Sly & Bri

First off, I get it.

Drugs, recording studio, beds. Name three nicer things.

OK. Free drugs, good recording studios, large and comfortable beds. If I could slip through one to another while using all three? It would be the life.

That's how the children of boomers learn about these guys, the wrong way. One never left his room and was a genius, the other never left his room and was late for shows.

There's the uneasy distance, already. People fought for Brian Wilson. NBA players were involved, punching other people, punching other family members, for giving Brian drugs. But Sly Stone stayed in the cabin.

Sly and the Family Stone's line of hits were just as ubiquitous in the late 1960s as Beach Boys classics were in the early 1960s but I never had to go out of my way to hear the Beach Boys, only Sly.

Whole documentaries were made about Brian Wilson for me digest, Sly I had to learn about from little snippets inside the segregated bits of info they'd give me during the "Funk! What an Embarrassment" episodes in the History of Rock and Roll Series.

In their day, Sly and the Family Stone were a pop group. Sly was on Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, Que Sera Sera. By the time I came around, they were R&B, soul, proto-funk, and radio couldn't possibly play their songs alongside the Who and Stones.

In their day, the Beach Boys attracted the "wrong element." By the end of Reagan's decade, they had a No. 1 hit and a hilarious ABC docudrama to their burnished credit.

I haven't watched any recent Beach Boys documentaries because I can't stand the sight of their drummer, made angelic in death via record collecting dudes my age who couldn't get over Uncle Jesse.

Dennis Wilson was the guy who shacked up druggily with an underaged blood relative just before he died during a day spent making everyone around him miserable.

The guy who routinely resupplied Brian with heroin and coke, the guy whom the late Stan Love beat the crap out of on behalf of anyone with good taste:

Meanwhile, Larry Graham is out there literally wearing the white cowboy hat.

I love the Beach Boys. Oxygen enriches my blood, so I've cried to 'Surf's Up.'

The music is titanic, there is much to get into, far more dynamic records than the ones Sly and the Family Stone released. "Dynamic" because the Beach Boys industry stuck around, completing discs (barely), and the music was bound to reflect the times, those 1970s.

Sly's music, the minimal output after 1975, reflected his times, those 1970s. The Beach Boys' records often reflected their contractual obligations.

After Sly Stone died I read many nice posts. I also read ex-bloggers whining on social media about how Sly was late to 2000s-era Sly Stone show and they regretted, this is not a joke, not being across town watching Bon Iver perform a concert on time.

When Brian Wilson died I saw so many re-posts of Brian Wilson's effusive love of 'Norbit' that Bsky turned into Facebook for a while there, everyone ready to share the Shortnin' Bread screenshot. A big white sports blog, currently devoid of NBA thoughts on its front page in the middle of the NBA Finals, just asked me to subscribe to their site via email on the charms of a Brian Wilson column. They did not write about Sly Stone's death.

Doesn't really make me want to wax my surfboard. Oil up my Theramin. Al up my Jardine.

Saw Wilson once, at the Park West in Chicago in 2005. Terrific band, Wilson was into it because the sound was on point, eschewing his in-ear monitors. As with most of his appearances over the last few decades, Wilson did not need to be there. The songs did the work.

Sly needed to be there, that's why people were upset. He was a DJ first, his shift-specific presence was required on microphone long before he was asked to sing into it two shows a night. The growl, the pleas, his random Telecaster stings, his right hand on the organ. I said, riiiiiii

He didn't want to do that, two shows a night, same as Brian. He wanted to be in a studio, introduce the world to drum machines, snort drugs.

When Brian was explained to us in the 1980s and 1990s, Wilson was made out to be some sort of acid casualty, not the guy competing with all four howling members of Black Sabbath combined for Most Cocaine Consumed, 1974.

Sly?

"He did coke."

Did anyone try to hel-

"Also crack."

I love Brian Wilson, I love anyone who can make me cry. He introduced the rest of the world to the idea that California had suburbs, regular streets that aren't Dead Man's Curve. He was an honorary Midwesterner long before he moved here: Brian Wilson respected seasons.

Sly was cool with 72 and sunny and left the fuck alone. We celebrated demure actresses for this, crabby genius directors and oafish literary giants. Do I think Robert Evans had a problem? You bet. Do I fault him for his largesse? Not for one second.

The two recently departed are the sound of Everything Which Came Next, a break in the road created by radio programmers and middle-aged 1980s boomers who forgot that the Animals and Four Tops and Beatles and Otis used to play back-to-back-to-back-to-back on their family car's single speaker. Some of us like Ohio Players, some of them like indie rock, some like both, it makes sense, every band has one member with bangs.

Why these continue to act as disparate elements competing for our time disappoints me. These are two Americans. Sly Stone was as old-timey and as corny and as helpless and as abused as Brian Wilson. Yet Wilson is given space to land, Stone was expected to put on rings and sing.

THERE'S A BREAK IN THE ROAD

Thanks for reading!