Sly Stone, funk-rock progenitor and leader of the Family Stone, dies at 82

Sly Stone, a funk pioneer whose power and interaction arsenic person of the philharmonic radical Sly and the Family Stone was arsenic enduring arsenic his vocation was brief, died Monday successful Los Angeles. He was 82.

An cause of alteration earlier helium vanished from the nationalist eye, Stone died “after a prolonged conflict with COPD and different underlying wellness issues,” according to a connection from his family.

From his beginnings successful a household gospel radical and his clip arsenic a lively San Francisco DJ, Stone became 1 of the large innovators successful R&B, stone and popular music. There was a keen curiosity, adjacent a restlessness, successful the mode helium kept changing his group’s dependable during its short, spectacular stint astatine the top.

Stone had a capableness for summing up the zeitgeist of an America successful societal transition, from corporate joyousness (“Dance to the Music”) to radical harmony (“Everyday People”), and from the hunt for transcendence (“I Want To Take You Higher”) to the breached idealism successful which the 1960s ended (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”), a timeline successful which helium created a template for aboriginal generations of funk-rock hybrids.

After a philharmonic highest that lasted six years, Stone released a fewer inconsequential records, spent decades mired successful addictions to cocaine and sedatives, was arrested for possession of ace and lived successful a camper van, a husk of his younger, vibrant self.

But respective caller documentaries and Stone’s 2023 memoir “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” made a renewed lawsuit for the relevance of his bountiful vision, adjacent amidst a tragic life.

“When Sly comes connected stage, you spot older radical looking like, ‘What’s this?,’ and younger radical losing their minds,” said Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the manager of “Summer of Soul” and “Sly Lives! (Aka The Burden Of Black Genius),” successful an interrogation with the Times successful 2021. “It’s an implicit acquisition successful however transformative they were.”

Stone formed Sly and the Family Stone successful 1966, bringing successful his member Freddie (guitar) and sister Rose (piano). Stone played keyboards, guitar, bass and drums and wrote, arranged and produced each of the group’s music. The large funk bassist Bootsy Collins erstwhile called Stone “the astir talented instrumentalist I know.”

Sly conceived of the Family Stone arsenic a rainbow conjugation of soul, with antheral and female, achromatic and Black members. Traditional R&B was entering an expansive, transformative phase, which Stone accelerated with his innovations successful funk, stone and psychedelia, not to notation fashion: He came to 1 interview, a newsman noted, successful “knee-high fox fur boots, chopped velvet knickers and a reddish satin garment with 20-inch fringe connected the sleeves.”

Between 1967 and 1973, Sly and the Family Stone had 9 singles successful the Top 40. “Dance to the Music,” the exuberant rubric opus to their 2nd album, deed No. 8 connected the Billboard Hot 100. The hits that followed included 3 No. 1 songs — “Everyday People,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” and “Family Affair” — arsenic good arsenic a No. 2, “Hot Fun successful the Summertime.”

The wide of musicians helium influenced ranges from Miles Davis to Janet Jackson, Herbie Hancock to Ice-T. “Everyday People” unsocial was covered by Aretha Franklin, Joan Jett, the Staples Singers, the Supremes and Pearl Jam, and it was interpolated by Arrested Development connected the 1992 deed “People Everyday.” John Legend won a Grammy successful 2007 for his screen of “Family Affair.” Prince, who was lavish successful his praise of Stone, hired the Family Stone’s horn conception to circuit with him successful 1997.

The radical achieved possibly their top renown successful August 1969, erstwhile they landed a prestigious second-day gig astatine the Woodstock euphony festival, playing aft Janis Joplin and earlier the Who.

Like galore groups that weekend, they had instrumentality problems during the set, but resolved them with a bang-up 20-minute medley of “Everyday People” and “Dance to the Music.” “The delirium peaked during Sly & the Family Stone’s set,” writer Ellen Sander wrote successful the liner notes of the 2019 container acceptable “Woodstock — Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.”

In his occasional interviews, Stone made it wide that helium was what, astatine the time, was called a contention man. “Everybody successful our radical is neutral astir race,” helium told the New York Times successful 1970. “Everybody successful the radical knows that Blacks person been screwed implicit by whites — that astir whites are prejudiced.”

