From Morecast Connect and aj Benza. Fame Uh, he'd liked to be walked on a leash and play really dirty, kinky sex games. Is the guy put the cock in the Peacock network. Okay, bitch, hey, everybody, aj Benzi here, but fame is a bitch. This is your daily Unfiltered podcast for June eleventh, twenty twenty five.
Six one, one, two two five.
Love the Double Ones because they doubled their twenty two's and quadruples. We know they're forty four, So the Double Ones. I love. I love eleven eleven on the clocks. I kiss my phone, I kiss laptop. Well, it's crazy the things I kiss when I see eleven eleven. I don't know why. It's just a stupid thing. But I'm not alone. Many people do it. I just wolfed down two chicken cutlets from last night.
But listen, not just.
The chicken cutlets, which are expertly fried, but also sliced up really good, juicy red tomatoes, not the typical ones you see at the store, which lasts for fucking four months. Whatever you get tomatoes that last that long, last a month on your countertop, or get rid of them. They got most steroids in them than Arnold Schwarzenegger from the eighties.
You need fruit and vegetables that tend to go bad anyhow for smallsh tomato, plum, tomatoes, balsamic, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, some basil from the little potted plant I got in front of the house the garden there. Oh my goodness, cutlets over tomato, basil, balsamic and extra virgin olivo. I can't. It's just it's heaven. It's like I sometimes think of, like what if I have had
a little prisk what if things really? What if I do something awful, I'll never have cutlets with tomatoes and basil and vinegar and oil again. Oh my god, think about that the next time you want to hold off and punch somebody. Because I see many things happening out there in the real world that make me want to m haul back and deliver a fucking right hand to these people's faces. I'm talking about the riots. Five days
of this shit going on six now. So now I'll get into that, but before I do, I will say there is we listen us people on the right. We have a significant win to celebrate. Yes we do. It's bigger than ABC telling the Hens on the View to tone down the Trump rhetoric.
This is bigger.
It's bigger than the tech Titans from Northern California to DC and kissing the ring. This is bigger. ABC News has fired their stupid jerk off veteran reporter or correspondent, Terry Moran, because he went on that dumb social media rant where he targeted President Trump and Trump's advisor Steven Miller, who, for my money, might be the smartest person in politics I've seen the last twenty years. Really, guy's brilliant. I'd
love to see anybody trying debate this kid. I say, kid, he's a man, but to me, he's much younger, so he's a kid. Went to the gym today. You know, I got a membership with Rocco, but I also got him his own membership in case he wants to go if I'm not around. As I said to him, look I'm too fucking fat. I gotta get this is disgusting. I gotta start working out tomorrow. I said, But I got your own membership for yourself. You want to take
a friend, you go. And I was telling the guy behind the count, oh, he's available to have his own. I said, he, you don't need that. He said, strong kid, it's an athlete. Take his father's ays. Don't worry about a trainer. The guy didn't know what to do, and I said that. I said, I don't mean it like that, but I gotta go.
I gotta go. I can't take people.
I can't sometimes, like whenever I leave the house, at times I feel like, am I ready?
Am I ready to deal with people?
Like? I went to the bank today right for some stupid reason that I can't explain. There's plenty of money in my account. But earlier, but I was in La, I mean in Vegas. We did we sent a check through the computer to the landlord, and for some reason another check was like also got to them. And they called me and said, mister Ben's, we have two checks. You should I hold this till June. I said, yeah, I suppose, so just hold it till June's rent. Okay,
thank you. I get a call today, mister BENSI there's a stop payment. I said, I would never do that. There's plenty of money in that account.
So I go to the bank.
I say, listen, I gotta send a bill pay to my landlord, and I'm giving them. And I could tell that women at the bank, by the way, all Central American, didn't know what the fuck to do. I said, well, I can do bill pit. Yeah, you can do it on your phone, on your app. Okay, let me do it in front of you. So here's the place I have to send. If you did your account number, I don't think I do. It didn't happen last month. My wife did it, but I mean I was out of town.
But I called the landlord. They're like, no, you don't need our account number. Just the point is, nobody knows nothing. And the women I were talking to what them allan? Don't ask me how I know.
Just feel bad for me that I know.
But here for twenty seven years, I know at every bank and every doctor's office, and every cashier is our Armenian or Central American. And they all speak the same and sound the same. The Armenians.
We better jewelry, but they're the same. They don't.
I remember being you. I keep I shouldn't keep talking this. I remember going to banks and the bank would give you your mother and father a set of dishes or a toaster for opening up a new account. Remember Christmas accounts. They knew your name when you walked in over unless you live in a nice small town and the people there are still red blooded Americans working behind the glass. Maybe your bank doesn't even have bulletproof class that's that would be amazing, but that doesn't exist here.
