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Friday Funk #11 – ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ by Sly & The Family Stone
Friday Funk #11 – ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ by Sly & The Family Stone
Friday Funk #11 – ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ by Sly & The Family Stone
Sly Stone turns 81 years old today. Happy birthday to one of the fathers of funk!
‘If You Want Me To Stay’ is funk in a form nobody but Sly & The Family Stone were capable of creating: simultaneously laid back and danceable, unpredictable and groovy, catchy and understated.
Sly wrote in his memoir that the song “was straightforward in some ways. If you want me to stay, tell me. Otherwise, I’m gone. But people couldn’t decide how wide a lens to view it through. Was it a love song? Was I singing it to my audience?” Sly stopped short of answering these questions.
Larry Graham, famed for inventing the popping and slapping technique on electric bass, had departed by Fresh (1973). The album’s liner notes credit Rustee Allen with playing bass, but from Dance To The Music (’68) onwards, Sly was playing “most everything on all my records.” Allen himself has said, “I would play something and he might enhance it. ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ was like that.”
Although the bass doesn’t have the upfront tone of Graham’s classic part for ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’ or Bootsy Collins’s wah fest on the Mothership, it is similarly the lead instrument in ‘If You Want Me To Stay’. The bass leads the chord changes, both dovetailing with Sly’s vocal melodies and informing his next line.
The song’s brevity would seem almost cruel if it didn’t contain such magic. Every note is played with such precision, each instrument sounding relaxed but purposeful. The arrangement’s timings are perfect: organ chords interject to carry momentum, and the trumpet alternates sustained notes with punchiness similar to the staccato bass.
At 2:20, when Sly sings, “I’ll be so good, oh, I wish I could / Get the message over to you now,” there’s a couple of bars without piano or organ before they enter again, relieving the tension built by Sly’s insistent singing. The organ chord in the right speaker is something you can imagine floating away on, and the closing 30 seconds of the song have the lightness of Sunday morning dreaming.
Sly’s vocals are unpredictable and constantly engaging. He bites some syllables and drawls others. The non-lexicable sounds add as much as the words. The singing, twinkles of piano, and cries of organ, together with that brilliant bassline, seem to have taken you through an album’s worth of moments by the time the fadeout starts before 3 minutes.
George Clinton wrote in his memoir about producing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover of the song: “you’re going to be able to sing by the time you finish learning that shit. It was an education for me, too: I would have never tried to sing that song until I tried to analyse it for [Anthony Kiedis].”
Clinton said of Fresh and its predecessor, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, “That was his peak to me - those two records. And Woodstock. It was like: ‘Okay, he's the one I'll be listening to for the rest of my life.’”
‘If You Want Me to Stay’ on TV
In 1974, Sly performed the song on The Mike Douglas Show. If it wasn’t for the studio backdrop, you could be forgiven for thinking Sly was in his living room. He’s almost comically relaxed, making singing and performing look as easy as sitting back in an armchair. Sly directs the band, “Faster, faster,” and grins widely as they match his tempo. “Yeah, alright. Uh-huh.” He bends the rhythm of lines to his will and plays with his pitch. At 1:40, he chuckles midway through the line, “I wish I could get this message over to you now,” and then seamlessly glides down from a high-pitched cry. With the band still playing, he gets up and walks off camera, looking as though he hasn’t a care in the world. This was a master at work, a master at ease.
Sly Stone turns 81 years old today. Happy birthday to one of the fathers of funk!
‘If You Want Me To Stay’ is funk in a form nobody but Sly & The Family Stone were capable of creating: simultaneously laid back and danceable, unpredictable and groovy, catchy and understated.
Sly wrote in his memoir that the song “was straightforward in some ways. If you want me to stay, tell me. Otherwise, I’m gone. But people couldn’t decide how wide a lens to view it through. Was it a love song? Was I singing it to my audience?” Sly stopped short of answering these questions.
Larry Graham, famed for inventing the popping and slapping technique on electric bass, had departed by Fresh (1973). The album’s liner notes credit Rustee Allen with playing bass, but from Dance To The Music (’68) onwards, Sly was playing “most everything on all my records.” Allen himself has said, “I would play something and he might enhance it. ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ was like that.”
Although the bass doesn’t have the upfront tone of Graham’s classic part for ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’ or Bootsy Collins’s wah fest on the Mothership, it is similarly the lead instrument in ‘If You Want Me To Stay’. The bass leads the chord changes, both dovetailing with Sly’s vocal melodies and informing his next line.
The song’s brevity would seem almost cruel if it didn’t contain such magic. Every note is played with such precision, each instrument sounding relaxed but purposeful. The arrangement’s timings are perfect: organ chords interject to carry momentum, and the trumpet alternates sustained notes with punchiness similar to the staccato bass.
