You get a Like as a way of saying “thanks for passing on the word.” A great but cursed talent of long ago. Perhaps the nearest equivalent I can think of is Peter Green, but he managed at least some sort of comeback. Gil Scott-Heron also comes to mind. Tough gig being a musical genius.
“Dance To The Music” however will live forever! And his Woodstock performance is one of the all-time gateways to another world.
I was thinking of Peter Green, too. And his comeback never equaled his pre-drug abuse creativity - not even close. I have all his Splinter Group albums - kept hoping for another "Man of the World" or "Albatross" ...
His death is bringing his music to people~ again~when we benefit to hear it! Wow are these judgemental, divided times with so much pigeonholing. Big article in NY Times today. The first record I ever bought was a Sly and the Family Stone album! I grew up in San Rafael, near his hometown of Vallejo. I will always feel thankful to Sly.
Alright -- well, in my universe I have Sly tied for the #1 spot of best musician of the 20th century. The reasons for this go very deep, and I',m not saying who he;s tied with at this time. I was upset but not shocked to hear this news.
Syd Barrett and Betty Davis are more appropriate comparisons than any football player, btw, in fact Sly has pieces of both of them. He has pieces of lots of the other greats, which is part of my choice.
Maybe it's the late hour or the fact that I had a dream last night that I was getting a Sly Stone tattoo on my left shoulder blade -- and only heard the news late today because of this post -- but there's much too much judgement coming out here. This industry eats its own, the brighter you shine, the harsher is your burn out, and the exceptions prove the rule, so ease up on the criticism of Sylvester. That goes for Ted too. You've not got the faintest notion to say things like "the protagonists fail to grasp how many people they’ve disappointed, or how much they’ve betrayed their own talent."
That's some kind of bullshit entitlement there: you think you deserve a Sly Stone different from the one we got? That's not how it works, just like Mingus, just like Miles, you must accept the entire human, not just the parts you want. I'm not defending bad behavior, I'm saying, the full package is the universal law, it doesn't happen another way.
If any of you think you could come up with a fraction of what he did, in the way he did at that time, or any time really, and survive better than he did I've got 2 words for ya: TRY IT.
Well said. I agree wholeheartedly with your comment, especially the universal law of the whole package.
But i also think its ok to be critical of larger than life figures, especially those that have passed. For our sake. It helps us, those that are willing to look and consider, to better know the world and the pitfalls it contains.
Still, you make an excellent point about people that shouldnt be ignored. Nobody knows what its like to be someone else, and we would all do well to remember that, especially while engaging in criticism.
absolutely -- a clear-eyed view is essential, and that's part of why we are gathered here, Ted is better at that than most, most of the time. But I do think very few people understand the psychic minefield that is fame or notoriety. reading autobiographies can help humanize, and its true Sly's memoir isn't as gritty as, for instance, Etta James' in terms of the inner emotional landscape but again, as you echo here, that level of reveal or inner exploration is up to them, not up to us. To quote Cedric Burnside's catchy tune from a couple years back "the world can be so cold."
feels a bit warmer sharing thoughts like this here, thanks for your comment too
This is what I've been telling my kids. He reminds me of Dave Chappelle in the way they were both young, talented black men who were moved along way too fast in the business and, my belief is that, the business was trying to own them, and they knew it, but didn't know how to defend themselves, so they left. I understand that response perfectly. I believe it saved Dave Chappelle, but Sly Stone was too deep in the drugs to work his way back out. Just the saddest story ever. So much potential lost. I wonder how many people who knew him in his later years appreciated who they were talking to and what a great, intelligent, talented human he was.
Thanks for your comment. None of us can truly understand what it's like to be in another's shoes, although we can try - but unless someone has wrestled with addiction, I'm inclined to think that it's best to try not to judge. (Same for Gil Scott-Heron.) We just don't know what all either of them went through, including whether they were self-medicating due to mental illness. That's so prevalent (sadly) that I feel more inclined to cut Sly a break.
The stresses of touring have thrown many people, and I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that can be.
