A Sly Stone Primer: 15 Songs (and More) From a Musical Visionary

New York Times

11-02-2025

In Sly & the Family Stone's prime, from 1968 to 1973, the band was one of music's greatest live acts as well as a fount of remarkable singles including 'Everyday People' and 'Hot Fun in the Summertime.' There was a shining optimism to its sound, which mixed funk with the ecstasy of gospel, a little rock and a touch of psychedelia — as well as a vision of community and brotherhood that stood out in a period of political separatism.
The visionary behind it all was Sly Stone, who wrote, produced and arranged the music, winning acclaim as the author of invigorating anthems and an inventor of new, more complex recording sounds. But by the early 1970s, he was ravaged by drug addiction, kicking off a cycle of spirals and comebacks and sporadic, desultory live appearances. Now Stone, 81, is the subject of 'Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),' a documentary directed by Ahmir Thompson, better known as the Roots drummer Questlove, that debuts on Hulu on Thursday.
Stone, who was born Sylvester Stewart and grew up in Vallejo, Calif., had gospel in his blood. His father, K.C., was a deacon in a Pentecostal church, and Sly began performing with his younger brother Freddie and younger sisters Rose and Vet in the Stewart Four, which released a single, 'On the Battlefield,' in 1956 on the Church of God in Christ label.
As he learned to play guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and harmonica, Stone's ambition swelled. In 1964, he produced and co-wrote Bobby Freeman's No. 5 hit 'C'mon and Swim,' and soon talked himself into an on-air gig at KSOL, the Bay Area's AM soul music powerhouse, where he read dedications in his nimble baritone and mixed in Bob Dylan and Beatles songs to the format. 'I think there shouldn't be 'Black radio.' Just radio,' he later told Rolling Stone. 'Everybody be a part of everything.'
After having a small local hit in the Viscaynes, one of the few integrated groups in doo wop, he assembled Sly & the Family Stone with a lineup of men and women, Black and white. In 1967, 'Dance to the Music' became their first of five Top 10 singles. Two years later, they performed at Woodstock, providing one of the weekend's high points. The days of playing nightclubs were over. 'After Woodstock, everything glowed,' Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir.
Stone was a unifying figure, 'the only rock artist who appealed equally to Black and white audiences,' the critic Robert Christgau wrote, but the singer's optimism curdled. He moved from the Bay Area to a mansion in Bel Air that was once owned by the 1930s film star Jeanette MacDonald, and began snorting and freebasing copious amounts of PCP and cocaine, which he toted around in a violin case. People kept giving him drugs, he wrote. 'It would have been rude to refuse.'
'There's a Riot Goin' On,' released in 1971, is a difficult, disjointed album that's also considered a masterpiece. But soon, the good times were over: The hits dried up and Stone's drug arrests mounted. Stone's last major public appearances came at the 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and a Grammy tribute in 2006.
The influence of Sly & the Family Stone's sound is so vast, it's hard to measure. It's in music from Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, Talking Heads and Prince, and many more: Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Tricky, Outkast, De La Soul, KLF, Beck, Lenny Kravitz, Seal, even U2's 'Mysterious Ways.' Stone may be out of sight, but he is somehow always still around. Here are 15 songs that help explain his musical impact.
5 Hits
This perfect, concise unity song, which popularized the phrase 'different strokes for different folks,' is built on simple layers like Larry Graham's one-note bass line. 'I kept it short with the idea that it would have a long life,' Stone said in his memoir.
For those who chose to sit rather than stand at this precarious moment of protest, Stone had a message: 'There's a permanent crease in your right and wrong.'
Though Sly was the group's mastermind, Freddie Stone was a world-class guitarist whose dynamic funk licks added hooks and percussive cross-rhythms. Jimi Hendrix borrowed the riff from this song for Band of Gypsys' live recording of 'We Gotta Live Together.'
This laid-back song about nostalgia for the carefree days of childhood rises on Rose Stone's minimalist, single-chord piano part and her explosive singing voice. Sly slips in a bittersweet note — autumn will arrive soon, he sings, and it's time to brace for a chill.