We got that in delicatessens and shock.
Its gross. And they know what you call these stores out here? You know, they just I guess liquor stores again in New York to bodegas, you get everything, fruits, vegetables, sodas, liquor, whatever you want, sandwiches, cereal. You do all your shopping there at like thirty percent of a higher rate, but you get everything done. And it's always a Vietnamese or a Chinese person sitting on a pail, you know, separating beans from the string being thing. They just don't stop working here.
There's three or four people that don't know what you're talking about.
Ah, what need to do? Excuse me? What the melting pot? With the melting pot? But I was in New York. New York City was called the melting Pot, and I gotta be honest, I loved it. I loved going out and the people I met, the people I hung out with, in drank with, and dance with and fell in love with, were all from every part of the world. There wasn't a muscle in my body that didn't like or or had preconceived ideas about anybody else. Black, White, Egyptian, Vietnamese, Spanish, Pole.
It didn't matter.
The older I got, it changed. It's just different. Now it's different. It's not as friendly as it used to be, you know what I mean. We used to go out and it kind of all felt the same. I'm gonna touch on that in a second, but I want to talk about it's so great that Terry Moran was dumped suspended by the network.
Not too many hours after.
He gave Steven Miller the bullshit and called him a world class hater, and ABC News says, we're at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran, and based on his recent post, which was a clear violation of ABC News, we've made the decision to not renew. Oh, I love it. We hold all of our reporters to the highest standards of object Let's not get carried away because you haven't held up to that standard for years. But I remember what I was the Daily News, and it came down to,
you know, Pete's gonna fire you. Pete Hamill, my oiler in chief, my idol, who I assume was still a fist fire and womanizing, hard drinker, because that's the guy I wanted to be turned out. He was none of those things. He sober, he was no longer throwing punches. He was married to I think an Asian woman, and he was very liberal. And he said, look, you know, I can let you go because I could hire four or five reporters and pay them what I'm paying you,
or you could change your beat. You could be my guy in New York City that writes about all the new immigrants coming into the city. This is nineteen ninety seven. And I said, I don't think. I don't want to do.
That, Pete, I don't. That doesn't excite me.
You're talking about the new immigrant I mean, but that's where he was way back then.
These things don't happen overnight.
It takes a few decades before it's like, holy shit, this is the problem right about the new immigrants who are really in the city. I don't think I want to do that, you know what I mean? It didn't feel right, and here we are.
Sorry.
I lost my train and thought I had to run to the kitchen because I actually had a pot of water on to cook some pasta and made some pestal the other day, and I wanted to have a quick bowl of pesto. But it's getting too late, so I shut the sole wolf. I wasn't thinking what I had to do.
But you know, Pete Hamill wanted me to be that guy that talked to the new immigrants, and I had no desire to do that. But like I said, these things start to become an issue way before you think it.
That was like an innocent thing he suggested I do. But I knew that's not the way I am. I don't want to sit down with Haitians in their kitchen or check stands or whatever the new people were coming in. I know. I said, I'd rather write about Pam Anderson's new tits. He said, well, that's where we you know, that's where we disagree. Well that was it. He's gone. The News fired him six months after he got rid of me. And unfortunately he's gone. Pete great man, great ride,
a great American. And I'm still talking about things like pam Anson's new Tits. So I guess I win. But ABC News making a big commotion, and I love when he interviewed Trump, Trump said, looks, Stee, I gave you a shot.
You know I didn't. I didn't thank.
I don't know who you are, but I gave you a shot. You're doing very terribly. You're doing a very bad job. My Trump isn't up the standards. I haven't been doing it as much, so I got to get back into it. But he told them, Steve, you're not doing right. You're doing it wrong. Terry, I don't know who you are. Now I'm not there. I gotta fix it.
Speaking the fixes yesterday, I mentioned a bunch of suicides that occurred in that period in twenty eighteen where we lost a lot of people, and I mentioned Paul Walker, and some of you said, ay J, Paul Walker crashed his car into a tree. He wasn't committing suicide. No.
I know that. I know exactly how he died.
And there's a theory out there that he might have done it on purpose, or the.
Car was.
Messed with that kind of shit. I'm sure it wasn't the case, but I do tell that story of the one night I went out with him because for a moment in time, we had the same manager, Stephen Fenton, Steve Fenton, Corny Little. He's a good looking, decent looking guy, blonde haired guy. Actually told me when he signed me, I want to be in the aj Benza business. And I said, well, business is shot right now.
Let's see if you can resurrect it. And he did his part.
One night, we were driving through New York's through La late one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning, coming back from a movie shoot for some independent short film I did, and.
I was hungry.
