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The Star
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Fashion fabulosity: Sly Stone didn't just change music – he changed style too
In 1974, decades before Ye, then known as Kanye West, packed Madison Square Garden for a twin album-fashion spectacular, Sly Stone, the cosmically groovy singer-songwriter who died Monday (June 9), offered his own extravaganza of dance, funk and flash on New York's biggest stage. The occasion was a sold-out Sly & The Family Stone concert in front of more than 20,000 fans, and the centrepiece was Stone's wedding to Kathy Silva – a gold and black display of fabulosity. The bride and groom (and the whole wedding party, band included) wore coordinated Halston looks. Stone wore a gleaming cape and jumpsuit, the waist cinched with a big gold belt buckle, so he looked like a cross between a disco superhero and a sci-fi lord come lightly down to Earth. Behind them, a dozen models in black dresses carried gold palm fronds. It was, The New Yorker declared, 'the biggest event this year'. It was also seven years after Stone arrived on the music scene promising A Whole New Thing (the name of his debut album), and boy, had he delivered. Read more: A new generation of fashion lovers are just getting to know Steve Madden Sly Stone's style crossed genre, race, gender and audience. It offers unity in a psychedelic stew of fringe, rhinestones and lame that was sometimes celebratory and sometimes chaotic, often outrageous, but almost always impossible to forget. Photo: Instagram/Sly Stone He introduced not just a whole new sound but a whole new kind of style to the stage. Like his music, it crossed genre, race, gender and audience, offering unity in a psychedelic stew of fringe, rhinestones and lame that was sometimes celebratory and sometimes chaotic, often outrageous, but almost always impossible to forget – whether it was on The Ed Sullivan Show or the Woodstock stage. 'He had a look,' Questlove, drummer, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor, wrote in the introduction to Stone's 2023 autobiography, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) . He loved an accessory: a necklace, an arm band and, especially, a hat. He wore giant, broad-brimmed fedoras long before Pharrell Williams stepped out in his 20-gallon Vivienne Westwood number in 2014, as well as crocheted toppers and exaggerated newsboy caps – like the silver-sequinned style he wore with his magenta-sequinned shirt for a performance on The Midnight Special in 1974. He was his own Spaced Cowboy (the name of his song) in Nudie suits, spangled vests and wigs. 'He challenged people's perception of normalcy,' Williams wrote in The New York Times . 'He wore seriously fly clothes, and to this day, I have no idea how he walked around in those platforms.' And it wasn't just him; it was the whole band. Stone had a theory of fashion just as he had a theory of rhythm, one that emphasised the individual within the group dynamic. He would pick the colours for the crew – his favourites were red, white and black, which were also the colours of his living room, but within that spectrum, they were free to go their own way. At a time when many Motown bands still wore matching suits and ties, the idea that band members should dress to express their own bliss was revolutionary. 'Sly had the idea that we should be in the same theme, but make it be your own personality,' Jerry Martini, the band's saxophone player, said in a video interview posted on the band's YouTube channel in 2013. Read more: 'Doing what I love': Malaysian fashion designer Zang Toi is living his best life He also described a day when Stone, dissatisfied with whatever outfit Martini had planned, looked around, grabbed a razor and cut up a cow-skin rug for him to wear like a poncho. The point, Greg Errico, the band's drummer, said in the video interview, was 'to be colourful'. Not just to stand out, although they definitely did that, but 'to be like (what) music is – music is technicolour'. Stone understood the power that came from connecting the ears and eyes, and he stuck to that conviction through his struggles with drugs and the industry, as his appearance during a 2006 Grammys tribute in silver lame and a giant blond mohawk attested. He didn't just sing about embracing 'the skin I'm in'. He offered everyone a bedazzled primer for how that might look. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Los Angeles Times
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A timeline of Sly Stone's career in 10 essential songs
