There was an odd symmetry to the near-simultaneous deaths of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson at age 82 last week. “Both of them poets of summer,” Rob Sheffield says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. “Both chroniclers of the American dream in California. Both from pretty much the same era. Both of them also started out very young as musical prodigies, who figured out early that they needed to be in charge of their music.”
As a Bay Area DJ, Sly Stone slipped Bob Dylan and the Beatles into R&B playlists, foreshadowing the genre-blurring of his own music. “He was always trying to mix up boundaries,” says Sheffield. “That’s where he realized his eclectic taste was something that he needed to really establish aggressively in his band, or he’d always be pigeonholed.”
The discussion also follows Stone’s influence through Parliament-Funkadelic, OutKast, and even the Jackson 5 — Sheffield argues that band began as Motown’s attempt to create “Sly for kids” after Sly took too long between albums. To hear the entire episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.
Wilson, meanwhile, was competing with the Beatles to push the formal limits of popular music, taking charge in the studio even as the rest of life proved challenging. “In a studio is the only place where he had that ability to relate to people,” says Sheffield. “He knew what he wanted in a studio and once he got outside of that environment, he had no idea how to relate.”
The conversation also challenges the weirdly prevalent misconception that the Beach Boys‘ pre-Pet Sounds music isn’t worthy of being taken seriously. Early songs from “Surfer Girl” to “The Warmth of the Sun” are arguably just as transcendent as Wilson’s more self-consciously arty efforts.
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Our panel eventually decides that Stone and Wilson met most precisely in one particular band: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who covered Sly and the Family Stone‘s “If You Want Me to Stay” on Freaky Styley, and did an amazing, funked-up version of “I Get Around” at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. “Pet Sounds and There’s A Riot Goin’ On walked so Stadium Arcadium could run,” they joke.
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The discussion concludes by touching Wilson’s final masterpiece, “Summer’s Gone,” from the Beach Boys’ 2012 reunion album — a song Bruce Springsteen specifically recommended after Wilson’s death. “He’s sitting on the beach, he’s watching the waves, he’s thinking about the end of it all,” Sheffield says. “It’s like Prospero at the end of The Tempest, where he breaks his wand.”
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