DISGRACELAND - Sly Stone: Guns, PCP, a Psycho Mutt, and a Fugitive from Justice

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

At the end of the 1960s, Sly Stone was at the center of a groundbreaking musical movement that intended to break down barriers of race and genre, all in the service of making people happy. But at the dawn of the 1970s, Sly Stone suddenly was not happy. His L.A. mansion was overrun with cocaine, PCP, guns, and bodyguards. He was strongarmed by the Black Panthers. He thought his own bass player hired someone to kill him. He drew the attention of local law enforcement. Before long, he was crossing paths with cops from coast to coast, busted time and again for drug offenses – including when he went on the lam under a false name and was declared a fugitive from justice. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. This episode was originally published on April 4, 2023. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Sly Stone are insane. He suspected that his own bass player hired someone to kill him. He was strong-armed by the Black Panthers, did cocaine with Miles Davis. His L.A. Mansion was overrun with cocaine, PCP, guns, and bodyguards, drawn the attention of local law enforcement.

He was soon crossing paths with cops, from coast to coast and was busted time and time again for drug offenses, including the time that he went on the lamb under a false name and was declared a fugitive from justice. If there is any justice in this world, Sly Stone will be remembered as the mastermind of great music. Music that was intended to break down barriers of race and genre, all in the service of making people happy.

That music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my, my Melotron called Vanity Calamity, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to a clip from Rod Stewart's Maggie May. And why would I play you that specific slice of business in the front, party in the back, cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 1st, 1971.

And that was the day Sly and the Family Stone released their fifth studio album, there's a riot going on, an unexpectedly dark missive that hinted at darker days to come. On this episode, drugs, paranoia, a fugitive from justice, murky missives, and Sly Stone. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Sly Stone wanted to take them higher. Every last hippie down there in the mud on old man Yasker's farm. Half a million, easy. Stone on Acapulco gold.

Tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. Sly knew where freedom could be found. He had the map that he could light their fire. All they had to do is stand and repeat after him. Higher. 3.30 a.m. was an early wake-up call, but the people couldn't resist. Tents unzipped, sleeping bags cast aside. Every one of them looked up at the stage and saw themselves reflected in the integrated faces of Sly and the family stone.

Men, women, black, white, everyday people. The rhythm pulsated, was unrelenting, and so was Sly's call to action. I want to take you higher. The crowd responded by echoing the word back to him, higher. Sweat ran down Sly's forehead to his oversized glasses. His mutton chops glistened, and the fringe jacket felt damp against his skin.

It's close now. He could feel it. Freedom. The great release. It was like a third. God, released a pipe piper. He led and they followed. Boom, shakalakalaka.

They're all into together, and together they'd be free. Together, they would move as one. One year later in 1970, Sly's stone wasn't moving. He didn't want to. Dancing to the music, let's nod and say we did. Staying in one place, living inside yourself. Now, that felt fucking great. Sly rarely left the home studio in the loft of his Tudor-style

mansion at 783 Bel Air, the one he was renting from Papa John Phillips. When he did step out, he cruised LA's freeways in a cocoon on wheels, 36-foot Winnebago. He didn't engage with the outside world. It wanted too much from him to perform night after night, to take everyone higher. The pressure was overwhelming. The attention was a mind fuck. He was on his own trip now, and he was taking no passengers. Those blest-out masses back at Old Man Yasker's farm, they could find their own way.

Sly's new path was dimly lit and was paved with cocaine and PCP, and it led him here, inside, alone, safe. To outsiders, the place felt anything but safe. To Sly's unhinged pit bull, that bug-eyed motherfucker named Gunn. Yes, that's right, a pit bull named Gunn, if he didn't make you paranoid, then the hired muscle with actual guns did. Who the fuck were these guys anyway? They weren't around back in San Francisco. They only started showing up one slide moved to L.A. The drugs, the people, the vibe, everything was different in L.A.

But then, everything was different everywhere. The 60s were over. It was the 70s. Martin's dream, the hippies dream. There were memories. Everyone just woke up. Dig it for what it is. A dream.

