Funk rock revolutionary Sly Stone dies at 82
Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and '70s and beyond with such hits as Everyday People, Stand! and Family Affair, has died at age 82.
Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said he died in Los Angeles surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments.
Formed in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and embodied a time when anything seemed possible — riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk.
Stone's group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly's brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album A Whole New Thing and earned the title with their breakthrough single, Dance to the Music. It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time.
Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. Everyday People, I Wanna Take You Higher and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as 'different strokes for different folks.'The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting No. 1, and three million-selling albums: Stand!, There's a Riot Goin' On and Greatest Hits.
Sly's influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and the Black-Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots.
By the early '70s, Stone himself was beginning a descent from which he never recovered, driven by the pressures of fame and the added burden of Black fame. His record company was anxious for more hits, while the Black Panthers were pressing him to drop the white members from his group. After moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 1970, he became increasingly hooked on cocaine and erratic in his behaviour.
By the end of the decade, Sly and the Family Stone had broken up and Sly was releasing solo records. Most of the news he made over the following decades was of drug busts, financial troubles and mishaps on stage.
Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll of Fame in 1993 and honoured in 2006 at the Grammy Awards, but Sly released just one album after the early '80s, I'm Back! Family & Friends, much of it updated recordings of his old hits.
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