Some people light up the night sky like falling stars - they're incandescent for a brief time, and then gone. Those few years might well have been the sum total of what he could have done. We'll never know.
Sly's music was and remains really important to me, and I wish the industry hadn't used him and the band in the ways that are endemic to it. Really, who would *want* to be famous, if they knew what it would do to them? The industry is so anti-creative, really. Maybe the best thing is to do what Kate Bush has done: stop touring, write, record, and just live as normal a life as possible - then come back for a brief, stunning, and beautifully-made limited run. And head home, to make more music. I am inclined to believe that most people in the arts would happily "settle" for such a life. There's a trade-off: in Bush's case, it's making music instead of having to deal with the whole industry racket and how destructive it can be. Me, I'll take the music.
ah yes! the curiosity is good, but I'm going to hold that in my vest for a bit longer . . . .again it's a very personal choice, but I could make a good case for them being a strong general choice too, like Sly. It's just a kind of inner game in order to clarify my personal criteria which are always evolving as I do more deep dives over many many years
He was, first and foremost, an entertainer, in every sense of the word. His performance on the Ed Sullivan show proves that he could move even the most staid audience to get in the groove.
We left Woodstock on Saturday so I missed his show there, sad to say, but he hung on a lot longer than Jimi. In the end, drugs got them both.
What a talent, and, in some ways, what a waste. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Sly and the Family Stone lived the mixed-race life and it was no big deal. They were Oakland, after all. I finished my Berkeley high school years with their music but they were just like our house band.
The connection with Whitney Houston’s similar self-destruction is found in Clive Davis.
I was stuck in a massive traffic jam on Park Presidio in SF sometime around 2012 or so. No way out. But a nice sunny Friday afternoon, the street greenery all around, and I put the disc in the player and cranked it ALL THE WAY UP. Pretty soon there were cars rocking all around me. That was Sly's superpower. That, plus distributing the idea that people – we, all of us – really can work it out.
This is a story about how chronic drug addiction ruined a man's life...a man who had enormous musical talent that was very marketable. He did not "abandon" his fans or set out to disappoint anyone. He had a disease that disregulated him and destroyed ...not his fans, but his personal life including his creativity. I would have liked to read about his rehab attempts, why they didn't work, why he couldn't escape his addiction.
It’s funny how learning about the sobering reality of some artist’s late careers makes their heyday seem even more important in context.
I’ve listened to Sly and the Family Stone’s set at Woodstock dozens of times but I’ll admit that I didn’t ever look into their career and life trajectory. Thank you for writing this
So sad. We used to play "I Want To Take You Higher"... it was right up there, next to Stevie's "Superstition" in our covers. Incredible groove. Sly and the band had so much going for them, but I guess some people just aren't built for that kind of fame and success. Godspeed, Sly.
Way back in the early 70s I read an excellent article by the critic Robert Somma in Fusion magazine - he was discussing the "27 club" and the number of truly talented musicians who had died at that age. As a long-time observer of the rock scene he had an insight to the motivations of drug use. Of course there is the temptation of people offering them to you as gifts but he described two major factors: touring takes you away from your normal support group of family and friends who love you and hopefully keep you safe, and this group is replaced by unscrupulous music industry folk (sorry for the redundancy) who see you only as product to be sold. But there was also the challenge to be creative every night, to do things a bit differently and exciting. The creative pressure, night after night, often with little sleep, leads you to the cycle, as Sly Stone describes, to get up before a show and down afterwards.
This article has remained in my memory because, over the years, it's sadly frequent to look at the entertainment section of the news and see yet another musician in court after substance abuse had taken them down a dark path. And every time I think "better in court than at the funeral home." So I'll lift my coffee mug in tribute to Sly Stone this morning and hope he is, as my grandmother would say, singing with the celestial choir.
