There's a Riot Goin' On is the fifth studio album by the American funk and soul band Sly and the Family Stone. It was released in November 1971 by Epic Records.Record World, Nov. 6, 1971, p. 18 The recording was dominated by band frontman-songwriter Sly Stone during a period of escalated drug use and intra-group tension. Recording sessions took place from 1970 to 1971 at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, California and in Stone's home studio in Bel Air.
With the album, Sly and the Family Stone departed from the optimistic sound of their previous music and explored a darker, more challenging sound featuring edgy funk rhythms, a primitive drum machine, extensive overdubbing, and a dense mix. Conceptually and lyrically, There's a Riot Goin' On embraced apathy, pessimism, and disillusionment with both Stone's fame and 1960s counterculture amid a turbulent political climate in the United States at the turn of the 1970s, influenced by the decline of the civil rights movement and the rise of the Black Power movement. The album's title was originally planned to be Africa Talks to You, but it changed in response to Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On (1971), released six months before Riot.
A commercial success, There's a Riot Goin' On topped the Billboard Pop Album and Soul Album charts, while its lead single "Family Affair" reached number one on the Pop Singles chart.[ There's a Riot Goin' On > Charts ]. All Media Guide, LLC. Retrieved on 2008-08-16.0 Billboard.com – Search Results: Family Affair Sly (singles charts). Nielsen Business Media. Retrieved on 2008-08-16. In 2001, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of at least one million copies in the US.RIAA Searchable Database. RIAA. Retrieved on 2008-08-16. Originally released to mixed reviews, the album has since been praised as one of the greatest and most influential recordings of all time, having impacted the funk, jazz-funk, and hip hop genres in particular. It has appeared in publications' best-album lists, including Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", on which it placed 99th in 2003 and 82nd in 2020.
In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Background Having achieved great success with their 1969 album Stand! and performance at Woodstock, Sly & the Family Stone were due to have submitted an album of new recordings to Epic Records by 1970. However, Sly Stone missed several recording deadlines, worrying CBS executive Clive Davis, and a Greatest Hits album was released in an eighteen-month stretch during which the band released no new material, except for the single "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". Relationships within the band were deteriorating, with friction between the Stone brothers and bassist Larry Graham.
Jewish-American manager David Kapralik claimed that the Black Panther Party was urging Stone to replace him with a black manager. After moving to Los Angeles, California, in late 1969, Stone and his bandmates began to use cocaine and PCP heavily rather than recording music. During this time Sly & the Family Stone released only one single, "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" / "Everybody Is a Star", issued in December 1969. Although "Star" was a positive song in the vein of their previous hit "Everyday People" (1968), "Thank You" featured a darker political theme.
By 1970, Stone had become erratic and moody, missing nearly a third of the band's concert dates. He hired streetwise friends Hamp "Bubba" Banks and J.B. Brown as his personal managers, and they enlisted gangsters Edward "Eddie Chin" Elliott and Mafioso J.R. Valtrano as his bodyguards. Stone assigned these individuals to handle his business dealings, find drugs and protect him from those he considered enemies, among them his own bandmates and staff. A rift developed between Sly and the rest of the band, which led to drummer Gregg Errico's departure in early 1971. Speculation arose as to the release of new studio material. In a December 24, 1970 article for Rolling Stone magazine, journalist Jon Landau wrote:
Stone's intention of a darker, more conceptual work was influenced by drug use and the events that writer Miles Marshall Lewis called "the death of the Sixties"; political assassinations, police brutality, the decline of the civil rights movement and social disillusionment. According to The Austin Chronicle, "slowed down, [Sly's] quest for post-stardom identity mirrored black America's quest for post-Sixties purpose."
Recording and production
Sly Stone mostly worked on There's a Riot Goin' On alone in a studio that he had built for himself at The Plant Studios, also known as The Record Plant, in Sausalito, California, or at his home studio in the loft of his Bel Air mansion. He would often lie down in the bed and record his vocals with a wireless microphone system. According to the other Family Stone members, most of the album was performed by him alone, overdubbing and sometimes using a drum machine to lay down beats, namely the Maestro Rhythm King MRK-2, which featured preset rhythms. Stone felt that the rhythm box made unrealistic sounds if used as designed, so he resorted to overdubbing the drum sounds manually, contributing to the dense mix.
Other band members contributed by overdubbing alone with Sly instead of playing together as before. For "Family Affair" and some other tracks Stone enlisted several other musicians including Billy Preston, Ike Turner, and Bobby Womack instead of his bandmates, and several female vocalists mostly omitted from the final mix. The album's muddy, gritty sound was due in part to this overdubbing and erasing and mixing techniques nearly drowned out undubbed sounds. Miles Marshall Lewis stated, "Never before on a Sly and the Family Stone album were songs open to so much interpretation, and even more so, dripping with cynicism. On the other hand you can hardly hear what he's saying for most of the album. Like Radiohead's Kid A (2000) or even the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. (1972) more recent to the time, a murkiness in the mix of the record inhibits complete comprehension of the words."
In the fall of 1971 Stone delivered the final mixes to the CBS Records offices, relieving the worried Davis. CBS issued "Family Affair" as the first single, the band's first in nearly two years. A somber, electric piano-based record sung by Sly (in a low, relaxed tone) and sister Rose Stone, it became their fourth and final number-one pop hit. It is one of the earliest hit recordings to use a drum machine – a slightly earlier Sly Stone production, Little Sister's "Somebody's Watching You", was also among the first.
Music and lyrics
The album departs from the optimistic psychedelic soul sound of the group's 1960s records, instead embracing a darker sound featuring filtered drum-machine tracks. Songs such as "Luv 'n Haight", "Thank You for Talking to Me Africa", and "Spaced Cowboy" are characterized by edgier, unrelenting grooves with rhythmic sounds resembling murmuring noises. Conceptually, Riot embraces apathy as a source for deriving rhythmic and emotional energy, departing from the more welcoming sentiments of songs like "Dance to the Music" (1968). As The New York Times writer Jon Pareles explains, it was "about turning away from the post-1960s turbulence of the Nixon presidency and withdrawing into music as a hazy refuge", exemplified in the opening track "Luv n' Haight" and its declaration of "Feel so good inside myself, don't want to move".
"Luv n' Haight" is satirically titled as a reference to the Haight-Ashbury scene, while the music and lyrics express disillusionment with the 1960s counterculture. BBC Musics Stevie Chick cites the track, with its "desperate call-and-response set to fiercely combative lick", as an example of Riots "dark" and "troubled" funk. "Africa Talks to You" is a nine-minute funk jam written in response to the backlash Sly Stone received from estranged fans and friends, record industry associates, and the media. According to biographer Eddie Santiago, the lyrics cynically portray "fame and its cold retrogression into perceived insanity", with a chorus that reflects "Sly's feelings on being cut down in his prime like a tree in the forest."
The album's title track is silent and listed as zero minutes and zero seconds long. For many years it was speculated that this cryptic track listing and the title of the album referred to a July 27, 1970, riot in Chicago for which Sly & the Family Stone had been blamed. The band was to play a free show in Grant Park but the crowd became restless before the band began and started rioting. Over a hundred people were injured, including several police officers, and the reason given to the press was that the band was late and/or refused to perform. The original LP jacket featured a photo collage with a picture of the band-shell in Grant Park overlaid with a photo of a police car. However, in 1997 Sly Stone said that the "There's a Riot Goin' On" track had no running time simply because "I felt there should be no riots."Dakss, Jonathan (1997). "My Weekend with Sly Stone". Sly-and-the-family-stone.com.
The closing track "Thank You for Talking to Me Africa" is a slow reworking of Sly and the Family Stone's 1969 "Thank You" single. The result is described by AllMusic's Matthew Greenwald as a blues- and gospel-influenced examination of urban tension and the end of the 1960s. He goes on to say it is "perhaps the most frightening recording from the dawn of the 1970s, capturing all of the drama, ennui, and hedonism of the decade to come with almost a clairvoyant feel."[ AllMusic: Thank You for Talkin' to Me, Africa]. All Media Guide, LLC. Retrieved on 2008-10-01.
Artwork The original cover art for Riot featured a modified version of the flag of the United States, featuring a black canton with nine-point suns in place of a blue canton with five-point stars. No other text or titles appear on the cover, although Epic executives added a "Featuring the Hit Single 'Family Affair' sticker to the LP for commercial viability and identification purposes. Family Stone A&R director Steve Paley took the photograph. Three of the custom flags were created: one for Sly, one for Epic Records, and one for Paley.
In an interview with Jonathan Dakss, Stone explained the album cover's concept, stating "I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood. I wanted suns instead of stars because stars to me imply searching, like you search for your star. And there are already too many stars in this world. But the sun, that's something that is always there, looking right at you. Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better."
The outer album sleeve features a photo collage, by artist Lynn Ames, depicting American cultural images of the early 1970s. Featured on this collage were color photos and black & whites of the Family Stone, the Capitol, a grinning boy in plaid pants, the American flag with a peace sign in place of the stars, the Marina City twin towers of Chicago, a Department of Public Works caution sign, a piece of the Gettysburg Address, the tail end of a gas guzzler, drummer Buddy Miles, the Lincoln Memorial, soul musician Bobby Womack, a bulldog, several anonymous smiling faces, and Sly's pit bull, Gun.
Reception and legacy