Sly Stone obituary
Between 1968 and 1973 Sly Stone, who has died aged 82, changed the direction of African-American popular music not once but twice. Initially promoting a utopian vision of racial and sexual unity with catchy, imaginative and anthemic songs, he then morphed into a shadowy, stoned figure whose downbeat music mirrored the disenchantment of the early 1970s.
It was in 1968 that his band, Sly and the Family Stone, released the single Everyday People, an appeal to unity that topped both the US pop and R&B charts for four weeks in early 1969. Everyday People's catchphrases – 'different strokes for different folks', 'we got to live together' – reflected an optimistic, racially inclusive America and ensured that Sly, with his bright smile and brighter threads, became an iconic figure to many. He and his band had a huge US following, their energy and optimism making them flag bearers for the nascent hippie movement, while appealing to both black and white audiences.
In 1969 the band released the adventurous album Stand!, which opened with the title track urging listeners to stand against injustice, and was followed by the dissonant Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey. By now the likes of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were studying Sly: he was an icon of black power and arguably the most influential talent in popular music.
The band's powerful performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 – with Sly driving the audience into a frenzy as he chanted I Want to Take You Higher – provided one of the highlights of the Woodstock feature film, and magnified their fame. Then the band relocated to Los Angeles in late 1969, releasing Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), a propulsive funk number that topped the charts in 1970.
Sly then began to shut himself away in a Bel Air mansion, consuming huge quantities of cocaine and angel dust (the hallucinogen PCP). The album There's a Riot Goin' On took almost two years to emerge – a lifetime in pop music. It was a Sly Stone solo effort in all but name and its sound was no longer bright and bold but sombre and low-fi, recorded with an early drum machine and a few close friends (the guitarist Bobby Womack, the organist Billy Preston) sitting in and getting high.
Sly's record company, Epic, was aghast, fearing it would alienate his audience. But once again Sly proved himself ahead of the pack: Family Affair, the first single to be released from the album, was a US No 1 and has since gone on to become a contemporary music standard.
Nothing else on There's a Riot Goin' On possessed the commercial potential of Family Affair, but the album was a murky, compelling insight into Sly's weary but creative mind – and its drug-induced mood of ennui and cynicism appeared to match that of many Americans experiencing a comedown after the excitement and hopes of the 60s. Riot topped the US album charts and effected a profound influence on African-American music. It is now regarded by many as a masterpiece.
Born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, Sly grew up in Vallejo, California. His mother, Alpha, sang and played guitar at a local church, and his father, known as KC, served as a deacon. With his siblings, Sly sang in the Stewart Four, a gospel group that played in churches and even cut a 78 record.
He taught himself to play the guitar and soon mastered the organ, harmonica and a number of other instruments, becoming lead vocalist of the Viscaynes, a doo wop group with whom he released two singles in 1960. After studying musical theory and composition at Vallejo Junior College in Fairfield, California, he was hired by Autumn Records, producing pop hits for the Beau Brummels and Bobby Freeman (and writing Freeman's C'mon and Swim).
Sly maintained a hectic schedule during the mid-60s: leading his own band, the Stoners, and working as a DJ at the KSOL radio station in San Francisco, then at KDIA in Oakland, at both of which he was a pioneer in playing contemporary rock music alongside R&B. He formed Sly and the Family Stone in 1966 with his brother Freddie on guitar, Larry Graham on bass, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Jerry Martini on saxophone and Greg Errico on drums. His sister Rose joined on electric piano after the release of the group's little-noticed 1967 debut album, A Whole New Thing. Sly wrote all the material, played guitar and keyboards, and sang, too.
Sly and the Family Stone were a radical proposition from the start: a multiracial, mixed sex band who blended elements of contemporary rock with a James Brown-influenced dance groove. Their afros and long hair, and fashionable clothes, stood outside the R&B mainstream, in which matching suits and processed hair remained the norm. With their harmonising, their habit of using different members to sing individual lines, and Graham's popping bass technique that would come to be the signature sound of funk, they had a unique feel.
Only three months after their second album, Dance to the Music, which contained their first hit single (a Top 10 success in the US and the UK) with the track of the same name, they released Life, an unremarkable collection of songs that produced minor hits with the title track and M'Lady.
A year later came Stand!, and then, as Epic grew frustrated at receiving no new material, a Greatest Hits collection was put out in 1970. It reached No 2 in the US charts and has since gone on to sell more than 5m copies. With Sly working for two years on his next album, Epic's president, Clive Davis, froze his royalties to force him to get a move on. When Davis finally received There's a Riot Goin' On he was shocked by its contents.
Although his worries about the album's unsaleability proved to be ill-founded, Davis did, however, have genuine cause for concern in the years after Riot. Sly's drug intake escalated, and he became increasingly paranoid and isolated, regularly refusing to perform at concerts (leading to riots by furious audiences) and surrounding himself with thuggish bodyguards. Their threatening behaviour led Errico and Graham to leave the band and the 1973 album, Fresh, although it contained the Top 20 US single If You Want Me to Stay, was not a great commercial success.
The following year the album Small Talk proved a critical and commercial failure, and 90% of tickets for a 1975 concert in New York were left unsold. The Family Stone dissolved and Sly attempted a solo career, but subsequent albums failed to sell. In 1977 Epic released him from his contract.
For more than four decades he created little. Rarely performing or recording – his last album, Ain't But the One Way, came out in 1982 – he generally made the news only when arrested for cocaine possession, in court for not having paid tax or fighting with various managers over royalties. A comeback was mooted in 2007 when a European tour was booked, but Sly's reluctance to perform for more than 20 minutes, plus his new band's ineptness, meant the performances were widely ridiculed. After that he existed for many years as little more than a ghost, often reported to be living in his van, still a superstar in his own mind.
In 2023 his autobiography Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again), written with Ben Greenman, was published and Stone gave interviews in which he claimed to be free of his drug addictions. Seemingly, his daughter Sylvette and a new manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, had combined their efforts to ensure drug dealers no longer had access to Stone. A feature documentary, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), directed by the musician Questlove, was released in 2024.
The popularity of the music he created between 1968 and 1973 had never faded – Prince, D'Angelo and Lenny Kravitz were among the many musicians influenced by him. Indeed, the US critic Joel Selvin wrote that 'There are two types of black music: before Sly Stone and after Sly Stone.'
He is survived by three children: Sylvester, from his marriage to Kathy Silva, which ended in divorce; Sylvette, from a relationship with his fellow band member Robinson, and Novena, from another relationship.
Sly Stone (Sylvester Stewart), musician, born 15 March 1943; died 9 June 2025
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