The Questlove Show - Questlove Supreme: Sly Stone Tribute with Ben Greenman

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

In a special one-on-one episode, Ben Greenman sits down with longtime writing collaborator Questlove. Having just published the Sly Stone memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) alongside the music legend, Ben speaks about the process. He and Quest' compare their favorite songs in an episode that features a snippet of a previously unreleased Sly song.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clivert Show on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.

If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say, you know, trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I got you. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel funny, anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Daniel Alarcon. And this is my friend. This is much more famous than I am. I wouldn't go that far. But I'm John Green. Co-hosted the podcast The Away End with my old friend Daniel on our podcast the away end.

We'll share with you the magic of international football, all leading up to the 2026 World Cup. Together, we'll find out why, of all the unimportant things, football, soccer, is the most important. Listen to the away end with Daniel Auerkone and John Green on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a...

You know, something just hit me. I'm certain if someone does a super cut, all they're going to get is if you just take the first 12 seconds of this podcast, it's always going to start with, ladies and gentlemen, this is a special. You're the special episode. All the event of QLS. All right. I'm going to do the opposite. Ladies and gentlemen, that's how you kick it off each time. That's how you get any character.

I don't know. It's, to me, I don't know. Maybe, maybe every episode is my dream episode or every episode is an amazing, you know, something, there's something unique about each episode. Yeah, this is Quest Love Supreme. I'm doing this solo style. I don't mind this. I wish I could do more of these. You know, I will say to our listeners out there, if you are committed to this podcast and nine times out of 10, I would like to think that you guys have purchased the tangible roots albums complete with a gazillion liner notes, not to mention to follow me on Instagram

is to also complain about my inside baseball speak, of which I will say that this gentleman here is kind of the equivalent to smack me on the back of the, the hand like no that that's a run on certain sort of jack right off the top it's a mix of slapping you on the back of the hand and patting you on the back of the back which is to say it's uh yeah i mean they're just different things but no we inside baseball away at any at any time we just uh yeah right but we clearly we clearly know that my propensity to rabbit hole yes that's true oh my god And to rabbit hole and to delve off into uncharted territory, like a person needs a GPS.

And I'm actually shocked. There's some friends of mine since the pandemic. You know, they're like, okay, I'm going to start getting to my memoir and whatnot. And I think they kind of treat it like the rap game. Like I'd see them like going off with their computers. And I'm like, wait, you're doing this on your own without like adult supervision. and they're kind of like, yeah, that's, that's the way it should be. And I'm like, no, it isn't.

So you don't make a movie running around. It's also, it's just for, it's like we have to, it's just baby Jessica eating you out of the well. That's fine. See, that, that reference alone is how I want to introduce the world. If you want to water down there because you think it's fun, that's great. It's just that then what? And then so.

This is the fact that you mentioned. baby Jessica, who I'm certain now is like 37 years old. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Grieman. If you purchased any of my, what is it now, seven books? Yeah, by the way, let me just say, I think she is 37 because I looked her up the other day. The fact that you hit her age exactly is alarming. Wow. That, yeah, I'm scared to myself. Hey, baby, I'm looking right now, baby Jessica today.

See, even now, we're supposed to be talking about Sly Stone. Oh, my gosh. She's like seven feet tall. She's married with a husband and she's like seven feet tall. Well, welcome to Well, Well, the baby Jessica podcast.

All right. So let me explain Ben's role in my life. You know, right before, I mean, if you're a longtime diehard, roots follower, you will know that it takes a crazy soul to

figure out. things in real time. And when you're dealing with so many personalities and so many, I wouldn't know the proper term to call like a person with my brain and a person with Tariq's brain and a person with like just dealing what he has to deal with, kind of in the last three years of Richard Nichols' life of which he knew his exit was going to happen. He wanted to be more prepared and really prepare us so that it. His work doesn't go in vain.

Speaking of Richard Nichols, the longtime manager and sort of brain trust of the roots of which, you know, his ability and his gift to take the creative out of me and mold it and to take the creative out of Tarek. And really for all of us in the circle, even members not of the group, like people that work in the circle. it takes a it takes a crazy figure to figure this all out like to juggle 18 plates at the same time and our guest today ben greeman which basically was like you know this writer from the new yorker richard said that um i guess in planning the what is called the amir book which basically kind of while he was in his uh sort of state you know he had Leukemia and was in the hospital for a long time.

And even though his brain was there, like he really wasn't fully functional, but he, you know, he can still type and text and all those things. And he said that there's a writer I really like it. I want him to sort of play my role in your life for your books. And I'm like, wait, what books? He's like, yeah, you're going to write books. And then everything that I'm doing now, like Richard basically put on the, a mere book of life.

And it's kind of his last words. on the book was like, if you're broke by 75, then I can't help you. So Richard basically spit the last six months of his life planning me and Tarek's next 50 years, which everything on that list, I absolutely detested. I'm like, I'm not writing a book. Questlet, what the hell is that Quest loves food? I'm not investing in food. Like, what the hell is that?

And literally everything I'm doing now, teaching, movies. directing, you know, he knew that I had a gift of me that I didn't know. So this is how Ben Freeman came into our lives. Rich is at the genesis of, in a weird way, the genesis of this book that we're talking about too, which I can, I'll get to. Right. Well, that's, that's, I'm sorry, I gave you a long 10 minute introduction to basically say that, you know, I wanted to know, like, your best writing style. Like I saw the New Yorker stuff, but there was a book,

I guess a fictional book. Can you explain this book to me? It was sort of like a fictionalized version of Sly. Okay, so this is sort of the bizarre genesis of this project, which is that I was obsessed with Sly and the Family Stones music since I was a kid,

you know, eight, nine, ten years old. I bought greatest hits on cassette. I wore it out. I, what do you call that little brush at the bottom on the metal of the cassette? When you double stick tape it because it falls off.

and you have to put back off. Right. I repaired the cassette so I could keep hearing it. And what year did you buy this? 78, 79, whatever. I was when I was 77, 78, 79, something like that. And you brought it or was it in your house? No, no.

I was starting to buy cassettes. My first set of cassettes, whatever was coming out around then. Like, it was probably Hall of Notes and Elton John, and I got onto the slot, Billy Joel, and I just got the slide. I had heard the songs, the biggest songs on the radio. And I love the cover photo. And the cover photo we can get back to as a sort of N-CAP, because to me, that is the kind of metaphor.

It's this one guy sitting in the car, and then all these iterations of other people just flowering from his head. And it's a kind of amazing metaphor for what the project was. But I just heard the music. And I loved all the hugest hits. And then as I explored, as I got to be 12, 13, and I was buying all the other records, and I just got obsessed.

