With the album,Sly and the Family Stone departed from the optimistic sound of their previous music and explored a darker,more challenging sound featuring edgy funk rhythms,a primitive drum machine,extensive overdubbing,and a dense mix. Conceptually and lyrically,There's a Riot Goin' On embraced apathy,pessimism,and disillusionment with both Stone's fame and 1960s counterculture amid a turbulent political climate in the United States at the turn of the 1970s,influenced by the decline of the civil rights movement and the rise of the Black Power movement. The album's title was originally planned to be Africa Talks to You,but it changed in response to Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On (1971),released six months before Riot.[8]
Having achieved great success with their 1969 album Stand! and performance at Woodstock,Sly &the Family Stone were due to have submitted an album of new recordings to Epic Records by 1970. However,Sly Stone missed several recording deadlines,worrying CBS executive Clive Davis,and a Greatest Hits album was released in an eighteen-month stretch during which the band released no new material,except for the single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". Relationships within the band were deteriorating,with friction between the Stone brothers and bassist Larry Graham.[14]
"Black Panther Convention,Lincoln Memorial" (June 1970). There's a Riot Goin' On was influenced by the burgeoning Black Power movement and a disillusionment with 1960s Hippie culture.
Epic executives requested more product from the band,[17] and the Black Panther Party,with which Stone had become associated,was demanding he make his music more militant and reflective of the black power movement,that he replace drummer Greg Errico and saxophonist Jerry Martini with black instrumentalists,and replace manager David Kapralik.[17][18] After moving to Los Angeles,California in late 1969 Stone and his bandmates began to use cocaine and PCP heavily rather than recording music. During this time Sly &the Family Stone released only one single,"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" / "Everybody Is a Star",issued in December 1969.[19] Although "Star" was a positive song in the vein of their previous hit "Everyday People" (1968),"Thank You" featured a darker political theme.[20]
By 1970,Stone had become erratic and moody,missing nearly a third of the band's concert dates.[21][22] He hired streetwise friends Hamp "Bubba" Banks and J.B. Brown as his personal managers,and they enlisted gangsters Edward "Eddie Chin" Elliott and Mafioso J.R. Valtrano as his bodyguards. Stone assigned these individuals to handle his business dealings,find drugs and protect him from those he considered enemies,among them his own bandmates and staff.[23] A rift developed between Sly and the rest of the band,which led to drummer Gregg Errico's departure in early 1971.[24] Speculation arose as to the release of new studio material. In a December 24,1970 article for Rolling Stone magazine,journalist Jon Landau wrote:
The man from Epic tells me that Sly hasn't recorded much lately. His last album of new material was released well over a year ago and even 'Thank You', his last single, is old by now. Greatest Hits was released only as a last resort in order to get something salable into the record stores. It was a necessary release and stands as the final record of the first chapter in Sly & the Family Stone's career. Whatever the reasons for his recording abstinence, I hope it ends soon so that he can get back to making new music and we can get back to listening to it.[25]
Stone's intention of a darker, more conceptual work was influenced by drug use and the events that writer Miles Marshall Lewis called "the death of the Sixties"; political assassinations, police brutality, the decline of the civil rights movement and social disillusionment.[26] According to The Austin Chronicle, "slowed down, [Sly's] quest for post-stardom identity mirrored black America's quest for post-Sixties purpose."[27]
Recording and production
Sly Stone mostly worked on There's a Riot Goin' On alone in a studio that he had built for himself at The Plant Studios, also known as The Record Plant, in Sausalito, California, or at his home studio in the loft of his Bel Air mansion. He would often lie down in the bed and record his vocals with a wireless microphone system.[28] According to the other Family Stone members, most of the album was performed by him alone, overdubbing and sometimes using a drum machine to lay down beats,[28] namely the Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2, which featured preset rhythms.[29] Stone felt that the rhythm box made unrealistic sounds if used as designed, so he resorted to overdubbing the drum sounds manually,[28] contributing to the dense mix.[29]
Other band members contributed by overdubbing alone with Sly instead of playing together as before. For "Family Affair" and some other tracks Stone enlisted several other musicians including Billy Preston, Ike Turner, and Bobby Womack instead of his bandmates, and several female vocalists mostly omitted from the final mix. The album's muddy, gritty sound was due in part to this overdubbing and erasing and mixing techniques nearly drowned out undubbed sounds. Miles Marshall Lewis stated, "Never before on a Sly and the Family Stone album were songs open to so much interpretation, and even more so, dripping with cynicism. On the other hand you can hardly hear what he's saying for most of the album. Like Radiohead's Kid A (2000) or even the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. (1972) more recent to the time, a murkiness in the mix of the record inhibits complete comprehension of the words."[28]
