Sly Stone (82) – Sly and the Family Stone – was born Sylvester Stewart on March 15, 1943 in Denton, Texas, before the family’s move to Vallejo, California, in the North Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. He was the second of five children born to K.C. and Alpha Stewart, a deeply religious middle class couple, raising their children on music. Sylvester was identified as a musical prodigy. By the time he was seven, he had already become proficient on the keyboards, and by the age of eleven, he had mastered the guitar, bass, and drums as well.
As a teenager he had settled essentially on the guitar and joined a number of high school bands. One of these was the Viscaynes, a doo-wop group in which Sylvester and his friend Frank Arellano—who was Filipino—were the only non-white members. The fact that the group was integrated made the Viscaynes “hip” in the eyes of their audiences, and would later inspire Sylvester’s idea of the multicultural Family Stone. The Viscaynes released a few local singles, including “Yellow Moon” and “Stop What You’re Doing”; during the same period, Sylvester also recorded a few solo singles under the name Danny Stewart. With his brother, Fred, he formed several short-lived groups, like the Stewart Bros. After high school Stone studied music at the Vallejo campus of Solano Community College.
In the early sixties Sly Stone played keyboards for dozens of up and coming major performers including Dionne Warwick, Righteous Brothers, Ronettes, Bobby Freeman, George & Teddy, Freddy Cannon, Marvin Gaye, Dick & Dee Dee, Jan & Dean, Gene Chandler, and many more, including at least one of the three Twist Party concerts by then chart topper Chubby Checker. In the mid-1960s Sly also worked as a DJ with a couple of popular San Francisco area Radio Stations as well as a record producer, producing for predominantly white San Francisco-area bands such as The Beau Brummels, The Mojo Men, Bobby Freeman, and Grace and Jerry Slick‘s first band, The Great Society.
In 1966, Sly was performing with his band Sly and the Stoners, while his brother Freddie was working with his band called Freddie and the Stone Souls with cousins Greg Errico and Jerry Martini. One night, they made the decision to fuse the bands together adding bassist Larry Graham, who had studied music and worked in numerous groups and trumpeter Cynthia Robinson.
Working around the Bay Area in the 1967 Summer of Love, this multi-racial band made a strong impression on the public. In 1968, sister Rose Stone joined the band and Sly Stone’s brilliant period of about 6 years had begun. After a mildly received debut album, A Whole New Thing (1967), Sly and the Family Stone had their first hit single with “Dance to the Music“, which was later included on their second album of the same name (1968), in which their voices and instruments, high and low, each took a turn in the spotlight. A racially mixed band with male and female members, playing soul-infused rock together was a rare sight at the time — a utopian vision of what pop music could be.
Although their third album, Life (also 1968), suffered from low sales, their fourth album, Stand! (1969), became a runaway success, selling over three million copies and spawning a number one hit single, “Everyday People“. The group began touring following the success of Dance to the Music, and drew praise for their explosive live show, which attracted black and white fans in equal measure.By the summer of 1969, Sly and the Family Stone were one of the biggest names in music, releasing two more top five singles, “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)“/”Everybody Is a Star“. Hits like “Life,” “Stand!,” “Everyday People,” and “Hot Fun in the Summertime” were all anthems of solidarity and joy that acknowledged the pain and frustration of the times and encouraged their audiences to transcend it.
Sly & the Family Stone’s soaring performance of “I Want to Take You Higher” at Woodstock in 1969 was a triumph of that era, and the band finished the decade with an enormous hit: “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” whose joyful funk masked the existential horror and lacerating sarcasm of its lyrics. For a period of time from 1968 to 1973, their music was inescapable.
After moving to the Los Angeles area in fall 1969, Stone and his bandmates had become heavy users of illicit drugs, primarily cocaine and PCP. As the members became increasingly focused on drug use and partying (Stone carried a violin case filled with illegal drugs wherever he went), recording slowed to a trickle. Between summer 1969 and fall 1971, the band released only one single, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)“/”Everybody Is a Star“, in December 1969.
This song was one of the first recordings to employ the heavy, funky beats that would be featured in the funk music of the following decade. It showcased bass player Larry Graham‘s innovative percussive playing technique of bass “slapping“. Graham later said that he developed this technique in an earlier band in order to compensate for that band’s lack of a drummer.
Their next album was supposed to be called The Incredible and Unpredictable Sly & the Family Stone — a sideways reference to Stone’s habit of blowing off gigs. He finally released his masterpiece, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, in late 1971. Recorded with help from Bobby Womack and an early drum machine, it was a bleak, scarred, wobbly vision — the soured remains of the Sixties dream.
At the peak of his success, when hits like “Dance to the Music” and “Everyday People” were high on the charts, the wildly inventive musician and singer presented a glowingly optimistic image in step with the times, bringing together black and white audiences, uplifting crowds with electrifying shows. But the unpredictability that was the core of his genius, gave way to a long decline, as his personal demons destroyed what he had once been.