Just another glass half full scam that tricked you into believing that things could actually change and that boogeyman weren't real. But things weren't getting better. and the boogeymen were abs of fucking lootly real. They had names like Crazy Charlie and Tricky Dick. They'd always been there, and they always would be, doing the dirty work with a flashlight while your back was turned, or walking through your front door with a pistol aimed right between your eyes

after you open them, really opened them for the very first time. 1970, now that was a reality. Everywhere you turned, it was a riot going on. Hard hats beating on anti-war protesters in the streets in New York City, snipers on the roof at Jackson State, police cruisers burning at Coachella, four dead in Ohio. The Panthers, they claimed they were on Sly's side,

that they were part of the solution. But Sly was looking out for number one now. He only trusted a few, like his right-hand man, Hamp Bubba Banks, Bobby Womack and Billy Preston. Miles was all right. That new record, Bidges Brew, was a motherfucker, no doubt.

Sly wanted to make soul music if it sounded like that. Miles liked to swing by Sly's mansion. head on up to the loft where Sly was working on new shit. Miles found Sly overdubbing that same track so many times that the sound coming from the reel was murky as fuck. Murky, just like Miles's voice. Sly, you got any of that blow? Panthers.

What did they really want? Not to share in Sly's stash. They had their motives. They wanted Sly's music for themselves, and they were prepared to get it by any means necessary. They strong-armed him to dump his white manager, Fire was a drummer Gregor Rico and his saxophone player Greg's cousin, Jerry Martini, both of them white, and replaced them with black musicians. That was what made Sly on the family stone so great in the first place. It wasn't by chance that Sly hired black players and white players.

He assembled that band with intention. Could Jerry Martini blow as well as some of the other cats? It didn't matter. He was the right guy for the part more ways than one. It was like the song said. Everybody was a star. The Panthers did get their way, even though they weren't the ones to make it happen. Gregor Rico saw the writing on the wall, Sly's ego and the Ascendant.

They all for one and one for all ethos that had driven the family stone for years, mere vapor trails in its wake. If Sly wasn't laying down the track himself, he was having someone like Bobby or Billy do it rather than one of his own band members. Shit, he'd get miles to blow more than cocaine if he could. Greg knew what that meant. Pretty soon, Sly would replace Greg with that maisterer rhythm king, Mark II. in love with. A fucking machine. Gregorico bailed before the record was even finished. When that

record, there was a riot going on, was finally released in November of 1971. Two years had passed since Woodstock, closer to two and a half years since the band's last studio album. Regardless, Riot went to number one because people were clamoring for something new from Sly. But what they got wasn't what they expected. There's a riot going on was hangover music.

It sounded exhausted, pessimistic. The vibrant, life-affirming songs that define the Family Stone's first four studio albums were long gone. Even Family Affair, the lead-off single was funk music on life support. Rock critic Grail Marcus famously referred to the record as Musac with its finger on the trigger. And although it's since been re-evaluated as one of the greatest U-turns in rock history, at the time of its release, there's a riot going on, sounded like a shock. It even shocked Larry Graham, the band's bass player. Larry just wanted to be funky, which this shit most definitely was not, at least not in a conventional sense.

It didn't help that Sly began to suspect that Larry had hired his own muscle to do him in. Someone had tried to poison him. Sly was sure of it at a party. Who else was the target of those spiked drinks if not Sly? Such was the conceit of ego, and the ego had landed. An alter ego. Sly Stone was just that. A character created by a man named Sylvester Stewart, and Sylvester Stewart wasn't himself anymore.

He was the other guy. He was Sly. Sly was taken over. Sly was obsessed. Sly fixated. Sly said, did you see that shadow? What was that noise? Who is that person over there? And are they cool? Somebody's watching you, brother. The others in the family stone chalked it up as the corruption of Sylvester Stewart by his alter ego, which was only made worse by the corruption. by the powers of being in Los Angeles. Southern California was fear, drugs, and delusion, the heart of darkness. Sly's own heart had gone dark. None of this shit even faced him. Not even in February of 1973, when the pounding started on the front door of 783 Bel Air.

Loud, aggressive. Could be the county sheriff, and maybe the feds. Look around, cocaine everywhere. Angel dust, sedatives, rifles, guns, and that fucking psycho mut. But Sly didn't panic. Sly oozed cool. Sly Stone had people to take care of shit like this. People on both the right and the wrong side of the law.