I said, you might let me stop betting at one of these donuts. It's one of those donut chains that's here in La, you know. And it wasn't the best neighborhood. It was Hollywood, but it was still like you know. It was an armed security guard at the door and a few black guys going around us. I'm gonna get get a glazed donut and a clo if he wants to, no, I don't. I don't think we should up. What are you talking about, Well, it just looks very dangerous, Steve. It's a fucking donut shop.
What are you worry about what do you want? Hayes a lot. What do you what if you want to get?
No? No. I think we set out here. He didn't want to be there. He was dating the actress Yale O'Grady. I mean Gale O'Grady, good looking woman. Anyhow, he also represented Paul Walker, and one night he and me and Paul Walker went out with Steve, and then Steve left us after a while. He basically told me, this kid's going to be a star, you know, take him out.
I couldn't like.
Looking back on it now, it seems ridiculous that I be the guy that you say, take this good looking young actor out because he might be somebody one day.
But that's really what happened.
I went to d'antannas, which I might go to Wednesday night with the great Alison Martino.
We've been talking about hanging out again.
She wants to really do something fun with all these mysteries and scandals episodes he has on tape, in terms of, you know, maybe getting a theater where we can show some episodes, have a question and answer, you know, time between me and her and other people with the audience. I think it'd be great, and you have to go to her page Vintage los Angeles on Facebook. Allison is the curator, the greatest curator of all things Los Angeles. But I'll let you know, well, hopefully i'll see her tonight,
being Wednesday night. But anyhow, I'm out with Paul, and I'm at D'antani's, where i'll probably go tomorrow tonight. And actually, what's his name? The Jarkroff ginger head from seventy show comes around me, the guy who's in prison now. He was like, hey, what's going on? Just being a Jarkroff couldn't stand him. Then Danny Masterson and then Paul and I hang it out waiting for waiting for a table, and suddenly it's like a lot of noise behind me,
and I see his face light up. It's like three girls who were looking very interested, very pretty girls in our direction. And I thought, oh, well, I'm gonna show this kid how it's done. No, they were not looking at me. They wanted Paul. They fell in love with
his ocean blue eyes. But he did say that night in terms of what he wanted to do in his career, he said, look, I just want to play a copper a guy that gets behind the wheel of a fast car, and that's what his career became, fast and furious until he fucking crashed his car into a tree. I just wanted to address that because people thought I didn't realize that maybe he committed suici. I don't mean it that way.
I mean it was a thing. People were throwing theories out there and no. And I was talking about cars, and I thought of, remember last week we talked about people who named their houses that very interesting to say the least, Like, oh, yes, remember when we looked at the Phairmont, Like what, why didn't you what the fucking address? You know? Evans house was Woodland but he lived on
Woodland Drive, so it wasn't a stretch. But some people really have big names for their homes, which I'm not against. But I was talking about naming cars, and I remember when I got my sixty four Fleet would Cadillac painted Caribbean blue?
Not painted?
He came that way, a paint color they no longer use, just like my ninety three Lincoln Continent of that color's gone. And it's a shame. Every fucking car looks the same nowadays. So I had like six thousand dollars to my name, and me and Chico, we just we just drove to La We're at seven eleven and a fucking u hole getting some gatorade of beef turkey or something. And this gypsy, this older man, a gypsy Romanian type guy you see in Los Angeles, steps out of his car.
Beautiful car. The interior is the looor blue and black.
The car you could raise a family of six in the back seat. I'm like, God, this fucking amazing. I just I knew I was gonna get the nineteen seventy six El Dorado from Vinnie, and I had it for a week or two and it started giving me issues, and I thought, I can't afford to have a car. I gotta keep going to the mechanic for every visits through fifty three fifty I can't do it.
So I walked it.
She goes like, you gotta get this car, said Chica. I got six thousand dollars and pay days two weeks away. You gotta get it, Pope, you gotta get it. Think about you with this car and the show you have. It's perfect. I'm like, I know. So I sit to the guy in seven to eleven. Are you selling that car? Yes, I'm telling how much you want. Five thousand, Oh god, five thousand. Listen, he said, But for I'm taking a drive it around the block. You'll see you sitting in it.
I said, I don't know about engines. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not a car guy. But if I feel good in it, I'll buy it. He goes drive it me and she go get in for ten minutes.
She didn't care. He's drinking his coffee.
It felt good, you know, it felt great, And I said, this thing is amazing.
He said, sixty four. Bro, this is crazy.
I said, okay, I said the guy, I'll give you the money tomorrow and make a deal with him. Give him five grand I got a thousand dollars left. Chico was riding around in the car. He made a sign up that just said it's a sixty four. Because everybody would get to a red light, what's the year? So he just got holding up the sign with a stick in his hand, it's a sixty four. It was so stupid. But I called him a gypsy because he was like a Romanian gypsy type.
