April 15, 2007 -- IT S fitting that Sylvester Stewart - better known as Sly Stone - started performing in church, where before his 10th birthday he formed his first group with brother Freddy and sisters Rose and Vet. Because, to the members of Sly the Family Stone, the exquisite combination of funk, soul, psychedelic rock and gospel music that propelled the band to the top of the charts was nothing more than church music. We wrote about truth, says Rose Stone, Sly s younger sister and keyboardist/singer for the Family Stone.
We had a good message in the music. It always ministered to people, and people could relate to what we were saying because we wrote about the times. On the eve of Epic Legacy s re-release of all seven Sly the Family Stone albums, Rose spoke to The Post about why the group s groundbreaking amalgam of styles moved people to their cores.
It was a new sound as far as what people were used to, says Stone of hits such as Dance to the Music, Everyday People, and Family Affair. We weren t a rock n roll band, and we weren t R B. We just played church music, because that s the way our church sounded.
Sly Stone was a popular San Francisco disc jockey in 1967 when he gathered up Rose, their guitarist brother Freddy and four friends to form a band that would break ground with its music, its mixed racial and gender composition, and even its free-form fashion and onstage abandon. Their first album, A Whole New Thing, failed commercially, but from the moment the follow-up, Dance to the Music, kicked off with the title track, people were hooked, and luminaries from Miles Davis to James Brown welcomed Sly the Family Stone to the pantheon of music royalty. While the band s third album, Life, stumbled, the two that followed, Stand and There s a Riot Going On, made them superstars, setting the stage for the funk craze of the 70s and acts like Parliament-Funkadelic.
But even in the midst of three-night stints at Madison Square Garden, the members of the Family Stone had a hard time grasping the level of their fame. We didn t know how big we were until we had sold out MSG for about the seventh time, says Stone. We were so excited about it, we were like little kids.
We were very naive at that point. This naivete, combined with the pressures of fame, contributed to Sly Stone s implosion. By 1972, he was abusing drugs, and several band members left.
The Family Stone released two more albums before disbanding. Sly s production has been sporadic ever since, and his recent appearance on the 2006 Grammy Awards mystified some when he walked off stage early, which Rose attributed to an unexpected change from the event s house band. But while Sly still performs occasionally, including with a band led by his sister Vet that plays his music, the original Family Stone s seven fresh, unique and inspired albums are more than enough to secure his legacy.
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