But the guy who created this Sly Stone alter ego, Sylvester Stewart, he was scared shitless. He wasn't non-plussed like Sly. He was plused as shit. Sly was in control like he always was. Sly said, yeah, man, let him come in. Let him break down the door. What did he have to lose? Sylvester Stewart, meanwhile, was sweating his ass off.

He had plenty to lose. The question was, just how much would he lose when that front door swung open? And the outside world came crashing in. Word was, Sly Stone had gone full on Howard Hughes. He was a recluse, a hermit, growing out his fingernails and pissing into jars. The rumors were everywhere. Sly Stone was not. Sly was once the ecstatic face of rock and roll's future.

And that face was all over the place. The Oakon Coliseum, Winterland and San Francisco, the psychedelic supermarket in Boston, the Fillmore West, the Fillmore East, Detroit, Vegas, Decatur, Harlem, Ed Sullivan, Top of the Pops, and the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. From 1967 to 1969, Sly and the Family Stone cranked out four breathless albums and a couple of non-album singles that mass genres and blue minds. Dance to the music, sing a simple song, thank you for letting me be myself. again. Everyday people, they could not miss. They were the epitome of late 60s cool on the

cutting edge of the music industry, and they delivered each new creation with confidence and virtuosic talent. Slice Stone had worked towards this moment for years, back in the Lejo when he was still just Sylvester Stewart, one of five kids singing gospel music in his father's Pentecostal Church, touring churches up and down California. He knew he was probably the most talented kid in a house full of talent, but he didn't hog that talent. He spread the love and the joy. His idea of family wasn't limited to the people living under his roof. He ran with a local gang. Actually, the Cherry Busters were less a gang and more a bunch of kids who just wanted to look cool together, which, as anyone who has started a rock band can attest, is probably even more important than

sounded cool, for at least the beginning stages. The Sylvester sounded cool from the jump. His dynamic voice made him a regional celebrity as a DJ on KSO. LFM, the number two black station in San Francisco. He spun Dylan and the Beatles next to his latest Rheum B tracks. No one was crossing genres like that on commercial radio. His reputation as a tastemaker grew. A small local label hired him as a house producer. Sly oversaw early hits by white rock groups like the Bo Bremels and the Mojo Men.

Legend has it. He even helped the little Bay Area band called The Warlocks produced their 1965 track kit Countdown, just one month before they changed their name to the group. Grateful Dead. Music was freedom. Black, white, rock, soul. Any attempts to define a song didn't do it justice. It undersold the experience. Music was about expression, the feel, the harmony, the possibility. When he became Sly Stone, Sylvester Stewart took it one step further. He wanted his music to make people happy, no matter their color or creed. Sly on the family stone and walk that walk from their inception in 1966.

Sly's brother Freddy on guitar on Larry Graham on bass, two black men. Sly's sister Rose on keys and Cynthia Roverson on trumpet. Two black women. Jerry Martini on saxophone and Gregorico on drums. Two white men. But when they sang, thank you for letting me be myself. They didn't just mean their gender or color or their skin. They were talking about all that leopard print, robes and caves, wigs and go-go skirts,

affros and neon jewelry and goggle shades. Like any gang worth their salt, the Family Stone had their look down. He took them until their second album, 1968's Dance to the Music, to Get Their Sound Down Too. The album's title track, which managed to introduce all seven members of the band in just three minutes, was the band's first top ten hit. As the calendar turned from 1968 to 1969, their single Everyday People held the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. But Sly Stone, or rather Sylvester Stewart, self-doubt, grew an equal measure to his band's

success. What if the next single wasn't as good as the last? What if the band couldn't maintain this level of excellence? What if the crowds kept getting bigger? Sly went from being everywhere to being nowhere. In 1970 alone, he missed 26 of the Family Stone's 80 scheduled gigs. It's not like he was backstage with a case of cold feet bailing at the last minute. He didn't even bother to show up.

That was the rumor floating around the crowd of 75,000 at Grand Park in Chicago, July in 1970. The free show was an olive branch from an unreliable and erratic grifter, a show to make up for the last Chicago show, which Sly had missed. The rumors ran as hot as the 90-degree temperature. Sly didn't give a fuck about Chicago. Shit, man, Sly wasn't even in the state. The audience was hot, drunk, and stoned. And they chanted Sly's name over and over.