Dear Ted, Homo sapiens who ride the wave of gigundus overview, don't ride the same wave lengths that most of us in the crowd of Homo sapiens do. A great, fully fleshed-out example is the staggering film, "Copying Beethoven". Like Sly, Beethoven was a full-out Sagittarius who marched to his own rhythm section. He was the greatest pianist in the world and wrote the Missa Solemnis, and his last six string quartets, the mind altering late piano sonatas and the unbelievable 9th Sympathy while going stone deaf. My guess is that very few Homo sapiens could even listen to the late sonatas or the quartets and all that the majority of us will ever experience is feeling elated while humming along to the "Ode to Joy." AND, the same obscure understanding runs through Sly's life. His genius, like Beethoven's, could never be understood by the vast majority of us Homo sapiens, AND, I can assure you that there is very little in life---things like seeing your child after it just comes out of its mom---that is as overwhelming as the ode to joy a healthy person feels for half an hour after the rush of snorting a big fat railer of pure cocaine. One of my mentors who is extremely well versed in the rock concerts of the 60s, 70s and 80s---and does not abide in the house of rock critic cliche---assures me that there was never anything in the rock period like going to see Sly live: the Beetles, the Stones, even Prince were cross town traffic next to a Sly and the Family Stone concert.
Thank you for writing this piece on Sly Stone. I always knew his music, but never thought much about where he went. I’m glad you wrote about him. He definitely shouldn’t be forgotten. He is now renewed in my mind. Listening to his album right now… :)
Totally agree with you – Hot Fun is one of the best summer songs, up there with some of the Beach Boys icons that defined and shaped post WWII boomer culture. I am so grateful for Sly's appearance on Letterman. I watch it several times a year. Keep on Dancin' to the Music and never let go of that Funk-A-Nayess!
You get a Like as a way of saying “thanks for passing on the word.” A great but cursed talent of long ago. Perhaps the nearest equivalent I can think of is Peter Green, but he managed at least some sort of comeback. Gil Scott-Heron also comes to mind. Tough gig being a musical genius.
“Dance To The Music” however will live forever! And his Woodstock performance is one of the all-time gateways to another world.
I was thinking of Peter Green, too. And his comeback never equaled his pre-drug abuse creativity - not even close. I have all his Splinter Group albums - kept hoping for another "Man of the World" or "Albatross" ...
His death is bringing his music to people~ again~when we benefit to hear it! Wow are these judgemental, divided times with so much pigeonholing. Big article in NY Times today. The first record I ever bought was a Sly and the Family Stone album! I grew up in San Rafael, near his hometown of Vallejo. I will always feel thankful to Sly.
tearing up...
Alright -- well, in my universe I have Sly tied for the #1 spot of best musician of the 20th century. The reasons for this go very deep, and I',m not saying who he;s tied with at this time. I was upset but not shocked to hear this news.
Syd Barrett and Betty Davis are more appropriate comparisons than any football player, btw, in fact Sly has pieces of both of them. He has pieces of lots of the other greats, which is part of my choice.
Maybe it's the late hour or the fact that I had a dream last night that I was getting a Sly Stone tattoo on my left shoulder blade -- and only heard the news late today because of this post -- but there's much too much judgement coming out here. This industry eats its own, the brighter you shine, the harsher is your burn out, and the exceptions prove the rule, so ease up on the criticism of Sylvester. That goes for Ted too. You've not got the faintest notion to say things like "the protagonists fail to grasp how many people they’ve disappointed, or how much they’ve betrayed their own talent."
That's some kind of bullshit entitlement there: you think you deserve a Sly Stone different from the one we got? That's not how it works, just like Mingus, just like Miles, you must accept the entire human, not just the parts you want. I'm not defending bad behavior, I'm saying, the full package is the universal law, it doesn't happen another way.
If any of you think you could come up with a fraction of what he did, in the way he did at that time, or any time really, and survive better than he did I've got 2 words for ya: TRY IT.
Well said. I agree wholeheartedly with your comment, especially the universal law of the whole package.
But i also think its ok to be critical of larger than life figures, especially those that have passed. For our sake. It helps us, those that are willing to look and consider, to better know the world and the pitfalls it contains.
