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      Sly Stone and the Sound of an America That Couldn’t Last

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      The influential musician, who died on Monday at 82, forged harmony — musical and otherwise — that he wasn’t able to hold together on his own.“Landscape” is just one of those words. It’s lost all mouthfeel. It implies a sort of vastness — “the landscape of history,” “the landscape of man,” “the commercial baking landscape.” As craft, it connotes comeliness: “landscape painting.” In action, it exacts beauty through order: a city’s landscaper.Sly Stone died on Monday, at 82, and there it was again. He “redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” declared an official news release. It’s more like landscapes. But who’d deny the gist? I’m sitting here studying a photo of Stone and his band, the Family Stone, five dudes, two chicks, two white, five black. For a racially traumatized America, here was a landscape that redefined “landscape,” too.The band was his idea, as were their songs. What they redefined was how much sound and rhythm you could pack into three minutes — often, into less. The opening 15 seconds of their first hit, “Dance to the Music,” are a blast, like from a launchpad: Greg Errico beats the skins off his drums while Cynthia Robinson screams for you to get up. The horns sound drunk; Freddie Stone’s guitar sounds like it’s responding to a 9-1-1 call.Then at about the 16th second — mid-flight — the ascending party halts and a doo-wop parachute opens. Harmony and tambourine lilt to earth, whereupon we’re exhorted to … dance to the music. Lyrically, all that’s happening here is instruction, pronouncement. “I’m gonna add some bottom,” bellows Larry Graham, “so that the dancers just won’t hide,” before his motorific bass lick starts peeling wallflowers off the wall.This, to paraphrase another Sly gemstone, is a simple song that, musically, teems with, to quote a different gemstone, a vital songwriting and performance philosophy: fun. What else is happening here? Well, the landscapers are celebrating the landscape of themselves. They’re warming up, warming us up, banging out their promise of redefinition. Motown, rock ’n’ roll, gospel, marching band, jazz, lullaby. For about three years, every one their hits was most of all of those: America’s sounds pressed together into radical newness by seven people who dared to embody a utopia that, come 1968, when the band was reaching it apogee, seemed otherwise despoiled. For three years, this band was disillusionment’s oasis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review: ‘Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly,’ by Jeff Weiss

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      In a scrappy new memoir, Jeff Weiss blurs fact and fancy as he recounts his stint as a bit player in the celebrity-industrial complex.WAITING FOR BRITNEY SPEARS: A True Story, Allegedly, by Jeff WeissIn 2023, the pop princess Britney Spears published her autobiography, “The Woman in Me.” In its pages, Spears had choice words for the paparazzi who pursued her at the heights and depths of her fame. She described them as enemy combatants, the ghosts in a Pac-Man game, sharks who sensed blood in the water. They were, she wrote, “an army of zombies” who treated her with “disregard” and “disgust.”She hated them. She feared them. Jeff Weiss, by his own account, was one of them.In the 2000s, Weiss worked as an occasional reporter for a couple of tabloids. (He was also cited for trespassing on Brad Pitt’s property, ostensibly at the bidding of People magazine.) He details these exploits — with grandiosity and rue — in “Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly.” It is not a novel, not yet a memoir. A roman à clef? Probably. Autofiction? Sure. It is also, in its most engaging moments, a bedazzled biography of Spears herself, as glimpsed across the dance floor, or through a long lens.Weiss, if you believe him, first met Spears when he sneaked into the “ … Baby One More Time” video shoot, which was held at his Venice, Calif., high school. The first glimpse of a pigtailed Spears ensorcelled him. A few years later, sprung from college and lightly adrift, Weiss found himself flung into her orbit again. Zhuzhing his résumé and shushing his qualms, Weiss persuaded a tabloid to hire him as a Hollywood party and celebrity reporter. (Context clues suggest that the tabloid was Star; in the book, Weiss calls it Nova.)This is a book that wears its antecedents on its sleeve, or perhaps low on the brow, like a Von Dutch hat. There’s new journalism here and gonzo journalism, as well as more literary stabs at the mournfulness of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the contempt of Nathanael West. Parts of the book read like a retread of “Miss Lonelyhearts,” doused in apple martinis. Other sections suggest link-rotted LiveJournal entries. In broad strokes, it is a story of a young man’s disillusionment, a West Coast “Sweet Smell of Success,” if success smelled like Victoria’s Secret body mist.These strokes are indifferently compelling. Weiss falters in building stakes or sympathy for the self he describes. A 22-year-old college grad distracted from working on his novel? Oh no! And there is a cloying quality to his repeated insistence that he is too pure, too talented to do the work of a tabloid reporter. Many of us who make a life in journalism have done as bad or worse, without ever expensing our drinks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sly Stone, Maestro of a Multifaceted, Hitmaking Band, Dies at 82

