there's a riot goin on Archives

The New York Post reported this week that music legend Sly Stone has fallen on hard times and is homeless and living out of a van. Stone blames his money problems on his former manager and has sued him. The article implies that Stone may be suffering from some mental illness, perhaps related to his history of drug abuse, noting he is disheveled and paranoid, believing the FBI is after him.

It is sad to hear that someone so talented who was on top of the world is living this unfortunate life. Stone says he has new songs, and he did release an album of his songs re-recorded by other artists earlier this year. But even at a Grammy performance in 2007, one could see he was not in top form. At that tribute performance with other artists playing his songs, he came out onstage, played briefly, and then walked off before the song was over. (He appears at around the 6:30 mark in the video at the link.) Similarly, check out this April 2010 performance of “Dance to the Music.”

In the 1960s and into the 1970s, Sly and the Family Stone made some great music. In the book Mystery Train (1975), Greil Marcus focuses one of his essays on Sly Stone, connecting his career to the ancient folk song “Stagger Lee,” to race, and to the changing culture and music of the early 1970s. Noting the impact of Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin on (1971), Marcus calls it “a quiet, bitter, open act of rebellion.”

In the essay, Marcus writes about the war and the lack of trust in political leaders in the days leading up to Watergate, and how such a time may lead to either a culture of cynicism or one that is fake and safe. But Stone “was clearing away the cultural and political debris that seemed piled up in mounds on the streets, in the papers, in the record stores; for all the darkness of what he had to say and how he said it, his music had the kind of strength and the naked honesty that could make you want to start over.”

I wonder how much Stone’s sense of the insanity of those times led to his own personal madness. His current condition is unfortunate for us as well as for him. During these times featuring worldwide fears when we are still too often faced with a choice between cynicism and make-believe, we need artists with strength and naked honesty.

What do you think led to Stone’s current situation? What is your favorite Sly and the Family Stone song? Leave a comment.