Latest news with #FamilyStone
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dionne Warwick, Jamie Foxx Among Those Paying Tribute to Sly Stone: 'May He Rest in Paradise'
Hollywood is paying tribute to Sly Stone after news of the funk-rock pioneer's death was announced Monday. Stone died after a 'prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues,' his family said Monday. More from The Hollywood Reporter Secretly Group Acquires 50 Percent Stake in Merge Records Mariah Carey Signs Multi-Album Deal With Gamma Jessica Pratt, MJ Lenderman, Shaboozey Among Big Winners at 2025 Libera Awards 'Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family,' his family wrote in a statement. '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.' Sly shot to prominence in the music industry in 1968 alongside his band Sly and the Family Stone with their hit 'Dance to the Music,' which landed in the top 10 on both the pop and R&B charts. The group continued to deliver a series of crossover tracks, including 'Summer of Love,' including 'Stand!,' 'Hot Fun in the Summertime,' 'Runnin' Away,' 'If You Want Me to Stay' and 'Time for Livin',' which emerged to define their hometown of San Francisco. In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Dionne Warwick, whom Sly used to play the keyboard for early in his career, said, 'I met Sly during his years as a DJ. I will miss him as I know everyone will. My condolences to his family.' At the 2025 BET Awards carpet, Grammy nominee Durand Bernarr told THR, 'I hope that he knew he was loved and he was respected and we're rooting for him.' Also at the BET Awards, American Idol alum and 'Over' singer Lucky Daye commemorated his influence on the music industry, also telling THR, 'May he rest in paradise today.' In a statement to THR, Grammy winner Ray Parker Jr. said, 'He was my hero. Sly wrote the best songs in the world and bridge the black and white worlds like no other. I'm pretty sure every one of his albums had a No. 1 Pop hit. The guitars on 'Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself' speak for themselves. There's never been anything like it before and is hard to imagine will be again.' Paul Stanley, co-founder and co-lead vocalist of KISS, said on X, 'Sly Stone Has Died. In 1968 I saw Sly & the Family Stone debut at the Fillmore East in New York City opening for Jimi Hendrix. They were a freight train of bombastic, joyous SouI that would soon climb the charts and change the sound of R&B for so many other artists. Rest In Soul!' On Instagram, Jamie Foxx wrote, 'Legend RIP SLY.' Questlove, director of the Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) documentary, paid tribute to Sly on Instagram, writing, 'From the moment his music reached me in the early 1970s, it became a part of my soul. Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note. His songs weren't just about fighting injustice; they were about transforming the self to transform the world. He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths.' The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into in 1993, wrote on X, '1993 Inductees Sly & The Family Stone made it possible for Black popular music to burst free on its own terms, with singer, songwriter, and producer @HigherSlyStone at the helm, extending the boundaries of pop and R&B with each new song.' The Sundance Film Festival also shared a statement on X: 'Sly Stone changed music forever. A visionary, a rebel, a genius. His sound shaped generations and his spirit broke boundaries.' Below, read more tributes to Stone. "You should know that he was a genius" – PJ Morton remembers Sly Stone on the red carpet at the #BETAwards — The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) June 9, 2025 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Holly Robinson Peete (@hollyrpeete) Sly Stone changed FUNK FOREVER. With the Family Stone, he fused groove, soul, and psychedelia into something bold and alive. Integrated in sound and spirit, the band broke every rule. His influence is everywhere funk has gone and everywhere it's still in peace, Sly.… — Okayplayer (@okayplayer) June 9, 2025 Rest In Beats SLY Stone ..and we should THANK @questlove of @theroots for keeping his FIRE blazing in this Century. 2 documentaries and book . GET EM — Chuck D (@MrChuckD) June 9, 2025 View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eric Johnson (@upstairsaterics) Rest easy Sly Stone. You changed music (and me) forever. The time he won over Ed Sullivan's audience in 1968. Simply magical. — Danny Deraney (@DannyDeraney) June 9, 2025 RIP Sly Stone (1943–2025), the funk pioneer who made the world dance, think, and get higher. His music changed everything—and it still does. — Eric Alper 🎧 (@ThatEricAlper) June 9, 2025 Rest in peace, Sly…🖤 Today, the legendary Sly Stone from Sly and the Family Stone, has passed away at age 82…In honor of his legacy here's an incredible clip of Sly and the Family Stone performing 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' — Melodies & Masterpieces (@SVG__Collection) June 9, 2025 Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025 Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Send me some money!' My unforgettable encounters with the legendary Sly Stone