Still, you make an excellent point about people that shouldnt be ignored. Nobody knows what its like to be someone else, and we would all do well to remember that, especially while engaging in criticism.
absolutely -- a clear-eyed view is essential, and that's part of why we are gathered here, Ted is better at that than most, most of the time. But I do think very few people understand the psychic minefield that is fame or notoriety. reading autobiographies can help humanize, and its true Sly's memoir isn't as gritty as, for instance, Etta James' in terms of the inner emotional landscape but again, as you echo here, that level of reveal or inner exploration is up to them, not up to us. To quote Cedric Burnside's catchy tune from a couple years back "the world can be so cold."
feels a bit warmer sharing thoughts like this here, thanks for your comment too
This is what I've been telling my kids. He reminds me of Dave Chappelle in the way they were both young, talented black men who were moved along way too fast in the business and, my belief is that, the business was trying to own them, and they knew it, but didn't know how to defend themselves, so they left. I understand that response perfectly. I believe it saved Dave Chappelle, but Sly Stone was too deep in the drugs to work his way back out. Just the saddest story ever. So much potential lost. I wonder how many people who knew him in his later years appreciated who they were talking to and what a great, intelligent, talented human he was.
agreed! in a real sense, just staying alive through some of these gauntlets is an accomplishment -- or living all the way to 82
Thanks for your comment. None of us can truly understand what it's like to be in another's shoes, although we can try - but unless someone has wrestled with addiction, I'm inclined to think that it's best to try not to judge. (Same for Gil Scott-Heron.) We just don't know what all either of them went through, including whether they were self-medicating due to mental illness. That's so prevalent (sadly) that I feel more inclined to cut Sly a break.
The stresses of touring have thrown many people, and I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that can be.
Some people light up the night sky like falling stars - they're incandescent for a brief time, and then gone. Those few years might well have been the sum total of what he could have done. We'll never know.
Sly's music was and remains really important to me, and I wish the industry hadn't used him and the band in the ways that are endemic to it. Really, who would *want* to be famous, if they knew what it would do to them? The industry is so anti-creative, really. Maybe the best thing is to do what Kate Bush has done: stop touring, write, record, and just live as normal a life as possible - then come back for a brief, stunning, and beautifully-made limited run. And head home, to make more music. I am inclined to believe that most people in the arts would happily "settle" for such a life. There's a trade-off: in Bush's case, it's making music instead of having to deal with the whole industry racket and how destructive it can be. Me, I'll take the music.
agreed!
Amen to that.
Thanks for this, Cornelius.
I am that am.
You are that are.
It is that is.
Curiosity peaked: Who else you got #1?
ah yes! the curiosity is good, but I'm going to hold that in my vest for a bit longer . . . .again it's a very personal choice, but I could make a good case for them being a strong general choice too, like Sly. It's just a kind of inner game in order to clarify my personal criteria which are always evolving as I do more deep dives over many many years
He was, first and foremost, an entertainer, in every sense of the word. His performance on the Ed Sullivan show proves that he could move even the most staid audience to get in the groove.
We left Woodstock on Saturday so I missed his show there, sad to say, but he hung on a lot longer than Jimi. In the end, drugs got them both.
What a talent, and, in some ways, what a waste. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
But better than booze or smack I guess...
Sly and the Family Stone lived the mixed-race life and it was no big deal. They were Oakland, after all. I finished my Berkeley high school years with their music but they were just like our house band.
The connection with Whitney Houston’s similar self-destruction is found in Clive Davis.
I was stuck in a massive traffic jam on Park Presidio in SF sometime around 2012 or so. No way out. But a nice sunny Friday afternoon, the street greenery all around, and I put the disc in the player and cranked it ALL THE WAY UP. Pretty soon there were cars rocking all around me. That was Sly's superpower. That, plus distributing the idea that people – we, all of us – really can work it out.
Loved that man and his band so much.
Would that all our traffic jams in life were so resolved!
