Sly Stone Believed Everybody Is a Star: The Massive Legacy of an Avant-Funk Revolutionary

By Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone

He combined rock, soul, and funk in inspirational anthems, while also channeling a streetwise sense of betrayal and rage

Thank you for the party, but Sly could never stay. Sly Stone was always the ultimate mystery man of American music, a visionary genius who transformed the world with some of the most innovative sounds of the Sixties and Seventies. With Sly and the Family Stone, he fused funk, soul, and acid rock into his own utopian sound, in hits like “Family Affair” and “Everyday People.” Yet he remained an elusive figure, all but disappearing in the 1970s. When he died on Monday, it seemed strange he was “only” 82, because he seemed even older — as if he’d outlived himself by decades. Yet his music sounds as boldly futuristic and influential as ever, which is why the world is still reeling from this loss.  

Nobody ever sounded like this man. Sly could write inspirational songs of unity, anthems like “I Want to Take You Higher” that would turn a live crowd into a euphoric tribe, or uplifting hits like “Stand!” or “Everybody Is a Star” that can catch you in a lonely moment and make you feel like the rest of your life is a chance to live up to the song’s challenge.  

But that went side by side with his streetwise sense of betrayal and rage. “Everybody Is a Star” comes on like a love song to human hope, so radiant in every tiny sonic detail, with Sly chanting, “Shine, shine, shine!” But it’s also got the weird question, “Ever catch a falling star? Ain’t no stopping till it’s in the ground.” Sly Stone wanted to remind you that you were the star of hope in the sky — but you could also be the star that comes crashing down into a crater. 

All his contradictions come together in his greatest song, the 1970 funk blast “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” with the hardest bass-versus-guitar staccato slash attack on Earth.

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“The concept behind Sly and the Stone,” he told Rolling Stone in 1970, “I wanted to be able for everyone to get a chance to sweat. By that I mean … if there was anything to be happy about, then everybody’d be happy about it. If there was a lot of money to be made, for anyone to make a lot of money. If there were a lot of songs to sing, then everybody got to sing. That’s the way it is now. Then, if we have something to suffer or a cross to bear — we bear it together.”

Learn how the Sly and his band influenced others.

Discover Black history such as the Civil Rights Movement, that Sly lived through.

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