The way I put it is that with most pop music, if you hear enough of it, if I play you a minute, and then I pause the song, and I say, okay, tell me what you think the next 10 seconds will be. You know. I mean, you certainly know,

and I know in most cases. You have a sense of the rhythm, you have a sense of the structure. The idiosyncrasies of Sly, even within a pop music context, were amazing. Like, you can hear a minute of thankful and thoughtful, hit the pause,

I don't really know what's going to happen. I don't know from down to the actual rhythms of the song and drumming over the machines to there's a lyrical left turn or some bizarre resurfacing of another song. I just, he was very surprising and very, I was fascinated that somebody could not be predictable. And then as I later find that in life as well as on the music. So my early 20s, mid-20s, I thought about writing a straightforward

biography. Just like, this is the story. I'm a journalist. This is what happened. As I researched it, I would find things that upset me. And I was too young and I didn't really know how to do it. And I didn't want to do it in that way. I didn't want to be the one to say, I found out all these negative things about this person who I idolize. And here they are. So I stopped. And I converted it to a novel, which was a composite really of Sly and Marvin Gay, a little bit of Curtis Mayfield, dustings of Swamp Dog and Durando and whoever else. You know, just, it was like a funk star. In large part, Sly and in large part Marvin Gaye,

because they're, I kind of mashed up the different aspects of the tragedies of their life. That novel, it sold okay, but it seemed to find its way to music people. One of those people was rich, and one of those people was someone in Georgia's camp, George Clinton's camp. So around the same time, I think you're a year ahead of George. I think your book came out in 13 and George is in 14. Right. Pretty soon after we wrote Mometta, I got a call that George wanted,

was looking for a co-writer for his memoir. And that was also in his equation. So he had been like, wow, the sensibility here is kind of interesting and it's a different kind of storytelling. And it really seems to be presenting a voice rather than just analyze and it's, I don't know, non-judgmental about certain aspects of the lifestyle and something about it he liked. And then when I met him, I just made a couple of jokes and he liked the jokes. Like, the joke I made is with George, he was going through some legal stuff.

And I said, he had all this paperwork. And I said, you should print it all on underwear and then just wear that on stage and sell them and call them legal briefs. And he said, oh, my God, that's so funny. He didn't do it. But I think he liked that idiotic idea. Yeah, I was going to say, that's such a George Clinton thing. that's how you had him. It's like entrepreneurial insanity.

And he's like, oh. And so something about it he liked. So I did that book. We did all of our books. And George, as I finished up that book, I remember sitting in the car with Archie Ivy, George's right-hand guy. And when we were finishing up George's book

and saying, I'd really love to do Slice book. And the feeling at that point was, I don't know, man. It's not like a super constructed situation over there right now. The architecture is weird. He's still using obviously at that time, which means that most of the goal in an average day is to manage that part of life.

And I was connected to his camp and the people were great. They were very nice and he was very receptive. It just didn't come together in a structured way. We would make agreements, I think journalists have written about this, so I'm not telling tales out of school. But to do an interview, someone would say, we need a thousand up front. And I would say, no, no, no, no. We're talking about a partnership on a book deal.

This is not how this works. I'm not buying today's delivery. You're basically saying that artist now charged for interviews? I think they needed money so he could score. I mean, this is just my interpretation. And they knew as the people who were helping him, that the main goal was to get cash for that day. And it was very short-sighted and very short-term.

So we wrote up a bunch of agreements and they all collapsed. We'd start to redline them to make them more professional. And I'd say, well, I'll agree to this, but not to this. And then it just never happened. And I would say to my wife every year, I'm still trying for this. I mean, George is still optimistic. He says, I'll connect me to this new guy who's with him or this person, but I don't know. It just doesn't seem like it's a doable thing.

Then in 2019, Arlene, who had been Sly's girlfriend in the 80s and sort of re-entered the camp. She had broken up with Sly gone and worked in the legal industry, gotten married, built a straight life such as it was, and then came back in as a kind of management helper. So she was able to help him execute certain kinds of correspondence or to process things or to say to him, the practical part, she was really strong. I'm like, you can't forget to do this thing by Thursday. Or if you can't, we got to ask for, send a note saying we need more time, you know, that kind of stuff. So she called me in 2019, and I guess it had come to her attention that this book had been on the table. And she was very positive about it. And then I hung up and told my wife, oh, my God, I think it might happen.

Like, there's a real infrastructure. Then they disappeared for six months. And I was despondent, and I thought, okay, well, this is the final nail on the coffin. I later learned that when they resurfaced that it was because he was getting clean. And she didn't think there was any way he could do the book if he was still using. Plus he had immediate health issues as he was trying to get clean. When he got clean at the end of 19, she called me again. So we agreed.

We got a contract ready. We signed to do the book and it met immediately into COVID. And I thought COVID would kill it. And it's in the crib. As it turned out, COVID really helped it. because everyone was in one place. She didn't have to go to her office every day so she could be with Sly Moore at his house,

keeping him focused and explaining to him what it would take to do this. And it was a different process than the usual book. If you and I do a book or I do a book with George, it's a certain number of long conversations. Because of Sly's health and his energy, we were capped at 15, 20 minutes sometimes, so we had to do a lot of conversations that were shorter,

which I don't think would have happened without her because she would remind him, we got to do this for the book. This is important. Let's keep doing this. And we got a runway in that first six months inside of the COVID cylinder where he really committed to the process,

which was great. I mean, she has a credit on the book for that reason. It says created in collaboration with her because truthfully, had she not helped to keep him focused in those early months, it could have easily dissipated. And that was how it happened. I mean, that's sort of the backstory.

And the weird part, like you said initially, is that the weird fiction book that came out of my not wanting to confront this person's real life ended up very roundabout leading me back to the door of this memoir. So it's strange. It's one of those things in life that, you know, who knows? I like to think that Rich knew. My theory is that Rich knew all this stuff 15 years. years ago and he figured it all out and he had it all mapped and he's like, Ben wrote this novel, but if I do this, Amir will be able to do this and eventually Ben will get back to the memoir. So in my mind, this is already planned.

Yeah, you probably knew what's going to happen. It's so weird. Even after I finished reading it, I was like, well, I guess he'll really do Sly's book, like, for real. Like, I always knew it was going to happen, which I don't know if you ever felt like it was never going to happen or whatever. I thought it wouldn't. And then again, because of the nature of his life now, which I didn't really know, I had heard all the stories that you had heard and we had heard them all. I didn't know what the person would be able to do. And I was really pleasantly surprised. I mean, his physical condition is iffy. Mentally, he was good. I had heard all the stories that you had

heard of him, one sentencing journalists or, you know, having an answering machine message that said, did you call? And then it would just hang up on people or whatever. Not a super accessible guy. But I think that double gatekeeper thing of George and Arlene made him at least provisionally trust the process, which is always his issue. Being ill-used or feeling like he was ill-used by media for so many years, kind of made the poster boy of, you know, junkie failure. and lost promise and all this kind of stuff that really bugged him, I think he needed to understand that it wasn't coming from that side because his back was up.

I think his back was up for decades in some ways. And then to get to the real guy who can be kind of gentle and funny and playful, as well as all those other things, I mean, he certainly can be difficult and stubborn. But that provisional trust was really important. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying.

Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of the Girlfriends

Oh my God, this is the same man A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist I felt like I got hit by a truck I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care So they take matters into their own hands I said oh hell no

I vowed I will be his last target He's gonna get what he deserves Listen to the Girlfriends Trust me babe On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.

It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the ground. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm John Green. You may know me as the author of The Fault and Our Stars. And now, I guess, also is the co-host of the away end, a brand new world soccer podcast. I'm Daniel Alarcon, a writer and journalist. And John and I have known each other since we were kids. My first World Cup was Mexico 86.

