What was so special about Sly as a musician.

The way he told stories --

The way Sly --

The way Sly told stories in a song or, you know, they lyrics, and he, and he could express and get across to you that you were somebody, and, and you felt that no matter what walk of life you were in, you heard that loud and clear, without knocking, you know the opposite party, but just letting you know that you have control and uh, you don't have to let people keep you down. And just you have to keep that sunshine going though, something positive that you just got to keep, you know, it made people feel like they could really change their own lives. And uh, which we can, we do have the power but sometimes other forces make us believe that we're just not going to get the chance. When he wrote it seemed like he wrote for whoever was going to do the part. If he decided this line was going to go here or this lyric was going to go there, he considered the person that was going to play it or sing it or beat it. And so that it wasn't out of their, uh, capabilities, even if they thought they couldn't do it at first, when they started working with it, they found that, hey, I didn't know he knew I could do that. You know?

The type of things that he wrote for Greg, he wrote things that, um, um, well, when he wrote a song, he considered each person that was going to be a part of that song. Is what I'm saying. He considered their personality, so he wouldn't have you doing something that you might feel awkward or uncomfortable or didn't like doing, and gave you the option to, if you didn't like it let me know and I'll write another one. Because when most writers write a song, they say, well, I wrote this for Whitney Houston or I wrote this for James Brown, and they gave it to somebody else to do. You know what I mean? And it turned out to be a great song and they did it themselves and it was even better then. But he wrote for that person, he didn't just write a song. He, he considered the people that were going to be included, and uh, their personality and what he wanted to get across also. I mean he just, the whole ball of wax like when he comes in here to play he considers the acoustics and the wattage of the amplifiers and the spacing and who's going to stand where and where are the voice backs are going to be so you could hear yourselves. And my, he even had a special mike for me that he chose for me to use when I recorded that he chose something different for Jerry for his horn texture. And for voices. But I don't think he was intentionally doing that, he was just that aware that that was needed, and he was doing that just as a matter of having that knowledge.

I read this great article in Goldmine about there's a common view about how drummers over time…

Well, there were rock drummers, it wasn't that there were wasn't rock drummers. But at the time, at the time when we started the group, let's say in the late, in the middle '60s, middle to late '60s, drums were more or less like, like I had mentioned to you before, like paint on the wall. You know, it was really, it was considered an instrument that needed to be there, but just for rhythmic, or just to keep tempo more or less, just to keep time.

[Explains not to use "as I said before" rule]

Yeah, drums at that time were, were more or less like paint on the wall. Uh, they were considered, um, an instrument of, just, uh, of tempo more than creative suggestions and inspiration. Ahem, I never heard, I mean I've always heard, drums were always so exciting to me when I was a kid. You know, I, I used to listen whenever a band played, whether it be just a guy with a guy with an accordion and a, and a, like at a wedding reception, which was where I bought my first pair of drums when I was 14. It would excited me, and I'd listen to the high-hat and I'd listen to the snare and the bass drum. So I always, I, I had a different inspiration but I had a different picture. And I mean, thank God, I was born at the right time to where I, I had opportunities to, to, uh, to be in a, you know, a vehicle where I could express these feelings I had about rhythm and about music. Because I would hear rhythm and music as one, not separately, not just as keeping time, but I would hear, I would hear colors, I'd see colors to chords and to melodies and to different, you know, lyric expressions. There would be definite pictures I'd get in my mind. So the drums were a way for me of expressing that. And like I said, fortunately, I was with, like, you know, with Sly and the Family Stone I had, it was, you couldn't ask for a better vehicle to experiment and express those, those feelings, you know, rhythmically.

Who were your rhythmic influences?

Early on? Buddy Rich was definitely, he was inspiring because he had longevity, he had, um, he was a, he was a big, his personality was, he was very aggressive, and he was always, he had more or less, he was arrogant, you know. Which kind of fits with the drums. Because you have to be aggressive, you know, in contemporary rock and rhythm and blues, the part required that more, to be a little bit more aggressive, as opposed to like say pre-'60s, like I was talking about in older days where rhythm was more of a time piece rather than an expressive instrument of, of music. So like Buddy Rich, uh, he had longevity, and he had the chops. And for a big band drummer, he played with a lot of feel and a lot of personality. Guys like that. And then, you know, as far as rock goes, I, I used to listen to, I used to practice to records like Little Richard, like "Lucille" and um, Fats Domino, you know, those records, and all the way from that to, you know, who was, I used to listen to, here in San Francisco there was a station, as a matter of fact Sly was a disk jockey on KSOL and they played all the R and B records, the rhythm and blues records, so I used to listen to that. Sometimes on Sundays, we'd listen to, uh, the gospel stations, like early in the morning, you know, and you could catch some rhythms and then it was just wild stuff. It just came across on the radio like nothing else. You know, so I got a lot of inspiration from that.

What about James Brown? Where does he fit in?

James Brown, I used to practice to that stuff too. He fits, you know, I mean, he, his stuff, he would establish a groove. I mean his music was real simple but it was very powerful. And you know, it would cut a swat -- a swath through wherever it landed. You know, he would establish a groove, he'd lay on it and he didn't give it up, you know, until the record ended. From the second it started it was every place that it went musically which it didn't go to a lot of places, but where it did go, it was big and definite and you could hang on to it. So he was, uh, he was, I used to, he was very influential, James Brown.

Okay, "There's A Riot Going On" album where Sly started using a rhythm machine. And uh, the way he used it, he applied it, as opposed to like James Brown using his rhythmic accent would be on the one, definitely. Sly took the rhythm machine, he was writing, and without the group, he had moved to L.A., so without the group being there and whatever else was going on, you know, he'd need rhythm to write. So the rhythm machines had just come out, and they were, you know, in the early days, and there was actually, there was a couple of them, they were pretty simplistic compared to what was available now, but there was a couple of them that had like these, they, they used like, they were Latin rhythms that they had preprogrammed in these things. And they were kind of funky, you know, if you, but, uh, but he would, he would take it, he would turn, like if you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, the one came out, he'd turn it around and he'd start the phrase on the 3 or on the 2, and so it began there and if you listen to it that that's where the 1 was rather than where it was conceived by the programmer, it turned into this obscure, funky thing that was from outer space, it was great. So he would take that, you know, and, and, and lay the track down on the tape and then start writing and establish the one in a different place other than where it was conceived. And it would really make for some -- that's it. You got it.