Sly Stone died this week.
Sly and the Family Stone were America’s happiest pop group. A mixed-race, gender-integrated funk-soul band, their early albums were euphoric—the most primal expression of what it felt like to be young, horny and alive in late ’60s America. They embodied the ecstatic, rainbow-tinted vision of the hippy ideal.
From R&B Roots to Psychedelic Funk
The band emerged from traditional rhythm and blues:
But across their first three albums, they fused soul and funk with hippy counterculture to create something unique—a sun-drenched sound with a peace-and-love message:
They ended the 1960s on a high. Stand! was a commercial triumph, and their Woodstock performance was legendary. Recorded at Pacific High Studios in San Francisco, Stand! was relentless in its optimism. The closing track, You Can Make It If You Try, radiated a belief that life really could get better for everyone.
But reality intervened. Days after Stand! was released came Bloody Thursday: a police crackdown on antiwar protesters at Berkeley that left one dead and over 120 injured.
From Idealism to Isolation
The violence of the time seeped into Sly Stone’s psyche. He had ties to the Black Panthers but fell out with them over demands to sack his white band members. Instead of riding the crest of success, the band began to fall apart. Sly missed recording deadlines. Drug use escalated. His behaviour became erratic. Creative tensions mounted.
Between their Woodstock triumph and 1971, the band released just three singles and a greatest hits album.
In that time, Marvin Gaye released What’s Going On, a masterpiece of spiritual disillusionment—a Black GI returns from Vietnam, only to find the country he fought for unrecognisable. Sly responded with what might be the greatest "answer record" in pop history: There’s a Riot Goin’ On.
The Riot in My Head
I already knew the sunshine funk of the early records. But I first heard Riot in a college bedroom in Liverpool. It was hard to believe this was the same band that made I Wanna Take You Higher. This was edgy, paranoid, druggy funk—perfect for a hot Liverpool summer, not long after the city’s own riots, with Hillsborough’s death toll still haunting our collective memory. The album sounded like bad drugs and broken dreams.
Riot is the sound of burnout. Sly wasn’t just tired of stardom or strung out—he was sick of it all. The counterculture. US politics. The dream. The idealism of the sixties had collapsed into political assassinations, police violence, civil rights backlash and despair. While Marvin Gaye clung to a vision of redemption, Sly was losing faith entirely.
Lo-Fi, Drugged-Out Innovation
There’s a Riot Goin’ On was mostly recorded by Sly Stone alone, layering parts obsessively and using guests like Billy Preston and Bobby Womack. It’s one of the first major albums to feature a drum machine, giving tracks a cold, tinny, metronomic feel.
The production is a mess—full of tape hiss and glitches. Whether it was due to endless overdubs or mixers clogged with cocaine is anyone’s guess, but the claustrophobia is very real.
On Luv n’ Haight, Sly’s vocals are nearly incomprehensible. The lyrics boil down to just two lines:
“Feel so good inside myself, don't want to move.”
He wasn’t just stepping away from the limelight—he was pulling the curtains shut.
From Uplift to Ugliness
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) was released between Stand! and Riot, but it gets reworked on the album as Thank You for Talking To Me Africa.
Watch this performance and you’d think the good times had returned—but listen closer to the lyrics:
Lookin' at the devil / Grinnin' at his gun
Fingers start shakin' / I begin to run
Bullets start chasin' / I begin to stop
We begin to wrestle / The Devil was on the top
This is not peace and love. This is the blues, filtered through druggy, cynical funk. And it gets darker:
Flamin' eyes of people fear burnin' into you
Many men are missin' much, hatin' what they do
Youth and truth are makin' love, dig it for a starter
Dyin' young is hard to take, sellin' out is harder
Thank You is the antithesis of You Can Make It If You Try. It’s a terrifying vision of fame, drugs, and death. And no, it’s not getting better.
The Aftermath
It would be two years before the band returned with Fresh. It’s not in Riot’s league, but it does contain one of my favourite Sly Stone moments:
And then there’s this—an eerie, stoned-out cover of Que Sera Sera, sung by Sly’s sister Rose. Where Doris Day’s original is full of the possibilities of adulthood, this version is pure resignation.
That journey—from You Can Make It If You Try to Que Sera Sera—is the sound of a band ageing into disillusionment. The dream died, and Nixon’s paranoid America took its place.
Still Relevant, Still Riotous
The parallels to today are hard to miss. Riot is the perfect soundtrack for anyone watching anti-ICE protests in LA or tiny aid boats heading for Gaza, clinging to ideals in the face of overwhelming violence and inertia.
There’s a Riot Goin’ On changed music. It invented the dark, urban funk that would go on to shape hip hop—its groove, its grit, and most of its samples.
Like What’s Going On, Riot is an album of realisation. The dream of an America on a slow march toward justice? Dead on arrival. Sly faced up to it in 1971.
Now we watch 80-year-old Vietnam vets getting zip-tied, Senators arrested, journalists shot with rubber bullets—and realise we’re in the same place. Still trying to love a country that doesn't love us back. Still hoping it might change.