In 2013, there didn't seem much point in requesting an interview with Sly Stone. It was 31 years since he had released an album of new material, Ain't But the One Way, which he had abandoned midway through, vanishing completely from the studio and leaving the producer Stewart Levine to patch together what he could. It was longer still since he had produced any music that was even vaguely close to the standard he had set himself in the late 60s and early 70s – a six-year period bookended by the release of the groundbreaking single Dance to the Music in 1967 and his last truly classic album, Fresh, in 1973 – when he could justifiably have claimed to have changed the face of soul music. Sly and the Family Stone, the multiracial band he had formed in 1966, released a string of classic singles in that time: not just Dance to the Music, but also I Want to Take You Higher, Everyday People, Stand!, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), Family Affair, If You Want Me to Stay. By contrast, his most recent release, 2011's I'm Back! Family and Friends, was a desultory collection of rerecordings of old hits, terrible remixes (a dubstep version of Family Affair!) and three new songs. Occasionally, something flickered in the original tracks, a faint trace of his former greatness, but they sounded suspiciously like unfinished demos. It felt of a piece with the handful of gigs he had played with various former members of the Family Stone a few years before: nights where something would spark fleetingly, mixed with disasters such as their 2010 appearance at Coachella, where Stone stopped and started songs at random and launched into a rant about his former manager that subsequently occasioned a lawsuit. But, in 2013, a lavish retrospective box set, Higher!, was due out. It told Stone's story from his early days, when he was a staff producer at Autumn Records in San Francisco, occasionally knocking out a novelty dance track or two under his own name, to 1976's Family Again, a single that attempted to recreate the astonishing sound of the Family Stone in full flight. But there was no question of him promoting it: his interactions with the media seemed largely restricted to appearances on the gossip website TMZ, whose reporters would doorstep him – at the mobile home where he apparently lived full-time – after a cocaine possession charge, or a lurid report that he was homeless. Instead, I spoke to former members of the Family Stone, who had incredible tales to tell of the glory days, when the band single-handedly shifted the compass of black American music. They melded psychedelia with rhythm and blues and gospel, helping to usher in one of soul music's most fertile periods. Artists previously beholden to the wishes of their record labels – Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder among them – felt empowered to strike out on their own artistic paths; it prompted Miles Davis to change tack and record the epochal fusion album Bitches Brew. They also had stories of the consternation caused by the very existence of the US's first major multiracial band – or, as the trumpeter and vocalist Cynthia Robinson put it, by 'seeing different races having fun together on stage'. Just the sight of her walking down the street with the band's long-haired white saxophonist, Jerry Martini, enraged onlookers, she said: 'We had to run! We hadn't even said anything to them!' I had read Joel Selvin's eye-popping 1998 oral history of the band, filled with lurid detail and the testimony of former members bitterly airing grievances about their fall from grace. Racked by drug problems and intraband discord, the band's career had slumped to such an extent that, by 1975, their final show at New York's 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall attracted barely 1,000 people. But clearly something had changed: the striking thing about the interviews I did was the awe and reverence in which they now held their former leader. 'He affected my life second only to God,' said Martini, who in Selvin's book had been the most critical of the lot. 'Why don't people try to love him for what he did? He had so much to offer the music business and the world in general. Why is everybody concentrated on drugs or this or that?' It was already shaping up to be a fascinating feature when I got word that Stone wanted to talk to me. I didn't really believe it and it didn't seem as if it was going to happen: the negotiations to bring him to the phone went on for weeks and I had a holiday booked. With nothing seemingly happening, I packed my bags and departed for a family-friendly hotel in Cornwall with my wife and kids. We were there when I got a message: call this number; Sly will talk to you tonight. Incredibly, the only place in the hotel where I could get a signal was in the playground, perched on the edge of a bouncy castle. But that didn't really matter, because, when I rang the number, I got an answering machine: 'You called. Or did you? We'll call back.' There was no option to actually leave a message. I kept trying. Nothing. Finally, 12 hours after the appointed time, he picked up. I explained who I was and why I was calling and he told me, in no uncertain terms, to go and fuck myself: 'I don't give a fuck what you heard, I ain't telling you anything. You guys send me some money, fair's fair, I work. I don't give a fuck about anything.' Then he put the phone down. That, I assumed, was that: I had been told to fuck off by one of music's true, unequivocal geniuses while sitting on a bouncy castle just outside Newquay, which I supposed was a unique experience in itself. The next day, I was told to try again. Back to the bouncy castle I went. Presumably, the record label behind the box set had stumped up some cash, because this time he was charm itself: putting on an English accent when he picked up – 'to whom am I speaking?' – and describing at length his plan to form a backing band entirely comprising musicians with albinism, which was a little unexpected, but, the way he explained it, weirdly in keeping with the Family Stone's initial message of peace and unity. 