In the fall of 1971 Stone delivered the final mixes to the CBS Records offices, relieving the worried Davis.[30]CBS issued "Family Affair" as the first single, the band's first in nearly two years.[30] A somber, electric piano-based record sung by Sly (in a low, relaxed tone) and sister Rose Stone, it became their fourth and final number-one pop hit.[31] It is one of the earliest hit recordings to use a drum machine – a slightly earlier Sly Stone production, Little Sister's "Somebody's Watching You", was also among the first.[28]
The album departs from the optimistic psychedelic soul sound of the group's 1960s records, instead embracing a darker sound featuring filtered drum-machine tracks.[32][33] Songs such as "Luv 'n Haight", "Thank You for Talking to Me Africa", and "Spaced Cowboy" are characterized by edgier, unrelenting grooves with rhythmic sounds resembling murmuring noises.[34] Conceptually, Riot embraces apathy as a source for deriving rhythmic and emotional energy, departing from the more welcoming sentiments of songs like "Dance to the Music" (1968).[3] As The New York Times writer Jon Pareles explains, it was "about turning away from the post-1960s turbulence of the Nixon presidency and withdrawing into music as a hazy refuge", exemplified in the opening track "Luv n' Haight" and its declaration of "Feel so good inside myself, don't want to move".[35]
"Luv n' Haight" is satirically titled as a reference to the Haight-Ashbury scene, while the music and lyrics express disillusionment with the 1960s counterculture.[36][37]BBC Music's Stevie Chick cites the track, with its "desperate call-and-response set to fiercely combative lick", as an example of Riot's "dark" and "troubled" funk.[34] "Africa Talks to You" is a nine-minute funk jam written in response to the backlash Sly Stone received from estranged fans and friends, record industry associates, and the media.[38] According to biographer Eddie Santiago, the lyrics cynically portray "fame and its cold retrogression into perceived insanity", with a chorus that reflects "Sly's feelings on being cut down in his prime like a tree in the forest."[38]
The album's title track is silent and listed as zero minutes and zero seconds long. For many years it was speculated that this cryptic track listing and the title of the album referred to a July 27, 1970, riot in Chicago for which Sly & the Family Stone had been blamed. The band was to play a free show in Grant Park but the crowd became restless before the band began and started rioting. Over a hundred people were injured, including several police officers, and the reason given to the press was that the band was late and/or refused to perform.[39] The original LP jacket featured a photo collage with a picture of the band-shell in Grant Park overlaid with a photo of a police car. However, in 1997 Sly Stone said that the "There's a Riot Goin' On" track had no running time simply because "I felt there should be no riots."[40]
The closing track "Thank You for Talking to Me Africa" is a slow reworking of Sly and the Family Stone's 1969 "Thank You" single. The result is described by AllMusic's Matthew Greenwald as a blues- and gospel-influenced examination of urban tension and the end of the 1960s. He goes on to say it is "perhaps the most frightening recording from the dawn of the 1970s, capturing all of the drama, ennui, and hedonism of the decade to come with almost a clairvoyant feel."[41]
Artwork
The original cover art for Riot featured a red, white, and black American flag with nine-point suns in place of five-point stars. No other text or titles appear on the cover, although Epic executives added a "Featuring the Hit Single 'Family Affair'" sticker to the LP for commercial viability and identification purposes. Family Stone A&R director Steve Paley took the photograph.[8] Three of the custom flags were created: one for Sly, one for Epic Records, and one for Paley.[42]
In an interview with Jonathan Dakss, Stone explained the album cover's concept, stating "I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood. I wanted suns instead of stars because stars to me imply searching, like you search for your star. And there are already too many stars in this world. But the sun, that's something that is always there, looking right at you. Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better."[28]
