The tragic life and times of Sly Stone’s pets
At one point recently, Sly Stone, one of the most pivotal musicians in the development of modern music, a virtuoso who had cracked the fine art of ‘cool’ and coupled it with a unique culture-blending vision, was living in a van. He liked the van. He had grown to loath the cloistering ways of a fixed address. However, the notion that this was a considered and rationalised lifestyle choice soon diminishes when you hear that he also had a dead baboon in there with him.
He had owned the baboon since the mid-1970s. He doesn’t recall exactly where he got him from, but he imagines “the baboon store?” At one point, this ferocious primate had the run of his Los Angeles mansion, swinging off chandeliers and getting out of its gaud on the copious cocaine and PCP that he left scattered about the place. In its own domesticated way, it was free.
However, its favourite pastime was indicative of its troubled disposition: it would torture Stone’s other pets. His bulldog was a fierce target, but this addled baboon didn’t much care; like its owner, courting danger was now a strange way to keep himself sane, the sobering rushes of adrenaline cut through the haze of drugs.
Unlike his owner, however, who spent his time steadfastly avoiding obligations and passing out in various places, the baboon would yank the poor dog’s tail endlessly and then scamper to safety when the deranged mutt snapped. The primate would cower out of reach of the chunk hound’s gnashing teeth atop the rock star’s fence.
This would all begin again once the bulldog turned its back, a vicious cycle of cat and mouse, like an episode of Tom & Jerry, if only those lovable characters were also capable of disembowelling drug dealers. Much like the pronouncement of his masterpiece, there really was a riot goin’ on around Sly’s place. However, despite his wayward existence, there was still an artist with a peaceful intent beneath Stone’s ever-maddening exterior.
So, after hours of watching this cycle of canine humiliation, he decided it was about time his baboon was taught a lesson. Stone smeared the escape fence with copious grease. The next time that the primate yanked the dog’s tail and made its familiar escape, it slid to the floor in a state of terror and confusion. However, the bulldog too had been morphed by the peculiar ways of its own lifestyle, and rather than maul its adversary, according to Larry Graham, who was there to witness this madness, “that dog turned the monkey over and fucked it.”
Following the incident, the baboon never slapped the dog again. The monkey survived the attack and lived to see more placid days.
However, it will have died at some point in the intervening years—all monkeys do. So, it’s unclear whether Sly Stone slimmed his life’s possessions down to what could fit in a van and thought a dead baboon was a treasure he couldn’t part with, or the beast had somehow outlived the typical life expectancy of around 25 years despite its terribly unhealthy lifestyle, and simply lay deceased in his camper, awaiting a burial. All the while, its owner still claims, “I never lived a life I didn’t want to live.”