It slid and never took the stage, so the crowd did. Thousands of people surged, feet trampled bodies, bottles and rocks soared through the air. Chicago PD swarmed. The crowd picked up whatever they could find, sticks, dirt, scraps of asphalt, toss them, and the cops responded with tear gas. Red and swollen faces cried out. Window shattered. Street signs and lampposts uprooted.

A police cruiser was overturned. Another was sent on fire. rioters jumped from the bushes and ambushed the cops. The pigs are retreating, they yelled like they were on the Cambodian border. Keep attacking. The cops drew their service revolvers. Shots rang out. Hot fun in the summertime.

At 9.50 p.m., about six hours after the riot began, it was over. 150 arrests, at least 100 people, including 24 cops, were treated for injuries. Three kids have been shot by the police. In Sly Stone, he was far, far away. He was back home. Some said he only left the sanctuary to ride around in his Winnebago. Others said an imposter was now playing the role of Sly. The real Slystone.

Sylvester Stewart, that motherfucker was dead. LAPD got that particular tip from a phone call. It was 1973. A voice on the other end of the line said, is a dead body at 783, Bel Air. The cops went over to Sly's place ready for anything. His reputation preceded him. He had a recent bus in his Winnebago out on Santa Monica Boulevard to thank for that.

Now cops were banging on Sly's front door, and his muscle tried to stall. No use. The cops were inside within seconds. They told everyone to stay where they were and not to fucking move. They opened every drawer, overturned every cushion, no dead body. Lots of guns. Drugs too. Sly Stone didn't give a fuck.

And when Sylvester Stewart protested from somewhere in the back of his mind, Sly placated him with more drugs. Later at the courthouse, Sly slipped into the bathroom to snort coke off the countertop. He could do whatever we wanted. Go AWOL from a scheduled concert, get high in court. It was untouchable. His lawyer disagreed. Sly, you can't do this, his lawyer said. That's what I pay you for, Sly responded, so I can do this.

Sly's defense argued that the guns, the LAPD confiscated, were part of an antique collection. and that the pills were prescription drugs. Sly didn't know if the cops had found any of the cocaine or PCP. He was barely paying attention, and he didn't really care. In the end, he got one year's probation and court order rehab. That little slap on the wrist didn't so much hurt, but the next slap did. That came courtesy of Clive Davis, president of Columbia Records, parent company of Sly's label, Epic.

Clive was irritated. Sly was late delivering his new album. there's a riot going on was two years old now. And why couldn't Sly be more like Marvin or Stevie? For Sly's peers, every year meant at least one new album. Wasn't Sly a genius like the rest? It didn't help that the record plant in Sassolito, the one place Sly would leave his home studio for these days,

wasn't exactly conducive to getting work done. They built Sly's own room called The Pit, Sunkin' floor, carpeted, jacuzzi, loft bed for when the hour stretched into days. Clive was pissed. He suspended Sly's contract, shape up or ship out. Fuck that, Sly thought no one told Sly want to finish a record, not even Clive Davis. So Sly took matters into his own hands. He went down to the record plan flanked by two of his dudes, big, menacing types.

The record plan's manager didn't know if these were the guys she'd heard about. Underworld mafioso types like Edward, Eddie Chin Elliott, or J.R. Veltrano. The kind of company Sly kept these days. But she didn't need to know their names. she saw the pieces strapped to their belts and she knew they meant business. And when Sly spoke in that low, menacing voice, practically an octave deeper than how he sounded on the records, it was obvious he was all business.

Give me my fucking tapes. The tapes, aka Sly's still unfinished new album. But the tapes didn't belong to Sly. They were property of epic. Sly could give it to him. Those were his songs on those tapes. his voice, his blood, his sweat, his tears. He repeated his demand.

The fucking tapes, now. The studio manager wasn't backing down. Sly stoned and scare her. If one of his goons wanted to get nuts, then fine, let's get nuts. Go ahead and shoot. Sly knew this wasn't working. He calmed his voice, told his guys to chill. He asked the manager if the two of them could speak privately in a different room,

out of earshot of his muscle. Sly went from a shock caller to a beggar. Don't embarrass me, he said. Please, just give me the tapes. But the studio manager wasn't the one embarrassing slide. He was just embarrassing himself, and he knew it was true. He left the record plan empty-handed, and he felt about as low as that sunken floor room at the record plant.

