Sly Stone, pioneering funk and soul musician, dies elderly 82

Sly Stone, the American musician who lit up generations of dancefloors together with his gloriously funky and incessantly socially aware songwriting, has died elderly 82.

“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,” a circle of relatives observation reads. “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.”

With his staff Sly and the Family Stone, Stone tied in combination soul, psychedelic rock and gospel into fervent, uplifting songs, and changed into one of the crucial key progenitors of the 1970s funk sound along James Brown and others.

The staff’s hits come with 3 US No 1 singles – Everyday People, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and Family Affair – plus Dance to the Music, I Want to Take You Higher, Hot Fun within the Summertime and extra. The 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a moody mirrored image on civil rights and the corrupted idealism of the postwar technology created predominantly by means of Stone except for the remainder of his band, is extensively considered one of the crucial largest of the 20th century.

Born Sylvester Stewart to a Pentecostal non secular circle of relatives in Texas in 1943, Stone grew up within the San Francisco Bay Area. His first song got here in a gospel quartet with 3 siblings, the Stewart Four, who put out a in the community launched unmarried in 1952.

As a tender guy he changed into widely known within the fertile musical scene of countercultural San Francisco: a multi-instrumentalist and radio DJ who had a chain of native bands and labored as a manufacturer 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 staff Freddie and the Stone Souls, to shape Sly and the Family Stone. Their leap forward got here the next yr with Dance to the Music, and luck used to be absolutely established by means of their fourth album in two years, Stand! (1969), which sooner or later offered greater than 3 million copies. The band’s stylistic and racial range attracted a wide target audience, they usually performed either one of the defining song fairs of 1969, Woodstock and the Harlem cultural pageant.

Hits persevered extra fitfully all through the early 1970s, and the gang – infamous for no-shows at concert events – slowly fractured amid expanding drug use. Stone would file There’s a Riot Goin’ On predominantly on his personal, making use of one of the crucial earliest makes use of of a drum system; albums akin to Fresh!, with its Richard Avedon portrait of Stone at the duvet, have been additionally essentially his paintings. The band cut up solely in 1975, even though Stone persevered to make use of the band identify for solo releases.

Despite having laid the rhythmic groundwork for disco, Stone couldn’t maintain his occupation within the overdue 1970s, and his dependancy to cocaine worsened. He persevered to accomplish with friends akin to Funkadelic and Bobby Womack, however album releases dried up after 1982’s Ain’t But the One Way.

He used to be arrested in 1983 for cocaine ownership, and for riding beneath the affect of cocaine in 1987, prompting him to escape California for Connecticut. He used to be apprehended two years later, and sentenced to 55 days in jail, 5 years’ probation and a high-quality. His difficulties intended that he used to be little observed all through the 1990s, and it wasn’t till 2006 that he carried out in public once more, at a tribute to Sly and the Family Stone on the Grammy awards.

He carried out with the Family Stone on a excursion the next yr, however incessantly inconsistently, and made a lacklustre look at 2010’s Coachella pageant. His ultimate album, I’m Back! Family & Friends, that includes re-recordings of previous songs along 3 new tracks, used to be launched in 2011.

In 2015 he used to be awarded $5m in a lawsuit towards his former supervisor and lawyer, effectively arguing that royalty bills have been diverted from him, even though he in the end wasn’t awarded the cash because of the phrases of a 1989 royalties settlement with a manufacturing corporate. Difficulties with royalties intended that Stone spent a lot of his latter years in poverty; in 2011 he used to be residing in a campervan in a residential house of Los Angeles – voluntarily, he claimed – and depending on a retired couple for meals.

“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” the circle of relatives observation added. “His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.”

That memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), used to be praised in a Guardian overview: “The charm, playfulness, humour and personality of Stone’s songs come through in his on-page voice”.

In a 2023 interview with the Guardian accompanying its newsletter, he mentioned: “I was always happy if someone took the things I was doing and they liked them enough to want to do them on their own. I’m proud that the music I made inspired people.”

He used to be 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.