Well, the reason why I knew I had to have the car.
Was when I got in the car to test driving, because I said, Chico, I'm gonna buy a car from his fucking gypsy at seven to eleven, Chica, we just got here to fuck these people up. Pope, you gotta get this cars.
You turned on the radio.
I wasn't working, and suddenly he turned a couple of corners of the antenna from the back shoots up, and now the song's coming in and it's Stevie Nick singing Gypsy from Fleetwood Mad And not only did I call him the Gypsy, but because she prosally had three different Gypsies in her Yorkshire Terrier brood. And it's I gotta do it. It's done, It's done. You know all my
cars have that kind of feeling. And I'll get to the love affair I had with my nineteen ninety six Mercedes five hundred sl which was a celebrity lease.
Back in the.
Day, because you know, my column was popping and I was on TV a lot, and I met this guy at a wedding. Actually I think it was Tico Torres's wedding to Ava Hertzekova, who worked at Mercedes on the West side of Manhattan.
And you know, you're looking for a celebrity lease.
I know I did. He was talking about so I'm looking for a car, yeah, you know, and he gave me the car. It was gonna be given to the New York Jets rookie name key Shawan Johnson, but he said he's dropping too many passes and Mercedes doesn't want to be associated with him.
John Johnson went on to have a.
Great NFL career, But it was me lucky at one point, and they well, they didn't give me the car.
I paid four in a month.
On top of that, it was three fifty to garage in Manhattan, so seven to fifty month I had my Mercedes five hundred SL convertible hard top. The whole thing. It was classic. And I'll get to that when I talk about sly Stone, who died the other day and left a big hole in the music industry.
But before I get there, this whole thing with Simone. You know, I'm gonna save Simone.
Bowles and Roley Gaines for tomorrow because it's so like, it's just not where I want to go. Simone Bowles is wrong in the way she spoke about transgenders coming into the sport and acting like it's not a big deal and let's all, you know, virtue signaling. I'll get to that tomorrow. I'll talk about Jared Lado tomorrow too. I know he's been weird lately. There's been stories about women saying when I was young, he came after me.
He's very creepy and sneaky.
Unit I've always heard that about him.
Fantastic actor.
Sometimes you have to measure the talent level of an actor with how weird he can be off camera.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it exists.
There's a lot of actors like Nicholas Cage who are completely insane off camera, but when the movie is on and the camera's rolling, they know what their job is. Mickey Rourke's the same way. But you get these guys off a movie set and they're fucking nuts. And Jared Laedo is one of those guys. He's a rock star in addition to a movie star and an Oscar winner. And when you have that kind of you just you're gonna take advantage of opportunities. Sometimes that don't always seem right.
I'll give you the It was an example of like many years ago when I was on top of my little hill my mid to late thirties, and some girl was with her mother at some movie premiere.
I forget where I even was.
Was someplace in Hollywood, and she recognized me from watching me on TV. I'm like, let's say thirty six, she's like nineteen twenty, and you know, the mother's like, hey, but my daughter's a big fan of yours. The mother was like, not that much older than I was. It was very weird, but she's like, get her number, get her, give us your number. And I'm doing this going yeah, I guess I'd like to see this girl. She's young,
but the mother's behind it. I mean, you get these situations where you go, oh, okay, I guess this is same, like that awful crazy story of a woman I'll never know her name when Jack and Joey and Rosalie and Jack came out here and I was, you know, my E show is.
Popping my name mama on TV. The whole thing.
I'm living life like crazy and I'm at the Montreon Hotel. Skybar was the place inside the hotel off Sunset Boulevard on Sunset Boulevard and with my two nephews.
To me, this was the epitome of fame.
I could fly my family out, put them up in a beautiful hotel, hang out with my nephews, slash brothers, and show them what it's like to be in my shoes. It was just great, you know.
I loved it.
Watching me shoot mysteries and scandals on the boulevard. It was just, you know, I lived for that, opened up a bank account, gave the bank cards. You need money, you know, don't worry about it. This just I loved being that guy. And a girl approaches me and approaches us, and she's a little tipsy, you know, we start talking to her. I came out here with my mother from Oregon or maybe San Diego, whoever it was.
It was like two hours away at least, because.
I wanted to find aj Ben's and he always talks about Skybar when he's on his e show, when he's on the Gossip Show, he's always at Skybar. So he came out here to find she's looking at me right in the face. I said, did you find him? No, I don't see him anywhere. Matphews and I are just like kind of staying quiet. Oh that's weird. He usually comes here. I see him all the time. What would you do if you saw him? I definitely have to
sleep with them. Just she's getting slopping now. And after like five minutes this, I go, listen, I'm a j no, I give him my license. Oh my god, so embarrassed, drags her mother over, talk about embarrassing.
