When I heard that Sly Stone was set to publish his memoir, my first reaction was one of surprise: I’d assumed that he had long since passed away. As the leader of funk-rock-soul masters Sly and the Family Stone, the singer and multi-instrumentalist born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 wrote and recorded some of the most infectious, inventive, exuberant music of the late 1960s and early 70s, including such tracks as Family Affair, Runnin’ Away, Stand! and Dance to the Music. While the band’s influence has endured, Stone himself fell so fully out of the public eye that I can’t have been alone in assuming his addictions had done for him years ago. The reality is that Stone, now 80, was forced by declining health to finally get clean during the pandemic, at which point he turned his attention to getting down in print his story of stellar success and long, narcotised decline.
Named after one of Sly and the Family Stone’s funkiest songs, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) was ghostwritten by Ben Greenman, who has also worked on a book with Stone’s friend and fellow funk titan George Clinton. The story Stone has to tell is one with few surprises, playing out pretty much as anyone with a cursory idea of his career might expect. Born in Texas and raised in Vallejo, a town 30km north of San Francisco, Sly Stone was never going to do anything else with his life other than devote it to making music. He sang at home and in church with his siblings and parents. “I felt incomplete without an instrument,” he writes. “When I went out into the world, I was surprised to see people who weren’t carrying instruments.” He studied music at college, benefiting from the guidance of an inspiring teacher, David Froehlich, who Stone would later invite to his concerts as guest of honour. While he was working out his sound with the band who would become the Family Stone, Sly gained a following as a jive-talking DJ on a San Francisco radio station, and produced some hit records, including one for Grace Slick before she found fame with Jefferson Airplane.
