Sly Stone, the exceptionally talented musician and pioneer of psychedelic funk, who captivated audiences during the Woodstock era in the late ’60s and early ’70s, has passed away at the age of 82. His unique sound and innovative style redefined music and left an indelible mark on generations.

In a heartfelt statement from his family, it was shared, “After a protracted battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and various other underlying health issues, Sly departed peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family. While we mourn his absence, we take comfort in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to inspire and resonate for generations to come.”

The family also expressed excitement, revealing that Stone “recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in the future.” This development hints at the enduring impact of his life and artistry.

As a songwriter, producer, arranger, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and charismatic performer, Stone, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, led his group, Sly and the Family Stone, to the pinnacle of success. His energetic and experimental singles and albums seamlessly blended soul and rock, creating a profound influence on the music landscape.

This year, Stone’s life and career were explored in depth by Questlove, the Grammy and Oscar-winning director of “Summer of Soul,” in a documentary titled “Sly Lives: aka the Burden of Black Genius.” The film features raw commentary from numerous Black artists about the pressures of success in the music industry.

Questlove highlighted, “One of the most powerful quotes from the film is that Sly created the alphabet we are still using to express music. He was the first to take advantage of being a bedroom musician, utilizing multi-track recording, the wah-wah pedal, the drum machine, and doing everything himself. While we celebrate talents like Stevie Wonder and Prince for their innovations, Sly was the prototype. He also single-handedly revived hip-hop through the countless samples that originated from his work.”

Critic Dave Marsh noted in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” “Sly’s sound was intricately woven, not just musically but also sexually and racially. Here was a band where men and women, Black and white, did not have fixed roles but rather many fluid ones. The women played, the men sang, the Black members expressed themselves freely, the white members embraced funk—everybody did something unexpected, which was the only thing the audience could anticipate.”

The journey began with the breakout 1968 Epic Records single “Dance to the Music,” reaching a peak with the 1969 album “Stand!” This album featured four chart-topping singles, including the iconic No. 1 pop and R&B hit “Everyday People,” which helped Stone cultivate a diverse and enthusiastic fanbase of both Black and white listeners.

Radiating with lyrical and musical brilliance, Stone’s prophetic sound had a significant influence on artists like George Clinton, whose Parliament-Funkadelic style was heavily inspired by the Family Stone’s groundbreaking example, and Prince, another multifaceted artist known for his genre-blending capabilities.

As rap and hip-hop began to rise in popularity, Stone’s music became widely sampled and adapted by artists such as De La Soul, Public Enemy, Ice Cube, and the Beastie Boys, showcasing his far-reaching influence across musical genres.

Stone’s impact extended beyond the expected confines of the music industry. In his 1989 autobiography, legendary trumpeter Miles Davis credited Stone as the inspiration for his seminal work “On the Corner,” a groundbreaking fusion of jazz and streetwise funk. Additionally, keyboardist Herbie Hancock acknowledged Stone’s influence with the track “Sly,” featured on his best-selling 1973 album “Head Hunters.”

However, despite capturing the collective imagination of musicians and fans alike, Stone faced a rapid decline from the heights of popular success, his spiral accelerated by crippling drug abuse that plagued his later years.

David Kapralik, who managed Stone at the peak of his career, reflected to biographer Jeff Kaliss on the iconic 1969 footage of Stone’s performance at the Woodstock festival, saying, “I knew that this was Icarus, his wings made of wax, and the sun he flew too close to.”

Stone’s dark 1971 album “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” primarily recorded solo, achieved No. 1 status, but tensions within the Family Stone grew during its production. Subsequent releases on Epic and Warner Bros. yielded diminishing commercial success, and by 1983, Stone’s career with major labels had effectively ended.

In the years that followed, Stone became more prominent in police blotters and court documents than on music charts. He made sporadic reappearances after the turn of the millennium, often marked by bizarre public appearances or chaotic concert performances. Notably, in 2011, the New York Post reported that he was living homeless in a van in Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district.

In a candid plea, he told the Post, “Please tell everyone, please, to give me a job, play my music. I’m tired of all this s–t, man.”

Sly Stone, born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, moved with his family at just six months old to Vallejo, California, northeast of San Francisco. Raised in the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, he was immersed in gospel music from a young age, making his first recording appearance at the age of nine on a sacred single by the Stewart Four, a group that included his brother Freddie and sisters Rose and Vaetta.

Active in music throughout high school, where he earned the nickname “Sly” as a playful abbreviation of his name Syl, he became proficient in keyboards, guitar, bass, and drums, performing in various semi-professional bands. He later pursued studies in music theory at Vallejo Junior College.

His appearances on a local TV dance party, reminiscent of “American Bandstand,” with his group the Viscaynes led to a production job in 1965 at Autumn Records, an independent label founded in San Francisco by local underground radio DJs “Big Daddy” Tom Donahue and Bob Mitchell. For Autumn, he produced R&B singer Bobby Freeman’s dance hit “C’mon and Swim,” which peaked at No. 5.

Stone also produced sessions for local rock bands, crafting hits like the Beau Brummels’ “Laugh, Laugh” and “Just a Little,” along with the Great Society’s “Someone to Love,” which later became a smash hit in a new version by vocalist Grace Slick with her subsequent band, Jefferson Airplane.

Now known as “Sly Stone,” he gained popularity as a disc jockey at Bay Area stations KSOL and KDIA. Although both were ostensibly R&B stations, he blended the soul hits of the day with tracks from contemporary rock bands, showcasing his eclectic musical taste.

Driven by a vision to merge soul and rock, Stone formed his own band in August 1966. The final lineup included his brother Freddie on guitar, sister Rose on keyboards, Italian-Americans Greg Errico and Jerry Martini on drums and saxophone, respectively, a Black woman, Cynthia Robinson, on trumpet, and Larry Graham, who contributed his uniquely popping, fuzzed-out bass sound. Stone played keyboards and guitar while sharing vocals with many other band members.

The flamboyant, rock-infused Sly and the Family Stone made an immediate impact at their shows at Winchester Cathedral, a club in Redwood City south of San Francisco. A former promotion man for Columbia Records caught the attention of Kapralik, then head of A&R at Epic Records. Impressed by the band’s performance, he not only signed them but also took over management of the group.

The band’s 1967 debut LP, aptly titled “A Whole New Thing,” did not chart as expected, prompting Kapralik to encourage Stone to craft a radio-friendly single. The result was “Dance to the Music,” which rocketed into the top 10 of the pop and R&B charts, driven by the band’s call-and-response vocals, punctuating horn charts, and infectious, jubilant energy.

While the follow-up album and its successor “Life,” both released in 1968, failed to make significant chart impacts, the group reached new heights with 1969’s “Stand!” This collection climbed to No. 13 nationally and featured the vibrant “Everyday People” along with three other pop hits, “Sing a Simple Song,” the title track, and the explosive “I Want to Take You Higher,” which became the Family Stone’s signature concert anthem.

The massive success of “Stand!” and its accompanying singles transformed the Family Stone into a top concert draw. Their performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1969, promoted by George Wein to include rock acts, caused a stir, as fans jumped over fences, leading to restrictions on similar groups at future festivals.

However, Stone’s performance at the Woodstock Art & Music Festival in Bethel, N.Y., that August represented the pinnacle of the group’s career. Performing in a torrential downpour at 3:30 a.m. before a mud-soaked audience of 500,000, the Family Stone electrified the crowd. This performance became a highlight of Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning documentary about the festival.

Despite their groundbreaking achievements, the band’s increasing drug use began to tarnish their reputation as a live act. In 1970, the Family Stone canceled 26 of their 80 concert dates, and a failure to appear at a make-good show in Chicago’s Grant Park that July incited a riot between angry concertgoers and the police.

Epic Records had to wait two years for a follow-up to “Stand!” During this period, the label filled the gap with two non-LP singles—the swinging “Hot Fun in the Summertime” (No. 2, 1969) and the massively funky “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” (No. 1, 1970)—as well as the No. 2 compilation “Greatest Hits” (1970).

Meanwhile, Stone, whose use of cocaine and the hallucinogenic drug angel dust was soaring, secluded himself in a home studio at the former residence of John and Michelle Phillips in L.A.’s upscale Bel Air neighborhood. Occasionally recording in a mobile unit on the mansion’s grounds, he surrounded himself with a group of high, heavily armed hangers-on and dealers. He largely distanced himself from his band but occasionally collaborated with R&B stars like Bobby Womack and Billy Preston.

The resulting album, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” was a predominantly introspective and claustrophobic work, characterized by its languid rhythms driven by the mechanical beats of the Ace Tone Rhythm Ace, an early drum machine. While it topped the LP chart and produced a No. 1 single, “Family Affair,” many critics found the album lacking the joy that had defined the band’s earlier releases and reflective of both America’s Vietnam War-era malaise and Stone’s apparent mental decline.

With Graham, who later founded the popular funk group Graham Central Station, and Errico both exiting the Family Stone, the bandleader recorded the 1972 album “Fresh” with new musicians and remaining core members. This more upbeat, rhythmically dense, and lyrically vibrant collection became Stone’s last top-10 release, peaking at No. 7.

Stone attempted to present himself as a happy family man on the cover of his 1974 album “Small Talk,” appearing with his girlfriend Kathy Silva and their young son Sylvester Jr. In June of that year, Stone and Silva married in a public ceremony at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with the Family Stone performing for 23,000 assembled guests. Despite the publicity, the album peaked at only No. 15.

Silva filed for divorce within six months, accusing Stone of drug abuse and spousal violence. The split was finalized years later, following revelations that Stone had fathered a daughter, Sylvette, with Family Stone trumpeter Cynthia Robinson in 1976.

Stone’s time at Epic Records concluded with two poorly received albums, “High on You” (marketed as a solo release) in 1975 and the hopefully titled “Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I’m Back” in 1976. The latter album marked the first Family Stone collection since their debut a decade earlier that failed to chart; by then, only Robinson remained from the original lineup.

Following this, two lackluster titles on Warner Bros., “Back on the Right Track” (No. 45, 1979) and “Ain’t But the One Way” (1982), were released. The latter, which did not chart, would be the last album to feature Sly Stone’s name for 29 years.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Stone remained largely out of the public eye, with occasional reports of arrests for drug and weapons charges surfacing. In 1987, he was arrested for failing to pay child support just before a two-night stand in Hollywood that was billed as a comeback attempt. He reportedly underwent multiple unsuccessful stints in drug rehabilitation facilities.

He made guest appearances on Funkadelic’s 1981 album “The Electric Spanking of War Babies” and on tracks like former Time guitarist Jesse Johnson’s “Crazay” (a No. 2 R&B hit in 1988) and Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove.” Additionally, he contributed songs to the 1987 films “Soul Man” and “Burglar.”

In 1993, Stone made a rare appearance, appearing visibly uneasy and nearly mute, with the original members of the Family Stone at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Los Angeles.

A potential career renaissance seemed on the horizon during the early 2000s. In 2006, he made a stunning appearance at the Grammy Awards, sporting a glued-on fauxhawk atop his shaved head, as he briefly fronted a band that included his former bandmates along with stars like Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, and R&B singer John Legend, during a medley of Family Stone hits.

The following year, an appearance in San Jose with a version of the Family Stone led by his sister Vaetta resulted in a series of European concert dates, including a stop at the Montreux Jazz Festival. However, critics lamented that Stone’s participation was too limited, and many shows were marred by his typical lateness.

He returned to the stage in 2010, alongside his brother Freddie, now a Pentecostal minister, and former Family Stone members Robinson and Martini at the monumental Coachella Festival in Indio, California. Arriving hours late, Stone astonished the crowd with a diatribe against his manager, Jerry Goldstein, who had worked with him since the early ’90s. Goldstein responded with a slander suit against his client.

Stone subsequently filed a lawsuit against Goldstein for $50 million, claiming the manager had wrongfully withheld millions in publishing royalties. In early 2015, a Los Angeles jury awarded Stone $5 million in the case, marking a significant legal victory.

In August 2011, just a month before the New York Post reported his homelessness, Stone’s solo album “I’m Back! Family and Friends” was released by the independent L.A. label Cleopatra Records. The album featured collaborations with artists like Jeff Beck, Bootsy Collins, Johnny Winter, and Ray Manzarek of The Doors. It included remakes of seven Family Stone hits (along with remixes) and two new original songs, including a rendition of the gospel classic “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” Unfortunately, the album received universal criticism and failed to chart.

In addition to his children with Silva and Robinson, Stone is survived by another daughter, Novena Carmel, who is also a musician based in Los Angeles.