Lithofayne was living there at the time. Sly had brought her out from New York towards the end of 1971 – at the height of his fame and all the craziness that came along with it – telling her he wanted to record her. As he’d never even heard her sing, she suspected he had other intentions in mind. She wrote a few songs, including one called “Placidyl Syl”, a reference to both Sly’s birth name (Sylvester) and his taste for pharmaceutical sleeping aids, but he never did get around to producing her. Instead, she found herself mothering him. On one occasion, she returned to Bel Air from visiting Etta James to find his flunkies standing around on the lawn, fearful to go inside because Sly had shot the place up. Lithofayne walked into the house alone and found Sly sitting in the lotus position in the middle of his bed, a gun by his side. “Where you been?” he demanded. “I almost lost my fuckin’ mind. Don’t ever go off like that again.” She told him: “People keep asking, what did you do before you got me?” “Tell them muthafuckas I suffered,” Lithofayne says, mimicking Sly’s gravelled bass voice. At that point she realised his dependency had taken a dangerous turn. “I thought, oh shit, it’s time to go.” In the event, that decision was made for her. Her father called, shortly thereafter, with a tipoff from a friend in the LAPD. “He said, ‘Honey, you better get out of there. They got the house under surveillance.’ I said, ‘For what?’” She didn’t have to be warned twice. At the beginning of December 1972, the house was raided by armed cops and Sly was arrested for failure to produce identification. “I think I was just protected,” she says now. “Universally-protected — I know I have it in my chart — because I was very stupid. I could have been in any of many of the things I’ve known to go down. And here I am about to be 75-years old.”