Bevis M. Griffin: "There’s power in unity."

Austin cultural revolutionary discusses substance abuse counseling, Sly Stone, and resistance.

Bevis M. Griffin 2024. (📷Pic: Luke Jacobs)

Hey, Napalm Nation.

I am still working diligently on researching those singles release dates for The Book, as outlined in last week’s post. It’s exhaustive, painstaking work, but I am in the home stretch. I hope you accept this profile of an artist/cultural warrior I deeply admire as an apology. Hope to see you next week.

DATELINE: AUSTIN, TEXAS—Bevis M. Griffin has been many things in his life.

He began as a Black musician roaming the streets of ‘70s Austin, looking like the bastard son of Sly Stone, ushering glam rock into the local scene as the singing drummer of Franklin’s Mast. (Read Part One and Part Two of my five year old history of Austin glam in The Austin Chronicle.) He later formed The Skyscrapers just in time for the punk explosion, tearing up Raul’s and the Armadillo stage, opening for bands like Ramones; another concurrent outfit, The Shades, opened for The Clash. These were followed by The Bats and Banzai Kik. By the early ‘80s, Griffin took the battle to New York City, co-founding the Black Rock Coalition alongside Vernon Reid and others. He had always known rock ‘n’ roll was a Black art form—but in an industry that erased its own pioneers, the fight for recognition had never been more urgent.

When Griffin and I originally cooked up this piece, it was going to be about a new chapter in his life—a community-focused role that tied into his belief in service, in lifting people up. It would have dropped right in time for Black History Month, amplifying the conversation around Black voices in American music and beyond.

Then January 20th happened.

45’s second term wasn’t content with the usual political calamity. No, part of his administration’s playbook seemed aimed at erasing the very ideas of Blackness, equality, and the spaces that celebrate them.

But if Bevis M. Griffin has taught me anything, it’s that he’s been dealing with this dynamic since birth, simply by dint of his skin color.

“Black people, we’ve been dealing with oppression since the inception of the United States Constitution,” he told me early in our conversation. “So, you know, we just roll with it.”

Bevis has been rolling with it, and fighting against it, for over 50 years.

Austin, the Long Road, and Giving Back

Griffin’s resume reads like a mixtape of rock’s most rebellious eras. But these days, his fight is something else entirely: Local, immediate, and arguably even more urgent.

“I’ve been accepted into a forensic peer support role with Integral Care here in Austin,” he says. “It’s a clinical system that lets me bring my life experience to help others, especially people struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues.”

With the title of RSPS Recovery Support Specialist, Griffin isn’t new to this world. He’s been clean for years, choosing sobriety after decades of navigating the road’s highs and lows—both chemical and emotional.

“I toured for 40 years, starting in ’72 when I was just 18,” he recalls. “And back then? Austin was the most liberal, creative community in Texas. It was a hotbed for experimentation, musically and otherwise. Drugs weren’t just common—they were practically currency.” As he laughed when interviewed for that Chronicle glam history: “We were all motorheads!”

But as Griffin puts it, all that stuff “feels fun until it’s not.” Sobriety wasn’t just about cleaning up—it was about seeing straight. Now, he’s using that clarity to help others avoid the same traps or pull themselves out if they’re already in too deep.

He’s also recently joined the Executive Advisory Board for the Sims Foundation, an Austin institution providing low-cost mental health care to musicians and others in the live music ecosystem. If you’re in Austin and part of the music scene—whether you’re on stage, behind the board, or just slinging beers to the crowd—Sims has your back.

“Austin gets it right,” says Griffin. “Between Sims and HAAM [the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians], there’s a support system here that doesn’t exist in most cities.”

A very Sly Stone-ish Bevis M. Griffin and Franklin's Mast bassist Jimmy Fleming at the Krackerjack house in Austin's Clarksville, 1974 (📷Pic: Jillian Bailey)

Sly, Substance, and the Cycle of Genius

It’s impossible to talk to Griffin without talking about his heroes. And there’s one that looms large.

“Sly Stone was everything,” he says. “He was the blueprint for so much of what I became.” Bevis has been energized by Amir “Questlove” Thompson’s new Hulu documentary, SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius): “It nailed something people don’t always get—how genius can be a double-edged sword.”

It’s been said often in documentation the last few years of the presence of Blacks in movies or television pre-1970: “I wasn’t seeing a lot of people who looked like me.” Griffin was a rock ‘n’ roll-loving Black teen in the post-Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Bo Diddley era.

“I was fascinated with The Rolling Stones,” he declares. “I was fascinated with The Beatles. But I was totally enamored of Jimi Hendrix, of Sly and The Family Stone. And Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix had my ethnicity, so obviously that's going to be the world that I drink from.

Suddenly, he had rockers that look like him. It’s why he constantly informs people that those two paragons of a simultaneously restorative and futuristic rock ‘n’ roll vision were the “original glam rockers.”