One of the funkiest songs ever recorded, thanks to the 'thumping and plucking' bass style Graham credibly claimed to have invented. 'Lookin' at the devil, grinnin' at his gun,' Stone sings in a clipped voice, and in the following verses, he quotes from his own hits and shares lead vocals with all six other band members.
5 Deeper Cuts
The first Sly & the Family Stone album sold poorly, and Stone's record company pressured him for a single. 'Dance to the Music' did the trick, but the singer hated the song, according to the sax player Jerry Martini. 'Dance to the Medley,' on the same album, was far more complex — a 12-minute suite in which the band interpolates its own hit.
Stone borrows a melody from the Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' to decry an untrustworthy square who 'will take a blind man's glasses.'
The title makes this woozy mid-tempo number sound like a Black Power statement, but its lyrics also ask African Americans to stop using insulting terms for white people. There's a breathless mood in the music, thanks to Stone's distorted harmonica, which he played through one of the first commercially available talk boxes.
Stone had one final reinvention in him: On 'Fresh,' he applied his increasingly croaky voice to deconstructed R&B — funk that didn't swing. As the producer Brian Eno told the composer Charles Amirkhanian in a radio interview, Stone 'reshuffled all the instrument roles' by making bass and drums as important as vocals and guitar.
Among Stone's intermittent 'comeback' albums, 'Back on the Right Track' feels the least distant from his prime. 'Shine It On' is a chugging funk number that mixes positivity with a bit of resentment.
5 Curiosities
This elegant 45, released under the musician's birth name five years before he formed Sly & the Family Stone, has strong echoes of the Drifters but also hints at the greatness ahead. His voice moves easily into falsetto and enlivens the song with rhythmic gusto, while the dramatic arrangement utilizes a Latin bolero rhythm.
Preston, a dazzling organ player, had been a gospel prodigy like Stone, and brought in Sly to arrange the music on 'Wildest Organ in Town!' They wrote three songs together, including 'Advice,' in which Preston sings, 'I want to take you higher.' The ecstatic notion of a spiritual high was common in gospel, most notably in Mahalia Jackson's 1947 standard 'Move on Up a Little Higher,' and 'Advice' served as a precursor to Stone's 'I Want to Take You Higher' just three years later.
Stone wrote and produced this song, which he described in his memoir as 'filled with philosophy,' and released it on his Stone Flower label. 'If it feels good, it's all right,' the San Francisco singer Joe Hicks moans, but the creepy mood and drawn-out six-minute length suggest nothing feels good, nothing is all right.
Medleys are usually redolent of Vegas revues and wedding bands, but the great soul singer Merry Clayton holds down this suite of four joyous Sly & the Family Stone tunes with strong, knowing contributions from the bassist Neil Jason and Paulinho Da Costa on percussion.
George Clinton, the outré Funkadelic mastermind, brought in Stone, a pal and a peer, for 'First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate,' a sprawling three-disc session. Of the six songs that feature Stone, the most interesting is 'The Naz,' originally by the 1950s comedian and spoken-word performer Lord Buckley, one of Stone's earliest jive-talking inspirations.
3 Things You Should Know
When he was 19, Stone had national success with the Beau Brummels, a Bay Area folk-rock group inspired by the British Invasion sound. Their first two singles, 'Laugh, Laugh' and 'Just a Little,' both produced by Stone, charted at No. 15 and No. 8. 'He was great to work with,' the singer Sal Valentino recalled. 'He could play everything if we needed him to.'
'Family Affair,' released in 1971, was the biggest hit of Sly & the Family Stone's career, its third and last No. 1. Ken Roberts, who managed the group, said in Joel Selvin's 'Sly & the Family Stone: An Oral History' that Stone became the first artist to command a record company advance of $1 million per album.
According to Selvin's book, two Stone associates, whose jobs included security, came to believe that Graham, the bassist, had hired a hit man to kill his boss. In November 1972, after a sloppy show at the L.A. Coliseum, Stone's squad beat up Graham's security in a hotel lobby. 'They were going to kill Larry,' said a band member who helped Graham escape the trap. The bassist realized his time in the Family Stone was over.