The Vanity Fair interview was not in fact Sly's first in decades. Five months earlier, Sly granted me his first in-person chat in 21 years, and I used it, within a few days, for an article in the LA Times, and, after another interview a year later, for my book, I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone (Backbeat Books, 2008), for which Sly provided the Foreword and George Clinton the Preface. The second edition of the book will be out in the Fall of 2009, incorporating a third interview with Sly. --- Jeff Kaliss