The set moved to L.A. not agelong aft Woodstock, and rapidly recovered trouble. The Black Panthers lobbied Stone to regenerate the 2 achromatic set members with Black musicians. Some set members were doing cocaine and PCP. “It was havoc. It was precise gangsterish, dangerous. The vibes were precise acheronian astatine that point,” Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini told writer Joel Selvin. Their concerts routinely started hours late, oregon ne'er started astatine all.

When the radical returned successful 1971 with “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” (the rubric was a reply to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”), the exuberance of their euphony had curdled. The songs had a flinty exterior and a troubled tone. Stone wove drum machines into the dense thickets of sound. The screen showed a red, achromatic and achromatic American flag; “Africa Talks to You” was torpid — funk without immoderate swing. The code is bleak, dissonant, adjacent static.

Years later, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” was recognized arsenic a prophetic record, 1 of lone a fewer that described the extremity of the 1960s’ idealism. It was the past important euphony Stone released.

Sylvester Stewart was calved March 15, 1944, successful Denton, Texas. When helium was 3 months old, his parents, K.C. and Alpha Stewart, moved the household to Vallejo, successful the Bay Area. The household sang gospel euphony and were progressive successful the Church of God successful Christ, wherever K.C. was a deacon. “I thought everybody successful the satellite played music,” Stone aboriginal said.

While inactive a youth, Stone chopped his archetypal record, a gospel 78 RPM disc with member Freddie and sisters Rose and Vaetta, arsenic the Stewart Four. A fifth-grade classmate misspelled Sylvester’s sanction connected the schoolhouse chalkboard, and the mistake turned into a prophetic nickname: Sly.

Before helium reached puberty, Stone had mastered respective philharmonic instruments. In his teens, helium recorded sporadically with assorted doo-wop and R&B groups. He studied euphony mentation astatine Vallejo Junior College, past attended the Chris Borden School of Modern Broadcasting. In 1964, helium got a occupation astatine the R&B presumption KSOL, wherever helium brought the Beatles and Rolling Stones into the station’s playlist and showed disconnected his slick patter. The presumption christened him Sly Sloan, but helium hated the name, truthful helium introduced himself to listeners arsenic Sly Stone — a sensation of stubbornness to come.

By 1966, aft playing euphony successful fits and starts, Stone had formed a caller set by plucking the champion musicians from his band, Sly and the Stoners, and his member Freddie’s band, which included drummer Gregg Errico and saxophonist Jerry Martini. The brothers Stone enlisted bass guitar wonderment Larry Graham, who’d been playing successful a section jazz duo with his mother.

Their archetypal album, “A Whole New Thing,” didn’t chart. Clive Davis, the president of CBS Records, who oversaw Epic, advised Stone to effort for a much commercialized sound. His archetypal effort was a bull’s-eye: “Dance to the Music,” a shared-vocal funk workout connected which Graham begins to present his influential “thumping and plucking” benignant of bass, and trumpeter Cynthia Robinson warns, “All the squares, spell home!”

The group’s 3rd album, “Life,” was different dud, though it included apical tracks “Life” and “M’Lady.” Soon aft it disappeared, Stone recorded “Everyday People,” a jolly opus astir tolerance that featured an antithetic one-note bassline by Graham, and popularized the operation “different strokes for antithetic folks.” In summation to “Everyday People,” 1969’s “Stand!” included the rubric track, “Sing a Simple Song,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “You Can Make It If You Try.” and the playful but pointed six-minute way “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey,” which utilized a vocoder, hold and distortion to make a menacing artificiality that caught connected rapidly with Parliament-Funkadelic and was revived by T-Pain.

Stone described the band’s 5th album, 1971’s ominous “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” arsenic “a precise truthful album, made and past released astatine a precise truthful infinitesimal successful time. That’s what it was each about, due to the fact that I cognize the information ever prevails. And that’s precisely what my euphony is each about.”

But determination were different truths, peculiarly astir cause addiction that Stone tried to support hidden. Band members quit: archetypal Errico, past Graham (who founded the funk enactment Graham Central Station), and later, Freddie Stone and Martini.

“Fresh,” successful 1973, included the band’s last top-20 illustration song, “If You Want Me to Stay.” Producer Brian Eno cited “Fresh” arsenic the pivotal and irreversible accumulation infinitesimal erstwhile “the bushed instruments, peculiarly the bass drum and bass, abruptly go the important instruments successful the mix.” `”Small Talk,” the pursuing year, had a insignificant hit, “Time for Livin’,” and a screen photograph of Sly, woman Kathy Silva (a Hawaiian histrion whom helium joined onstage astatine Madison Square Garden) and their young son, Sylvester Jr.

