As you might expect, I didn’t grow up with much soul and funk music on the music centre, beyond what was on the radio. Maybe it was being a kid under the decidedly unfunky polluted yellow skies of Teesside, but it never even came into my cultural orbit really.
For some reason, it was largely regarded as girls’ music. Which was as sexist as it is ridiculous and came from the same cultural stereotype which dictates that boys can’t dance. I mean, I can’t, but I’m enthusiastic.
Boys who liked funk and soul were mistrusted and called ‘smoothies’ . They wore 3 button, high waistband ‘Oxford bags’ pants and platform shoes instead of our ubiquitous beat-up jeans, baseball and desert boots. And they had segs in their shoes, so you could hear them coming up behind to jump you. We were probably just envious of their success with girls, who would prefer listening to their Barry White records rather than our ELP and Sabbath. But we were gauche kids and just thought this was the way of the world.
That said, some funk and soul music did break through our wall of bludgeon riffola. One was Shaft with its great Skip Pitts wah wah, and another was Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone. Both hinted at a world which was, as yet, undiscovered by us, a world beyond 15-minute keyboard solos and guitar feedback.
But it was Sly who showed me this new land, which led onto a love for Funkadelic, Parliament, Graham Central Station and others. It was the way they were a psychedelic group, but blended it with funk’s irresistible rhythms and melodies.The far out psyche was my way in. Remember, liking chart music was severely frowned on by my cultural milieu, so you had to have an ‘’excuse’, their faroutedness gave us that excuse - mad isn’t it?
I think we also responded to his freakout at Woodstock. Wanna take you higher!!. Man, he was out there. Joan Baez he wasn’t. So as these cultural tides broke over our heavy and prog rock defences, the first record I got in the genre was their excellent 1973 Fresh album, then the Greatest Hits. A remarkable thing struck me when I was 16 about these records. They gave me something to play when girls came around to ‘listen to records’ It broke up all the Van der Graff Generator and Tangerine Dream noise. And that was important at 16. Stupid really, but to me girls were from a different planet and couldn’t be expected to like the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I don’t know why I thought that, received stereotyping I suppose, I was only two years away from learning this was far from the case.
Like many, I lost touch with Sly. Even in 1977 we were listening to his music that was 5 or 10 years old. He disappeared off my cultural radar apart from hearing the singles on the radio. I suppose I didn’t realise the profound influence he had subsequently on many, perhaps especially Prince.
The blending of rock and soul was profound and I have all the records from 1967’s A Whole New Thing to 1974’s Small Talk Now all that silly rockist mentality has evaporated, I can see how unique they were in the musical landscape of the time. His problems were well documented but he still made 82 but he was probably at his best from 1968 - 1973. It just shows how far a little bit of genius will spread. I shall be forever grateful for what his records opened me up to both culturally and musically to all those years ago.
Sly showed me this new land...