I was nine years old. I watched every game and I fell in love. On our new podcast, The Away End, we'll share with you the magic of international football, all leading up to the 2026 World Cup. For us, soccer, football, is a story we've shared for over 30 years since Daniel was the star player

on our high school soccer team. Very debatable. And I was their most loyal and sometimes only fan. I love this game. I love its history, it's hope, it's heartbreak, and above all, it's beauty. Together, we'll find out why, of all the unimportant things, football, soccer, is the most important. Listen to the away end with Daniel Auer Kohn and John Green on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For those of us that aren't familiar with how memoirs work, is this the same as an autobiography? Like, you know, because even when you first approached me, I was dead set against it because I was like, well, dude, like, I just turned 40. Like, why am I at the end of my life now? Like, I'm thinking that autobiographies are for anyone that has a six on the left digit of their age, and they have something worthy to look back at. And I'm like, why am I looking in the rearview mirror, you know, right after undone comes out or whatever? I think that the question is more about, it partly is what you're saying about how much of the life,

that there's memoirs that focus on one aspect of the life. Patty Smith's books are a great example where she's going to focus on her relationship to downtown and Maple Thorpe at a certain period in her life, but it informs the larger story. Autobiographies, generally speaking, are taken to be the whole life or as much of the life as you can do.

But I don't know. There's probably a very smart academic distinction that I don't know. I just know it from the actual books that I've worked on with you and with other people. And the best way I can describe the Sly one is that I did George's and then I did Brian Wilson's book with him. And those, it's not, I wouldn't say in a kind of glib way that it's a combination of those two, but there are some ways in which it is an interesting midpoint between those two. Obviously, I thought for funk purposes, George's the New Testament, Sly's the Old Testament.

So there's that kind of idea, too, of your, you go backwards in time. And you do the New Testament version with George. You get P-Funk and highly conceptual narrative-driven funk and a lot of characters and a real good awareness of how cartoons work and Davy Crockett Caps and all that kind of stuff, George's version. And then Slide version was the version that was the Old Testament. That's maybe a little bit more earnest and yoke to the time and had to burn out so something new could exist. So I thought about George a lot.

And then Brian Wilson was somebody who had very clear mental illness that he was struggling with, as well as substance problems. I think for Sly it's more substance issues. But it really changed the shape and the nature of his memory. And so in the Brian book, we said right at the beginning, we're going to have to deal with that forthrightly. We're going to have to talk about in some way how memory works and doesn't work. Because you, for any of us, I mean, you were young and you have a great memory. But the fact of the matter is, I don't remember many, many things of my own life. And I live a relatively clean, boring life.

And there's a lot that I just can't recover as I get older, let alone if you're 80 and you had 60 years of fame and drugs. Right. The worst drug in a way is fame. And so I really wanted to think through that with him. And so going back and asking an 80-year-old to reimagine, what was the 60-year-old you? What was the 40-year-old you? What was the 20-year-old you? That's a bizarre exercise. Do you remember the first question that you asked him? The first question that I asked him when we were writing the proposal was I was just trying to loosen him up.

And I asked about Woodstock and it didn't take because it was, I don't think it's that interesting to him in some way because there's the life lived and then the life remembered. and I don't know if he knew, you know, you just play the gig and then later it's a legend. Like, did he not know that that was the paradigm shift of his life? He knew, the next day he knew the concert was a big deal. But one of the things he said that was interesting is that when the movie came out the next year and he was a movie star, that was a secondary acceleration that maybe people now don't fully understand. The movie for us is the concert. The movie is what made Woodstock Woodstock.

I don't think Woodstock made Woodstock at all. I totally agree. The idea of Woodstock. He felt that in the moment. Like to us, we see through the movie, like your film, to the event. And so we're thinking we're seeing how important the event was. What we're actually seeing is that the movie brought it to people's attention. The first question I asked him where I got a real answer was we were just kind of loosening him up.

And I said, just tell me a random story, just something funny that happened. And he told me a story that I didn't think would make the book at the time. It did, which is about giving a stolen car to Edda James where he, I didn't know she was part of his story. I mean, I knew that was another drug troubled, you know, superstar, but I didn't, I wasn't aware of any crossover between them. I knew weird crossovers like her singing, you know, Paul Simon songs or laying on the floor of the studio as people would walk by for sugar on the floor, but I didn't, I didn't

know that she can slide crossover. And evidently, they were friendly, and she dropped by and they were hanging out and probably using and she asked if she could borrow a car. And he said, no, I'll just give you one. So he went out and he gave her a car. She was driving with a boyfriend to Texas. I believe, I may get some details of this wrong. It's in the book. And then he gets a call a couple weeks later in there in Texas. And she says, I got pulled over. The car was stolen. And he's like, oh, I didn't know that. And he said, you didn't mention me, did you? And she said, no, no, no, a E, the boyfriend I was driving with. He was very straight about it, but didn't mention you. He just said, we bought this

from someone. We had no idea. We have the right papers. And then I said, so you didn't know it was stolen. He's like, no, I probably knew. I just had a couple of cars. I didn't think it would come up. Like, wow, you don't think that that's going to happen. You just, the papers, I don't know how it worked back then in California, but whatever the fake papers were to make it look like title had been transferred, he thought they were good enough. And so, It was a very random story to me. And I thought at the time, I don't think this is going to make it because I don't really know where this fits into the larger story. It turned out that it did fit into this kind of craziness period where fame just takes you.

You don't have introspection. It's like somebody, I try very hard not to read for any of our books. I do with you, a book I do with anyone else, not to read any reviews. Because in my mind, you can choose who you are as a writer, as a musician. as a filmmaker, I try not to read anything. Because I think once I'm done, I kind of don't care about people's opinions, and I know some will be good, some will be bad,

sometimes people will get it, sometimes they won't. But one slipped through, and it was kind of irritating, and I won't say where, and I don't begrudge. I mean, I don't care. People can like things or not. Some people are loving it, and some people have problems with it. Somebody talked about the middle

and how they felt like the middle was kind of, they didn't say uninsightful, But they said this is just like rehearsing or re-staging talk show appearances. In my mind, there was a real good reason for that. Because when you get mega-famous, like he got mega-famous, so much of it is you're seeing yourself how you are seen. You're trying to control the stories that are told about you and thinking every day, well, is that me?

Is that true? And I'm sure even, like, I mean, look, you're famous, you know. And then you think back to him on the couch next to Muhammad Ali, and you think, I'm paraphrasing what you would think. You think I'm famous now in 2023. Think of being those guys in 1975 when there's three channels. There's a finite number of black celebrities. And these are the two arguably biggest. I mean, maybe Stevie Wonder, but at that time at that place, this is a fame of like,

I can't even fathom it. You know, to be Muhammad Ali and Sly, fighting over what the responsibility of a black entertainer is on Mike Douglas is like mind-boggling to me. So I think that he really wanted to, and he was interested in seeing old appearances, going back and looking at old performances, he really wanted to think,

well, what was it to be me then? You're saying that he looked, that he had to recap and watch old interviews and all that stuff to sort of jog his memory? That's not just jog memory. Even before me, he would do it. Orlean said he always was sort of kind of interested, I think, to try to be to whatever degree someone is, a student of their own existence. Like he would always watch when things started to appear on YouTube 20 years ago. He'd be really interesting. He'd be like, oh, that's the Midnight Special Show.

When we watch, oh, I remember, there was this can't. I am a person who kept darting back and forth and pissing me off. You know, like I couldn't focus or, oh, I remember there was a person in the audience that I thought looked like this person. Not to jog his memory, but to think I was so documented for a period of my life. Right. In print, on radio, on TV. What was that? It just was so weird.