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      Sly Stone, the influential, eccentric and preternaturally rhythmic singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose run of hits in the late 1960s and early ’70s with his band the Family Stone could be dance anthems, political documents or both, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 82. The cause was “a prolonged battle with C.O.P.D.,” or lung disease, “and other underlying health issues,” according to a statement from his representatives.“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the statement said.As the colorful maestro and mastermind of a multiracial, mixed-gender band, Mr. Stone experimented with the R&B, soul and gospel music he was raised on in the San Francisco area, mixing classic ingredients of Black music with progressive funk and the burgeoning freedoms of psychedelic rock ’n’ roll.The band’s most recognizable songs, many of which would be sampled by hip-hop artists, include “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “Family Affair,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”Mr. Stone, second from left, with the other members of Sly and the Family Stone in 1970.GAB Archive/RedfernsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Ex-Girlfriend to Resume Testimony About Sex Under Duress

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      The woman, known in court as Jane, has testified that she felt obligated to participate in sex marathons with male escorts because the mogul was paying her rent.A former girlfriend of Sean Combs is set to retake the stand on Monday at his federal trial to continue her testimony about a series of sex marathons with male prostitutes, which she said she felt pressured to continue because Mr. Combs was funding her livelihood.As the trial enters its fifth week, prosecutors are expected to drill down on a key part of their sex-trafficking case: allegations of financial coercion.The former girlfriend, who is known in court by the pseudonym Jane, spent more than seven hours last week testifying about her tumultuous relationship with the music mogul, which started in 2021 and continued until his arrest in 2024. Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, and his lawyers have denied that the sex at the center of the case was ever coercive.Jane testified last week that in an effort to fulfill her boyfriend’s fantasies, she began to participate in drug-fueled sexual encounters with a succession of hired men that the couple called “debauchery” or “hotel nights.” Her account of the sex marathons — which could last for days and typically involved Mr. Combs watching and masturbating — aligned with the “freak-offs” described by Casandra Ventura, another former girlfriend who testified at the start of the case.The pattern of “hotel nights” left Jane feeling used, exhausted and at times sick, she testified. But Mr. Combs was dismissive when she voiced her reluctance, she said, and she continued out of a desire to please him. At times, she arranged to hire certain “entertainers” herself so she could choose the men involved, she testified.The dynamic shifted in 2023, when Mr. Combs began paying her $10,000-a-month rent. Jane said she feared losing her home if she did not comply.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Guntram’ Review: In Concert at Carnegie, Strauss’s First Opera

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      Leon Botstein’s American Symphony Orchestra dusts off “Guntram,” and singers unveil the beauties and flaws of a 19th-century epic fail.After the Munich premiere of Richard Strauss’s first opera, “Guntram,” in 1895, the orchestra went on strike, the two lead singers refused to reprise their roles and another cast member demanded the promise of a better pension before considering any further performances. Add in derisive reviews, and the opera, which had gotten a lukewarm reception in Weimar a year before, was dead in the water. In his garden, Richard Strauss put up a grave marker to “venerable, virtuous young Guntram” who had been “gruesomely slain by the symphony orchestra of his own father.”On Friday, the American Symphony Orchestra under the sure-handed direction of Leon Botstein resurrected “Guntram” in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall that unearthed stretches of ravishing music but also confirmed the structural weaknesses of a work that sags under the weight of its Wagner worship. For the lead tenor, the title role is a tour de force requiring the kind of unflagging power Strauss would later demand of his “Salome.” John Matthew Myers delivered a bravura performance of astonishing resourcefulness and tonal beauty in the role.I did not come away convinced, as Botstein argued in the printed program, that the work deserves a place on the opera stage. But the performance offered a tantalizing glimpse of a musical storyteller who had yet to find a worthy subject for his dramatic instincts, but was already looking to pour his melodic gifts into the service of psychological insights.Here, Strauss wrote his own libretto, thick with Wagnerian alliterations and clichés. It tells the story of Guntram, a medieval minnesinger on a mission to spread the gospel of peace in a realm gripped by war and social repression. He saves Freihild, the unhappily married daughter of a duke, from suicide. At a banquet, her warmongering husband, Robert, threatens Guntram, who kills him in self-defense and is then thrown into the dungeon. Freihild frees him and declares her love. But after Friedhold, a member of Guntram’s brotherhood, intervenes, he resolves to atone in monastic solitude and directs Freihild to sublimate her passion into charitable works.For an opera centered on renunciation, the music is headily sensuous. The score weaves in quotations from Strauss’s own “Death and Transfiguration” as well as the late operas by Wagner. (When Strauss berated a musician in rehearsal for flubbing one tricky spot, he is reported to have said, “But Maestro, we never get this passage right in ‘Tristan,’ either.”)Long monologues dominate each of the three acts. (Botstein presented the composer’s edited version from 1940.) While dramatically stifling, these are some of the most musically convincing passages, especially in Myers’s rendition, which brought a wealth of tone colors and emotional nuance to his narrations. These monologues, in addition to the gorgeous instrumental preludes, fully deserve to be programmed in concerts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roger Nichols, Songwriter Behind Carpenters Hits, Dies at 84