This is a story about how chronic drug addiction ruined a man's life...a man who had enormous musical talent that was very marketable. He did not "abandon" his fans or set out to disappoint anyone. He had a disease that disregulated him and destroyed ...not his fans, but his personal life including his creativity. I would have liked to read about his rehab attempts, why they didn't work, why he couldn't escape his addiction.
It really is a sickness, in 2025 why is this not obvious....
I always found it puzzling that Sly was the producer of the Beau Brummels who were the polar opposites of The Family Stone
Anthony Young
Santa Monica CA
That’s a very weird way to write what should have been a celebration of an incandescent talent, not a National Enquirer style character assassination.
How dare he write all those true things about Sly Stone!
This is a sad story.
It’s funny how learning about the sobering reality of some artist’s late careers makes their heyday seem even more important in context.
I’ve listened to Sly and the Family Stone’s set at Woodstock dozens of times but I’ll admit that I didn’t ever look into their career and life trajectory. Thank you for writing this
So sad. We used to play "I Want To Take You Higher"... it was right up there, next to Stevie's "Superstition" in our covers. Incredible groove. Sly and the band had so much going for them, but I guess some people just aren't built for that kind of fame and success. Godspeed, Sly.
Way back in the early 70s I read an excellent article by the critic Robert Somma in Fusion magazine - he was discussing the "27 club" and the number of truly talented musicians who had died at that age. As a long-time observer of the rock scene he had an insight to the motivations of drug use. Of course there is the temptation of people offering them to you as gifts but he described two major factors: touring takes you away from your normal support group of family and friends who love you and hopefully keep you safe, and this group is replaced by unscrupulous music industry folk (sorry for the redundancy) who see you only as product to be sold. But there was also the challenge to be creative every night, to do things a bit differently and exciting. The creative pressure, night after night, often with little sleep, leads you to the cycle, as Sly Stone describes, to get up before a show and down afterwards.
This article has remained in my memory because, over the years, it's sadly frequent to look at the entertainment section of the news and see yet another musician in court after substance abuse had taken them down a dark path. And every time I think "better in court than at the funeral home." So I'll lift my coffee mug in tribute to Sly Stone this morning and hope he is, as my grandmother would say, singing with the celestial choir.
Dear Ted, Homo sapiens who ride the wave of gigundus overview, don't ride the same wave lengths that most of us in the crowd of Homo sapiens do. A great, fully fleshed-out example is the staggering film, "Copying Beethoven". Like Sly, Beethoven was a full-out Sagittarius who marched to his own rhythm section. He was the greatest pianist in the world and wrote the Missa Solemnis, and his last six string quartets, the mind altering late piano sonatas and the unbelievable 9th Sympathy while going stone deaf. My guess is that very few Homo sapiens could even listen to the late sonatas or the quartets and all that the majority of us will ever experience is feeling elated while humming along to the "Ode to Joy." AND, the same obscure understanding runs through Sly's life. His genius, like Beethoven's, could never be understood by the vast majority of us Homo sapiens, AND, I can assure you that there is very little in life---things like seeing your child after it just comes out of its mom---that is as overwhelming as the ode to joy a healthy person feels for half an hour after the rush of snorting a big fat railer of pure cocaine. One of my mentors who is extremely well versed in the rock concerts of the 60s, 70s and 80s---and does not abide in the house of rock critic cliche---assures me that there was never anything in the rock period like going to see Sly live: the Beetles, the Stones, even Prince were cross town traffic next to a Sly and the Family Stone concert.
Sly taught us to Stand because there is a giant about to fall... for a 15 year old suburban white boy in 1969 that was enough!!!
Thank you for writing this piece on Sly Stone. I always knew his music, but never thought much about where he went. I’m glad you wrote about him. He definitely shouldn’t be forgotten. He is now renewed in my mind. Listening to his album right now… :)
Totally agree with you – Hot Fun is one of the best summer songs, up there with some of the Beach Boys icons that defined and shaped post WWII boomer culture. I am so grateful for Sly's appearance on Letterman. I watch it several times a year. Keep on Dancin' to the Music and never let go of that Funk-A-Nayess!