EVANSVILLE – For an upcoming show at Roberts Stadium, promoters planned to get rid of all the seats.
Instead, attendees would lounge on blankets. Above them would be a specially-built seven-foot-high stage that would almost seem like it was floating. And atop it would stand a band that was always on the verge of flying anyway: Sly & the Family Stone.
Promoter Bob Alexander likened it to a “be-in”: one of those 1960s-style parties where young people gathered to raise their consciousnesses. You know – take acid.
“The same thing has been done in other cities with great success,” he told the Evansville Press on March 7, 1971: two weeks before the show’s scheduled date. “Everybody brings blankets and it becomes an indoor rock festival.”
It seemed like a foolproof plan. And for it to work, he needed only one thing: Sly Stone to show up.
That was a dicey proposition for 1971. For anytime in Stone’s career, really. The musician’s punctuality was as unpredictable as his music. Sometimes he’d arrive on time and put on a great show. Other times he’d roll up three hours late in a white limousine – and put on a great show. Then there were the nights his fans never saw him at all.
“Sometimes you don’t feel your soul at 7:30,” he once told Rolling Stone.
Sadly, that was the case in Evansville. After promoters sold $25,000 worth of $5 tickets in just a few days, word came down that Stone planned to cancel the whole tour. In the end, he nixed 12 dates, Roberts Stadium among them. Another concert was planned for ’72, but neither Courier & Press archives nor lists of Sly’s tour dates over the years show it ever happening.
Now it never will. The mercurial genius legally known as Sylvester Stewart who captivated Woodstock and created a string of hits that could swing from danceable to political and back again in a span of seconds died on Monday after a long battle with COPD. He was 82.
Songs like “Everyday People,” “Hot Fun in the Summer Time” and “Dance to the Music” still blare from speakers all over the world. And that’s just a thimble of the sensational music Stone churned out in only a few short years, before his career slowed partly because of lingering issues with drugs.
In the spring of 1971, however, Stone was at the peak of his powers. He was only a few months away from releasing one of the greatest albums of all time. “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” is as bleak as its title. It wrestled with the end of the ’60s and the dark decades yet to come.
“Every critic salivates over that album, like, ‘oh, my God, it’s the most amazing funk album ever,'” Questlove told NPR earlier this year around the release of his documentary “Sly Lives! (AKA the Burden of Black Genius).”
“Yes, it’s the very first funk album, but for me, it’s probably 41 of the most painful documented minutes in a creator’s life,” he continued. “Like, this is clearly someone who is an unwilling participant in his journey.”
Despite a few tours and surprise appearances, that journey skidded into virtual anonymity toward the end of his life. According to his New York Times obituary, he spent part of the 2000s living out of a white RV. But he refuted rumors he was essentially homeless. He said the vehicle was everything from his office to his dressing room to his “hideout.”
In ’71, that was all far away. And it’s difficult not to picture what that show at Roberts Stadium would have been like – Sly floating above us, like always.
Additional information from the Evansville Courier & Press archives.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Sly Stone played a legendary show in Evansville – almost
Reporting by Jon Webb, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
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