poverty. A change in fortunes came with the release of his much-acclaimed memoir last year at the age of 80. Not surprisingly it was titled Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). Interestingly, when announcing his death, his family stated “In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story”.
The musical footnote to this story is that Sly Stone had passed me by in my musical youth. Too young for his sixties work, I only recall the Family Affair hit single on the radio. I often read journalists in the music press lauding him without being inspired to go and explore his work. However, my mates and I were great fans of Magazine, the band founded by Howard Devoto after he walked away from Buzzcocks after their Spiral Scratch debut. Their third LP The Correct Use Of Soap was released in 1980 and side 2 track 2 was this terrific song with strange spelling. Checking the label I saw it was written by one Sly Stone. Aaahhh….. I thought. We were lucky enough to see the reformed Magazine play it live on their 2009 tour in Glasgow.
Last Word
So as we say farewell to one great innovator of American music in the 1960s, another one passes away within a few days. I feel a Brian Wilson piece coming on for next week’s WIS. And then possibly something more up to date – well, maybe only thirty or so years old!
Sly drops into the heap at the WIS Master Playlist below, which is a must for all those long summer barbeques. Go on – educate your neighbours!
AR
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