And soon, he'd feel even lower. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. June 22nd, 1983, Fort Myers, Florida, Ramada Airport Hotel. There was no answer from room 221. The bellhop knocked a second time with his free hand. The other hand balanced a tray of hotel food. He waited. Nothing.

This was odd. He knew someone was in there. The front desk had received several calls that morning. Sly Stone demanding room service. He sounded as angry as the previous night when he stoned into the hotel lobby after playing at a local bar. Said the owner stiffed him. The motherfucker didn't pay up.

That pissed Sly off, not just because it was wrong, but because Sly needed the money. Bad. Finances have been a bitch since the mid-1970s. Fresh, the album Sly labored over at the record plan and finally delivered in the middle of 1973 was a solid effort with some great songs like the single, If You Want You to Stay. But each subsequent release offered diminishing returns. The bottom line in his bank account diminished too. So did the family stone.

original members left one by one. It was hard not to embrace complete disillusionment while your band leader embraced complete self-destruction. By the time of the 1976 album, heard you miss me while I'm back, Cynthia Robinson was the only holdover from the glory days, and even she eventually left. Despite the record's title,

no one was missing Sly all that much by that point. The title of his next album, 1979's back on the right track, gave the impression of the thing were chugging along just fine. It was all for show. Sly had gone off the rails long before. In the mid-70s, broke, strung out, and still paranoid, Sly Stone hit up his friend and one-time manager Ken Roberts for some money. Sly was desperate. In exchange for the cash, he irrevocably made Roberts the recipient of his performance right royalties, which is the money a songwriter is paid

every time his songs are performed, meaning on the radio, concerts, jute boxes, stadiums, So not a good deal for Sly. And then, in 1980, the IRS levied a multi-million dollar tax lien on Sly's income due to years of unpaid taxes, which meant that he didn't even see the majority of the money he was making from his music. Sly had nothing left but a habit. And he felt that habit call out to him as he made a beeline through the lobby of the Fort Myers Ramada. His nerve shook like a low e-string plucked by Larry Graham's thumb. Freedom awaited him upstairs in room 221.

The next morning, the bellhop continued to knock on Sly's door, louder this time. Still, only silence. He began to worry, what with Sly's demeanor the night before were the reputation he dragged around. The bellhop called for the general manager who quickly appeared with a key. He unlocked the door and slowly turned the doorknob. The men stepped inside. They saw two bodies, Sly Stone and a woman, both out cold. Next to Sly was a glass pipe, a torch.

a razor with white powder. When the paramedics arrived, Sly was starting to come too. They asked him if he'd been freebase in cocaine. Yes, Sly responded, but it's all gone. Not just the drugs, the money, the family stone, everything was gone. But Sly Stone was given a chance to get it all back,

the good things at least. If he stayed away from drugs, then the money, the family, the music, they could all be his again. He just had to do one thing. All he had to do is recognize that Sly Stone was a character that he, Sylvester Stewart, had control over. And if Sylvester refused to give in to Sly's demands,

he didn't cater to Sly's every urge, he'd once again achieve greatness. This was the solution presented by the staff at the Lee Mental Health Clinic, a six-acre retreat in Fort Myers where Sly Stone did six months of court-ordered drug rehab in 1984 following his conviction for possessing free-basing paraphernalia. For those six months, it seemed to work.

Sly receded into the background, and Sylvester peaked out from behind those dark oversized glasses. He was clean, coherent, focused. He was thankful and thoughtful. But when he was released from RIAB, he was still broke. Sylvester Stewart didn't make the money. Sly Stone made the money. Sly Stone had always made the money. So Sly Stone got to work.

Sly sold his publishing. interest in most of his compositions to Michael Jackson as a way to pay off debts. This was in 1985, the same year that the King of Pop famously took control of the Beatles catalog from Paul McCartney. And then, at the end of the decade, according to Sly himself, Sly began a professional relationship with a manager named Jerry Goldstein. Sly later alleged that between December of 1988 and February of 1989, Goldstein, through his company Goldstein Music, made about 30 loans to Sly. $100 here, $100 there. The loans helped Sly pay living expenses and pay for more cocaine.

