Sylvester Stewart, and his band The Family Stone, was an enigma to me as a young music fan. He was Haight Ashbury neighbors with The Doors and Santana, mesmerized the Woodstock crowd and had huge success in his time. Yet 50 years on, this group felt lost to me.
There was no Sly in my parent’s CD collection, the classic rock radio stations I glued my ears to lacked “Everyday People” and “Thank You”. History was pieced back to me through negative anecdotes from old guys in record stores and the mentions of “Stand!” in many Greatest albums lists from music magazines.
Eventually I did learn more from Wikipedia and Spotify, but that elusiveness remained. His albums seemed to flame out as I listened chronologically and unlike contemporaries Bob Weir or John Fogerty, he was never taking a nostalgia tour to Westbury Music Fair or Madison Square Garden. Sly was a living ghost to my ears, haunting the lo-fi grooves of “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”.
Sly Lives! (AKA The Burden of Black Genius), the recent documentary on Stone by Oscar winning director and musician Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is excellent. Questlove is supremely passionate about music, and conducts thorough insightful interviews with bandmates, contemporaries and disciples of Sly. Whether you’re a music fan, a Sly fan, or enjoy well told stories, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s available on Hulu and Disney Plus.
Directed by Oscar-Winner Ahmir Thompson, the film explores the life, music, and cultural impact of Sly Stone, shedding light on the challenges faced by Black artists navigating success.
What interested me most is why Sly didn’t get the chance to secure a legacy the way my favorites like Springsteen or Zeppelin did. Living forever in the airwaves of classic rock radio, where the music is kept alive for younger generations like me.
Sly felt enormous pressure not just as a brilliant musician, but as a prominent black man at a tumultuous time in American history. From there comes the subtitle “Burden of black genius”. Soul stirrer D’Angelo says, “It doesn’t matter what you do, we as Black folks gotta always be three four five steps ahead of everybody else in order just to break even.” Sly experienced this even before his fame as a talented DJ and producer while only being a musician on the side.
As his profile grew, this need grew with it. The Family Stone were on top of the world by 1969. The multiracial/gendered group seemed to be Martin Luther King’s dream manifest in a music group. In an interview, Sly said, “I dug the music of white and black artists, the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. It’s all music, and it should be together somewhere.” However, physically and musically embodying the civil rights dream took a toll.
The civil rights dream didn’t fade out, it was assassinated. Sly felt this intensely. As drugs entered the picture, the music shifted to the disillusioned lethargic “There’s a Riot Goin’ On”. This change was rejected by critics, scoffing it away as drug addled disintegration. The band broke up amidst paranoia and infighting. While it’s since been acclaimed as one of the greatest ever, this continued a cycle of self-destruction that seemed to never end.
Q-Tip makes a comparison to David Bowie, who was allowed to change frequently as a white artist. That artistic evolution was denied to Sly because racist standards of the time deemed black musicians as exclusively entertainers rather than artists.
By the 1980s, he was a frequent target of media ridicule over his addictions. They were gleeful in his downfall, like he was being punished for daring to have survived into the Reagan era. He fell deeper into drugs, and eventually obscurity. Masters and Publishing were sold off, as those he inspired like Prince became royalty. Sly’s legacy faded from the rearview mirror as time drove away, leaving him in the dust.
The question I asked is kinda wrong. I’m talking about a documentary on the man and his music. He can’t have been forgotten. However, this film was needed to spread the music to folks around my age. Not everyone’s a crate digger, and the touring circuit is no longer an option given his poor health.
Sly’s decline had many causes, his own faults brought him down just as much as the faults of society. Sly himself says at the film’s conclusion “We deserve everything we get in this life”.