It's AJ.
Can you you knew you'd made him?
I can't.
I'm so proud of.
You, proud of you.
And like in two minutes, I said, well, I'm gonna get out of here. My nephew's is staying here. I gotta go back to Hollywood. Says I'm coming with you, and the mother gives us the whole, like, hey, how fun kind of thing, the traveling back to my apartment, this teeny weeny place off Santa Monica Boulevard, the first place that Marilyn Monroe lived in. It's a hovel, it's a gingerbread house. And she's starting to tell me about her life. And I said, listen to me right now.
I don't want to know your name, because I'll be honest. She wasn't a ten Okay. It was the kind of girl that my nephew said, are you sure you want to go home with her? Yeah? I do. What's I wasn't thinking, right, I don't want to get it just wasn't my type.
But I said, I'm gonna go. I don't want to know your name.
I don't want to know anything.
Don't you want to know where I work?
No? Actually they were from San Francisco. Now I remember, because she finally was able to say she works in a menagerial position.
For the gap.
I was like, stop, that's it, that's all I want to know, and went back to my apartment, did the deed and we're done, And I said, I flow you camp gets back to the Mandre and that's where you stay.
Yeah, no problem, but let me tell you my name? No no, no, no, no, here's my phone.
I don't want your phone them please just not center back to the Mandra never heard from her again, obviously, but that's the level of stupidity and quote unquote fame that exists out there, and her mother was behind it, signing all fun and so Jared leto Yes, he could be creepy because he's a big fucking movie star and yet he likes girls on the younger side.
Anyhow, We'll get into that more during the week, but.
I want to talk about sly Stone and the importance of him passing away. I mean, this guy, I don't know how much she listened to his music, but you talk about you can't even pin him down to a certain kind of music that his group sly and the Family Stone had did perform psychedelic cold funk. I don't know. The guy created the songs, wrote the songs, produced them, sang on them, the brainchild of a supergroup in the
sixties and seventies. And you look, you know, some of the best musicians out there will tell you that when he got there, when he got to the top as bligd as he was later in life for having issues with drugs and shit like that, this is a guy who opened the door for so many other musicians to
know where to walk in. Like I said yesterday, there might not have been a Prince or Lenny Kravitz, or an Andre three thousand, or an outcast or Bruno Mars, maybe not even Public Enemy without sly Stone doing what he did. I mean, listen, you can't sing on every day people. You can't sing that without absolutely knowing what's in your heart. And at the same time trying to
help others find that feeling in them. That's a song that goes so much deeper than some of the pop shit, the bull shit pop songs.
I saw Katie Perry the other day.
Some gay fan jumped on stage and Sydney Australian you know, got next to while she's playing the song You're.
Hot and You're cold, You're.
Yes and your no, you know, and then you're a rapp its like, who fucking cares about that song?
I guarantee you she hates it. But everyday people.
That did did they And here she comes a uh oh, that's summer day, Oh summer. There's so many hits they blended into each other. I used to ride around that cat and that Mercedes with with my Slider family Stone CDs man. Ah.
As brilliant as he was, like.
This happens in Hollywood, it came down to how he can handle the money, the notoriety, the flash, the schedule, the demands, the public, the.
And the thing.
You know, there's another battle besides just creating the songs and the music and the sound and the group. Well then how can you sustain it?
Can you keep.
Juggling all those instruments and those balls in the air.
You gotta keep it going. Are you strong enough?
It's fucking tough man. I'm not saying we should feel bad for people who get to that point in life, but there is an additional amount of work you have to do. Can't just take the god, the gift that God gave you and performing.
And think that I've done. No, you gotta get the work done.
You're gotta take what He's given you and make.
It all work.
It's look, it ain't taking ditches, but it's a different kind of hard work. And when you work for yourself, and to a minuscule example me, you know, I work for myself. It's not a familiar position. I've always worked for network studios, what have you, newspapers, big institutions that you follow rules and guidelines and you know, instructions. Well, when you're your own boss. Somebody said recently, you can't be a shitty boss and a shitty employee and stay successful.
And again, eventually he got to slidestone, and you know, he succumbed to some of the things in life that people do. But there's this crazy moment in this documentary that questlove the musician produced. Excuse me, it's called Slide Lives, and it opens up with this female.
Interviewer is saying to Slicestone.
You know this musical talent you have, you're the envy of so many people in the recording industry, and you've made it to the top. And then she asked him, why did you blow it all? And he's sitting there smiling, going, I didn't blow nothing, you know. He just life just met him headfirst, and he got to a point where he wasn't showing up to venues on time.
He was skipped in concerts, He.
