The hit songs written in Sly Stone’s “secret room”
These days, Sly Stone lives a secretive life that sharply contrasts the excessive, drug-fuelled years that defined his time in Sly and the Family Stone. He was one of the most innovative musicians of the ’60s and ’70s, assembling the first significant band to feature men and women of different races.
By blending genres from gospel and soul to psychedelia and funk, Sly and the Family Stone became one of the most influential bands of their generation. However, by the ’80s, Stone’s substance abuse became too much, and the band fell apart. By 2011, you could find Stone living in a van, parked on the streets of low-income neighbourhoods in Los Angeles, making music on his laptop.
He told the New York Post, “I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.” Stone’s life couldn’t resemble his ’70s heydey less – a time when he was an incredibly well-respected musician. In fact, Stone had a ‘secret’ room within the Record Plant recording studio known as The Pit during the height of his career.
The Pit was uniquely decorated. For example, you had to crawl through a giant pair of red lips to reach a bunk bed. The studio was set up so that musicians could record in the bed or write while lounging about in a relaxed atmosphere.
Many iconic tracks were written or recorded here, most notably Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’. According to Stevie Nicks (via Yahoo Entertainment), she was given access to the ‘secret’ studio while the rest of the band were recording demos in the main studio.
“I was kind of wandering around the studio, looking for somewhere where I could curl up with my Fender Rhodes and my lyrics and a little cassette tape recorder.” After a random worker gave her access to the room, she wrote ‘Dreams’ in 20 minutes. “It’s a big studio with a sunken circular shape, actually like a lighthouse, like a circle, and there’s keyboards all around, a bunch of keyboards that went down this tunnel kind of thing. And then over to the side was this big half-moon circular bed with all black and red velvet.” She added, “I thought, ‘Thank you, Sly Stone and the spirits of Sly Stone and all of your band.'”
Besides ‘Dreams’, the room was also – of course – responsible for some of Stone’s recordings. Most notably, There’s A Riot Goin’ On, Sly and the Family Stone’s fifth album, released in 1971, was created in The Pit. Stone worked on most of the album alone in his secret room, and the result was one of the band’s most popular records, although it divided critics at the time.
Additionally, Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones recorded some tracks in The Pit, which he put on his second studio album, Stone Alone. During his time in the secret studio, he played with some classic musicians such as Van Morrison and Joe Walsh.
It seems as though Stone’s hidden room proved a creative haven for those lucky enough to use it. However, according to Nicks, it was kept a close-guarded secret.
