Sly Stone's Later Career
Sly recorded two more albums for Epic: High on You (1975) and Heard You Missed Me, Well I'm Back (1976). High On You was billed as a Sly Stone solo album; Heard You Missed Me was a Sly and the Family Stone album in name only. Although Sly continued to collaborate with some of the original Family Stone members on occasion, the actual band no longer existed. Sly played most of the instruments on record himself; he maintained a band to support him for live shows. Among his main collaborators were Cynthia Robinson and Pat Rizzo from the Family Stone, and background vocalists Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva, who parted with Sly in 1976 and formed The Brides of Funkenstein in 1978. Epic released Stone from his contract in 1977, and in 1979 released 10 Years Too Soon, a remix album featuring disco versions of the 1960s Family Stone hits.
Sly signed with Warner Bros. and recorded Back on the Right Track (1979). Although the album featured contributions from Freddie and Rose Stone, Sly remained unable to return to the success of his late '60s and early '70s fame. He toured with George Clinton and Funkadelic during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and also appeared on the 1981 Funkadelic album The Electric Spanking of War Babies. That year, Clinton and Sly began work on a new Sly Stone album; however, recording halted when Clinton and Funkadelic disputed with and left Warner Bros. Records in late 1981. When Sly disappeared into self-seclusion, producer Stewart Levine completed the album, which was released as Ain't But the One Way in 1982. The album sold poorly and received mixed critical reception. Overcome by drug addictions, Sly Stone disappeared from the limelight and entered drug rehabilitation in 1984, at the insistence of his old friend Bobby Womack. Sly continued sporadically releasing new singles and collaborations until a 1987 arrest and conviction for cocaine possession and use. Afterwards, he stopped releasing music.
In 1992, Sly and the Family Stone appeared on the Red Hot Organization's dance compilation album, Red Hot + Dance, contributing an original track,"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (Todds CD Mix)." The album attempted to raise awareness and money in support of the AIDS epidemic, and all proceeds were donated to AIDS charities.
On August 16, 2011, the album I'm Back! Family & Friends was released. The album features re-recorded versions of Sly and the Family Stone's greatest hits with guest appearances from Jeff Beck, Ray Manzarek, Bootsy Collins, Ann Wilson, Carmine Appice, and Johnny Winter, as well as three previously unreleased songs.
One month later, on September 25, 2011, the New York Post reported that Sly Stone was now homeless and living out of a white camper-van in Los Angeles: "The van is parked on a residential street in Crenshaw, the rough Los Angeles neighborhood where 'Boyz n the Hood' was set. A retired couple makes sure he eats once a day, and Stone showers at their house."
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Famous quotes containing the words sly, stone and/or career:
“I teazed him with fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.””
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head.... But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)