At 2:20, when Sly sings, “I’ll be so good, oh, I wish I could / Get the message over to you now,” there’s a couple of bars without piano or organ before they enter again, relieving the tension built by Sly’s insistent singing. The organ chord in the right speaker is something you can imagine floating away on, and the closing 30 seconds of the song have the lightness of Sunday morning dreaming.
Sly’s vocals are unpredictable and constantly engaging. He bites some syllables and drawls others. The non-lexicable sounds add as much as the words. The singing, twinkles of piano, and cries of organ, together with that brilliant bassline, seem to have taken you through an album’s worth of moments by the time the fadeout starts before 3 minutes.
George Clinton wrote in his memoir about producing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover of the song: “you’re going to be able to sing by the time you finish learning that shit. It was an education for me, too: I would have never tried to sing that song until I tried to analyse it for [Anthony Kiedis].”
Clinton said of Fresh and its predecessor, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, “That was his peak to me - those two records. And Woodstock. It was like: ‘Okay, he's the one I'll be listening to for the rest of my life.’”
‘If You Want Me to Stay’ on TV
In 1974, Sly performed the song on The Mike Douglas Show. If it wasn’t for the studio backdrop, you could be forgiven for thinking Sly was in his living room. He’s almost comically relaxed, making singing and performing look as easy as sitting back in an armchair. Sly directs the band, “Faster, faster,” and grins widely as they match his tempo. “Yeah, alright. Uh-huh.” He bends the rhythm of lines to his will and plays with his pitch. At 1:40, he chuckles midway through the line, “I wish I could get this message over to you now,” and then seamlessly glides down from a high-pitched cry. With the band still playing, he gets up and walks off camera, looking as though he hasn’t a care in the world. This was a master at work, a master at ease.
Sly Stone turns 81 years old today. Happy birthday to one of the fathers of funk!
‘If You Want Me To Stay’ is funk in a form nobody but Sly & The Family Stone were capable of creating: simultaneously laid back and danceable, unpredictable and groovy, catchy and understated.
Sly wrote in his memoir that the song “was straightforward in some ways. If you want me to stay, tell me. Otherwise, I’m gone. But people couldn’t decide how wide a lens to view it through. Was it a love song? Was I singing it to my audience?” Sly stopped short of answering these questions.
Larry Graham, famed for inventing the popping and slapping technique on electric bass, had departed by Fresh (1973). The album’s liner notes credit Rustee Allen with playing bass, but from Dance To The Music (’68) onwards, Sly was playing “most everything on all my records.” Allen himself has said, “I would play something and he might enhance it. ‘If You Want Me to Stay’ was like that.”
Although the bass doesn’t have the upfront tone of Graham’s classic part for ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)’ or Bootsy Collins’s wah fest on the Mothership, it is similarly the lead instrument in ‘If You Want Me To Stay’. The bass leads the chord changes, both dovetailing with Sly’s vocal melodies and informing his next line.
The song’s brevity would seem almost cruel if it didn’t contain such magic. Every note is played with such precision, each instrument sounding relaxed but purposeful. The arrangement’s timings are perfect: organ chords interject to carry momentum, and the trumpet alternates sustained notes with punchiness similar to the staccato bass.
At 2:20, when Sly sings, “I’ll be so good, oh, I wish I could / Get the message over to you now,” there’s a couple of bars without piano or organ before they enter again, relieving the tension built by Sly’s insistent singing. The organ chord in the right speaker is something you can imagine floating away on, and the closing 30 seconds of the song have the lightness of Sunday morning dreaming.
Sly’s vocals are unpredictable and constantly engaging. He bites some syllables and drawls others. The non-lexicable sounds add as much as the words. The singing, twinkles of piano, and cries of organ, together with that brilliant bassline, seem to have taken you through an album’s worth of moments by the time the fadeout starts before 3 minutes.
George Clinton wrote in his memoir about producing Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover of the song: “you’re going to be able to sing by the time you finish learning that shit. It was an education for me, too: I would have never tried to sing that song until I tried to analyse it for [Anthony Kiedis].”
Clinton said of Fresh and its predecessor, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, “That was his peak to me - those two records. And Woodstock. It was like: ‘Okay, he's the one I'll be listening to for the rest of my life.’”
‘If You Want Me to Stay’ on TV
In 1974, Sly performed the song on The Mike Douglas Show. If it wasn’t for the studio backdrop, you could be forgiven for thinking Sly was in his living room. He’s almost comically relaxed, making singing and performing look as easy as sitting back in an armchair. Sly directs the band, “Faster, faster,” and grins widely as they match his tempo. “Yeah, alright. Uh-huh.” He bends the rhythm of lines to his will and plays with his pitch. At 1:40, he chuckles midway through the line, “I wish I could get this message over to you now,” and then seamlessly glides down from a high-pitched cry. With the band still playing, he gets up and walks off camera, looking as though he hasn’t a care in the world. This was a master at work, a master at ease.