You know, like, was that even me? It's a kind of interesting existential question. And then folded into that, the fact that he. took arguably the most private thing being getting married and he did it in the most public forum that you could ever imagine so he both embraced and was at the mercy of a lot of this kind of fame thing i mean you know obviously when when you and i talk you have many versions of this all the time and so i also wanted to be very clear in the book that certainly things could not be remembered clearly.

And sometimes he would say, well, I've heard this story from other people. That's not how I remember it. You know, I heard that this is how this went down or this is what happened at this place. I don't, either I don't remember it or I remember it differently. And it is all part of the story. But when you write a memoir, you're not doing journalistic research in the sense that I'm not asking everybody. I'm asking him. And so same thing with Brian.

When I did Brian Wilson's book, Mike Love had a book coming out at the same time. Well, Brian's book was Brian's version. Mike's book was Mike's version. They differed on quite a bit because they remember it differently for a variety of reasons. So, yeah, that's the interesting thing to try to kind of. Let me ask you a question. What if you're given a recollection that you know didn't happen in that particular way? And I mean something factual, like, you know, so riot came out in 1974.

And like, do you correct the person like, no, actually he came out in 70 or? To some degree, I would correct them. To some degree, I mean, I don't, you, here's the problem. You're, you're, I serve at the pleasure of the king. I'm co-writing. It's not about me. It's about that person. And so they are, they tell me either overtly or.

Sometimes they don't articulate it overtly, but they explain that they want to tell their whole life. And sometimes this book was definitely not like this, but sometimes books are score settlers where they say, I kind of get back at that guy who wronged me. Sometimes they say, I want people to understand how I was. Oh, people would do that? Yeah. Is that a Gene Simmons thing? Yeah, I mean, not really. I mean, I think Gene, I think Gene was not a score settler.

I think Gene, just as a side note, he seems petty. He wanted to reiterate. No, I didn't find him that petty, but I think he always wanted to reiterate that Kiss had a clean half and a not clean half. You know, there were members of the band that drank and used, and then there were two members of the band that did not. And Gene was one of the clean people.

And he was one of those. He was a non-user, straight edge. And so in his mind, he wanted to be clear that a lot of the decisions got made, just the way the decisions got made to say, yes, a lot of things were equal. We were abandoned equals. In some ways, we were not abandoned equals because when sane strategy had to happen, I did that. But no, I mean, I think everyone gives you a charter.

So, for example, MoMeda, when you and Rich talked to me about it, it was exactly what you said a few minutes ago. I'm 40. What am I doing? And so as we strategize that through, we came to this idea of the meta, which was, well, let's make a book and blow up a book at the same time. Let's do a book, but Rich will be in there telling you, this didn't happen in New York. What are you talking about? We were in California, don't you remember? And we put in a rich getting on you about memories.

Rich is in the book as a kind of like second voice. We also put in emails between me and the absurdly similarly named Ben Greenberg, the publisher, where we were talking about where I would say to him in an email, and they were the real emails. So I would say to him, Amira's an amazing memory, but one of the things he's worried about is, do people care what records he was listening to in 92? And then he would write back and say, yeah, of course, maybe we could do them as a sidebar.

And then we would do that. So every book has that kind of pre-planning stage. I feel like in this book, I think he knew, of course, that there were things that were fuzzier to him and things that were sharper. I was surprised by how sharp they were, the things that were sharp. Like he sometimes would say, oh, we were saying this hotel in New York on the 18th floor.

And I would say, what? And he remembered the room number. You know, and then like maybe the next time you would have to kind of say to him, you'd say, oh, remember the show in Milwaukee just before Grant Park? And he would say, where? And then you'd say, Milwaukee, you played the show. And then he would say, oh, right, right, I remember. It's the one where they brought me out in the boat.

Okay, fine. So then we're there. A lot of it is that. situated. I mean, you know, it's a strange task. You don't just say to somebody, 1973, go. They're like, maybe you would. You have that kind of memory. But like, you don't say to somebody, 973, go. And they say, okay, so on January 1st, I remember I was buying a Rubin at this dollar. It's not, unless you're Mary Lou Hennner, you can't really do that. Right, exactly. So most people, you know, yeah, so I would correct, I guess just the quick answer to

the question is, yeah, you don't want the person to be embarrassed. If he, you, you don't want the person to be embarrassed. If he slipped up and said, while I was doing stand in 1919, yeah, I wouldn't leave that in. But like some things are, some things are interesting why they're misplaced. And then you might leave it slightly misplaced because it's interesting why he sees it that way. So I believe maybe in 1996, 1997 maybe, there was an author. His name is Joel Selvin. And he released an oral history book, basically talking to everyone in Sly's world, except for Sly. And this includes like Bubba, like, you know, like what they would call the handlers. And it's sort of weird because I took Selvin's kind of book as law.

And now that I'm doing my own unearthing with this slide documentary, I'm now realizing like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe this person wasn't a villain that I was led to believe. Like, I kind of came into my own research with Sly, you know, sort of holding Selvin's oral history book, which is a very inciterary and kind of fiery story. Like, that version of Sly's life to me was like the last half of Bogie Nights, if you will. do you know if he was at all aware of that book or what his response was? I think he definitely was aware.

And I had the same weird process that you did, but maybe in reverse, which is that as a megafaan, a super fan of Slies, I read everything in its day. So I read every article, every oral history, every, I would find scraps of things on the internet where somebody's like this kid, John Dax, who we mentioned in the book, because it was an interesting thing. He had a fan site. I think he was a student. So I flew him out.

He was trying to figure out. He had this label fatted data at the time. And he was trying to figure out, can I release my own records on the internet? What is the internet? So he flew John out. And so I just tracked all that stuff. I think I actually interviewed John for a magazine at the time

because it was so fascinating. And I was obsessed to slide. For this book, I had to try to strategically forget all that. Now, it's all in my mind. So I have all those stories in there anyway. when I was talking to Sly, sometimes I would ask him, not ask him directly about the stories, but I would say exactly what you just said, like, oh, there's this, you know, there's a version of this where so-and-so had a gun at this place and he would either pick up on the threat of it,

in which case it was really interesting because it would mean that he did remember it. Sometimes he would say, oh, I know that person told that story, but that's not how it happened, which would key me into the fact that it might not have been literally Joel's book. Maybe someone told him that after the book came out, said, oh, Eddie Chin saying that this thing happened or whatever. And so, yeah, I mean, I think he definitely, one thing to think about the oral history is that it's a reflection of stories that were being told. It's not, I mean, Joel did a great job.

I really liked that book for what it is. But as you say, it's a snapshot. Those are stories that people were dining out on. some of them for decades anyway. Like, if you were, if you were Baba, you were telling that story to every girl you met and every person who you were waiting in an airport with, you know, like, that was your thing.

Then Joel does the project, and you also tell it in the book where it becomes formal. Your stick, your, you're, you're, right. I mean, because that's their claim to fame. One thing I find with all these books is that everybody remembers being with famous people, but famous people don't remember.

remember being with anyone. Meaning this. Dog. Oh my God. You literally, you know, you summed up my life. But there's a billion in people that come up with these like crazy,

crazy like recollections of things that we've done. And all I can be is like, oh, yeah. And they're just like, you don't remember, do you? And it makes me feel bad because I feel like then in their eyes I seem inauthentic. You know what I mean? It's not inauthentic. It's the opposite.