Had to put up twenty thousand dollars up front for a club or arena before they would agree to pay him because he was unreliable.
Drugs, you know.
And of course Questlove goes into this whole other thing, which I'm not happy about, but it's a great documentary either way. But it's like, you know, Sly lived, He says, Sly lives with the burden of black genius. He lived with the burden of black jeens. That's a fucking cop out to me. Doesn't matter what color you are, people blow their opportunities. White, black, brown, doesn't matter. People blow their opportunities and blow their fame has nothing to do
with color. I don't like the Questlove introduce that, but you know, whatever the hell bound to happen when a musician like that.
I don't know the black experience.
I think I know a lot about it.
I was around a lot.
Of it for many years, and I'm still amazed by some of the shit that people say in the black community that I'm like, really, you still feel that way? Wow? But I'm not in their shoes.
So but it's sad, you know, there's so many.
People who don't truly understand how influential Sylvester well sly Stone, Sylvester Stone was. He was just very important to the music we all love and took for granted for many years. There was a time where Questlove was on this panel talking about the documentary and he said, sly happened to be at the helm creating the language and the alphabet for which even to this day, we're still using his tools and his tricks of the trade to express ourselves
through music. But it's also extremely it's very possible for all of that to get lost to history. And that's kind of what this is about. What me and my producer. Want you to know is why would you get to the mountaintop and then just walk away from it? And that's what sliced alone slone Sly Stone did. Sorry, it's so easy to say sliced alone. That's what Stone did. Had his band in the mid sixties, Sly and the Stoners, which would give you an idea right away what they're like.
And then it was Freddy and the Stone.
Souls and they joined forces those two and they had this concept to make this band and there's so many hits. Thank you for letting me be myself again. And it's not even like when you were my age and you got an album where your sisters had an album that you could read the front, back, the middle. The liner notes, it was a whole day. It wasn't just hearing the song on the radio or on TikTok and going who
sings this song and then knowing it instantly. It took weeks to know the lyrics to a song that you heard at the beat or in your car.
One time there was no internet to run to.
You had to wait by the fucking radio and hope it came on again. Like Bohemian Rhapsody or My Sharona or any one of those earworms, Stairway to Heaven, whatever came out. How could I know all the words? Well? When albums were available in our childhood, we read the line of notes and many songs the lyrics were there.
But that's not enough for sly Stone.
People think the song thank you for letting Me be myself again, okay, but the way he spelled it, thank you is spelled the traditional way for let me is f A l E t t I n m e thank you for let me b b e mice m I ce elf e l f again A g I n thank you for letting me be mass elf again. I mean, I'm sure maybe you think that's not a big deal, but it is a big deal. It's changing the way people can hear a lyric in their ear and turn it upside down and make it mean something else.
They just I mean, I'm very partial to that music.
It was in my house a lot, and it's this guy to me and that group had You know, I grew up as a kid and when my brother in law, Jack was coaching at a largely black high school, and he'd bring these athletes back to our home when they were going on for a baseball championship or basketball championship. I used to go with him to Westchester County, an hour north of New York City and watch these boys play ball, and I developed a.
Keen interest in.
Black culture with the Afros and the Afro Picks, the bell bottomed pants and the silk shirts, and I'm like, ah, fuck, have these guys play ball?
And they dunk?
Oh my god, the music they played, but they walk into an arena. When Jack's team walked out to BT Express, he.
Comes the Express Express. I don't even know if you know that.
So it wasn't even words, which just here comes the BT Express and that's what they came out to, colembing their hair forward with the Afro Picks, dunking on the layup line.
I was hooked, line and sinker.
So this guy still sly Stone had had the street, he had the church, and he had Motown. You know, he knew he was like a Smokey Robinson in addition to being cool and hip and dangerous.
Smokey was never dangerous. He was just sweet.
But with sly Stone, you go, well, how much can I like him without getting my heart broken?
Dance to the music.
I'm five years old, dance to the music that the day all we need is a drama? Are you kidding me? That was the first single. Then they come out with Stand Stand two years later I'm seven years old. That became a big hit. Like everyday people like hot fun in the summer time, and thank you for letting me be myself again, and also everybody is a star.
But if you listen to.
Stand, I'm telling you that's how I discovered that there are other hits on albums besides this one, the songs you hear on the radio at the beach on people's blankets. Wait, there's another song called Stan that's the B side. Stan was like that for me, and the other song that blew me away was My Lady. If I'm not mistaken, it's an apostrophe la d Malay.
I remember dating chick who.
Lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which is where I was born, and we go out in the city and I drop her off. Her name is Terry, and I drop her off at her apartment in the seventies. I was raised in eightieth Street. She was in the seventies. I just always was like, what this is amazing, I'm back at benson Hurst.
