I had the honour of speaking to Greg Errico, who is a founding member of Sly and the Family Stone, one of the most influential and innovative bands of the 60s and early 70s. Greg was born in San Francisco in 1948, he joined forces with Sly Stone in 1966 with Larry Graham, Cynthia Robinson, Jerry Martini, Rose Stone and Freddie Stone to form Sly and the Family Stone.
Greg Errico’s drumming was a crucial part of the band’s sound, he combined rock, R&B, jazz and he put the “unk” in the funk. He was the backbone behind songs such as “Dance to the Music,” “Everyday People,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” “I Wanna Take You Higher,” and “Family Affair”.
And of course, he played Woodstock on the very early morning of August 17, 1969 at 3:30AM that became legendary. The performance people were soaked and it rained all night.
In commemoration of 57th anniversary of Woodstock, Greg joined me in the Gumbo Kitchen to talk all about it.
Musically, San Francisco must have been a great place to grow up?
You know, looking back, I was in the right place at the right time. That creative and musical phenomenon that happened in the late 60s, mid 70s, especially in the Bay Area, was ground zero for all that. All that music and those songs that were created during that period of time…Sly, Santana, The Grateful Dead…it still lives today.
I started playing when I was 14, self-taught. I was 17 and a half when we started Sly and the Family Stone in December of 1966. I had another half year of high school left and did that. I mean, that time period was so amazing because up until that time, prior to that, The Beatles came out in 65 and before that was Elvis and before that was Pat Boone. For the record labels, you had to be in New York or L.A. to make it happen until that time. San Francisco has always been a hotbed for creativity, but it was its own thing. It didn’t follow any pattern, it didn’t want to be like anything else….and it wasn’t. So when it did explode there, it wasn’t through any kind of a business template so the labels were like “What is this?”
So you’re 14 years old when you start playing the kit, then three short years later you’re starting Sly and the Family Stone. I mean, that’s inspirational for anyone wanting to start an instrument!
I loved the drums, I wanted to start playing way younger but my folks wouldn’t let me have a drum kit around the house. So at 14, I had a little gig and started making some money, getting a little independence so I got a drum set. This was before internet and all the other sources of information and inspiration, you just had records. We had a 45 rpm record changer, the small singles…San Francisco was a melting pot society with people from all over the world so you had music from all over the world.
So when you, Sly and everyone in the band got together, did you have a vision of the type of band you all wanted to be?
Like everything else that came out of San Francisco, nobody copied each other, we all had our different ideas and inspirations of what we wanted to do. Sly had a radio show, he was a radio DJ so everyone knew who he was and he had produced a couple things at this point. He had one hit with Bobby Friedman called “The Swim” which he wrote and produced. Sly had made a couple attempts to start a group which didn’t work out, so he was going to make this one last swipe and in this swipe, he had already picked out a few people. He was told to go to this club to hear this guy on bass named Larry Graham and Sly had already knew Cynthia Robinson.
So we all met for the first time that night, we didn’t play a note. We just met and talked about wanting to do something that was new, different and creative. We were all looking at each other because nobody had a group with females, at least a modern contemporary band. There has always been females playing music but this was going to be a popular band and to have females alongside Black and White people during a time when there were race riots going on in this country. But nobody felt intimidated, we all felt inspired and it felt like this was going to be fun.
So Woodstock, how did you keep the momentum up to play for a crowd of people at 3AM in the morning and why was it at 3AM?
So we were scheduled to go on at 8PM Saturday night primetime. There’s 500,000 people there so this wasn’t a club gig, the energy that existed there was unique. It was one of those things that happened once, you can’t do it again. You can create a gig or an outdoor concert and invite a bunch of people, but the uniqueness of how that all came together and how it happened is a life experience, it happens only once. So the promoter, Michael Lang, kept coming in and telling us to give them another hour because they were behind. So that coupled with you’re getting ready to go up and then before you know it you had to go back down again. That happened about five times before 3AM rolled around. At around midnight it had been raining and the realization hit us that all these people who had been there since Thursday through rain and shine were done. It was raining and people were in their tents, they were done and they were beat up.
So we looked at each other, getting ready to go up so grabbed each other hands before going up and we looked at each other and said “All we can do is give it our all. give it 200% and do the best we can.” By the third song, everyone starts coming out of their bags, grooving, getting into to it and standing up….and the rest is history.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.