I mean, I think that, so I tried, like I said, to not, I think your film is very different. And we talked about this before. We keep a wall between them because one is Sly's version of what he remembers in his events. And then you're obviously reaching out like Joel did, but in a different way to a variety of people. First of all, everybody has literally a different perspective. You're standing here. They're standing there. They're looking this angle.

You're looking this angle. So they might say, oh, it was the day of that helicopter crash? because they see the helicopter going down on this side. You never saw it. So it's not part of your experience. So everyone, if anyone ever met Sly, they know it, they remember it. It's meaningful to them.

And they start to build from it. He only remembers a fraction of those. He remembers some when he was young when the people were more famous than him. That's interesting. You know, like if he's writing, come on and swim, he's dealing with people, he's a kid.

He's dealing with artists and producers and label executives who are above him. So those memories, are clear in a certain way. But at some point, there's no traction on most of these stories. And sometimes, like you just explained, you can recharge that memory. If you give context and you say, oh, no, this was just before that show where the cops came in and arrested you and he'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, that lady on the, I do remember

that conversation, but what did we talk about? And then other times, these people are possessive of those stories because they're so important to them. I have my own version of that, which is Eric Bogosian, the playwright and a monologist, and he was an actor. He was in talk radio, the Oliver Stone movie. Years and years and years ago, I was a young reporter, and he came to Miami to do some kind of event. And I went to his hotel and did the interview. This was a junket. And we had extra time. And on the spot, I thought it would be funny. Just, I don't know why. I just thought it would be funny to go out on the balcony of his hotel and take a bunch of pictures like we were friends on vacation. So we held beers and we looked like,

we were laughing and he pointed out and I pointed in just stupid shit. Ten years later, I was in New York and he had a book signing and I took those photos and I went to the book signing and I got to the front and I purpose. As a performance, I said, Eric, and he looked at me and clearly he didn't have any idea who I was and he said, I'm sorry, I didn't know that I said, I looked crestfallen and I said, Eric, it's me. And I showed him the picture. I said, we're friends.

You don't remember? And then after like 10 seconds. You're the worst person, man. After 10 seconds, I said, I'm just fucking with you. I was a reporter in Miami and we took these pictures. I thought it was really funny and like a good illustration of this. And then the funny thing I was thinking about the other day is he has almost certainly forgotten that. Because even that, which to me is like the end of a great story, to him was probably nothing again.

Did he remember that moment at all? I think when I showed him the pictures and I explained to him, he's like, yeah, yeah, I do, I do remember. I don't know if he was telling me the truth. He probably did, but then he's probably forgotten it all over again. And so it's such an interesting thing with fame. And this is what I was saying before about Sly at the height of his fame, because you almost become one of those people you don't remember meeting. I don't know if that's too spacey a way to put it.

But when you are who's famous everywhere all the time, you don't necessarily remember. I mean, I know you don't, and you have the best memory of anybody I know. every stage you've been on, every media you did, every person you saw, every radio, you know, conversation you've had, you remember a lot of them. But how can you remember them all? They blend together. You need space for like, what are the names of the people in my family?

Oh, yeah. That's the setback. Like, I can tell you the entire season 13 color scheme of the way that the soul train lights blinked. but if you were to put me right now in front of like all my first cousins yeah right i think that's exactly and the weirdness of flies memory the other thing just the last thing i'll say here is that as a fan one of the things that i wanted more of and didn't get i wouldn't say i was disappointed and you said something about this recently that really struck me is that I wanted huge, brilliant insights about how every song was created.

One thing I've realized over time is that artists make the work. They don't necessarily analyze the work. If you're Elton John or Paul McCartney or you're Brian Wilson, which I know, and I say, hey, let's talk about this album and this song. And they say, oh, was that song on that album? I thought it was on this other album. And I think, oh, my God, they're old. They're faltering.

They don't know which record this song was on. The truth is that, no, they just made it. the song. And a bandmate or a producer or a label executive or somebody said, let's not put this year. Let's hold that for this thing because we think it pairs well with this. Or who knows, it's a B-side and later it's released. They're not the marketers of their own life. To some degree they are and some degree they're not. And I've known this even with you for doing liner notes. Like you said, 90% of the things you remember perfectly. And then sometimes you'll say, oh, wait, let me check. I think that came out on this compilation. I'm not positive. I'm not

positive, hold on, let me check, and then you check and you come back and you say, yeah, yeah, that's what it was. I remember now. So that's really interesting. The artist is not necessarily the best critic of the artist's work. That's left to me to listen to every record and say, oh man, did you hear that thing and let me have it all where he drops his voice out for a tenth of his? He was just making the record. So that's very interesting. And I've learned that with every creative artist. I think some are more, you and and Little Stephen are more on the analytical side, just because of personality,

meaning that you do both things. There is a part of you that is analyzing as you make. Then there's people maybe, and George. I get accused of that. There's a part of me that thinks about my, I think that's absolutely right. I think about my Wikipedia entry as I create stuff. Or just why you're making a choice.

Like, it's not, like, I don't go to this. I don't consider it to be like, this person is a primitive talent. One thing about slide that struck me throughout is that this is the most trained rock star in the history of rock stars. Before Sly and the Family Stone, he's a producer of hits, a DJ,

a hugely popular DJ, and a composition student. So when you go to like Beatles Stones, who kinks, you know, whatever, John Fogarty, Dylan,

anybody else, those people were like naive, stumble in with their guitar, like Elvis, like in the woods, you know, this guy was trained. This is like a professional.

person before the band ever hit. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or we're wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft.

And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for

to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a can. It would not be on a

calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm John Green. You may know me as the author of The Fault and Our Stars, and now I guess also is the co-host of the away end, a brand new world soccer podcast. I'm Daniel Alarcon, a writer and journalist, and John and I have known each other since we kids. My first World Cup was Mexico 86. I was nine years old. I watched every game and I fell in love. On our new podcast, The Away End, we'll share with you the magic of international football, all leading up to the 2026 World Cup. For us, soccer, football, is a story we've shared for over 30 years since Daniel was the

star player on our high school soccer team. Very debatable. And I was their most loyal and sometimes only fan. I love this game. I love its history, its hope. its heartbreak, and above all, it's beauty. Together, we'll find out why, of all the unimportant things, football, soccer, is the most important. Listen to the away end with Daniel Alarcon and John Green on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Arlene said 300 interviews. Yeah, so one of the things that happened is that because of his energy, as I said, for you, you know, you can talk obviously for 90 minutes at a time. His energy, and I think just the newness of the process, and frankly, I don't know if this was the case for you as much, but it's traumatic to do a life story.

You are revisiting things. You're thinking of old girlfriends and old friends and, oh, shit, I love that house. Right. Oh, my God, that house. And then you just think about that. So the way it worked out is that we did 15 to 20 minutes sessions for the most part. Sometimes he would beg out early, say, I don't feel well or I'm tired. She'd go back.