I remember these streets as a young young boy, you know, the creamsickles and sitting on the stupid my grandmother and Rosalie and walking to the park store.
I remember these things as a young two three four year old kid. And I kept going to Brooklyn after that because we had relatives there.
And I remember leaving.
Her apartment, dropping her off, and I had the five hundred sl It was February. It was like twenty six degrees out at night. We just had a great meal at a restaurant called John's on Twelfth Street in Manhattan. John's is an old school Joint's been there at least one hundred years. Their main thing in the middle of the dining room was a bunch of candles. They would put in kiyanti bottles right and the wax would drip down
from the candle and get over the bottles. That was a very artistic thing back in the seventies for people to have in their houses. But John's, I think at this point twenty twenty five, I don't know if they still feature it, but in the middle of their dining room was a bunch of kiyanti bottles with just a wax strippings down them, and it was like the centerpiece of the restaurant. It's a great place to take a chick and not be seen. No one knows you're there.
You know, it's a neighborhood joint. Read my tablecloths, shit red booth, red sauce.
And I took her hair.
And drove it back to Bens and Earth and I didn't care back then, Oh yeah, I'm gonna go to this dry and get you. And Brooklyn picked you up, take you back to Manhatan for a meal, go what night? Clib drove it back to Bench and urse, I'll get on the belt Parkway and go home. I mean, you talk, ten drinks, fucking espresso, coffee pills. Just how the fuck did I do it? But I remember kissing her in the car. The car seats were so crisp and strong. Everything in that car was new, and I would I
would lower the top. I kept the hardtop in the garage, but I lowered the soft top and it was like twenty five degrees out and I keep the windows up and the heat on high. So we'd drive with her hair whipping around, this beautiful Italian black hair. And I remember kissing her good night. Nothing really came in this relationship, but sitting at good night and then flipping on sli Stone singing Milady as I drove away, and she called me like fifteen minutes later saying, I heard your radio
for like five minutes after you left. It was blast that you obviously had to just get on the bay the Bell Parkway.
I heard it.
Oh what a memory. And I think about some of the things when you look at sly Stone. He performed at Woodstock. They performed at Woodstock. Cynthia Robinson was a female who played the trumpet. Sly Stone was the first guy to incorporate women in his band, white people with Black people, with males with females, a.
Woman playing the trumpet.
You know.
Prince introduced Chilae playing the drums.
That was great. But like I said, is there a Prince or Bruno Mars or Letty Kravitz or a lot of these guys without sly I don't think so. But when they performed that Woods singing I Want to Take You Higher, which was a tough song for my father to like because it's basically.
A drug song.
I want to Take You Higher, they couched it to me in romance, but it was about drugs and there was a thunderstorm of woodstock.
One of their guys in the band got shot.
The equipment was crackling, but Sly sat there, stood there, singing like nothing was wrong. Half a million people in his hand. Also a moment you cannot recreate, like Diana Ross in Central Park in the pouring rain, prints at the super Bowl playing Purple Rain in the pouring rain.
That's those are God given moments.
But man, flying the Family Stone. They got songs. They got a bunch of songs that made Rolling Stones five hundred greatest songs of all time. Dance to the music everyday, people hot, fun in the summertime. Thank you for letting me be myself, family fair and stand. And by the mid seventies, you know, substance abuse, missing concerts, missing interviews, missing appointments, like I said, having to put twenty grand up front before he showed up.
But they kept going.
They kept going, and a lot of people, not only Prince but Beck, George Clinton, Parliament, Bootsye Collins, they all give it up. The Livestone. And I remember being a kid, I'm talking maybe eleven years old. They were on a show back in a day called Don Kirsher's Rock Concert.
It was a show that came on, I think at midnight, and it was like I always felt, if I was up and watching that show, I was doing something so cool and probably disallowed in a lot of homes, you know, to be up that late and watching the show about rock and roll, which was supposedly coming into your children's brains and fucking them up. But to stay up and listen to Don Curs's Rock Concert felt like a variety show slash talk show. And I'm telling you I'm not wrong.
I know for a fact that watching that show along with Dick Cabin, Mike Douglas, Johnny Carson obviously David let him and later on it made me want to do something like that. I was enchanted just sitting there, my knees on the rug and my elbows on this little hasseck. We had a colonial, fucking little stool thing.
We voughted Ethan Allen. Why do I remember this shit?
Ethan Allen on, Oh my god, it's too much to remember the shit your brain keeps in. Get it. I want to get rid of that, bring a new memory in.
But yeah, man, I said, I could do this.
I want to do that, and that's why when I have my talk show, I wanted singers to perform, bands to perform on the roof of this building we had on the fire escape. I just thought that would be really cool. People aren't doing that, and now you see John Mulaney. He does it on his Netflix show which ran for what ten weeks on Netflix.
Which I loved.
But he decided to introduced music acts. My deal was, I'm going to introduce new comedians and some music acts, and on Monday, when Broadway is dark in New York City, my guest will be from Broadway shows. That was mostly an idea of my producer, my gay producer, Michael Danny.
But it was a great idea.
People don't really interview Broadway stars anyhow. The point is I sat there and watched his shit on TV. Don cursed this ron concert. I think he came out eleven or twelve at night. It was a magical time of night, everyone's to sleep, and it always felt like I was I don't know how to say this. I didn't feel nervous. I felt a little more protected by the dark. I don't know what it was, but it just kind of helped me. It helped shape who I became good or band,
I don't know what to say. Those are because of the influences. Not listen. Before we coined the term social influencers, and we sat through millions of their bullshit things they do to steal our precious hours away from us on TikTok and Instagram and what have you. But before that term, it was just influences. They were everywhere, but they weren't always pointed directly at us. You have to search for them somehow. Sometimes you went and go find them. Other
times they can come at you any old time. You could be mowing your lawn. Something in your brain could be sparked while you're sitting there moaning lawn, or in a red light, even having an argument. It didn't matter that influences came at you. If you had any kind of creativity in your body and it just came at you, like tennis balls in a match, you have to fire
and back. Even while we sleep, there are things that are constantly coming at our heads, and if they're already in there anyways, you're gonna want to put them to work, right. So you start to take these influences and make them
into the person you think you can be. I'm way off point, but the point is, you know, they show these videos of Slidestone coming up in the ranks in San Francisco in the early sixties when it was wild and a wacky place, with you know, just a lot of talented people and all bumping into each other with the same.
Iconic time, and it kind of reminded me.
I heard Jay Moore on his podcast the other day called More Stories m o Hr.
I love his show. I love Jay. He went through his troubles.
He's straight and clean now for years and he's married to Jeanie Buss, who runs the Lakers. I'm very happy for his success. But he's got the life he had. This kid was in you know. Jerry mcgo wire on snel, he has had an amazing life, radio shows, TV shows. One of his show's action should still be on the air when he played the sports agent.
He was magnificent at it.
Anyhow, he was talking about a time in his life when him and Dane Cook and David Tell and Jim Norton and all these young comics were banging around each other. Jerry O'Connell, and it's like he said, we all made it. We all didn't know what the fuck to do with the next day, but we all made it in some capacity. And that's the way I feel when I think about those days back in New York City at my buddy
Rocco's restaurant Boom and the people I was around. How do you not, with the electricity around you become something with a sparking you Growing up in New York City in a specific circle of people, and I had out with many of those people who were bumping into each other in small rooms and small lounges and restaurants and whatever the hell, and we all made it in.
Some way, shape or form. I went downtown.
Julie Brown, Charlie Thren, the B fifty two singer what's her name? Crew was in the Lady, whatever the fuck your name. We were all together, the guy who made the bull on Wall Street, the statue Ortruda.
Everybody was together in little rooms. Of course, we were gonna.
Rub off each other, and sparks would ignite and send us in different directions, you know what I mean. We took energy from each other and gave it to one another. And then that energy that the neighborhood had it just made everything wonderful. It was a fuel to help us make it. And maybe I'm being cynical or sounding like an old man on the block, but.
I think we were all better off when.
Yeah, maybe you're doing it now, and God bless you if you are, but it doesn't seem like that exists anymore. Maybe not. Maybe it was a better place when there were bookstores on every few corners and jazz clubs and music thank yous in places where maybe a poet could hang his hat and try his wares. The world's not like that anymore.
It's very impersonal to kind of impersonal.
That I don't think a lot of songs and words could be born right and have a life. And you know, some people have to be touched and smelled and felt and heard very up close to recognize the genius. And that's what Slidestone was. He was an innovator. It's not even strong enough words to call him, but I'll tell you something he was, And it's just this is very important.
Like I say all the time, it's one thing.
If God gives you a talent or and if you waste it, you fucked up the plan. Man.
If he gave you something.
You gotta follow it. I don't care if it make sure a millionaire or a miser. You've got to follow it. I follow it every day. I'm not high in the hog, but I follow God's gift. And it's not enough to have the talent. You've got to be a steward of that talent. You gotta earn your wings and be the boss and the employee at the same time. And Slyestone, he honored the gift that God gave him, and in return he.
Gave us so many timeless things.
The guy carried the weight of how heavy that fame was, and at times it broke them. And look when he left us.
And now he flies free and another good man God. But listen to their music this week, and he'll live.
I'm aj Benz that That was your Daily Unfiltered podcast for June eleventh, twenty twenty five. I'll talk to these tomorrow.