With the newfound fame and success came numerous problems. Relationships within the band were deteriorating; there was friction in particular between the Stone brothers and Larry Graham. Record company Epic requested more marketable output. The Black Panther Party demanded that Stone make his music more militant and more reflective of the black power movement, replace Greg Errico and Jerry Martini with black instrumentalists, and replace manager David Kapralik. Noteworthy in those days was: When Bob Marley first played in the U.S. in 1973 with his band The Wailers, he opened on tour for Sly and The Family Stone.
“Sly filled an important social void, bridging blacks and whites,” says Stone’s first manager, David Kapralik. “But at the same time, there were forces pulling him into the eddies of militancy.” The Black Panthers sought his endorsement. “His two personas—the shy, innocent poet Sylvester Stewart and the streetwise character he invented, Sly Stone—were torn apart,” says Kapralik. “He numbed himself with cocaine.”
The Family Stone disintegrated over the next few years, as Sly sank deep into drug abuse and became even more erratic. He married Kathy Silva on stage in front of a crowd of 20,000 at a sold-out Madison Square Garden show in 1974, but within months in January 1975, the band had broken up, and the marriage, which produced a son, Sylvester Jr., didn’t last much longer. “He beat me, held me captive, and wanted me to be in ménages à trois,” Silva said years later. “I didn’t want that world of drugs and weirdness.” Still, she remembers, “He’d write me a song or promise to change, and I’d try again. We were always fighting, then getting back together.” After Sly’s dog mauled their son in 1976, however, Silva left.
Live bookings for Sly and the Family Stone had steadily dropped since 1970, because promoters were afraid that Stone or one of the band members might miss the gig, refuse to play, or pass out from drug use. These issues were regular occurrences for the band during the 1970s, and had an adverse effect on their ability to demand money for live bookings. In 1970, 26 of 80 concerts were cancelled, and numerous others started late. At many of these gigs, concertgoers rioted if the band failed to show up, or if Stone walked out before finishing his set. In January 1975, the band booked itself at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The famed music hall was only one-eighth filled, and Stone and company had to scrape together money to return home. Following the Radio City engagement, the band was dissolved.
Sly persevered, making one attempt after another to win back the public: His 1976 album was called Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back, and the one that followed it three years later Back on the Right Track. After 1982’s half-finished Ain’t But the One Way, he never released another album of new, original material, despite persistent rumors that he was working on the magical record that would get his career back on its feet. He collaborated with George Clinton, on whom he’d been a huge influence; he turned up for guest vocals on records by the Bar-Kays and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Besides spending a fortune on drugs, Sly Stone also dropped tens of thousands of dollars on his other hobby: automobiles. In his early days, he drove a Jaguar XKE he painted purple. There were Hummers, a London taxi and a beloved Studebaker. He would cruise around LA on a bright-yellow, custom three-wheel chopper. He was known to give cars to friends.
Stone’s personal troubles continued. He was arrested for cocaine possession multiple times in the 1980s, and he served 14 months in a rehab center beginning in 1989. Between Sly & the Family Stone’s 1993 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the 2006 tribute to them at the Grammy Awards (for which Sly appeared for a few minutes with an enormous blond mohawk, then wandered off), he all but vanished. Interviewed by Vanity Fair in 2007, he claimed he had “a library” of new material, “a hundred and some songs, or maybe 200.” In 2011, the New York Post reported that he was living in a camper van in Los Angeles; that same year, he released I’m Back! Family & Friends, mostly lackluster new re-recordings of his Sixties classics.
The years around 2010 – 2013 were filled by a law suit filed against Sly’s former manager for financial malpractice. Cash-flow problems forced him out of his Napa Valley house that he rented with money from a 2007 European tour and into cheap hotels and than the van in 2009. A $5 million dollar verdict in his favor may have eased his later years, although it is not entirely clear of he received any of those proceeds.
After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly Stone passed away on June 9, 2025 at the age of 82.
• AllMusic stated that “James Brown may have invented funk, but Sly Stone perfected it,” and credited him with “creating a series of euphoric yet politically charged records that proved a massive influence on artists of all musical and cultural backgrounds.”
• Before drugs, Sly’s talent was unique and that voice was not of this world – a baritone howl of oak, leather and sandpaper evoking fun, laughter, despair, and pain in equal measure. Every one of he and the family’s records was masterful, with the subtle arrangements in those songs coming through the speakers like audio art.
He delivered these gems with such wildly original invention and with a voice that often equaled the range of Hendrix’s guitar.
• That he survived down here on earth as long as he did is nothing short of a miracle, considering his drug intake. Maybe he was meant to join the 27 club, yet he lived a long, though somewhat troubled life.
What has he left us with? Some of the most heart wrenchingly soulful music any human ever created. He said over and over again that he wanted to “take us higher”. He did, and we are all the better for it.