Sly Stone's hit-making era lasted all of six years — from the end of 1967 to the end of 1973 — but the music he made over that half-decade helped map the future. The singer, songwriter, producer and style icon, who died Monday at 82, came up as a DJ in San Francisco before putting together the Family Stone: a multiracial band of men and women that melted the lines between funk, R&B, pop and psychedelic rock. The group's music went on to influence multiple generations of artists, among them Prince, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Outkast and the Roots; as a source of countless samples, Stone's songs represent a crucial part of hip-hop's DNA. Here, in the order they were released, are 10 of his essential recordings. 'Dance to the Music' (1967) Stone is said to have hated his breakout single, which he supposedly made at the behest of Clive Davis after the record exec requested something more commercial than the Family Stone's coolly received debut LP, 'A Whole New Thing.' Six decades later, though, 'Dance to the Music' still communicates a sense of boundless joy — even as it puts across a flicker of doubt about going so nice-and-smiley. Yowls trumpeter Cynthia Robinson in the song's bridge: 'All the squares, go home!' 'Everyday People' (1968)In the pantheon of catchphrases sprung from pop songs, few loom larger than 'Different strokes for different folks,' a perfectly casual bit of come-together sociology from the first of the Family Stone's three Hot 100-topping singles. Also worthy of canonization: Larry Graham's thrumming one-note bass line. Twenty-four years later, Arrested Development put 'Everyday People's' groove back on the charts in its 'People Everyday.' 'Sing a Simple Song' (1968)Funk as pure — and as low-down — as funk gets. 'Stand!' (1969)It's impossible to say too much about Stone's rhythmic innovations. But the title track from his 1969 LP — a platinum-seller enshrined in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry — is perhaps his most impressive harmonic achievement, with a key change in the verse that lends a touch of melancholy to the song's message of protest. 'I Want to Take You Higher' (1969)Issued as the B-side of the 'Stand!' single, this bluesy psych-rock barnburner went on to become the high point of the Family Stone's set at Woodstock: a pummeling barrage of brass and wah-wah delivered at around 4 in the morning. 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)' (1969)Stone's second No. 1 boasts two indelible riffs likely familiar even to listeners born a decade or two after 'Thank You' came out: In 1989, Janet Jackson sampled the song's pulsating guitar lick for 'Rhythm Nation'; in 1995, Brandy borrowed Graham's pioneering slap-bass part for 'Sittin' Up in My Room.' 'Everybody Is a Star' (1969)True to its title, this shimmering midtempo number features strong lead-vocal turns by Stone, Graham and his siblings Rose and Freddie. (That said, Rose Stone all but steals the show.) 'Family Affair' (1971) Stone's 1971 album 'There's a Riot Goin' On' is widely regarded as a turn toward a darker style shaped by the musician's drug use and his political disillusionment. And certainly the dry croak of his singing voice in the LP's lead single suggests he'd enjoyed healthier times. Yet the musical invention at play in 'Family Affair,' which spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 — and helped drive 'Riot' to Stone's only No. 1 showing on Billboard's album chart — makes clear that he hadn't lost his creative drive: It's a startling piece of experimental R&B with Billy Preston on organ, Bobby Womack on guitar and a primitive drum machine coughing up a mutant funk beat. Beautiful if foreboding. 'If You Want Me to Stay' (1973)With Stevie Wonder having supplanted him as soul music's premier visionary, Stone was flailing by the mid-1970s, and not unself-consciously: It's easy to interpret his final Top 20 pop hit as a warning to the record industry that he's prepared to take his ball and go home. ('You can't take me for granted and smile / Count the days I'm gone / Forget reaching me by phone / Because I promise I'll be gone for a while.') Funny — or is it? — how free he sounds. 'Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)' (1973)A churchy rendition of Doris Day's signature song by a man who truly knew too much.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sly Stone: influential funk pioneer who embodied the contradictions at the heart of American life
There's immense variety in popular music careers, even beyond the extremes of one-hit wonders and the long-haulers touring stadiums into their dotage. There are those who embody a specific era, burning briefly and brightly, and those whose legacy spans decades. Straddling both of those, and occupying a distinctive space in popular music history, is Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone, who died at the age of 82 on Monday June 9. A pioneer of funk whose sound spread far beyond the genre, his band Sly and the Family Stone synthesised disparate strands of American popular music into a unique melange, tracking the musical and social shifts as the 1960s wore into the 1970s. Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. A musical prodigy and multi-instrumentalist from a young age, Stone was born in Texas in 1943 and raised in California, in a religious Pentecostal family. He had put out his first single aged 13 – a locally released gospel song with three of his siblings, who would later join him in Sly and the Family Stone. A record producer and DJ by his early twenties, he imbibed the music of British acts like The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and applied his eclectic tastes and musical versatility to producing local psychedelic and garage rock acts in the emergent San Francisco scene. By the time commercial popular culture had flowered into a more exploratory 'counterculture' in 1967's Summer of Love, the ebb and flow of personnel across local bands had coalesced into a line-up including the Stone siblings – Sly, Freddie, and their sister Vaetta, with their other sister Rose joining in 1968. Pioneering socially, as well as aesthetically, Sly and the Family Stone had diversity at its core – a mixed sex, multi-racial and musically varied band. This was notable for a mainstream act in an America still emerging from the depths of segregation, and riven with strife over the struggle for civil rights. While their first album in 1967 A Whole New Thing enjoyed comparatively little traction, 1968's Dance to the Music presaged a run of hits. Their sonic collision of sounds from across the commercial and social divide – psychedelic rock, soul, gospel and pop – struck a chord with audiences simultaneously looking forward with hope to changing times, and mindful of the injustice that was still prevalent. Singles like Everyday People, Stand, and I Want to Take You Higher, melded a party atmosphere with social statements. They were calls for action, but also for unity: celebratory, but pushing the musical envelope. While the band wore its innovations lightly at first, their reach was long. Bassist Larry Graham was a pioneer of the percussive slap bass that became a staple of funk and fusion. And their overall sound brought a looser, pop feel to the funk groove, in comparison to the almost militaristic tightness of that other funk pioneer, James Brown. Where Brown's leadership of his group was overt, exemplified by his staccato musical directions in the songs, and the call and response structure, Stone's band had more of an ensemble feel. Musical lines and solos were overlaid upon one another, often interweaving – more textured rather than in lock-step. It was a sound that would reach an almost chaotic apogée with George Clinton's Funkadelic later in the 1970s. The party couldn't last. As the optimism of the 1960s gave way to division in the 1970s, Stone's music took a darker turn, even if the funk remained central. The album There's A Riot Going On (1971), and its lead single It's Family Affair contained lyrics depicting social ills more explicitly. The music – mostly recorded by Sly himself – was sparser, the vocals more melancholic. The unity of the band itself was also fracturing, under pressure from Stone's growing cocaine dependency. The album Fresh (1973) featured classics like In Time and If You Want Me To Stay, but they were running out of commercial road by 1974's Small Talk, and broke up soon after. Periodic comebacks were punctuated by a troubled personal life, including, at its nadir, reports of Stone living out of a van in Los Angeles, and arrests for drug possession. By the time he achieved a degree of stability, his star may have faded, but his legacy was secure. Stone embodied the contradictions of American popular music – arguably even America itself: brash and light-hearted on the one hand, with a streak of darkness and self-destructiveness on the other. The handclaps and joyous shouts harked back to his gospel roots, but his embrace of electric instruments aligned soul with rock and pop. He was a funk artist who played at the archetypal hippie festival, Woodstock, and a social commentator whose party sounds were shot through with urgency. He paved the way for the likes of Prince and Outkast, but also informed jazz and fusion. Jazz pioneer Miles Davis acknowledged Stone's influence on his own turn towards electric and funk sounds in the late 1960s and early 1970s on landmark albums like Bitches Brew. Sly Stone's joyful provocations may not have lasted at the commercial centre, but his mark was indelible. His struggles were both personal and social, but his sense of groove, and of a collective voice, demonstrated the value of aligning traditions with new ideas – a musical America that was fractious, but still a family affair. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council
Perth Now
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
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.
West Australian
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
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.