'To me, albinos are the most legitimate minority group of all. All races have albinos. If we all realise that we've all got albinos in our families, it's going to take away from the ridiculous racial tension, if you're black or you're white, blah blah blah.' He talked about the mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles, to which Sly and the Family Stone had moved in 1969 and where he made his 1971 masterpiece There's a Riot Goin' On, a bleak, experimental album that could be the sound of the utopian hippy dream curdling into something darker, or an expression of the mood in their new home, where drug use was rampant: guns, paranoia, dangerous dogs and a coterie of highly dubious 'bodyguards' were much in evidence. A little unexpectedly, he described life there as 'beautiful', although he did concede that the band's bassist, Larry Graham, had fled the band in fear for his life. 'But he's a great bass player and I figured that when he realises I'm not going to kill him, he'll be back,' he chuckled. He talked about playing Woodstock, the gig that more than any other sealed Sly and the Family Stone's ascendancy. By all accounts, they stole the show, taking the stage at 4am and rousing the audience from their sleeping bags with an electrifying performance. But his main memory, he said, was feeling 'scared', intimidated by the size of the crowd and the presence backstage of Jimi Hendrix: 'I knew my place. Just to be around Jimi Hendrix … shit. I didn't want to be running my mouth off.' At the time, I took that as modesty, but I thought about it again, years later, when I saw Questlove's superb documentary Sly Lives! (AKA The Burden of Black Genius), which convincingly posited the theory that its subject's increasingly uncontrollable drug use and reputation for turning up to gigs late, or not at all, was at least partly down to insecurity and crippling stage fright. Still, his mood was upbeat – he said he had thousands of new songs and that he wanted to 'maintain stability' in order that they might be released – until he suddenly cut me off. 'Have I talked to you enough now? I've got to go to the bathroom. You asked me about regrets,' he said, with a wheezy laugh. 'If I don't take a big shit now, I'll regret that.' And that was that: 20 minutes in the company of the one of the most enigmatic and confounding figures in pop history. The stuff about albinism got picked up by lot of other news outlets when the article came out, but none of Stone's thousands of new songs ever saw the light of day. He more or less vanished again for a decade after the interview, save for reports of his protracted legal battle to recover millions in missing royalty payments. He was awarded $5m (£3.3m) by a California court in 2015. And then there was a sudden, deeply unexpected flurry of activity. Questlove had not just made a documentary, but was releasing a Stone autobiography via his publishing imprint Auwa Books. Stone was putatively drug-free at last: not for the first time, a doctor had told him that, unless he stopped smoking crack, he was going to die; he had finally heeded the advice and his daughter Sylvette Phunne Robinson and his new manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, had taken it upon themselves to shoo away his umpteen dealers from his home in LA. In 2023, I spoke to him again – or rather I didn't speak to him. In 2013, his voice had been a rasp, hollowed out by decades of fast living; now, he was 80 and too ill to do interviews at all, except by email: 'I have trouble with my lungs, trouble with my voice, trouble with my hearing and trouble with the rest of my body, too,' he wrote. Clearly, things had changed: there was no lengthy period of negotiation about the interview, no demands for money, just a series of answers that arrived in my inbox 24 hours after I had sent the questions, at least one of which he took upon himself to correct factually. The answers were reflective, thoughtful and occasionally a little wistful – he was no longer able to make music, he said, but could 'still hear music in my mind' – and proud of his musical legacy and vast influence: '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.' They were also noticeably light on regrets. He conceded he probably should have got clean sooner, but equally, he said: 'I never lived a life I didn't want to live.' It was an intriguing corrective to the idea that his career amounted to a tragedy: six years of genius followed by decades of chaos and disappointment. Perhaps Stone could have done more, but perhaps he had already done it. He achieved more in those six years than most artists achieve in their lifetime, making music of such quality and originality, such power and funkiness, that you suspect it will be played for the rest of time. If there is anything even remotely like it in the thousands of tracks he amassed in his later years, that is just a bonus.
Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A timeline of Sly Stone's career in 10 essential songs
Sly Stone's hit-making era lasted all of six years — from the end of 1967 to the end of 1973 — but the music he made over that half-decade helped map the future. The singer, songwriter, producer and style icon, who died Monday at 82, came up as a DJ in San Francisco before putting together the Family Stone: a multiracial band of men and women that melted the lines between funk, R&B, pop and psychedelic rock. The group's music went on to influence multiple generations of artists, among them Prince, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Outkast and the Roots; as a source of countless samples, Stone's songs represent a crucial part of hip-hop's DNA. Here, in the order they were released, are 10 of his essential recordings. 'Dance to the Music' (1967) Stone is said to have hated his breakout single, which he supposedly made at the behest of Clive Davis after the record exec requested something more commercial than the Family Stone's coolly received debut LP, 'A Whole New Thing.' Six decades later, though, 'Dance to the Music' still communicates a sense of boundless joy — even as it puts across a flicker of doubt about going so nice-and-smiley. Yowls trumpeter Cynthia Robinson in the song's bridge: 'All the squares, go home!' 'Everyday People' (1968)In the pantheon of catchphrases sprung from pop songs, few loom larger than 'Different strokes for different folks,' a perfectly casual bit of come-together sociology from the first of the Family Stone's three Hot 100-topping singles. Also worthy of canonization: Larry Graham's thrumming one-note bass line. Twenty-four years later, Arrested Development put 'Everyday People's' groove back on the charts in its 'People Everyday.' 'Sing a Simple Song' (1968)Funk as pure — and as low-down — as funk gets. 'Stand!' (1969)It's impossible to say too much about Stone's rhythmic innovations. But the title track from his 1969 LP — a platinum-seller enshrined in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry — is perhaps his most impressive harmonic achievement, with a key change in the verse that lends a touch of melancholy to the song's message of protest. 'I Want to Take You Higher' (1969)Issued as the B-side of the 'Stand!' single, this bluesy psych-rock barnburner went on to become the high point of the Family Stone's set at Woodstock: a pummeling barrage of brass and wah-wah delivered at around 4 in the morning. 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)' (1969)Stone's second No. 1 boasts two indelible riffs likely familiar even to listeners born a decade or two after 'Thank You' came out: In 1989, Janet Jackson sampled the song's pulsating guitar lick for 'Rhythm Nation'; in 1995, Brandy borrowed Graham's pioneering slap-bass part for 'Sittin' Up in My Room.' 'Everybody Is a Star' (1969)True to its title, this shimmering midtempo number features strong lead-vocal turns by Stone, Graham and his siblings Rose and Freddie. (That said, Rose Stone all but steals the show.) 'Family Affair' (1971) Stone's 1971 album 'There's a Riot Goin' On' is widely regarded as a turn toward a darker style shaped by the musician's drug use and his political disillusionment. And certainly the dry croak of his singing voice in the LP's lead single suggests he'd enjoyed healthier times. Yet the musical invention at play in 'Family Affair,' which spent three weeks atop the Hot 100 — and helped drive 'Riot' to Stone's only No. 1 showing on Billboard's album chart — makes clear that he hadn't lost his creative drive: It's a startling piece of experimental R&B with Billy Preston on organ, Bobby Womack on guitar and a primitive drum machine coughing up a mutant funk beat. Beautiful if foreboding. 'If You Want Me to Stay' (1973)With Stevie Wonder having supplanted him as soul music's premier visionary, Stone was flailing by the mid-1970s, and not unself-consciously: It's easy to interpret his final Top 20 pop hit as a warning to the record industry that he's prepared to take his ball and go home. ('You can't take me for granted and smile / Count the days I'm gone / Forget reaching me by phone / Because I promise I'll be gone for a while.') Funny — or is it? — how free he sounds. 'Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)' (1973)A churchy rendition of Doris Day's signature song by a man who truly knew too much.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Sly Stone changed modern music
Sly Stone, the legendary multi-instrumentalist who led the groundbreaking hit-machine Sly and the Family Stone, died Monday at 82, his family reported, 'after a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues.' The statement went on to describe the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee as 'a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music' whose 'iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable.' Official statements are often aimed at myth-making, but there's no doubt Stone will be remembered as a towering figure in modern popular music. Not just for the No. 1 singles 'Everyday People,' 'Family Affair' and 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),' but also for the interracial, multigender make-up of the band that performed those songs. With brother Freddie on guitar, sister Rose on vocals and keyboards, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Greg Errico on drums, Jerry Martini on saxophone and Larry Graham playing bass and singing, the Family Stone was the first mainstream group featuring Black and white, male and female musicians, and where the women weren't limited to singing but also played instruments. 'There were race riots going on at the time,' Errico told me for Rolling Stone in 2015 of the era when the group was formed. 