I'd say to her, then you've got to go. go back later. He was right on the brink of talking about Jim Brown coming to the apartment in L.A. and calling the girls out. And he had to go out and tell Jim Brown, go away. These aren't your girls or whatever, you know, whatever the story was. He started telling that and he didn't finish. Can you go back later and get that? And she'd say, yeah, I could do that. So she'd go back while she was talking to him about whatever, you know, planting planters outside of his house. She'd say to him, can you tell me the James Brown story again and she'd get tape on that and send it to me so she would sometimes go back and complete we ended up with hundreds of sessions they're just very

short and and not very short they're 15 to 25 for the most part sometimes he'd have a lot of energy and sometimes he'd get one question in and something would bug him the interesting thing is he'd get in something would bug him he'd stop and then the next day or the day after I would see what it was that was bugging him because he'd have a really interesting story about Rudy Love or something. You know, like that just back to him. So yeah, that's so a lot of short sessions. You've done George Clinton. You've done sly. Yeah, we briefly mentioned, but like, you know, the little Stephen story is probably my favorite only because when you hear the audio book, you know, it's really like he's talking to you, you know.

That sort of thing. And Brian Wilson, like, what else is left for you? I mean, Little Stephen was great. And that's a case where I'm credited as an editor, not a co-writer, because he's a real writer. He writes political pieces and he writes, you know, songs, obviously. But he, so his take on it, when we were talking before about what a memoir is was a little different. When you say, how can you do this without adult supervision? In his mind, he is the adult supervision. And he also has that part of the brain we said, where he's an analyst of himself as he goes. But he was great. And his whole point was, well, what does any of this mean? We're doing all these things. We're making songs. We're touring.

Like, the world is in crisis, dude. Like, we got to figure this out. And he also was, he's a historian. Obviously, you know, he's done Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stuff. He, you know, he's a real serious historian of everything. So he was really interested in how rock and roll changed through the 60s. and then the monoculture exploded, and you have all these subcultures,

and what does that mean? It doesn't just mean that you're a boomer, classic rock adherent. You're actually looking at a time when there was one thing that affected everybody, and then that stopped happening. In terms of for me, I just don't know. I mean, there's so many, I want to do plenty of memoirs outside of music as well, but in the music space, I think about the great books, the memoirs that I love, and there's a lot of them.

You know, I don't know if I'm allowed to say Mometic, is we did the book, but that's a great. I forgot about us. Dylan's book, Chronicles, Neil Young's book, Shaky, Keith Richards' book, Patty Smith's book are great, Ray Davies, there's a million, Miles Davis. When I was thinking about the kinds of things I would like to do, the three that kind of rose in my mind are the Mingus Beneath the Underdog, a great book. I mean, it's outspoken, it's angry, it's hurt, there's a lot of injury in it.

And it kind of pairs, like if you're dining with this Sue Mingus book tonight at noon, it's named after a Mingus song. It's her story about her life with Mingus. And that she didn't do until the 2000s. But she was with him from, I think, 64 to when he died. And it's about maintaining the legacy and trying to get your head around this incredibly difficult, brilliant person. So that would be as if then Arlene wrote a book or whatever, you know, about this. Like, this is how this person saw it.

But let me tell you what it was to make this person happy in their life or try to keep them from being their own worst enemy or whatever it was. The Ville of Albertine, Viv Albertine, it's called, she's from the Slits, the punk band. I think her book is called Close, Close, Close, Closed, Music, Clues, Music, Boys, Boys, and it's great. It's such a good book about how you get inside an outsider, you know, what it means to be like a perennial outsider and punk and fashion and everything.

But in the book, you have to bring people. So how do you do that? That's weird. There's an element of that with Sly where Sly is such a singular person and such a glorious weirdo in a way. Like I use that word of people think I'm critical, but I'm not. I'm being complimentary. No, that's a compliment. Compliment. There's an interview in the book and the guy from the Guardian ended up interviewing me about this book. And he said, oh, I make a cameo in your book because I'm the journalist that Sly called and said he wanted an all albino rock band. And so I was laughing with him about it.

And Sly's theory was that that's how you eliminate racism with an alabino rock. And that kind of wavelength, the Vib Albertine is a version of that, but just being so singular. There's no one like you. And how do you, then you become embraced. And then the third, when I was thinking of him is this very strange book. There's this 20th century composer named Alec Wilder. And he was a classical composer. He did some film and some musicals and some popular song.

And I think the book is called Letters I Never Mailed. So the whole book is letters he wrote to people in his life who he was too afraid. Never sent him. And there's this, it's a really interesting book. And there's this Frank Sinatra letter where they were friends and then Frank became Frank, as famous as Sly, becoming Sly, and just walled off. Couldn't deal with anybody. So he writes this very moving letter, like how he just wants to hang out with him and laugh and

laugh at how people are stupid and, you know, just wanting to be his friend. And it ends with this line, which is just so moving. He says to Sinatra, believe it or not, I'm still available. All it needs is your request and my survival. That's the end of the letter to Frank. And I just thought, like, it's such a great book because it's all the things that you don't get to say to people. And so I think a lot about this. There's stars that I want to work with still.

You know, it would be great if whoever, if Stevie Wonder really did a real book, if Jagger did a memoir, if, you know, I mean, a lot of people did first ones that they got older. Maybe you'll do another book, another memoir. I mean, you've done seven, maybe another proper memoir. Maybe, uh, I got to live a life first. First, first you'll be 80. Then we'll, I've exhausted the first 40 years. But they, but in terms of like the whales of stardom to get to, you know, a lot of people have

done books. It's just interesting. I started to think with this sly book that there are so many different. kinds of books when I first went to him with this project. And I was thinking, because he's such a weirdo, well, what if he pitches me back a book that he says, it's just a thousand sentences broken? And I'm just going to say a phrase and then you write that down. And that's the whole book. And I won't do anything else. And I would have to say like, yes, sir, Mr. Stewart, because what am I? Like, I'm not. So one of those, there's this line that I, it sounded like it's a line that he knew he had

said before, but it's so great. It's like, it sounds like the kind of thing you say, and then you think, that was smart. And then later you say it again. And we used it as the last line where he said it's something like human beings, we come and go, some of us have not gone yet. And it was just such a- Wait, is he still full of those idioms? Yes, but I think that he, there's a, there's a tension there. He is, and then part of him is like, I said it already. Like, oh, right. Like, You know, yeah, so one quick coda to the songs, sometimes I would ask what songs meant. And he did this thing that kind of frustrated me,

but the more I went on it, it fascinated me where he would say, the song means what the song means. Like everyday people, what does that mean? That's what it means, everyday people. And I would think, are you fucking with me? Like, come on. But then when you think about it, he's kind of right. That when you get to boil down, you know,

he has a whole new thing, and it's a very complicated record, doesn't hit. Then he does the music, and he realizes the kind of genius of simplicity. You know, he resists that song a little because he thought it was kind of... Dumb. His pay grade, you know, whatever.

Like, it's a hit. What am I doing here? Like, I'm not the twist. So he's the master of simplicity, and we overlook it... He's a brilliant simplicity in some of those songs. I like the complexity, too. I mean, I don't know if we have time to talk about,

you know, the couple favorite songs, but in time is like not simple and it's a fantastic song and everyday people is simple. But he would say to me the song means what it means. And I would think, God, you know, you got to like song and dance me a little or tell me something. But then I thought, well, yeah, that is kind of what a painter would say or a sculptor would say. Like, it's not your job to go and analyze it. You made it.

It is what it is. It's my job to then say what it means, not yours. And then in this book, I can't even say a lot of that. Like, he, weirdly, the mid-70s records, he was a little bit more analytical, because I think they were more like kind of mission records. Like, heard you missed me from the top down or back on the right track from the top down. They're kind of mission records. Like, hey, I'm still here.

