A Conversation with Sly & The Family Stone’s Cynthia Robinson – HuffPost 8.5.13
Mike Ragogna: Cynthia, what are you up to these days?
Cynthia Robinson: What am I up to? The Family Stone is traveling, playing the music that Sly wrote, and I just did a gig in Atlantic City and in Chicago. As far as any new music, we haven’t written anything.
MR: Okay, but what about Cynthia? Are you working on anything creatively for just yourself?
CR: Creatively? I’m just living while I’m living.
MR: [laughs] Nice. We’re looking at a lot of dance records out right now, and they’re getting the biggest spotlight. Do you have any thoughts about music these days?
CR: Well, not really, no. I like all kinds of music, but a lot of what I like is really stuff that’s not heard too much today. I like Nancy Wilson and Natalie Cole. I play the things that I bought intentionally again and again and again. I have this three CD set of Nancy Wilson and just every song on there is just fantastic. I just love her. She’s so expressive when she sings anything. I’m just enthralled with this woman when she records with a full orchestra behind her at the same time. The fact that she can layer her phrasing in between these horn lines and these vamps and stuff, she’s just fantastic. I had heard some of the songs that she’s done because I listen to late night jazz and I’ve heard those songs by other people and it just does not compare. They’re just singing lyrics. When I hear them singing, there’s no projection of the emotion of the lyric. It’s just words and a note. When I hear them, I go, “Golly.” I know I’m on the right track and everybody else is wrong!
MR: [laughs] How about when you’re playing? Do you feel like you’re on the right track as far as what you’re playing?
CR: Absolutely, because of the reception that we get from the audience. These are young people that probably weren’t even conceived, and they’re bringing their children and they’re telling us that their parents played this music when they were coming up around the house, so they’re very familiar with the lyrics and the group and everything. They’re not all grey-hairs on walkers, you know? There was a little girl in Chicago, she was dancing like crazy. We had an hour and a half set, but it started raining forty-five minutes in and people started splitting because the rain was coming down. Some people had umbrellas and this one adult put an umbrella over a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than four, and she was dancing and smiling and she was loving it, and she was up front. I wish I could’ve gotten a shot of her! So some people stayed so we just kept playing. We played until the rain started blowing up equipment. They were covering up the monitors with tarps and the guitar players’ foot pedals started spitting and sparking and stuff and we had to quit cause the stage was getting flooded. They had something covering it, but rain was coming from the side. It was shooting horizontally across the stage. I don’t know how it did that, but that’s the way it was hitting me as I was playing. Finally they said, “That’s enough, you guys get out of here.” There were some people that stayed, but it drove most of the crowd away. I don’t know how many were there, but just an innumerable amount of people. I couldn’t see all the way to the end. It was fantastic.
MR: Cynthia, that also talks to the phenomenon that The Family Stone is. After all these years, the band means so much to the people that they would risk their lives with one force of nature to watch another force of nature!
CR: I know the songs that Sly wrote still have the meaning for those that are living today that weren’t even around when we started playing before, in the beginning. His lyrics, to me, if you listen to them, they can form a lifestyle that will leave you a happier person, a better person on this planet. It’s just lyrics to live by.
MR: Well, even titles to live by, such as “I Want To Take You Higher,” “Everyday People,” “Dance To The Music,” and especially “Everybody Is A Star”…
CR: Absolutely! When he wrote that, that was when I began to really feel special. It was not about me, but everybody probably felt the way I felt, like an ordinary person, and I began to see things in my life that I thought I was a star about. It had nothing to do with me. It had things to do with how I felt about my grandmother and the things I used to do for her just out of love for her. If she asked me to do something I didn’t know how to do, I would attempt it. The fact that I was able to get this done for her… I was actually starring in her life amongst dozens of things, other people, people I hadn’t been raised with. You can see that I had a job once–more than once–but some of the people that I assisted… That’s when I realized, “Hey, I am a star,” not necessarily in the limelight, but in my life, period, somebody was waiting for me to come along again because they liked whatever occurred when I was there with them. Mainly, it was with the elderly. I have this passion for the elderly and music, and I’m just blessed to be able to do both of those.
MR: Beautiful, that’s very special to hear. After hearing you tell this story, it’s clear these songs are inspired by and talking to everyday people.
CR: Everyday people! Just that word, “everyday.” Everyday people, that’s just all of us. It even includes the CEOs in their environment, you know what I mean? But it also included those that you would probably never hear a story about or who may never be under the headlights onstage, but they go through their lives doing great things for other people, too, like in their families. This, you never hear about. You’re not going to read about it in the paper, it’s just an ordinary life.