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      With Paul Williams, he wrote enduring 1970s soft-rock classics like “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.”Roger Nichols, a California songwriter and musician who, with his pop-alchemist partner Paul Williams, wrote an advertising jingle for a bank that turned into “We’ve Only Just Begun,” a milestone hit for the Carpenters and a timeless wedding weeper, died on May 17 at his home in Bend, Ore. He was 84.His death, from pneumonia, was confirmed by his daughter Caroline Nichols.Mr. Nichols was best known for his collaborations with Paul Williams, the songwriter, lyricist and all-around celebrity known for songs like “Rainbow Connection,” Kermit the Frog’s forlorn anthem from “The Muppet Movie” (1979).With Mr. Nichols focusing on the music and Mr. Williams conjuring up the words, the duo churned out silky pop nuggets like Three Dog Night’s “Out in the Country” (1970), which rose to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100; “Traveling Boy,” which Art Garfunkel released in 1973; and “I Never Had It So Good,” recorded by Barbra Streisand in 1975.But it was with their work for the Carpenters, the hit-machine sibling duo Karen and Richard Carpenter, that Mr. Nichols and Mr. Williams scaled the heights of pop success.“We’ve Only Just Begun” peaked at No. 2 in 1970, sold more than a million copies of sheet music and served as a timeless showcase for Ms. Carpenter’s spellbinding contralto vocal stylings.The single “We’ve Only Just Begun,” by Mr. Nichols and Paul Williams, rose to No. 2 on he music charts and became a staple of weddings. A&M RecordsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Beyoncé and BET Keep Calling Jesse Collins

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      There’s a memorable scene in Beyoncé’s “Homecoming” documentary about her headlining performance at Coachella in 2018, when she asks a production crew member for a 30-foot-wide camera track. He tells her it doesn’t exist. She then proves him wrong.The Emmy-winning television producer Jesse Collins remembers that moment well, so when the pop superstar called on him to produce her Christmas Day N.F.L. halftime extravaganza “Beyoncé Bowl” for Netflix, he was ready to meet her demands.“Hell no, I will never tell her something doesn’t exist unless it really doesn’t exist,” he said recently with a laugh, “because she’ll Google it and she keeps up with technology. If it can’t happen, I am 1,000 percent certain it can’t happen.”Collins, 54, has worked closely with Beyoncé on awards show performances, including her raucous rendition of “Freedom” at the 2016 BET Awards, when she danced and kicked in a shallow pool of water.“The water was one of the most complicated things that I’ve ever done on any award show,” Collins recalled in a video interview from his office in Burbank, Calif., in a comfy black hoodie as the sun beamed behind him. “Most people try to get away from water,” he said, but an executive had promised it. “When you start the conversation with, ‘This was promised to Beyoncé,’ everybody’s like, ‘We’re going to make this happen.’”Making things happen is Collins’s specialty, and it’s why heavyweights like Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z have recruited him for their projects.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Andy Bell of Erasure’s Magical Mystery World

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      The frontman, whose first solo album in 15 years recently arrived, explains why he’s a fan of gems, psychics and snails.For years, Andy Bell of Erasure has been drawn to women of a certain age. “Women like Catherine Deneuve or Deborah Harry have this innate royalness about them, this sense of fully being,” he said. “I’ve always admired that.”Imagine his joy, then, when, upon turning 60 last year, he began to feel that way about himself. “It’s almost like seeing yourself from the outside and appreciating who you are,” Bell said by video call from his vacation home in Majorca, Spain. “How lovely to feel that way!”The feeling gave Bell so much confidence, it helped inspire him to release his first solo album outside of his hit band in 15 years. Titled “Ten Crowns,” after the Tarot card that signifies finding balance in your life, the album extends Bell’s legacy of making effervescent dance music, but with a twist. Instead of working with Vince Clarke, his usual partner in Erasure, he paired with the songwriter, producer and remixer Dave Audé. “It did feel a bit like cheating,” Bell said with a laugh.The prime subject of the songs — love — echoes the theme of Erasure’s classic synth-pop hits of the ’80s like “Oh, L’Amour” and “Chains of Love.” (The band will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year.) As usual, the new songs sharply contrast ecstatic music with yearning lyrics. “For me, love is an unreachable destination,” Bell said. “To love someone unconditionally is almost an impossible task.”It’s far easier, he finds, to love the things that make up his list of 10 essential inspirations. Interestingly, none have anything to do with music. Instead, they show a heightened sense of the visual world though, to Bell, they’re intimately related. “I definitely see things as sounds,” he said. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Anything 3-DI love that illusion. It brings you to a place where reality meets fantasy. I think my interest stems from when I first saw Andy Warhol’s “Flesh for Frankenstein” with Joe Dallesandro. What’s not to like?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More