Right. So they have a message. And knows he was able to say a little more about that, even though he didn't always like it. I think he, back on the right track, there's a kind of like a cleaned up sly, like a smiley, cleaned up vest-witling sly that he thought like, man, how many, the headlines for that album were all kind of insulting, like, a well-behaved Sly Stone. He's like, come on. A win is a win. A win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying.

Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the fourth. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects.

From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcasts on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by her. a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters

into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come, look for up-and-coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent,

I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm John Green. You may know me as the author of The Fault and Our Stars, and now I guess also is the co-host of The Away End,

a brand new world soccer podcast. I'm Daniel Alarcon, a writer and journalist, and John and I have known each other since we were kids. My first World Cup was Mexico 86. I was nine years old. I watched every game and I fell in love. On our new podcast, The Away End, we'll share with you the magic of international football,

all leading up to the 2026 World Cup. For us, soccer, Football is a story we've shared for over 30 years since Daniel was the star player on our high school soccer team. Very debatable. And I was their most loyal and sometimes only fan. I love this game. I love its history, its hope, its heartbreak, and above all, its beauty. Together, we'll find out why, of all the unimportant things, football, soccer, is the most important.

Listen to the away end with Daniel Alarcon and John Green on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For those that might be listening that are new to Sly, whatever, briefly, tell me what are your three favorite Sly songs? Okay, well, as you know, it's an impossible task. That's why I always limited it to three, because... And I can't deal with the big hits. They're too big to get my head around.

No one deals with the hits. Real music fans like the filler. So I'd say, okay, if I had to pick three, I'd say... We Love All, which is an outtake from, it's a 60s, high psychedelia, high echo. But he writes the lyrics that later I would come to see as these very compressed weird sly lyrics, like the Funkett Stronger type lyrics where he says, it's like he does everything. And he says, unlike the police in his gun, unlike the judge in his son, unlike the local meter man, unlike the latest scam.

And so they're listing out all these things that aren't embrac. racing of everything. And that song is such a big, weird, spacey, 60 sound. Lots of echo. So that's really interesting. It doesn't sound like anything else they were doing at the time. Very spare in some ways. Second one is probably Sylvester, which is this tiny little thing that's not even... 30 seconds. Right. It's this fragment on the last proper album that he did, I ain't but the one way. it probably was a piece of tape that someone recovered at the thing. His memory of it was he remembered making it and he remembered sort of it was about,

but he wasn't 100% sure that it made a record because he's like, yeah, that little thing I recorded. And it's this incredibly weird, similar to a lot of the songs he made when he was then not famous, there's really weird meditation on identity where he's going past a mirror and he sees himself and his mother remembers his name. and it's very, very intense, really for what it is. But it's just him playing a little electric piano and singing for 30 seconds. That's one of my three. It's great.

And then the third one was a tie, I think, in my mind, between what was I thinking in my head, which is the second song. I like it for this reason. I'm mad that I can't resist it. Yeah. I don't know. I'm mad. I hate the album that comes from.

I'm mad I can't resist it. And yet those lyrics are little are very clever and I hate that I like that song. For me, the reason that I love it is that in my head, because when you say what was I thinking, we know where it's happening. It's in your head. That's where people think. Right. To add that little part, whether it's redundant or brilliant or drug album, I don't know for sure,

the in my head, which in the song when you hear it becomes this bizarre hook. Like, you can't get it out of your own head. and it's very catchy, and it's kind of simplistic, but psychologically complicated. So I don't know. I have a weakness for that. But then the one I picked, he recorded throughout his absence. And a lot of them are bedroom demos. And then some of them, he would run into a friend or a co-creator who would say,

oh, I like that. Let's do that. So in the 80s, when he would have a song with the barcais, a song with Earthwind and Fire, He had the Jesse Johnson song, obviously, which is not an original. That's the song he comes on as a duet. There's a song called The Yellow Light that he did that kind of trickles out on this giant Funkadelic record called First You Got to Shake the Gate, it's a triple record from 2014-ish.

And it's heavily treated vocals and just like this weird groove song, and he's probably saying something, but I can't make it out. And he can't make it out anymore. And it's just like this bizarre experiment and kind of incomprehensible, really deep funk that I love. It's so weird. And it just appears. It's like those Funkadelic records, those late ones are like party records, like for how late do you have to be before you're absent where George was just pulling in everyone. Belita Woods was a whole song and, you know, whatever.

There's some old song, some old Zap demo and he had somebody finish it. So they're kind of like compilations, not the family series, but the, you know, Big records. And so that one. So what are, so Sylvester's one of your three and then what are your other two? I like, I love Life of Fortune and Fame. I'm very upset that my version of it on the Roots' Game Theory was passed up. Like my, I have a version of it where I did all the music myself that I think is light years ahead of what wound up being the title track of game theory. They basically took my track and then. added other stuff to it, which, whatever. It's a life of a fortune and fame.

And, you know, probably even now, one of the reels, we cannot find any of the reels from the life sessions. And I got to know what happens at the end of I'm an animal. I'm an animal. It's just a weird song. And so it's not like I'm going to, and I've asked the band members about it and they don't have many memories about, you know again it's just like oh we we won the studio and we recorded it but for me that song says

everything about sly's weirdness it's like a kid sing along but it's also psychological like psychedelic and you know larry is doing exemplary work on his base that's not thumb related and you know cynthia shows off her jazz chops like a lot's happening in that song which is a filler it's still super brilliant to me. So I like it a lot. I love that song too. And I think same thing where people, it's a long time ago. So people don't remember what you're hearing on the reels is sort of lost the time

except that it's recorded. To me that song, and this is just me as a fan, is I always thought those are kinds of reaction songs to dance to the music in a way, in a way. And that to me, I always heard that song as like, I'll do what you want. I'll song and dance. I'll be your song and dance man. And then he has something in there. I forget the exact line where he says,

my conscience will die. I'll be an animal. My conscience is my guy. Oh. No, I think he says my conscience. Does he say my conscience will die off? Oh, the thinking kind. My conscience is my guide.

Or now I got to look up the lyrics. I might hear it wrong. And maybe the lyric is vague. But I always heard it as this weird thing of him saying, for my purposes of him saying, of him saying, I'll dance. What is it? I'll dance like a kangaroo.

So to me, when I thought about it, I love that song, it was always like him saying, I did whole new thing. I'm a composer. I studied composition. I'm working in the rock space, in the pop space, in the soul space, and whatever the funk space is becoming,

but I'm a composer. And then it kind of falls flat. And then it's like, as we know, dance to music is a massive hit, but also kind of a walk in the park for him and a little annoying. Like, why does that how I have to introduce myself to America? That?

Don't you know who I am or what I'm capable of? And so a lot of that tension of that third record is I think those two things. And like- Life is him fighting back like, I'm smart and you're going to take me on my own terms. And it doesn't work. And so then he has to make- Totally. And that's why-

And then he has to make stand. A lot of musicians, that's their favorite record life. Because it's so, it's kind of like what I was saying at the very beginning just to bring this full circle, which is that you try not to, you make the work and then you don't care about its reception. I don't care. I mean, ego care, but I don't really care. People care. You make your thing. Right.

That is the rare case where someone so smart is able to share with you. Well, no, it kind of does matter. or at least when there's a tension created between all my people telling me how Ta-Missero loved the first record, you know, fell over himself. And yet the audience didn't embrace it. Then I do this record and the audience embraces it. Music people are like, eh, not the first record. And so you've got to get back to that space.

