Farewell to Sly
Sly Stone – “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”
Lately, my bedtime storybook has been the autobiography of Sly Stone. Yes, that Sly - the wizard of funk, the pied piper of psychedelic soul, the man who turned grooves into gospel. The book’s called Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) and no, your eyes aren’t glitching. That’s just Sly spelling it out in pure funk phonics.
I picked it up because I wanted to understand how someone who invented the sound of joy in the ‘60s and ‘70s could end up living in an RV in L.A. We’ve all heard the music, but the man behind the mirrorball? Still a mystery…until now.
Before Sly left this planet yesterday (or possibly just beamed up), a writer named Ben Greenman managed to track him down and coax stories out of him, ten minutes at a time. Sometimes twenty, if the funk was flowing. What emerged wasn’t just a musician’s tale. It was a mashup of genius, chaos, revolution, and heartbreak. Sly didn’t just blend genres. He blended people. Black and white, male and female, funky and freaky…all cooked into the same soulful stew.
Of course, the industry that cheered him on also chewed him up. Exhaustion, exploitation, and enough drugs to keep a freight train dancing. He eventually clawed back $5 million in royalties, but it was like handing a band-aid to a volcano.
I actually met Sly in the late ’60s, when I opened for him in the Windsor-Detroit area. True to his cosmic style, Sly and his posse arrived fashionably late - so fashionably that half the crowd assumed he was a no-show and left. When he finally floated in (buzzed like a bee in bell bottoms), he and his band borrowed our gear, plugged in, dropped a sonic bomb for 45 minutes, and disappeared like James Brown’s cape. What. Just. Happened?
Next time I saw him was the Toronto Pop Festival, June 21, 1969, at Varsity Stadium. Twenty-eight bands, two hundred performers, and Sly closed the first night like Zeus closing the skies. Their whole set could be summed up in one word: HIGHER. Every tune, every riff, every shout took us up another floor of the funk skyscraper. When they vanished again - poof - we spilled onto Bloor Street, still singing, “Gonna take you higher!”
Sly may be gone, but his music? It’s still riding the escalator of eternity. DJs will sample him. Bands will cover him. Kids will find him and wonder how this magical unicorn made music that still kicks the dust off your soul.
And those lyrics - still echoing like our chants on Bloor St.
“I am no better and neither are you
We are the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then
You can’t figure out the bag I’m in
I am everyday people, yeah, yeah.”
Thank you, Sly. Falettinus hear you agin and forever
🙏❤️. GD