MR: The music was funk and also a philosophy. Were you aware at the time when you were having hits that it was bigger than its parts?
CR: No, it was just music that was so exciting and so fulfilling within me as a person. I’m sure other members of the band felt the same things because I could see the looks on their faces, that something inside of them was waking up and joyful about them, so I knew. Being an introvert, maybe it was just me, but I thought they were feeling what I was feeling inside. The way that they conducted their lives, they were all ready and eager to be there for the next gig and excited to be together to play together. That was a big thing. We spent more time together than they spent with their wives and girlfriends. Sly always had us rehearsing and he always had something planned out that he wanted us to do. So it wasn’t ever like, “Well what should we work on?” It was never that. He always had the plan, “This is what we’re going to do today, shoop shoop shoop shoop,” and everybody’s minds were in the same direction.
MR: So that’s the bottom line, you truly were family.
CR: Absolutely.
MR: Looking back at the years with the band, how do you feel about the mark that it continues to leave on music?
CR: That’s astonishing. Not that I didn’t think it would, but just that it is and that I know I’m right in what I feel about it because of what others are showing me. I talked to people that were in my peer group, and many, many people in many different places, and they’ve all said certain songs have really helped them through a difficult period in life. At first, it didn’t feel like a way of life, but then later on, I began to realize that it is, because it shaped a lot of my actions when I was probably doing something that I wasn’t proud of and straightened it out just because it felt better.
MR: Talking about “feel,” when you’re feeling in certain moods, do you pick up your trumpet and express yourself?
CR: [laughs] No. Honestly I don’t. I would, but when I’m not out there or preparing to go out there to do some gigs someplace, I feel you have to have a balance between your work and your home life, no matter what your occupation is. So I am in my home life mode and that’s what I’m dealing with until I start to prepare, which means put my clothes in the cleaners, go to the laundromat, update my wardrobe, and then fool around on my horn. But music is not my whole life, and I’ve heard so many people–Prince being one of them–saying music is his whole life. “If it’s not about music, I don’t know anything about it.” That’s what he said to me. I’ve always wanted to be able to say that, I’ve always said, “Ooh, that would be so great to be able to say that,” but when I get back in my home life, nothing goes away. Whatever you didn’t do before you left has to be taken care of still. So I’d rather do that. I’d rather participate in my home life. I’m glad to be able to address the problems of my grands and my great-grands, because we have a very close relationship–my children, my two daughters, and my grandchildren. So the everyday things that need to be taken care of–like I’m looking at one of these vents that keeps dropping out from the ceiling and exposing the attic–those things have to be taken care of and it’s not about music.
MR: No, it’s about everyday people.
CR: Everyday people. So I like to take care of those things. Of course, I don’t always do it expeditiously, but I do get it done.
MR: Speaking of family, your daughters are Laura and Sylvette.
CR: If you call her “Sylvette,” she’ll tell you, “Just call me Phunne.” That’s her middle name.
MR: Well, you’ve got to be so proud of them, too.
CR: I’m very proud of them both. They are very honorable people, they can be trusted, not just by me when I’m looking over their shoulders. That was the one thing I wanted to pass down to them, that was important in life, because they only got half the lessons. I’m a single parent both times, so it was very important to me that they were able to be trusted and cared about and to be honest with their feelings and be accepting of those that are lacking the things that you wish they had, but you accept them for who they are or you let them go, one of the two. So I’m very proud of them that they decided to take the time to raise their children. They’re both single parents. They chose to do that. I didn’t actually push it, I think they just saw what I did and I guess I passed it along. Their children are doing fantastic. Laura, my firstborn has two girls. Her oldest daughter got a bachelor’s from the University of the Pacific. She just spent two years in Paris and came back with her two kids. Her baby daughter is in college and she is taking these courses where she can teach all these different courses when she gets out. Her middle one just went to college. We tried to get her to go but she just kept saying, “I can’t do it” after high school, too tough. But this time, she took some things that she really enjoyed taking, and she drove by my house just to tell me she got her grades. She said, “Grandma this is the first time I’ve ever gotten an A in anything!” She’s so excited and I just said, “I knew you could do it, you just had to find out what your niche is.” You don’t always get that in school, you just get what they throw at you. She just finished a course and she’s going for her associate’s degree. My daughter Laura got her AA at the same time that her baby daughter graduated from high school, at the same time that her oldest daughter got her bachelor’s from UOP, so we had three graduations that year. It was very exciting to see the start of a trend. My daughter Sylvyette’s oldest daughter just went back for her third year at Virginia State and her youngest daughter, she only has the two, is going to be a senior in high school. So we’re still getting things done. Things are getting worked out and we’re all finding out where we fit in with the scheme of things and I’m sticking with it because there’s nobody to help with that. We have to encourage each other. My mom’s gone, my grandmother’s gone, my dad’s gone, my grandparents on my father’s side are gone, there’s no one really to go and ask anything to, so we’re just starting our family from here.
MR: In the end, it’s all about family.
CR: Yeah, when it gets down to it, that’s it. I told my kids, it doesn’t matter if this person or that person in the family isn’t perfect, this is what you’ve got. We have to work with that and if you can’t work with that, then you’re just jumping into someone else’s family and there’s always going to be something missing if you don’t work that out. Always going to be something missing, and when you get into somebody else’s family, there’s always going to be a certain spot where you’re going to realize that you’re really not part of that.
MR: But do you feel like you’ll always be part of this entity called Sly & The Family Stone?
CR: Absolutely, and I want to be. The thing about them was their parents opened their arms to their children’s friends and some of their children’s friends weren’t necessarily upright people, but they treated them well and they acted better. They didn’t condemn or disrespect anybody. They opened their arms to everybody, and as a result, we all began to act better. I felt like that was a learning tree for me as far as what family is really about.
MR: There’s a new box set out on the group, underlining its importance in music history. What kind of mark do you feel Sly & The Family Stone and you as an artist are leaving?
CR: What kind of mark? Well, aside from the negative side of things, I believe that the positive outweighs all that, simply because a lot of the negative did not transfer onto the people. I do notice one thing. When people emulate you, when they choose to do the things that you do, usually, they choose your worst habits to copy, and I’ve seen that happen before. But luckily, that’s not a huge problem in the scheme of things. I think a lot of times, if you really want to know what’s in a person’s heart and what they really truly feel, if you want to know that person and you never get a chance to meet them you have to listen to the things they write or read the things they write. You’ll get to know Hemmingway if you read his books that he’s written. You’ll get to know what’s really in the man’s heart. What he really believes. That’s who he is. That’s who he really is no matter what it looks like he’s doing on the outside.
MR: Do you have any advice for new artists?
CR: Well, you have to love it, first of all. If you love, it then you can withstand all of the opposition that you’re going to face. There are some people who are going to have not-so-kind things to say about the industry, maybe due to their observations or things that have happened or showed up in the papers and stuff. Seriously though, I’ve applied for jobs and I’ve only punched a clock twice in my life, so when they want to know what I’ve done in the last five or ten years and I put all these gigs and stuff, they look at it and they say, “This isn’t a job!” Well, for sure, it is, because we’re in a lot of long rehearsals to make this turn out right. You have to love what you’re doing in order to get past all of the things that people are going to tell you that aren’t very positive. But if you really like it then keep on doing it and try to be the best you can at it. That means sometimes you may not be able to go out and play with everybody when they’re out playing and having fun and partying because you might need to practice for something or other. Go ahead and practice because you’re not going to miss anything that’s for you.
MR: What do you want to do in the next couple of years, beyond the music?
CR: I don’t know. I’ve got to tell you, my grandson just asked me what I’m doing Saturday because he has someplace he has to be and he can’t get there on the local transportation. It doesn’t run on the weekends in that area, and he wants me to take him there for this job he’s got to do. That’s the future. That’s just Saturday. I told him to remind me a couple of times before Saturday gets here so I don’t plan something in between there because I’ll forget. The future has never been something that I’ve been able to plan. Every time I try, I don’t care if it’s three or four days ahead or a week ahead, it just doesn’t pan out. I planned to go do Graham Central Station; Larry Graham was playing here in Sacramento so close I could’ve walked. But it so happens that my granddaughter came from Paris, and we hadn’t seen her in two years. She brought her two boys–one we knew, one we didn’t–and Phunne’s oldest daughter came from Virginia state to visit us for a month before she went back for her junior year and my daughter Phunne was cooking dinner. So this big family thing all of a sudden fell on the eighth when Larry Graham was supposed to be here. I didn’t have the funds to take the whole family, and with them coming, I just didn’t want to not be there for them, because I’m always there for them. When they’re gone, when they’re here, I’m going to be here for them, so I didn’t make that concert. I don’t know what Larry thought about it, because Jerry [Martini] and I have done some gigs with him when he was playing with Prince. But I just couldn’t make it, and I didn’t have a phone number to say anything. The future I can’t plan, because things happen, so I just have to say, “Okay, I’ll try to do that.” Me, myself, I don’t live in the future, I live in the now. I will resort to reflecting in the past and make sure that some of my mistakes don’t occur again. But as far as planning something in the future, everything that is needed now is needed now, for the nourishing of the mind and body and the lifestyle.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne