Two Musical Geniuses, Each With Demons

Last week we lost Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, both at 82, both no longer to be plagued by the burden of fame.

If you’re of a certain age you’ve got plenty of fun memories surrounding those two. But you also remember their down years.

Brian Wilson, the leader and songwriter of the Beach Boys, gave us sunny, joyous nuggets out of the beaches of California, including “Fun, Fun, Fun.” Two years after that song, in 1966, he bowled us over — he also stunned the Beatles — with the brilliant album “Pet Sounds.” But then he withdrew into his home, into his room, into his head. He eventually revealed he suffered from schizoaffective disorder, marked by hallucinations and delusions.

For a while he was well enough to join the other Beach Boys on tour. In the summer of 1979 they performed for 40,000 sun-drenched fans at the Yale Bowl. I observed the spectacle from an overhead press box; Wilson, sitting at the organ, was subdued, almost zombie-like. He stiffened when somebody from the celebratory audience threw a frisbee that came close to his head.

Wilson wasn’t giving any interview to the local press. But fortunately for me, then the rock critic for the New Haven Register and its sister paper the Journal-Courier, Sly Stone was happy to talk when he came to the New Haven Agora in December 1982.

On the afternoon before the show he began our session by walking behind the bar, fixing himself a drink and carrying on for what I termed “a somewhat chaotic interview.” Occasionally he would break into song (“Take Me to the Water,” etc.) as his bandmates laughed and sang along. “He was in a good mood, bopping around in his floppy hat,” I reported.

But I had to ask him some tough questions, such as why he had been showing up hours late for his shows, or not showing up at all. He blamed “bad management” but admitted there had been “a little negligence” on his part.

Stone claimed he had changed his ways — but a few hours later he would demonstrate that he hadn’t changed at all.

Stone had been arrested repeatedly in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s on charges of drug use. But when I asked him about this, he said, “I got no problems.” He told me police regularly followed him around to see if they could find something illegal on him, but the charges would be thrown out in court. (However, in Questlove’s excellent new documentary “Sly Lives!” —that title now ironic — Stone freely admitted using angel dust and PCP.)

On that Tuesday afternoon in December 1982 Stone was optimistic about reviving his career. He said he would be releasing a new album by Christmas time, with the song “Give Me One More Hit.” But the album was never released; the band’s most recent studio album, which had come out in September 1982, would be their last. It did not sell well. Stone never got “one more hit.”

When I returned to the Agora that night to see the show, I waited for hours, along with an increasingly restless crowd. Finally, at midnight, the band appeared. Five minutes later, Stone joined them, to rapturous cheers.

After about only a half hour, in the middle of “I Want to Take You Higher,” with the crowd shouting that phrase back at him (just like at Woodstock!), Stone abruptly got up, blew a kiss to the crowd and left the stage. Eventually he returned for a reprise of “Higher,” but left again shortly afterward. The crowd kept yelling, pleading, “Sly!” But they didn’t get him. Instead they got the rest of the band playing “Dance to the Music” without him.

“Sly Lives!” gives some insight into his problems. He confessed he always got nervous before a show and his anxiety often kept him backstage. But one of his bandmates said, “The drugs were the most important thing in his life.” In 1976 Stone said, “I’m trapped.”

The documentary reminds us that Stone was a visionary in many ways, including assembling a multi-racial band when that was a rare thing. But it was a statement. Listen to the lyrics of “Everyday People” — “different strokes for different folks. We got to live together.” For a short, important time, as with the Beach Boys, the music did bring us together.