Tag Archives: sly-and-the-family-stone

Once upon a time, being in a rock band meant, ipso facto, being in a cover band. There are still plenty of cover bands, of course, but the Beatles and especially punk helped move it from being the default. Still, mastering other people’s material before embarking upon one’s own presents …

Sly and the Family Stone rip through a rendition of Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose” in the latest offering from the upcoming album, The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967. The First Family contains the earliest known live recording of Sly and the Family Stone. It was …

There was an odd symmetry to the near-simultaneous deaths of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson at age 82 last week. “Both of them poets of summer,” Rob Sheffield says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. “Both chroniclers of the American dream in California. Both from pretty much …

One day in 2009, Alec Palao found himself inside a Target in Los Angeles, buying a sweatsuit off a sale rack. He brought it back to a motel near LAX airport and gave it to Sly Stone, who was living there at the time. “He took one look at it …

Sly Stone’s journey highlights the difficulty of showing emotions,something that is even more difficult for Black people in the U.S. Expressing feelings at times felt dangerous for us. You could get laughed at, ridiculed, teased, ostracized, punched, or killed. To protect themselves, black people adopted a “cool” exterior — acting …

In the wake of Sly Stone’s death at age 82, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid made the case for why Sly and the Family Stone deserve a place at the top of the canon of American bands. Here it is, in his own words. I would make the argument that …

Public Enemy‘s Chuck D grew up listening to the music of Sly Stone, who died Monday at age 82 — and that music became a major influence on his own work with Public Enemy and beyond. He reflected on that legacy in a new interview with Rolling Stone. I’m a …

Ben Fong-Torres was one of Rolling Stone’s first star writers, interviewing iconic subjects like Bob Dylan, Ike and Tina Turner, Linda Ronstadt, Marvin Gaye, and more. His first cover story was in May 1969, on Joni Mitchell. “For whatever reason, my byline was dropped,” he says. “I can’t exactly say …

Sly Stone, one of the most influential and groundbreaking musicians of the late Sixties and early Seventies who smashed the boundaries of rock, pop, funk, and soul, died today. He was 82. The cause of death was a “prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues,” according to a …

This story was originally published in the November 11, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. The moment I stepped into Sly Stone’s room at the New York Hilton, the expression “holed up” sprang to mind. The room had the stagnant, stock-piled look of a fugitive’s hideout. It was the middle of …