Remembering Sly Stone and Brian Wilson: Similarities and Connections

Well, it’s been a week. Two musical geniuses of the 60s are no longer with us. Both died at the age of 82, two days apart. At this point, nothing is surprising. Sad, yes, but not surprising. As a millennial, I feel lucky to have existed on the planet at the same time as these legends, but it’s still sad when they go because that’s it, it’s an end of an era. Sly Stone had COPD and other health issues. Brian Wilson had dementia, a condition that basically means you go through two deaths, like you go through a living death where you’re not yourself and then you die. I remember watching the end of The Beach Boys documentary on Disney+ and Brian did not look well. When you’re at that age, you can be fine one second and gone the next. You might remember that last year I wrote a blog post about the weird similarities between Brian Wilson and Ray Davies. Well, as a tribute to Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, I’ll write about their similarities.

Both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were the founders of sibling groups

That’s right Sly and the Family Stone and The Beach Boys were sibling groups. Aren’t a lot of the greatest rock bands sibling groups? Sly Stone formed Sly and the Family Stone in 1966 with his brother Freddie and sister Rose. The lineup of the band weren’t just multi-gender, it was also multi-racial and they were a pioneering group in that way along with many other ways. They had horns before groups like Blood, Sweat & Tears. Chicago, and Tower of Power. Cynthia Robinson was the trumpet player and Questlove called her the original hypeman. Saxophone player Jerry Martini and drummer Greg Errico were white. Rounding out the classic lineup was bassist Larry Graham. After the group’s split, members of the group went on to do other big things: Freddie and Rose Stone recorded solo albums for Motown and Greg Errico toured with jazz fusion group Weather Report and David Bowie. Larry Graham formed funk band Graham Central Station and some former Sly and the Family Stone bandmates played on their albums. As for Sly Stone, he recorded some solo albums before reforming Sly and the Family Stone with new members, but by the 80s he was struggling to stay relevant in a music scene that had changed a lot since the 60s, when he was famous. By the 2000s he had financial problems and was homeless at one point.

The Beach Boys as we all know were made up of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson along with their close friend Al Jardine and the Wilson brothers’ cousin Mike Love. Other members of the group include David Marks, Bruce Johnston, Ricky Fataar, and Blondie Chaplin.

Both Sly and the Family Stone and The Beach Boys were pioneers in genres

Sly and the Family Stone were the founders of psychedelic soul, basically like the black American version of prog rock. Just like prog rock, there’s excellent musicianship and lots of jazz influences and all these jams and solos and weird time signatures, really pushing the boundaries of music.

The Beach Boys weren’t the first surf rock group, but they’re the most recognisable name in surf rock. They were the creators of the California Myth. While that’s what pop culture associates them with, fans love the psychedelic, experimental Pet Sounds era the most. This was when The Beach Boys went from playing similar sounding songs about girls, cars, and the beach to singing songs with deeper themes and even more layered production and with a more psychedelic, experimental sound. Pet Sounds is considered a proto-prog record with its song cycle. They truly held their own during the British Invasion, which makes them legendary. Competition was tough in the 60s because there was so much good music coming from everywhere. While the American mainstream record buying public didn’t appreciate Pet Sounds, the British certainly did and The Beatles were famous fans of that album. It’s an album that gets better with each listen and I swear every time I listen to it I hear something new. It is one of the most perfect albums ever and life isn’t complete without listening to it in its entirety.

Both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson were troubled geniuses

A lot of musicians had hardships, I mean isn’t that a common trope in VH1’s Behind the Music? Drug addictions and personal problems are something a lot of rock stars struggle with. And both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson had a lot of challenges in life, but it didn’t take away from their genius.

Sly Stone was a musical prodigy while he was still in primary school, playing keyboard well at the age of 7 and being able to play every rock band instrument by the age of 11. It’s hard enough mastering one instrument, now imagine four! When he was in secondary school, he was in an integrated doo-wop group called The Viscaynes. The lineup were made up of two white women, two white men, Sly Stone, and his Filipino friend Frank Arellano. They were the only integrated doo-wop band. Later, he worked as a DJ playing Beatles and Rolling Stones songs on the radio; he really liked them. He had personal issues with Larry Graham and that beef between them would lead to the demise of the group. By 1969 he started using heavy drugs like cocaine and PCP. Still, they were releasing great singles like “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)”. “Family Affair” was a big hit in 1971. By this point, his behaviour had become erratic and venues didn’t want to book Sly and the Family Stone because of how unreliable they’d become. Band members weren’t showing up sometimes. A lot of shows were cancelled, and that disappointed fans. In 1983, Sly Stone was arrested for possession of cocaine and in the 90s, his landlord accused him of trashing the mansion he was renting. In the 2000s, he made some appearances at music festivals like San Jose Summerfest, Montreux Jazz Festival, and North Sea Jazz Festival, but he was not punctual and would end his sets early. By 2009, he was homeless and living out of a van in California.