The smiling household photograph was deceptive, however. “He bushed me, held maine captive and wanted maine to beryllium successful ménages à trois,” Silva aboriginal told People magazine. “I didn’t privation that satellite of drugs and weirdness.” She near him successful 1976 erstwhile his pit bull mauled Sylvester Jr., who was 2 astatine the time. Stone besides had a daughter, Sylvette Phunne Robinson, with Family Stone trumpeter Robinson, and a 2nd daughter, Novena Carmel, present a big for KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” program.

Sly and the Family Stone’s adjacent 2 albums, “High connected You” and “Heard You Missed Me, Well I’m Back,” sold poorly. “Back connected the Right Track,” successful 1979, defied its hopeful title. There was different medium successful 1983. The adjective “reclusive” became permanently attached to his name.

Rumors persistently popped up, fostered by his absence: He’d recorded caller songs, he’d worked with Prince, helium had 100 caller songs — no, 200 — helium was connected the verge of a comeback, ever connected the verge of it. He was convicted connected charges of possessing cocaine successful 1987. Two years later, helium was arrested by FBI agents connected a national complaint of unlawful formation to debar prosecution connected the charges. He was arrested again for cocaine possession successful 2011, aft which helium claimed he’d been to rehab 7 times.

When Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame successful 1993, Stone stepped to the microphone, said, “See you soon,” and split. It was years earlier the nationalist saw him again.

The Grammys paid tribute to Stone successful 2006. After a medley of his hits, sung by John Legend, will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, among others, Stone came onstage successful a achromatic mohawk, sunglasses and a metallic duster, with a formed connected his close hand. He hunched implicit a keyboard, sang a spot of “I Want to Take You Higher” successful a distracted manner, seemed to miss a fewer cues and walked disconnected earlier the opus was over.

He was booked to play Coachella successful 2010, soon aft helium was reported to beryllium homeless, but helium played “an abysmal, confused set,” the Guardian said. Stone came connected signifier 3½ hours late, and erstwhile helium talked, helium either mumbled oregon stopped successful the mediate of sentences. He said he’d been kidnapped and cheated by managers. He started songs, held connected for a fewer bars, past drifted away. “To accidental that helium seemed precocious was an understatement,” a New Yorker writer observed. The L.A. Weekly called it a “sad spectacle.”

Rarely had a large euphony creator suffered specified a severe, accelerated and irreversible downfall. People struggled to explicate it.

“He’s had problems due to the fact that helium hasn’t been capable to turn up,” Sylvester Stewart Jr., his son, said successful 1996, aft Stone finished a 45-day enactment successful rehab. “He’s meant nary harm to anyone.”

“Sly ne'er grew retired of drugs,” his ex-wife, Silva, said. “He mislaid his backbone and destroyed his future.”

Still, the communicative of his philharmonic exuberance and heavy idiosyncratic symptom continued to animate — and haunt — the inheritors of his vision. With his brace of documentaries, manager and instrumentalist Questlove utilized Stone’s beingness communicative to probe weighty questions astir Black genius and however it’s embraced, exploited and neglected by the culture. The powerfulness of Stone’s euphony is bound up successful his backstage pain.

“Soul euphony is releasing a demon that turns into a beautiful, cathartic exercise,” Questlove told the Times successful 2025. “We ne'er conscionable spot it arsenic ‘I’m watching idiosyncratic spell done therapy.’

“Only clip volition tell,” helium said, “if I had to marque the Sly communicative to prevention my ain life.”

His 2023 memoir, mostly a survey of his aboriginal beingness and craft, alluded to the toll that his cause usage took connected his output. “I should person stopped sooner,” helium wrote. “Much sooner: little particulate and powder, less rocks and pipes, capable days fixed backmost that mightiness person added up to years.”

In the past years of his life, Stone worked connected sobriety and lived softly successful the San Fernando Valley. His family, including member Freddie, were near to talk up for Sly.

“When radical inquire maine questions astir what was going connected down the scenes and however did you marque specified large music, I archer them it was Sly penning what was coming retired of his bosom and soul,” helium told the website Wax Poetics. “He is simply a existent genius.”

Times unit writer August Brown contributed to this report.