Get the latest gossip

‘Send me some money!’ My unforgettable encounters with the legendary Sly Stone

He went from the towering highs of the 60s and 70s, where he changed the face of music, to the shambolic lows of a decades-long addiction. But interviewing the music genius over the years showed me a man who was awed, revered and strangely shy

Presumably, the record label behind the box set had stumped up some cash, because this time he was charm itself: putting on an English accent when he picked up – “to whom am I speaking?” – and describing at length his plan to form a backing band entirely comprising musicians with albinism, which was a little unexpected, but, the way he explained it, weirdly in keeping with the Family Stone’s initial message of peace and unity. He talked about the mansion in Bel Air, Los Angeles, to which Sly and the Family Stone had moved in 1969 and where he made his 1971 masterpiece There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a bleak, experimental album that could be the sound of the utopian hippy dream curdling into something darker, or an expression of the mood in their new home, where drug use was rampant: guns, paranoia, dangerous dogs and a coterie of highly dubious “bodyguards” were much in evidence. Stone was putatively drug-free at last: not for the first time, a doctor had told him that, unless he stopped smoking crack, he was going to die; he had finally heeded the advice and his daughter Sylvette Phunne Robinsonand his new manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, had taken it upon themselves to shoo away his umpteen dealers from his home in LA.

Get the Android app