The Unbelievable, Historic Rise and Fall of Sly and the Family Stone

“Boom laka laka laka! Boom laka laka laka!”

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when such an utterance was unknown to the world. But it did come from somewhere (and mutate into “boom shaka laka laka”), and that somewhere was the mind of Sylvester Stewart, better known to us all as Sly Stone. If for some reason that name doesn’t mean anything to you, well, I’m slightly envious because Questlove’s Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), the follow-up to his Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul now streaming on Hulu and Disney+, is an overstuffed treasure chest of musical exploration in addition to being (as the full title suggests) a thoughtful social inquiry.

One can’t overstate just how influential Sly and the Family Stone were for the development of pop, soul, rock and funk music (not to mention fashion) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nor how ubiquitous they were on radio for considerably longer, before their rebirth via hip-hop and R&B samples. The group’s 1970 Greatest Hits album (released at a time when such collections were not yet commonplace) is listed at 7x platinum, and, growing up, I can’t recall any household’s record collection not having a copy. These songs—“Dance to the Music,” “Everyday People,” “I Want to Take You Higher,” “Family Affair,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” are impossible to dislike—true crossover hits among generations, races and genders.

This was, as we’ll learn in Sly Lives!, all by design—though not in any inauthentic, plastic way. Sly Stone knew he had special talents, and he deployed them by making enduring classics with an almost cosmic alchemy. He was a musical omnivore and multiinstrumentalist—a San Fransican with Texas roots whose career began as a DJ at KSOL in the mid-1960s, where he was known for his hip delivery and playing music by both white and Black artists. This led to some early songwriting, session gigs, and, more importantly, production credits with R&B acts, white pop acts, and the burgeoning “psychedelic sound” with proto-versions of both the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead. This cross-genre approach was unusual for anyone at the time, and unprecedented for a Black artist.

One of his pals, the white saxophonist Jerry Martini, suggested he form his own group. As principal songwriter, keyboardist, and singer, Stone enlisted his brother Freddie on guitar and sister Rose on electric piano, and they rounded out with Greg Errico on drums, Larry Graham on bass, and Cynthia Robinson on trumpet. And everybody sang.

A band that was mostly Black but with two white dudes (Martini and Errico) and women instrumentalists (not just backing vocalists) had never been seen before. Hell, it isn’t much seen now. But the music, exuding exuberance and positivity, soon became a success. And some of the most interesting parts of this movie are how music nerd Questlove has his Greek chorus of musicians and producers like Nile Rogers, André 3000, D’Angelo, Q-Tip, Vernon Reid, George Clinton, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis break down some of the tracks to their component parts to funksplain why they are so good.

But by the summer of 1969 and their showstopping performance at Woodstock—only two rocket-fueled years—things started to turn weird. The short of it is that Stone got hooked on too many drugs, turned inward, and eventually his life short-circuited. (Importantly, this trajectory did conclude releasing two ahead-of-their-time “progressive funk” albums, There’s A Riot Goin’ On and Fresh, the first of which still sounds avant-garde.)

Sly Lives! does not apologize for the way Stone treated his bandmates, essentially locking them out during production of the Riot album, or how he treated his fans, with notorious lateness to gigs, that is, if he even showed up at all. But the movie offers context for what Sly represented to both Black and white America, and the overwhelming demands that were made of him. There are unfair expectations for all beloved artists, but for a Black genius in the late 1960s with such a crossover audience, his position became a true burden. As one talking head says, “There was no Black Elvis he could ask for advice.”

The second half of the movie has less of an interest in music theory than in dish. We see Stone whacked out on various talk shows (man, Dick Cavett comes across as a bit of a jerk here) and at court appearances. We hear testimonials from his children, few of them positive. Sadly, Sly Stone became a punchline, and if you were wondering if he is even still alive, the answer is yes, but there is no new footage (outside of a photograph or two) of the 81-year-old in this film. Physically, he has survived, but spiritually, he is a martyr to success.