Remembering 2025’s Music Losses: Sly Stone

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As I say every month when I do the monthly music farewells, it happens every month. We lose musicians. It’s part of life. Some are very famous, and some are hardly known. When you get very well-known individuals dying close together it’s shocking. That’s what happened last June. Here’s one of those greats who passed away. Sly Stone In less than a week, three singers, all of whom were 82, died. Lou Christie was probably the least remembered (he had a string of hits in the 60s, like “Lightning Strikes” and “I’m Gonna Make You Mine”). Brian Wilson and Sly Stone? Hall of Famers. You may know Sly Stone’s music. Sly and the Family Stone were all over the place in the late 60s and early 70s. You may NOT know his troubles. The man who gave us such great music, who — as someone on AllMusic said — “didn’t invent funk but did perfect it,” who was one of the icons of music…was homeless. Sadly, the reason was a familiar one: drugs. His habit destroyed his success and his finances, but mercifully left his life (fragile though it was). He wrote about his trials and tribulations in his 2023 autobiography, Thank You (Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Again), named after one of the Sly and the Family Stone’s biggest hits. It included living in a van parked in an unpleasant neighborhood in L.A., with a family allowing him to shower in their home and providing him food. It’s a bittersweet farewell to a man who had trouble beating his demons. Sly Stone Born Sylvester Stewart, March 15, 1943, Denton, Texas Died June 9, 2025, Los Angeles, California (COPD and other health issues) (age 82) HALL OF FAME: Rock and Roll, 1993 (with Sly and the Family Stone) My favorite song of Sly’s, which is still relevant today: