Podcasts · Word In Your Ear

The magnificent Sly Stone & Brian Wilson and the curse of our expectations

15 Jun 2025 · 36 min · Episode 774

As the great Warren Zevon said, ‘Enjoy every sandwich’. The two-man canoe navigates this week’s rock and roll rivulet which sadly entails reflections on a pair of towering musical giants ‘whose legend occupied the space where activity should have been’. Things considered include …

…are you born with genius or does a set of circumstances allow it to flourish?

… the impossible task of living up to people’s expectations and the calamitous ways it led Sly and Brian Wilson to behave.

… like Sly’s plane landing at the moment he was meant to be onstage at Madison Square Garden.

… the massive cultural contrast between Woodstock and ‘the Black Woodstock’ a month earlier and how Sly & the Family Stone looked like they’d ‘come from Mars’.

… how Derek Taylor, Tom Nolan and Nick Kent helped fashion the Beach Boys’ myth.

… Sly’s impact on Miles Davis, Prince, Massive Attack and hip-hop and how a record as radical as There’s A Riot Goin’ On was a No 1 Christmas album.

… In My Room, a completely new kind of teenage song.

… David’s five Beach Boys teenage moments …

… and Mark’s three examples of Brian Wilson’s Greatest Bits – eg the overture to California Girls.

… and 'Arise, Sir Roger Daltrey!'

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Links in the notes 2

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