There's a Riot Goin' On was met with a divided response from professional critics and general listeners, who found its production and lyrical content particularly challenging. Reviewing in November 1971 for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Hilburn disapproved of the Family Stone's stylistic change from "soulflavored" songs such as "Everyday People" and "Hot Fun in the Summertime", while saying that "there is little on the album that is worth your attention".[52] Fellow critic Greil Marcus called the record "Muzak with its finger on the trigger."[12] Others were more overt in their praise. Rolling Stone reviewer Vince Aletti wrote that, "At first I hated it for its weakness and its lack of energy and I still dislike these qualities. But then I began to respect the album's honesty".[53] Aletti cited it as "one of the most important fucking albums this year" and "the new urban music... not about dancing to the music, in the streets. It's about disintegration, getting fucked up, nodding, maybe dying. There are flashes of euphoria, ironic laughter, even some bright stretches but mostly it's just junkie death, oddly unoppressive and almost attractive in its effortlessness".[53] A columnist for Hit Parader magazine gave Riot a favorable review, and stated that the album has "a lot that makes Sly the in-person rave that he is."[54] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau concluded that "what's expressed is the bitterest ghetto pessimism", backed by "subtle production techniques and jarring song compositions", while declaring Riot to be "one of those rare albums whose whole actually does exceed the sum of its parts".[55]
There's a Riot Goin' On was included on several music publications' "End of the Year" lists and critics' polls,[citation needed] including The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop albums list at number seven.[56] The album achieved commercial success with two hit singles and reaching number-one on the Billboard Pop Albums and Soul Albums chart.[9] It later came to be viewed by critics as one of the greatest and most influential albums.[citation needed] Christgau wrote in 2007 that the "temptations and contradictions" of commercial stardom consumed Sly Stone and resulted in "the prophetic 1971" album, "its taped-over murk presaging Exile on Main St., its drum-machine beats throwing knuckleballs at [Miles Davis] and [James Brown], it was darker than the Velvet Underground and Nico and funkier than shit, yet somehow it produced two smash hits, including the stark, deep 'Family Affair'."[48]AllMusic described the album as "funk at its deepest and most impenetrable," stating that "what makes Riot so remarkable is that it's hard not to get drawn in with him, as you're seduced by the narcotic grooves, seductive vocals slurs, leering electric pianos, and crawling guitars."[43] Zeth Lundy of PopMatters deemed it "a challenging listen, at times rambling, incoherent, dissonant, and just plain uncomfortable" with "some episodic moments of pop greatness to be found". Lundy went on to discuss its radical departure from the band's past music:
[It] sank their previously burgeoning idealism at a time when social disillusionment was all the rage. Sly had found something else to take him higher and, as a result, Riot is a record very much informed by drugs, paranoia, and a sort of halfhearted malcontent ... listening to it isn't exactly a pleasurable experience. It's significant in the annals of pop and soul because it is blunt and unflinching, because it reflects personal and cultural crises in a manner unbecoming for pop records at the time. Riot can be classified as avant-soul only after being recognized as a soul nightmare—the 'nightmare', so to speak, being a reflection of an unfortunate and uncompromised reality, not a glossed-over pop-music approximation of reality.[3]
There's a Riot Goin' On has been considered one of the first instances of the funk music later popularized by George Clinton and Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, and similar acts. The album, as well as the follow-ups Fresh and Small Talk, are considered among the first and best examples of the matured version of funk music, after prototypical instances of the sound in Sly & the Family Stone's 1960s work.[57]Riot's sound also helped inspire Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock to crossover to jazz-funk.[58] It was called "a masterpiece of darkly psychedelic funk" by AllMusic contributor Steve Huey,[1] and "a phenomenal, dirty, psychedelic funk album" by Drowned in Sound journalist Jon Falcone, who said it soundtracked the political and social turbulence that opened the 1970s.[2] Paul Grimstad from Brooklyn Rail regarded it as a "frigid yet weirdly intimate" avant-pop record.[4]
In 1994 There's a Riot Going On was ranked number 14 in Colin Larkin's Top 50 Soul Albums. Larkin described the album as "unlike anything heard before in black music".[59] A 2003 article for Rolling Stone commented; "Sly and the Family Stone created a musical utopia: an interracial group of men and women who blended funk, rock and positive vibes... Sly Stone ultimately discovered that his utopia had a ghetto, and he brilliantly tore the whole thing down on There's a Riot Goin' On, which does not refute the joy of his earlier music."[60] In addition to being featured near the top of several major publications' "best album" lists, Riot was also ranked at number 99 on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revised list,[61] one of four Sly & the Family Stone entries to be included on the list; it is the second highest of the band's entries, preceded by Greatest Hits (#60), and followed by Stand! (#118) and Fresh (#186).[12] In the 2020 updated list, the album was raised to number 82 and became the highest ranked of the three Sly & The Family Stone entries, ahead of Stand! (#119) & Greatest Hits (#343).[13]Pitchfork named it the fourth best album of the 1970s.[62]
Riot's songs have been extensively covered and sampled. Artists who have covered or reworked its songs include Iggy Pop, John Legend, Lalah Hathaway, Ultramagnetic MC's, De La Soul, Beastie Boys and Gwen Guthrie.[63] Dave Rosen of Ink Blot magazine said that the album sounds unique, ironically in view of its vast influence; "Sly employed the unconventional (and possibly entirely original) technique of mixing live drums with what was at the time a primitive drum machine ... The introspective, yet political lyrics, the hard and dirty funk grooves, the inspirational, yet depressing songs—all of these elements would come to influence not only peers like Marvin Gaye and James Brown, but two generations of rappers and funkateers who paid homage to Sly's vision by making his samples and beats an essential backbone of their own innovations. Sly's Riot is still goin' on."[64] In a book on the album for the 33⅓ series, Miles Marshall Lewis described it as "one of the most powerful and haunting albums to inspire the hip hop movement"[65] and in Rolling Stone, Micheangelo Matos called this music a "Rosetta stone of dark funk and proto-hip-hop blues".[66] The singer Bilal names it among his 25 favorite albums, appreciating the drum machine sounds in particular.[67]
Track listing
All tracks written, produced and arranged by Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart for Stone Flower Productions.
Larry Graham Jr. is an American bassist and baritone singer, both with the psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone and as the founder and frontman of Graham Central Station. In 1980, he released the single "One in a Million You", which reached the top ten on the US Billboard Hot 100. He is credited with the invention of the slapping technique on the electric bass guitar, which radically expanded the tonal palette of the bass, although he himself refers to the technique as "thumpin' and pluckin'".
Maggot Brain is the third studio album by the American funk rock band Funkadelic, released by Westbound Records in July 1971. It was produced by bandleader George Clinton and recorded at United Sound Systems in Detroit during late 1970 and early 1971. The album was the final LP recorded by the original Funkadelic lineup; after its release, founding members Tawl Ross (guitar), Billy Nelson (bass), and Tiki Fulwood (drums) left the band for various reasons.
Funkadelic is the debut album by the American funk rock band Funkadelic, released in 1970 on Westbound Records.
Sly and the Family Stone was an American band originating from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, they were pivotal in the development of funk, soul, R&B, rock, and psychedelic music. Their core line-up was led by singer-songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, and included Stone's brother and singer/guitarist Freddie Stone, sister and singer/keyboardist Rose Stone, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, drummer Greg Errico, saxophonist Jerry Martini, and bassist Larry Graham. The band was the first major American rock group to have a racially integrated, mixed-gender lineup.
Sylvester Stewart, better known by his stage name Sly Stone, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the development of funk with his pioneering fusion of soul, rock, psychedelia and gospel in the 1960s and 1970s. AllMusic stated that "James Brown may have invented funk, but Sly Stone perfected it," and credited him with "creating a series of euphoric yet politically charged records that proved a massive influence on artists of all musical and cultural backgrounds." Crawdaddy! has called him "the founder of progressive soul".
What's Going On is the eleventh studio album by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. It was released on May 21, 1971, by the Motown Records subsidiary label Tamla. Recorded between 1970 and 1971 in sessions at Hitsville U.S.A., Golden World, and United Sound Studios in Detroit, and at The Sound Factory in West Hollywood, California, it was Gaye's first album to credit him as producer and to credit Motown's in-house session musicians, known as the Funk Brothers.
Head Hunters is the twelfth studio album by American pianist, keyboardist and composer Herbie Hancock, released October 26, 1973, on Columbia Records. Recording sessions for the album took place in the evening at Wally Heider Studios and Different Fur Trading Co. in San Francisco, California. The album was a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Hancock, crossing over to funk and rock audiences and bringing jazz-funk fusion to mainstream attention, peaking at number 13 on the Billboard 200. Hancock is featured with woodwind player Bennie Maupin from his previous sextet and new collaborators – bassist Paul Jackson, percussionist Bill Summers and drummer Harvey Mason. The latter group of collaborators, which would go on to be known as The Headhunters, also played on Hancock's subsequent studio album Thrust (1974). All of the musicians play multiple instruments on the album.
"Everyday People" is a 1968 song composed by Sly Stone and first recorded by his band, Sly and the Family Stone. It was the first single by the band to go to number one on the Soul singles chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. It held that position on the Hot 100 for four weeks, from February 9 to March 8, 1969, and is remembered as one of the most popular songs of the 1960s. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song of 1969.
Stand! is the fourth album by soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone, released in April 1969. Written and produced by lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone, Stand! is considered an artistic high-point of the band's career. Released by Epic Records, just before the group's celebrated performance at the Woodstock festival, it became the band's most commercially successful album to date. It includes several well-known songs, among them hit singles, such as "Sing a Simple Song", "I Want to Take You Higher", "Stand!", and "Everyday People". The album was reissued in 1990 on compact disc and vinyl, and again in 2007 as a remastered numbered edition digipack CD with bonus tracks and, in the UK, as only a CD with bonus tracks.
Greatest Hits is a compilation album by the American group Sly and the Family Stone. It was first released on November 21, 1970, by Epic Records. The album includes all of the singles from the albums Dance to the Music (1968), Life (1968), and Stand! (1969).
Greg Errico is an American musician and record producer, best known as the drummer for the popular and influential psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone.
Dance to the Music is the second studio album by funk/soul band Sly and the Family Stone, released in 1968 on Epic/CBS Records. It contains the Top Ten hit single of the same name, which was influential in the formation and popularization of the musical subgenre of psychedelic soul and helped lay the groundwork for the development of funk music.
Fresh is the sixth album by American funk band Sly and the Family Stone, released by Epic/CBS Records in June 1973. Written and produced by Sly Stone over two years, Fresh has been described as a lighter and more accessible take on the dense, drum machine-driven sound of its landmark 1971 predecessor There's a Riot Goin' On. It was the band's final album to reach the US Top 10, entering the Billboard Album Chart on June 30, and their last of three consecutive number-one albums on the R&B chart. In 2003, the album was ranked number 186 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
"Dance to the Music" is a 1967 hit single by soul/funk/rock band Sly and the Family Stone for the Epic/CBS Records label. It was the first single by the band to reach the Billboard Pop Singles Top 10, peaking at #8 and the first to popularize the band's sound, which would be emulated throughout the black music industry and dubbed "psychedelic soul". It was later ranked #223 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is a 1969 song recorded by Sly and the Family Stone. The song, released as a double A-side single with "Everybody Is a Star", reached number one on the soul single charts for five weeks, and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1970. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 19 song of 1970.
"Stand!" is a 1969 song by the soul/rock/funk band Sly and the Family Stone Issued as a single that year by Epic Records, it reached number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 14 on the Hot Soul Songs charts.
"I Want to Take You Higher" is a song by the soul/rock/funk band Sly and the Family Stone, the B-side to their Top 30 hit "Stand!". Unlike most of the other tracks on the Stand! album, "I Want to Take You Higher" is not a message song; instead, it is simply dedicated to music and the feeling one gets from music. Like nearly all of Sly & the Family Stone's songs, Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart was credited as the sole songwriter.
"Hot Fun in the Summertime" is a 1969 song recorded by Sly and the Family Stone. The single was released just prior to the band's high-profile performance at Woodstock, which greatly expanded their fanbase. The song peaked at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart, kept out of the number 1 spot by "I Can't Get Next to You" by The Temptations. "Hot Fun in the Summertime" also peaked at number 3 on the U.S. Billboard soul singles chart in autumn 1969. It is ranked as the seventh biggest U.S. hit of 1969, and the 65th in Canada.
Funk rock is a fusion genre that mixes elements of funk and rock. James Brown and others declared that Little Richard and his mid-1950s road band, the Upsetters, were the first to put the funk in the rock and roll beat, with a biographer stating that their music "spark[ed] the musical transition from fifties rock and roll to sixties funk".
The Rill Thing is Little Richard's first album for Reprise Records, released in August 1970. It was considered a comeback album for Richard, following a three-year hiatus on new albums and an acclaimed performance at Atlantic City Pop Festival. The album utilizes a soul-influenced sound and contains Little Richard's biggest post-Specialty single in "Freedom Blues", which broke the Billboard top 50. The follow-up single, "Greenwood, Mississippi" made the top 100 and number 56 on Cashbox Black Singles. Despite the success of the singles, the album failed to chart.
↑ Rabaka, Reiland (2013). The Hip Hop Movement From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation. Lexington. p.249. ISBN9780739181171.
Kaliss, Jeff (2008). I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone. New York, New York: Hal Leonard/Backbeat Books. ISBN978-0-87930-934-3.
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