Sly Stone, pioneering leader of funk band Sly and the Family Stone, dies at 82

Sly Stone, the pioneering leader of the funk band bearing his name, Sly and the Family Stone, has died, according to his family. Stone was 82 years old.

“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,” his family said 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.”

Stone, whose real name was Sylvester Stewart, formed a band with his brother Freddie and sisters Loretta and Rose at an early age. The band played gospel music, seemingly a far cry from the funk and psychedelia he would later become known for, but Sly and the Family Stone would become known for its blending of music styles.

Sly Stone would answer simply when writing in his 2023 memoir, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” about how he wanted to be remembered: “Music, just music.”

“I don’t want to get in people’s way and I don’t want them to get in my way. I just want to play my songs,” he said. “I would do it for nothing.”

He was born in Texas in 1943, the second oldest of five children, but his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was young. He got a job as a disc jockey in the early ’60s and played everything from British rock to soul music.

Sly and the Family Stone formed in 1966 as a combination of Sly and his brother Freddie’s individual bands. Sister Rose also joined the group. Loretta chose not to pursue music while younger sister Vaetta performed in her own band, Little Sister, and would join Sly and the Family Stone for occasional gigs.

While Sly was predominantly a guitarist when the band formed, he allowed Freddie to take that role in the new group and mostly played keyboard. However, he was, by many accounts, a musical prodigy. He learned to play guitar, keyboard, bass and the drums as a child.

The Family Stone was the first major American rock band to be racially integrated.

Sly and the Family Stone released its first album in October 1967, “A Whole New Thing,” but it received only limited attention. Just a month later, the band would be launched into the stratosphere when it released the single “Dance to the Music.”

“Dance to the Music” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart.

“I knew the music worked, but I didn’t know if people would get it,” Stone told The Guardian in 2023 in a rare interview during the later years of his life. “That’s what happened after the first album — I poured everything into those songs. Music people liked it, but not everyone was a music person. ‘Dance to the Music’ came out as a simpler version, and more people understood that.”

The band — and Sly in particular — also quickly came to be known for its high-energy, uptempo live performances. By 1969, after the release of “Stand!” the same year, the band was one of the biggest in the world and Sly was a household name.

“Stand!” featured the song “Everyday People,” the group’s first No. 1 single, and “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

“Timing is everything, you can’t plan lightning in a bottle, and Sly just happened to come at a time period in which the paradigm shift was gonna change culturally for music,” Roots drummer Questlove, who directed the film “Sly Lives!,” released in February, told “Good Morning America.” “He’s one of the first Black artists — really one of the first artists to sort of write confessional, along with [Bob] Dylan — the idea of not just doing love songs but talking about how you feel inside or political things. … Everything that was modern music, Sly pretty much built the blueprint.

At the height of the band’s fame, the members took the stage at the original Woodstock in August 1969. The band went on stage at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, just after Janis Joplin and just before The Who. The group ripped through an electric medley of hits including “Everyday People,” “Dance To The Music,” “Music Lover” and “I Want To Take You Higher.”

However, it was not long after that the band devolved into drugs, finger-pointing and missed shows. Sly himself admitted in his memoir that he became dependent on cocaine and PCP. The band released several unheralded albums in the ’70s but never reached the height of 1969 again. It was the same for Sly’s solo career, which included several albums in the late ’70s and early ’80s, usually still under the Family Stone name.

“When you get success, why do you feel guilty about it? And why do we sabotage it?” Questlove told “GMA.” “Even though he invented the alphabet for which we write many of the books, the culture doesn’t know. They know him for not showing up for shows, being late, being an addict.”

“Instead of saying, ‘He became an addict,’ we wanted to focus more on what events in life make you go there,” Questlove added, about the documentary.

Sly took the stage for a live performance at the 2006 Grammys, his first in decades, and made occasional appearances in the ensuing years. Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

“They’re the greatest funk band that ever was,” George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic, another pioneering funk band at the time, said during the induction ceremony. “Sly is probably the single greatest writer that I can try to think of.”

in addition to the recent documentary, a movie based on Sly Stone’s life is also in the works, his family said.

“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,” they said in their statement.

“We extend our deepest gratitude for the outpouring of love and prayers during this difficult time,” they added. “We wish peace and harmony to all who were touched by Sly’s life and his iconic music.”

Stone married his first wife, model Kathy Silva, on stage during a concert at Madison Square Garden in June 1974. Silva and Stone had a son, Sylvester Jr., in 1973, but later separated in 1976. He also has two daughters, Sylvyette, who goes by her middle name Phunne, born in 1976, and Novena Carmel, born in 1982.