Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors together with his gloriously funky and sometimes socially acutely aware songwriting, has died aged 82.
“After a protracted battle with COPD and different underlying well being points, Sly handed away peacefully, surrounded by his three youngsters, his closest pal and his prolonged household,” a household assertion reads. “Whereas we mourn his absence, we take solace in understanding that his extraordinary musical legacy will proceed to resonate and encourage for generations to return.”
Together with his group Sly and the Household Stone, Stone tied collectively soul, psychedelic rock and gospel into fervent, uplifting songs, and have become one of many key progenitors of the Nineteen Seventies funk sound alongside James Brown and others.
The group’s hits embrace three US No 1 singles – On a regular basis Folks, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and Household Affair – plus Dance to the Music, I Need to Take You Greater, Sizzling Enjoyable within the Summertime and extra. The 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a moody reflection on civil rights and the corrupted idealism of the postwar period created predominantly by Stone other than the remainder of his band, is extensively considered one of many best of the twentieth century.
Born Sylvester Stewart to a Pentecostal non secular household in Texas in 1943, Stone grew up within the San Francisco Bay Space. His first music got here in a gospel quartet with three siblings, the Stewart 4, who put out a domestically launched single in 1952.
As a younger man he turned well-known within the fertile musical scene of countercultural San Francisco: a multi-instrumentalist and radio DJ who had a sequence of native bands and labored as a producer for storage rock and psychedelia teams such because the Beau Brummels.
In 1966, he fused his band Sly and& the Stoners together with his brother Freddie’s group Freddie and the Stone Souls, to type Sly and the Household Stone. Their breakthrough got here the next yr with Dance to the Music, and success was totally established by their fourth album in two years, Stand! (1969), which finally bought greater than three million copies. The band’s stylistic and racial range attracted a broad viewers, they usually performed each of the defining music festivals of 1969, Woodstock and the Harlem cultural pageant.
Hits continued extra fitfully through the early Nineteen Seventies, and the group – infamous for no-shows at concert events – slowly fractured amid rising drug use. Stone would file There’s a Riot Goin’ On predominantly on his personal, making use of one of many earliest makes use of of a drum machine; albums similar to Contemporary!, with its Richard Avedon portrait of Stone on the quilt, had been additionally primarily his work. The band break up fully in 1975, although Stone continued to make use of the band title for solo releases.
Regardless of having laid the rhythmic groundwork for disco, Stone couldn’t maintain his profession within the late Nineteen Seventies, and his dependancy to cocaine worsened. He continued to carry out with friends similar to Funkadelic and Bobby Womack, however album releases dried up after 1982’s Ain’t However the One Method.
He was arrested in 1983 for cocaine possession, and for driving underneath the affect of cocaine in 1987, prompting him to flee California for Connecticut. He was apprehended two years later, and sentenced to 55 days in jail, 5 years’ probation and a wonderful. His difficulties meant that he was little seen through the Nineteen Nineties, and it wasn’t till 2006 that he carried out in public once more, at a tribute to Sly and the Household Stone on the Grammy awards.
He carried out with the Household Stone on a tour the next yr, however typically erratically, and made a lacklustre look at 2010’s Coachella pageant. His ultimate album, I’m Again! Household & Associates, that includes re-recordings of previous songs alongside three new tracks, was launched in 2011.
In 2015 he was awarded $5m in a lawsuit in opposition to his former supervisor and legal professional, efficiently arguing that royalty funds had been diverted from him, although he in the end wasn’t awarded the cash because of the phrases of a 1989 royalties settlement with a manufacturing firm. Difficulties with royalties meant that Stone spent a lot of his latter years in poverty; in 2011 he was dwelling in a campervan in a residential space of Los Angeles – voluntarily, he claimed – and counting on a retired couple for meals.
“Sly was a monumental determine, a groundbreaking innovator, and a real pioneer who redefined the panorama of pop, funk, and rock music,” the household assertion added. “His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his affect stays simple. In a testomony to his enduring artistic spirit, Sly not too long ago accomplished the screenplay for his life story, a undertaking we’re wanting to share with the world sooner or later, which follows a memoir revealed in 2024.”
That memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), was praised in a Guardian overview: “The appeal, playfulness, humour and character of Stone’s songs come by in his on-page voice”.
In a 2023 interview with the Guardian accompanying its publication, he mentioned: “I used to be all the time joyful if somebody took the issues I used to be doing they usually appreciated them sufficient to wish to do them on their very own. I’m proud that the music I made impressed folks.”
He was married from 1974 to 1976 to Kathy Silva, with whom he had a son, Sylvester Jr. He later had two additional youngsters: Sylvyette with Cynthia Robinson, and Novena Carmel.
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