The first thing I heard, when I woke up this morning, was that a US president was deploying marines against US citizens peacefully protesting about the brutal removal of migrants from Los Angeles, itself a proud city of migrants. The second was that Sly Stone had died. I thought of the deep, dark heartsore sound of There’s a Riot Goin’ On and felt very sad indeed.
I first heard Sly in 1990, when my then-boyfriend gave me a tape, which had Caravan’s If I could do it again I’d do it all over you on one side and Sly and the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits (1970) on the other. While the first side suggested the amount of weed I and my pals around Rochdale, Bury and Manchester were smoking that summer, the other pointed to something else entirely.
We’d grown up in working-class communities, which had been shaken by de-industrialisation, unemployment, and the rise of the far right. We’d also grown up as anti-racists, despising the then-prevalent skinhead poison, and dancing energetically to two-tone Ska. I loved the Specials, and in Sly and the Family Stone I discovered another black and white band, who were making an utterly amazing sound, and whose physical presence embodied the straightforward socio-political message of their songs. Plus, the women in Sly and the Family Stone were not shoo-bop backing eye-candy, but actual musicians, with extraordinary trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, up front and centre. The groove was explosive, catchy, physical. Wow!
Sly Stone spoke to me aged 16, and speaks to me now, as dog-whistle hatred once again divides communities and drives the direction of politics around the world. You’ll probably read a lot of judgmental stuff today about drug use and unfulfilled potential, and I’d ask you to ignore that, and focus instead on Sly’s incredible music, and what it said and what it did. Sly’s genius was to take super-simple grooves and nursery rhyme melodies and transform them into affirming celebrations of togetherness and humanity, which not only captured their cultural moment, but took music to another creative place entirely. A better place. Thank you, Sly.
If you’ve not seen it, I recommend the recent Questlove documentary, Sly Lives (aka the Burden of Black Genius) (2025). You’ll find it on Disney.
Leave a Reply