Brian Wilson’s childhood was difficult, with his father Murry being abusive towards him and his brothers. Murry was just one of a few villains in the Beach Boys lore, the other two being Mike Love, Charles Manson, and Eugene Landy. Brian Wilson in a way was like original Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett. The Beach Boys were releasing albums since the early 60s, with their debut pre-dating The Beatles’ debut by a few months. Dennis and Carl were still teenagers in the early years of the band. Fame is tough and Brian struggled with it. Right around Christmas 1964, he suffered a nervous breakdown while on a flight from LA to Houston. Soon after, he stepped back from touring and worked behind the scenes writing and producing Beach Boys songs. The studio and production is really his bag. He could do it all, sing, play, and produce, and he did it all while deaf in one ear. Many people think Murry’s abuse contributed to Brian’s hearing loss. In the mid 60s, Brian Wilson started smoking weed and tripping on LSD and while he created some genius music while under the influence, his mental health and stability was not so good. Eventually, he’d spend a lot more time sleeping and laying in bed and not really leaving the house much. He was using heavier drugs and binge eating, ballooning to 300 pounds. In the late 60s, he ceded control to the rest of the group and contributed less. In 1973, after Murry’s death, he had become even more reclusive and his behaviour even more erratic. In the mid 70s, his family staged an intervention and hired the quack Eugene Landy and put him under a conservatorship basically. Landy was a total leech and would take his money and control his whole life, especially in the 80s. In 1976, there was a whole “Brian’s Back” marketing campaign and he started playing with the Beach Boys again and Landy was let go, but just as he was getting better, he fell back into his old habits. Landy came back in the early 80s, but ties were finally cut in 1991 after a legal battle.

Both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson had encounters with Charles Manson

In my book Crime of the Century: Classic Rock & True Crime I go into a lot of detail about the Beach Boys and Charles Manson connection. It was mainly Dennis who was spending time with Manson, but Manson did record at the Beach Boys’ home studio. Dennis vowed in the 70s to never talk about his time with Manson ever again. There are many more classic rock connections to the Manson Family (not just Manson himself) and I talk all about it in my book. While doing research, I thought I had left no stone unturned, but you learn something new every day and while talking to my dad yesterday, he mentioned that Sly Stone might have had a connection to Manson, and I was shocked and looked into it and lo and behold, there is one, albeit not the strongest one.

In a KCRW interview, Sly Stone talked about how he had known Terry Melcher and his mother Doris Day and how he’d go over to Day’s house. If you know the Charles Manson story, you’ll know that he was introduced to producer Terry Melcher, who turned down his work. Manson took it personally and targeted the house that Melcher used to live in on 10050 Cielo Drive, and Sharon Tate happened to live there with Roman Polanski (he was in Europe at the time of the Tate Murders). Anyway, Sly Stone said that he’d hang out with Terry Melcher and they’d go to each other’s houses and sometimes when he was at Melcher’s house Charles Manson would be there. Sly Stone said he had no idea who the guy was until later on.

In recent years, documentaries were released about their lives

As I mentioned earlier, there was a documentary about the Beach Boys released in 2024. Personally, I preferred the film Love and Mercy and I think the documentary was a bit more for a normie fan rather than a die hard fan or rock and roll historian, but that’s Disney for you!

I haven’t seen the Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) documentary released earlier this year because I’ve been busy with my full time job and we cancelled Disney+ to save money, but I’ll give it a watch sometime. It was produced by Questlove and received generally favourable reviews.

In conclusion

One of the things I love most about studying music and telling the stories of famous people of the past is finding all these connections and similarities. It really gets to the heart of my diversity messaging and reinforces the message that while we may have a lot of differences, people are people at the end of the day and we’re a lot more alike than we think. Music truly unites and inspires and gives so much colour to life. There are so many more connections and similarities than you’d think and I love sharing them with you. I’m fascinated with these patterns and putting them in historical context.

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