Sly Stone, of the legendary band Sly and the Family Stone, dead at age 82

Sly Stone, the iconic frontman of the band Sly and the Family Stone, and an influential figure in funk, soul and rock, has died at the age of 82.

Stone's family confirmed the musician's death in a statement shared with CBC News.

"It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved dad, Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone. After a prolonged battle with [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease] and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family," the statement reads.

"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, born Sylvester Stewart, was a revolutionary musician and dynamic showman. Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and '70s and beyond with such hits as Everyday People, Stand! and Family Affair.

"His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable," the family's statement continued.

"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, which follows a memoir published in 2024."

Beginning with Dance to the Music in 1967, Sly and the Family Stone were a presence on the top 40 pop charts for seven consecutive years, with Billboard No. 1 songs Everyday People, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and Family Affair, as well as hits Hot Fun in the Summertime, I Want to Take You Higher and If You Want Me to Stay.

At a time of protests over conditions in inner cities and police killings of Black Americans, as well as an ascendant women's liberation movement, Sly and the Family Stone featured Black and white members, men and women, family and friends.

"I wanted the band to represent as much variety of soul as possible," Stewart told a television interviewer in 1980.

"I thought if people could see that, see all these different people having a good time on stage, then it wouldn't be so hard for people to have a good time, either."

Sly and the Family Stone, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, influenced artists such as George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Prince and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"It goes beyond saying that Sly's creative legacy is in my DNA... .it's a Black musician's blueprint," said musician Questlove in 2022, who went on to produce the 2025 documentary, Sly Lives! (a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius).

Stewart's charisma as a bandleader, along with his skill as an arranger and producer, have seen him mentioned in the same breath as other soul visionaries of the era such as Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder.

Clive Davis, Stewart's first label boss and the executive who had a hand in guiding careers of artists ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Whitney Houston, wrote decades later that Stone was "leaping over boundaries on so many fronts."

"He seemed so vibrant and alive, the hardest-working artist I've ever seen," Davis wrote in his 2013 autobiography The Soundtrack of My Life.

But to many music critics and fans, his life would ultimately be viewed as a cautionary tale.

​Stewart couldn't sustain his career, displaying erratic behaviour and showing up late for concerts, or not at all. He walled himself off in homes with guard dogs and bodyguards, friends and colleagues said, where he spent time making music but also consuming cocaine and PCP.

"The drugs just took him over, there was so much freebase around... My good friend Sylvester Stewart had totally become Sly Stone," Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini told Spin Magazine in 1985.

Stewart admitted as much in a 2023 memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again), co-written with Ben Greenman.

"Someone would come around with coke or angel dust and I would use one night and then the next night and on the third that was mostly what was filling the house and on the fourth I would realize that I had forgotten to sleep since the night before the first night," he said of 1975, when he was at least still producing material.

Stewart's music had disappeared from even the R&B charts by the late 1970s, and for all intents and purposes, his recording career of original music was over by 1982, save for very occasional guest appearances and collaborations.

The ensuing decades saw troubles of his own making, with drug-related arrests and stints in rehab, as well as battles to regain lost publishing royalties. He moved frequently, and often with the help of benefactors, at one point living in a camper van on a Los Angeles street.

Stewart was born the fourth of five children to musically inclined parents in Denton, Texas, on March 15, 1943.

"There were seven of us, and the eight member of the family was music," he said in the 2023 memoir. "We sang at home and then we sang at church."

The family moved when he was a child to Vallejo, Calif., near San Francisco, and Stewart joined a multiracial a cappella group in high school, the Viscaynes, with the group getting local radio play for one of their songs in 1961.

After studying music theory at college, he immersed himself in the local music scene, co-writing a Top 5 hit C'mon and Swim for Bobby Freeman and working the boards as a producer on the Top 20 pop hit Laugh, Laugh by the Beau Brummels.

He also DJ'ed at an area radio station until 1966, where he honed the dynamic Sly Stone persona.

The main players of Sly and the Family Stone assembled in 1966 and, in addition to Martini, they would coalesce with Stewart's siblings Freddie on guitar and Rose on vocals and keyboards, Gregg Errico on drums, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet and Larry Graham on bass.

They eventually earned a record contract with Epic Records, a subsidiary of CBS Records.

The response to the group's 1967 debut album A Whole New Thing was muted, but the release of Dance to the Music the following year has been described by music historian Rickey Vincent as "one of the great game changers in the history of Black popular music."

"Almost overnight, the formalized uniforms gave way to individualized outfits as 'funk bands' sought to celebrate the individuality of their performers while generating unity through their irresistible grooves," wrote Vincent in his book Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band, and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music.

Dance to the Music hinted at the band's kitchen-sink approach, with four of the members taking turns on vocals while flashing their prowess on their instruments.

"We've got to live together!" Stewart's plea for harmony on Everyday People, went down easier with the song's nursery-rhyme addendum, "Different strokes for different folks, and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby."

"I wanted it to be a standard, something that would be up there with Jingle Bells and Moon River," he wrote in his memoir. "That meant a simple melody with a simple arrangement to match."

While not as overtly political as Gil Scott-Heron or Nina Simone often were, Stewart's catalogue was marked by songs of social conscience and affirmation — Stand!, You Can Make It If You Try and Everybody Is A Star.

I Want to Take You Higher was a highlight of the band's stage show, with its gospel-influenced call-and-response with the audience, while Stewart was his most provocative on the single Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey.

The band's high-water mark was arguably 1969, with the release of Stand! and an incendiary performance at the Woodstock festival.

"I had so many ideas for song that year: simple songs, complicated ones, songs I thought could be standalone singles, experimental things," he wrote.

The music evolved, and generally slowed down, with 1971's There's a Riot Goin' On, critically acclaimed but hinting at the demons at hand. That was followed by 1973's Fresh, considered by many music critics his last album of consistent high quality.

Errico left the group in 1971, followed a year later by Graham, as their leader grew more mercurial and impulsive, highlighted by seemingly impaired appearances on talk shows, and a wedding in 1974 held at Madison Square Garden for a short-lived marriage.

CBS parted ways with him after 1976's Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back, with Stewart landing on Warner Records for two more releases.

Stewart was a spectral presence in the 1980s and 1990, appearing on recordings by Clinton, Maceo Parker and Earth, Wind and Fire, and arriving separately onstage from his bandmates while offering the very briefest of comments at the group's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

In 2006, he appeared in a blond Mohawk and only tinkered with the keyboards during a multi-act tribute to Sly and the Family Stone at the Grammys. Five years later, the album I'm Back! Family & Friends — mostly a rehash of old material with guest artists like Jeff Beck, Bootsy Collins and Ann Wilson of Heart — was not well-received commercially or critically.

After Michael Jackson purchased the international rights to the Sly and the Family Stone catalogue in 1983, Stewart sold the American rights to the band's catalogue to Jackson's estate in 2019.

Stewart is survived by three children.