The Slap

When Larry Graham lands in Australia for shows with his Graham Central Station band this month, it'll be his third time on our soil; the first was for a holiday, the second as a member of Prince's band. “When I played there with Prince I got a chance to find out that people like what I do there, so that's exciting!” the warm and friendly Graham says.

There are few modern musicians who can lay claim to having a specific role in shaping modern music, but as the inventor of slap bass during his tenure with Sly & The Family Stone – between 1968 and 1972 – Graham can track his influence. “I've been aware of it for quite a while,” he admits. “I wasn't in the beginning aware of the influence that my style of playing the bass was having on other people; that took a while. I guess mainly because, during the earlier years of Sly & The Family Stone, there wasn't nearly as much television exposure and I wasn't really aware of how many bass players were changing their style and learning to play the bass using my style of playing as a pattern.

“A lot of bass players didn't know what I was doing; they'd hear Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)… and be like, 'Umm, what is he doing?' You couldn't see it unless you went to a live concert. Then later when we started doing more TV shows they could see what I was doing.

“If cover bands were gonna play our songs the bass player would pretty much have to do my style of playing the bass. Then some of those bands started writing their own material and they wanted it to sound funky so they'd have the bass player still play like me even though it's their original song.

“More and more bass players started doing that, then over a period of time it became the standard. Even bass players who didn't necessarily listen to me, might have listened to someone else who played like me, maybe they were listening to Victor Wooten or Marcus Miller or Stanley Clarke or Flea.”

But Graham is quick to concede that he himself was heavily influenced by two very important figures in his early musical career. His first gig was backing his own mother in The Dell Graham Trio and his first taste of immense musical success came in those heady days of the late 1960s when Sly & The Family Stone were an unstoppable force of nature. His mother and Sly Stone become great sources of inspiration and education for Graham as a bandleader once Graham Central Station became his major concern.

“My mum was the leader of our band, then in Sly & the Family Stone, Sly was a great leader. I learned leadership from my mom and Sly, so later on when I formed my own band I had some great direction to fall back on, some great schooling that I had received.”