“When you see the way that Jimi and Sly presented themselves, compared to The Allman Brothers and Creedence Clearwater Revival, there was nobody more glam on the scene than Jimi and Sly,” Griffin exclaims of his heroes’ rock ‘n’ roll gypsy images.

And in the case of Sly Stone, he really had someone in the cultural foment who looked just like him.

“We bore a resemblance, which I thought was certainly encouraging,” he acknowledges, noting their similar bone structures. “And everybody in their bedroom is in the machinations of reimagining themselves as a higher presentation of what they are. I can only speak for myself, but I'm telling you: the whole concept of being a kid with posters of celebrities in your bedroom is almost like self-hypnosis. You put these things up that you aspire to: this is what I want to be when I grow up.

“So it was an incredible source of inspiration.”

The proof is in the photos–dig the pic at the head of this article. And so closely resembling someone as out there as Sly, especially in 1975 redneck hippie Austin, could be perilous.

"Those days were mad dangerous," he laughed in that Chronicle glam restrospective. "I would get accosted on the street. I had to carry nunchucks! I had a man bag full of weapons! And I was asking for it. A Clockwork Orange was a huge influence on my young mind, and I literally became a droog."

More than outer aesthetics, however, for Griffin, Sly’s trajectory—rising to iconic status and then falling into the abyss of freebase cocaine and seclusion—wasn’t just a cautionary tale. It was a map of how the music industry chews up sensitive, visionary artists.

“Sly wasn’t just a hitmaker. He was a social architect,” Bevis says. “He wanted to create music that reflected the society he wished existed—multicultural, gender-inclusive, optimistic. But the same sensitivity that fueled that vision? It also made him fragile.

“I see the same patterns in a lot of the artists I came up with. And hell, in myself.

“That need for insulation when the world gets too loud?

“For Sly, that became freebase. For me? It was a long stretch of bad choices before I found the off-ramp.”

The Politics of Erasure

But it’s not just individual musicians under threat. Griffith sees a bigger picture.

“We’re in an era where Black culture is still seen as disposable. Even when it’s been the backbone of American music forever,” he says. “This current administration? They’re not even subtle about it. Trying to erase Blackness, outlaw Black History Month—it’s all connected. Black culture is woven into the fabric of this country. Yet, every time we make strides forward, there are forces working to tear that tapestry apart.”

But Griffin is quick to point out that this isn’t a simple Black-and-white issue.

“It’s economic. It’s oligarchs versus the rest of us. It’s power and control. Race is the tool, but money is the motive.”

He draws parallels to fascist regimes, to moments in history where economic instability and fear bred authoritarianism. And he sees the same fractures forming now.

“But here’s the thing: America’s been on the brink before. And every time, people rise up. I saw it during the George Floyd protests. There’s a new generation that isn’t going to just sit back and take it.”

Bevis (r) in more recent, clearer days with his Black Rock Coalition cohort Vernon Reid (l). (📷Pic: Graham Whitford [Bevis: “Son of Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford-He’s a great photog!”])

Clarity is Sublime

For all the darkness we dug through in our conversation—addiction, erasure, systemic oppression—Griffin kept bringing it back to one thing: the power of personal clarity.

“Clarity is sublime,” he says. “That’s my mantra. It’s not about being perfect or pure. It’s about cutting through the noise, finding your own truth, and staying rooted in it.”

The benefits of that clarity are manifold. In his work as a forensic peer supporter, Griffin believes that the ability to listen actively—truly hearing someone without the fog of judgment—is a superpower. “I’m hearing people correctly now,” he said, reflecting on how sobriety has improved his relationships and his capacity for empathy. He’s not lecturing on abstinence, however. Rather, he’s testifying to the transformative power of making mindful choices. When you free yourself from the haze of chemicals, you can actually take in the world for what it is—and perhaps, in that honest perception, find a way to mend its fractures.

But he doesn’t proselytize sobriety as a moral high ground. For Bevis, it’s just the path that allowed him to see the long game—to recognize that rebellion isn’t always loud guitars and smashed amps. Sometimes it’s about survival. Sometimes it’s about service.

It’s this perspective that informs his advice to fellow creatives: stay in control of your emotional thermometer. Whether it’s choosing a modest beer over a binge or simply stepping back from the relentless torrent of negative news, the goal is to preserve that inner clarity. “Don’t let the external noise drown out your inner voice,” he urges. “Take a step back, listen, and then decide what’s really important.

“Every day, do something small,” Bevis M. Griffith advises. “Help a neighbor, offer a kind word, keep your own spirit buoyed, and know that there’s power in unity.” Such hard-won wisdom’s as much a call to action as it is a testimonial of a life lived dangerously and then reined in by clarity and purpose.

And sometimes, it’s about reminding people that indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. As we wrapped our talk, I asked him if he thought there was hope in all this chaos.

He doesn’t even hesitate.

“Absolutely.

“Because people care.

“Because they fight.

“Because history’s proven that when enough people stand up—things change.”

If that isn’t rock ‘n’ roll, I don’t know what is.

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