And finally, Stan synthesizes everything. I mean, you know, I don't know how you feel about this and what you're finding, but I find some of the most fascinating answers about, like, he said something kind of weird and cool, like, you couldn't be an artist in 1968 and not make stand in 1969. You know, like, you're an antenna when you're an artist, so you're seeing and hearing everything. You're bringing it all in. And I thought that was kind of fascinating. And that speaks to what we think about riot, which is that is it his depression and his

darkness or is it the 60s hangover that he's channeling or is it a mix of those things? Is it? I'm still trying to come to grips with my feelings on riot because, you know, the one the one theme of this movie that I'm doing, which is, you know, something happened in those two years that threw Sly off and the result is riot. And everyone just keeps talking about how beautiful this record is, how it's their Bible, how it's, and for me, I don't know. Like, if you listen to Space Cowboy, that to me, that's my uncle Willie just, piss in his pants, drunk, like not just giving zero fucks.

And I want to know what he's rebelling against. So is life, we can end with this. Is life your favorite as a musician? That's the one that you get the most kind of joy, excitement, frustration, productive frustration from. Yeah, I mean, life, life is the first non-greatest hits record that I gravitated towards. It just sounded fun.

Like dynamite, you hear great going crazy. on the drums and it sounded funny to me. And, like, dynamite sounds like Greg falling down the stairs. You know, like, the Chevy Chasebers. And that's a big break beats record, too. I mean, for a lot of reasons, right? People, people can go to. Love City, you know, like, I love life.

Yeah. So what's so funny is that the musician writer divide, I think, is exactly illustrated here, which is that I moved off of Riot at some point and went to Fresh. And I kind of stayed on Fresh. And the reason I stayed on fresh is that in time, you know, you put that record on. That first song is just like an unbelievable piece of writing. The density of puns and his getting his head around two years too long to wait, you know, his own frustration with the label waiting for him, switch from Coke to Pep.

I mean, that thing is like, I've never seen or heard lyrics like that. And then it's in the service of these very complicated, you know, He's stretching out, but not really losing form yet. They're not like jams. They're still songs, but they're weird song. Frisky is a weird. Frisky was probably the first slice song that I sang as a kid. Yeah.

Yeah. And then it has one extremely straightforward if you want me to stay. Oh, I asked him about that. What's that? He's like, no, that's what it is if you want me to stay. Like, does my audience and the people in my life want me? around. I hear a lot about how I'm a problem. I don't miss shows. Like, do you want me to do this? And so in going to Fresh, I always thought in a way, my theory, which he didn't necessarily agree with,

is that I think Fresh is a darker album than Riot because it's a forced smile. Because Riot hits and everybody's like, whoa, I don't know what to do with this. Like Family Affairs is a huge pop hit. The record sold great. But people listen and it makes them uneasy. It's too spare. It's too sparse. There's some throwaways, like you say, that get caught up in the legend. But they're not really, in my mind, full songs even, maybe, some of them. Then you go to Fresh, and I think it did so well, Riot, that Fresh is like the afterglow. But to me, it's kind of fake happy. And I love that.

And Kesar Asarra is so weird. It's like such a bizarre cover. He left the mistake in, you know, the same road's mistake. I think it's so I think it's so interesting in that period. And then, of course, as we go, there's a lot of songs I love and a lot that I've learned to appreciate for different reasons. But it's so funny to me that around that heart of greatest hits, and I think this is probably true.

Musicians might lean a little earlier when it's the whole band, and it's everybody doing everything at the highest end. And then writers might lean a little later, because he's starting to think it through in a different way. Like, you know, he's, that song, Fresh also has quotes of earlier songs. Like, he, there are, he starts to work in bits of earlier songs like he did with the slowdown. Thank you. Yeah, well, there's dance to the music and there's, you know, he's very self-referential to this.

We can get lost in, in sly circles till the cows come home. Yeah, the keep on dancing is exactly. And then do you remember, 1991 or so, Epic put out fresh, and they put out the wrong version. Right. They took all the wrong masters. And I was after college at that time, and I remember going to get it and thinking, listening to it. And in times, mostly the same, if you want me to say, it's mostly the same. And then whoever was pulling the reels pulled the wrong once.

So every song after that's different. No, if you want me to say it's different. The intro is way different. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The intro is different. Right. And then, but I remember listening to babies making babies, which is a whole different soul.

I love, yeah, that's way better. And thinking, oh, my God. Like, because again, when he reconstruct all that, he's being asked to reconstruct the album that came out, right, that we know of. And like you say, go back in here, the other frisky, the other thankful and thoughtful, the other skin I'm in, all these, you know, that are different takes, different vibes, different feels. And so, yeah, that's really, the process piece is interesting. And he did do some of it. Like there's one cool story where he's recording and he doesn't like the guitar and he tells the guy who's recording, I need a different guitar.

And the guy says, okay, and he's waiting for Sly to go get a different guitar. So I was like, no, the one I wants down in L.A. So they have to close up shop and go down to L.A. And he gets the right instrument. And the guy says, so I'll patch you him from the beginning. And so I was like, no, no, just in the middle. and the guy says, well, it's going to sound totally weird. One sound here and then in the middle it switches.

I don't think that's right. And Slice says, trust me. And Sly's right. I forget which song, but it just creates that weirdness where he had this vision of what to risk and what to change and what to take chances on. And that's how we got all this music. And he can tell the story and you can figure out what it all means.

Well, there it is, ladies and gentlemen. You can see for yourself, Bing Greenman's book with Slice Stone. Thank you for let me be myself again, said and spelled in its and it's Mondagreen glory out October 17th on our publishing. Now that I, now that our company's real, I'm not going to say the way Prince would enunciate it. To do the actual bird call or no? I'm tired of doing it. I've been doing it. I'm now just trying to flatten it to Iowa instead of a.

I'm tired of yelling it. But thank you for talking to us, man. I really appreciate it. And, you know, congratulations on this awesome book, man. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to congratulate Sly and Arlene as well for making this happen. And you're the publisher.

And here we go into the world. Here we go. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, we don't do this this often. But, you know, this is a special moment for us. So as a bonus to this episode, we're proud to present a clip from an unresolved. release Slystone song called Coming Back for More. And this was recorded, I believe, in the mid-80s. And it's set up by the songs Engineer and the book's co-author, Arlene Herskowitz, whose voice

are going to hear before the snippet. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. And we'll see you next to go around on Quest Love Supreme. Thank you. Hi, this is Arlene. And I was Sly's recording engineer in 1985. He used a Yamaha DX-7 and a rolling drum machine to create the song coming back for more.

At this time, Sly was trying to figure out whether he was going to come back into the limelight or not. And so he always put his thoughts into his songs. Hope you like the song as much as I do. I've been so high and it touched the sky. And the sky says, I'm going to just fell. It makes it easier. Back for me.

Rush Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from IHart Radio, visit the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me.

Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest, the director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Gowke. joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar.

This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, for wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone, I'm Ego Wood. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo.

My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that.

There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Daniel Alarcon, and this is my friend. This is much more famous than I am. I wouldn't go that far. But I'm John Green, co-host of the podcast The Away End with my old friend Daniel. On our podcast, The Away End, we'll share with you the magic of international football, all leading up to the 2026 World Cup.

Together, we'll find out why, of all the unimportant things, football, soccer, is the most important. Listen to the Away End with Daniel Alarcon and John Green. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.