Sly Stone, the virtuosic performer and pioneering bandleader of Sly and the Family Stone, has died at the age of 82.“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved dad, Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone,” according to a statement released by his family on Monday, June 9th. “After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family. While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.”
Stone was born Sylvester Stewart on March 15th, 1943, in Denton, Texas, and moved with his family to Vallejo, California, when he was a child. Growing up in the Bay Area, he and his siblings began performing together at an early age. In 1952, Stone, his brother Freddie, and his sisters Rose and Loretta made their first recording, a gospel single that was released locally. By the time Stone was in high school, his musical talents had blossomed and he was a virtuoso multi-instrumentalist, performing in a number of bands, including the doo-wop group The Viscaynes.
Related VideoAfter high school, Stone studied music at a community college in the Bay Area and began establishing himself in the San Francisco music scene. He worked as a disc jockey for the soul radio station KSOL, and started getting booked as a keyboardist for several major performers, including Donnie Warwick, Marvin Gaye, Chubby Checker and more. He also served as a staff producer for Autumn Records, and worked with several groups on their lineup, including Grace Slick’s first band, The Great Society.
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In 1966, Stone and his brother Freddie chose to combine the bands they were each playing in at the time, birthing the first iteration of the Sly and the Family Stone. The band honed-in on a sound that melded together a variety of influences, in part inspired by all the different acts and audiences Stone had been exposed to during the early part of his career. Energetic, uplifting, unpredictable, and, of course, funky, the band’s arrangements were pioneering for popular music — bassist Larry Graham is even credited for inventing the slap bass technique, which would go on to influence everything from funk to pop to the Seinfeld theme song and more. Graham also plays one of the greatest basslines of all time on “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).”
In 1967, Sly and the Family Stone released their first album, A Whole New Thing, which was well-received by critics, but failed to chart. Then in February 1968, the band — by this time joined by Stone’s sister Rose — released the single “Dance to the Music,” which catapulted their careers to success. The track peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was followed by an LP, also titled Dance to the Music, in April 1968.
The band quickly followed-up with their third album, Life, in September 1968, and continued playing gigs for larger and larger audiences. Then, in November 1968, they capped off their whirlwind year of success with their first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100: “Everyday People.”
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Marking the beginning of the album cycle for their 1969 release, Stand!, “Everyday People” became an iconic anthem for the ‘60s and the ideal of unity that many folks in the decade advocated for. Speaking about the single’s legacy in the 2017 documentary On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone, Dr. Cornel West explained that the song embodied a generation’s hopes for peace, respect, and human decency. “Sly created music that could be the place where we could go to have a foretaste of that freedom, of that democratic experience, even if we couldn’t live it on the ground,” he said. Watch the music video for the song below.
“Everyday People” was followed by the single “Stand!” with the B-side “I Wanna Take You Higher,” and the LP Stand! itself dropped in May 1969. That following August, Sly and the Family Stone made a legendary appearance at Woodstock, which was included in the popular 1970 concert film.
During this time, Sly and the Family Stone became icons of the late ’60s’ psychedelic boom, cementing their songs as mainstream classics, but also bringing some of the more difficult aspects of success into the band members’ lives. Stone’s drug use increased, his behavior became more erratic, and the turmoil from the late ‘60s — such as the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. — surmounted, all of which began taking Stone’s music in a new direction. These shifts ultimately resulted in the creation of There’s a Riot Goin’ On, Sly and the Family Stone’s fifth studio album, which dropped in November 1971.
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Riot explored darker themes, and was named as a response to Marvin Gaye’s release from May 1971, What’s Going On. Unlike previous releases, it featured less interplay between the band, and more overdubbing from Stone himself, who played many of the instruments on the album. Drum machines, disjointed beats, and long, psychedelic jam sessions reflected Stone’s dissatisfaction with fame and the recording industry, as well as the growing disillusion of many Americans in the face of the then-ongoing Vietnam War, economic turbulence, and more.
Musically, Riot was a groundbreaking release, influencing scores of artists from Miles Davis to Herbie Hancock, Prince, Iggy Pop, countless hip-hop artists and more. Personally, though, Stone was reaching a breaking point. The Family Stone had begun gaining a reputation for being flakey with live performances, often ending shows earlier or not even playing to begin with. Likewise, Stone’s relationship with political groups like the Black Panthers Party grew more complicated, and there were even calls from some for him to fire the white members of his band.
Despite all of this, Stone managed to keep things rolling for a few years more, and the band unveiled their sixth album, Fresh, in 1973. While still embracing the denser sound Riot had forged, the album was lighter in tone, and — even though it was their final album to chart in the US top 10 — it went on to be quite influential as well. Brian Eno wrote about the record in a 1983 essay, where he explained that it marked the moment that “rhythm instruments, particularly the bass drum and bass, suddenly [became] the important instruments in the mix” for popular music.
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After Fresh, though, Stone’s career began to decline. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, he released a solo record and more albums under the Family Stone name, and made several attempts at a proper “comeback,” but none took off. In the early ‘80s, he did some collaborations with George Clinton and Funkadelic, but in 1983 he was arrested on drug possession in Fort Myers, Florida, and entered court-ordered drug rehabilitation. This was followed-up by a 1987 arrest for cocaine possession.
Stone made a few more sporadic appearances and collaborations over the next few years, but after the Family Stone was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, he stepped out of public life entirely until 2006. During this time, his financial situation deteriorated, and he grew a reputation for his elusiveness.
After 2006, Stone began making public appearances again, and even performed onstage with iterations of the Family Stone, but his circumstance was growing more precarious. In 2011, it was reported that he was essentially homeless, living in either a trailer or cheap hotel rooms. He was involved in several lawsuits attempting to recuperate millions of dollars of royalties which he claimed he was cheated out of.
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Nonetheless, Stone’s resurgence into public life brought him back into the fold of the entertainment industry he helped define decades before, and younger artists began showing their appreciation. In his final years, Stone befriended The Roots’ Questlove, who directed the 2021 film Summer of Soul, which prominently featured concert footage of Sly and the Family Stone. In 2023, Stone released his memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), through Questlove’s publishing imprint, AUWA Books. That same year, a Questlove-directed documentary on Stone’s life debuted on Hulu.
Though his career certainly had ups and downs, Stone’s legacy was vast, and his influence on popular music is palpable to this day. The calls for unity from Stand! are as poignant as ever, and the catharsis of There’s a Riot Goin’ On is still resonant. From the empowerment of “Everyday People” to the ingenious idea that the rhythm section can carry a record to the simple notion that music can contribute to creating a better world, Stone’s talent and brilliance will be all around us for generations to come.
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