'Putting a musical group together with male and female and Black and white, to us, it felt really natural and cool and comfortable, but it made a statement that was definitely threatening to some people.' And Stone's stunning fusion of soul and psychedelic rock, with ample helpings of jazz, gospel and Latin, were unlike anything audiences had heard. 'He knew he wanted to mix all of these musical elements,' Errico added, 'and he knew he wanted a mixed-race band.' It led to an early career full of triumphs. He was one of only three musicians from the 1960s — the other two being James Brown and Jimi Hendrix — that Miles Davis listed as an influence. The group's performance before dawn on the second day of Woodstock in 1969, featuring the gospel-inspired '(I Want to Take You) Higher,' is widely celebrated as one of the most legendary moments of the legendary concert. And his 1971 album 'There's a Riot Goin' On,' which reflected the fight for civil rights and Black power set against the waning idealism of the Vietnam generation, was created by Stone almost completely by himself, and is rightly regarded as one of the greatest albums of the last century. 'There were moments that made my hair stand up, where the stage lifted off like a 747 and flew,' Errico told me of the group and the sound its mastermind created. According to Stone's 2023 memoir, in the 1970s, cocaine gradually sapped his creative spirit and eventually his ability to even show up to work. He later developed a relentless crack addiction, and experienced long wilderness years of drug busts and one mental health crisis after another. On top of his drugs and mental health struggles, Stone's scant performances and well-documented difficulties collecting royalties meant that one of the country's musical geniuses spent many of the later years of his life in poverty. Still, his name and his music are more likely to be remembered than the names and music of so many of his contemporaries. That's because Sly and the Family Stone's best songs sound as fresh as the day they were released, not to mention that his music has been sampled almost more than any other artist of the last 60 years. Cue up 1970's 'Woodstock' film or 2022's 'Summer of Soul,' which documented the legendary 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and Sly Stone will be there to astonish you and make you a fan all over again. Or you can dial up your favorite streaming service and search for funk, soul, R&B, or hits from the 1960s or '70s. Or just search 'great live performance footage' on YouTube and you're likely to hear and see Sly and the Family Stone in their incendiary prime. Ultimately, Sly Stone wasn't just one of the first multihyphenate artists to fuse genres in a group that mixed men and women, not to mention races. At the height of his powers, Stone was a Black man at a crisis point in America's history who was a symbol of positivity and inclusivity, which is something we all might do well to reflect on during these dark times. So, the next time you hit the dance floor, whether it's at an underground club or a suburban Bar Mitzvah, you'll no doubt hear a song by Sly and the Family Stone. That's because Sly Stone changed R&B, soul and rock music forever (while helping to invent funk along the way) with a pop music sensibility that few artists have ever even dreamed of. This article was originally published on
New York Times
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How the Bay Area Shaped Sly Stone
Several cities played outsized roles in the life of Sly Stone, the musical innovator who died on Monday at 82. There was Denton, the northern Texas town where he was born; Los Angeles, where he spent his later years; and even New York City, where he played several memorable concerts, including a Madison Square Garden date in 1974 at which he got married onstage. But no place was more central to Stone's formation and rise than the Bay Area. His family moved there shortly after he was born, and it's where he got his professional start and rose to stardom amid the multiracial psychedelic ferment of the 1960s. Here are five Bay Area spots important in his life. Stone's first encounter with music came as a child in Vallejo, Calif., north of Oakland. His father was a deacon at a local congregation affiliated with the Pentecostal sect the Church of God in Christ, and when he was 8 years old, Stone, whose given name was Sylvester Stewart, and three siblings recorded a gospel track. Stone appeared in several bands in high school. And then for a stint in college, he studied music theory and composition — and picked up the trumpet, to boot — at Vallejo Junior College, today known as Sonoma Community College. He was best known for funk and psychedelic rock, but Stone's eclecticism can be heard in the slow, firmly 1950s-style doo-wop music of the Viscaynes, one of his earliest groups. In an instance of foreshadowing, the Viscaynes, like the Family Stone, were multiracial at a time when that was exceedingly uncommon. ('To me, it was a white group with one Black guy,' Stone wrote in his memoir.) The Viscaynes recorded in downtown San Francisco underneath the Geary Theater, now known as the Toni Rembe Theater, and associated with the nonprofit company American Conservatory Theater. Stone attended broadcasting school in San Francisco and was then a D.J. at two local AM stations: KSOL, based out of San Mateo, and then KDIA, in Oakland. Both were aimed at Black listeners; KSOL, Stone wrote, had even changed its call sign to remind listeners that it played soul. But Stone again broke the mold, playing not just soul and R&B, but the Beatles and Bob Dylan. 'Some KSOL listeners didn't think a R&B station should be playing white acts,' he later wrote. 'But that didn't make sense to me. Music didn't have a color. All I could see was notes, styles and ideas.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
