‘My body is dying, it’s breaking down’
◆ Russell Oliver Stone, who rose to fame in the 1970s with his wife in R&J Stone, reflects on his career and a terminal diagnosis, writes Kerri-ann Roper
It was more than 30 years ago that musician Russell Oliver Stone recalls having a “moment of grace”.
He was half of musical duo R&J Stone, alongside his late wife Joanne, and their song We Do It, produced by Phil “The Collector” Swern, peaked in the UK singles charts in 1976 and became a hit in Australia and elsewhere.
He has also performed as a backing singer for names including Marvin Gaye, Tony Bennett and Sir Cliff Richard.
Joanne died of a brain tumour in 1979, and Stone battled alcoholism, which he overcame. He returned to studying and became a transpersonal psychotherapist, and his “spiritual path” also saw him take up yoga.
He has released albums including Love Aspects (2013), Groove Aspects (2014) and Devotional Aspects (2016), and his latest album is titled The Calling.
“I had a moment of grace, about 32 years ago, when I was in a treatment centre. And looking out the window, just an ordinary day, an ordinary window and ordinary buildings,” the 77-year-old says.
“And the thought came to me that being sober was not enough, nowhere near enough, I needed something much more meaningful.
“And that’s when it struck me. The thought came, it’s a spiritual path… just a very quiet thought, no bells and whistles, no big deal.
“And yet, that very quiet thought, through time, over 30 years, has amplified and amplified. And that was the moment of my personal awakening.
“All the study and work I’ve done since was fleshing that out, filling it out and finding my own path, which has consciously been over 30 years now. So the I’ve reached the point and, you know, the alcoholism was the first wake-up call.”
Ten months ago, he found out he has terminal cancer after a tumour was found in his colon. Diagnosed as stage four, Stone says he was told the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver.
“They were going to operate to remove the tumour, but then they said, ‘No, we’re not going to operate because it’s spread and there’s no point’. I had chemo for about three days and said, ‘No, I can’t do this, this is absolutely awful’, and my body was so unhappy,” he says.
“So I stopped doing the chemo and just allowed nature to run its course and be with my body. That feels the right thing for me to do.
“Other people look at it in different ways and that’s fine, but for this old boy, I’ll just be with my beloved body who I love so much… And just learning.”
Talking about his diagnosis he says: “I’m very much at ease with this. It’s bloody hard to live with on a daily basis, my body is dying, it’s breaking down. And that’s absolutely natural for this to happen.
“And the effect of that emotionally and physically can be sometimes very challenging, you know, with pain and anxiety etc. But I know what’s happening.
“Underneath I know that this is just part of the process. And thank God for western civilisation, because the use of pain relief is very well advanced now. And my experience with the NHS and Macmillan nurses and my GP has been absolutely brilliant. So they’re helping me through this process.
“And it really is a fundamentally important aspect of my waking up, which is approaching death in this way. And also giving out the message to people… there’s nothing to be afraid of here.”
His latest album is “a call to humanity, we really don’t have much time here and we need to wake up to what’s going on in the world of humans”.
He explains: “The Calling is literally that, a call to the spirits of the soul in each of us to say, ‘Look, can you wake up, to start living your life’, and not the life that you’ve been pre-programmed to believe how you should live it.
“One of the things that really came to me through a lot more research and my work as a psychotherapist is how much we’re controlled by conditioning. And this is very deep and goes through all different kinds of layers.
“And breaking free of that conditioning is a welltrodden path of spiritual awakening, to awaken literally to yourself.”
Asked how his practices over the years have influenced his music and latest album, he says: “When my late wife died, that was the first real trauma I had, because she was my partner in R&J Stone. When she died, in some ways the music died for me. That was in 79.
“I couldn’t really listen to music for about 12 years, only when I sobered up and started to get involved with chanting and study around especially transpersonal psychotherapy. I did an MA and my thesis was the effect of the voice on the mindbody-spirit complex.
“So looking at how the voice impacts on the whole system, and that affected how I sang, and gradually that began to bleed into my working of songs and material.”
On new song We Gotta Wake Up he is singing, but in other tracks he uses a technique called “sounding, which is intuitional singing, singing without words, without pre-formed structures, just allowing the heart to open and seeing whatever comes up”.
“All of the work I’ve done has informed me musically as well, and listening to other kinds of music and allowing this blend of spiritual learnings, spoken word, compositional stuff. This is what it represents. Some might call it spiritual jazz.”