“He’s something else”: the funk album Miles Davis made his band study
In 1972, Sly and the Family Stone were beginning to disintegrate, leaving Sly Stone to largely create on his own.
After years of releasing albums to little-to-no fanfare, 1969’s Stand! saw the band begin to taste success. By that summer, Sly and the Family Stone were one of music’s biggest acts, soundtracking the year with hits like ‘Everyday People’ and ‘Hot Fun in the Summertime’, as well as performing at the Woodstock Festival and the Summer of Soul concerts in Harlem.
The landmark year for the group, however, would take a turn later that year, when Sly Stone told his band that he would be relocating from San Francisco to Los Angeles. To his band, this was a foreshadowing of something unfortunate that was to come.
Drummer Greg Errico described the apprehension to Mojo as, “In LA, away from the people who knew him, he was Sly Stone every day.” Saxophonist Jerry Martini then agreed, explaining, “The whole ‘Family’ thing fell apart after that. LA changed Sly. Though he was still real sharp and still wrote great songs.”
Settled in Los Angeles, living in a home on Bel Air Drive, Stone was grappling with an addiction to substances, which began to stall the creation of the Family Stone’s fifth album. Eventually, 1971’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On came to fruition, a darker album that hears Stone play most of the parts – both instrumental and vocal – himself. Errico left the group and was replaced by Andy Newmark, a massive Family Stone fan himself.
“The band were magic,” Newmark said. “But by the time I got there, it was just Sly by himself. I arrived at the point where he was descending the mountain he’d climbed, into the darkness.”
Isolated and consumed in his own world, as Newmark remembers, Stone was making the next Family Stone record in a fractured environment, with the other band members rarely in the studio, if at all. They toured for the album, which became known as Fresh, released in 1973, from this disconnected space between Stone and the rest of the members. Newmark would leave the band once the tour ended in 1973, but, as he explains, Fresh remained a source of pride.
“Miles Davis loved Fresh,” he remembered. “Sly played him the acetate at his apartment on Central Park West, and Miles took it to his band and made them listen to it. Twice!”
Davis recalled his friendship with Stone in his self-titled autobiography, sharing his admiration for Stone’s musicianship but also the downfalls of his career that he perceived. “When I first heard Sly, I almost wore out those first two or three records, ‘Dance to the Music‘, ‘Stand’, and ‘Everybody is a Star’,” Davis wrote. “I told Ralph Gleason, ‘Listen to this. Man, if you know a promoter, you better get him to get Sly, because he’s something else, man.’”
Davis found inspiration in the Family Stone, which resulted in his 1972 album, On the Corner. While Stone’s unfortunate descent continued and the Family Stone’s dynamic continued to fracture, Fresh remains celebrated as one of the most essential funk albums ever made.