But in late February 1989, Goldstein and his attorney had a new proposition. If Sly wanted to keep getting cash loans and thus keep getting drugs, Goldstein told him that he needed to sign an agreement that made his entity Evenstreet, the manager of Sly's personal and professional financial affairs. The pitch was this. Sly was still in deep with the IRS. It would be better if his assets weren't his name. and if his royalty payments weren't being said directly to him.

The deal is a lifeline. It would ensure that his cash flow wouldn't completely dry up and that there would always be a little scratch he could get his hands on when he was desperate. Because in 1989, at the end of a decade in which he was arrested numerous times for failure to pay child support for possession of cocaine, for violation, probation, and for state narcotics charges, Sly Stone was perhaps more desperate than he'd ever been. He failed to appear in an L.A. court for those narcotics charges

and instead fled the state, running away to getaway. He was hiding out in New Jersey and Connecticut under the name Sylvester Allen. A California judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest. Sly Stone ended the 1980s as a fugitive. Sly Stone was nowhere to be found. But what else was new? He was always late. He was late to his own wedding in May of 1974

from a 21,000 people at Madison Square Garden. decades later in 2006 he was laid to a musical tribute in his honor at the Grammy Awards five songs into a star-studded medley he appeared blonde mohawk silver robe platform boots cast on one arm only to bounce after he played half of one song it was all part of fly's legend his behavior grew to overshadow his astonishing body of music he was the jd salinger of funk he was unstable and unreliable the wildest of wildest of wildness of wildness cards and rock and roll's deck, a once brilliant pop and funk king whose years of hard drugs turned him into a joker. Sly Stone was a cautionary tale. And now, in 2010, the crowd at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were kicking themselves for not heating that tale, for allowing themselves to get excited over a comeback show and a reunion that, on paper, seemed like a long shot. It was two in the morning. Some three hours after a reunited Sly and the family Stone were scheduled to take the stage.

The collective desire to witness slide Take a festival crowd higher Like he had all those years before at Woodstock That was the ultimate act of desperation By fans stuck in their past You can make it if you try Or a fucking naive hippie-dippy bullshit that was But then, a little after 2 a.m.,

people began to take the stage There were the horn player, Cynthia and Jerry. And look, Freddy Stone, shit Gregoriko on drums What's happening? The family stone were materializing right before. their eyes. And then, Sly? Is it really him? The guy in the long blonde wig with the captain's at? Holy shit, it was him. But the band's attempt to finish just one song were fractured and pitiful. Ditto for every time Sly stopped the song to mumble into the mic. He told the crowd that he'd

been kidnapped, that he had a lawsuit pending against his former manager, Jerry Goldstein, and that he'd been living in hotels. It all sounded like the ramblings of a crazy person, but there was some truth to what he was saying. The following year in 2011, a profile in the New York Post revealed that Sly was in fact penniless, homeless, and living in a white camper van that he parked on the side of a residential street in L.A.'s Crenshaw neighborhood. Just a few years earlier, the cash advances had stopped rolling in from Jerry Goldstein.

Sly had nothing, and that caused him to take a harder look at the agreements he signed back in 1989. He cried foul, said he'd been conned, coerced to sign his life away when he was at his most vulnerable. And then, after he signed the agreement, Jerry Goldstein's lawyer negotiated a settlement of Sly's IRS tax lien. In 1996, which meant that for 15 years, Sly's royalties were not going to tax collectors,

but to banks and companies managed by Goldstein, including roughly $3 million from BMI alone. So Sly's suit. And in 2015, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found that Sly Stone had not been fully paid for his songwriting royalties. Jerry Goldstein, his lawyer, and their entity Evenstreet, owed Sly $5 million in royalties and damages. The verdict was huge. Sly thanked the everyday people of the jury. With that money, he could stop living in a van on the streets.

He could pull himself out of poverty. Sly Stone, one of the most creative musical minds of the 20th century, could finally get some of his dignity back, get clean, and make a new record. Take the people higher one more time. And maybe Sylvester Stewart would get his too. Once again, take control over his alter ego like he had for those few months at the lead mental health clinic in the 80s. Put the bad shit behind him.

Forget about running away, living on the lamb, busted under a phony name in Connecticut and extradited back to California. They locked him up. They never threw away the key. Forget about the more recent run-ins with Johnny Law, like the one in 2011 when the LAPD pulled over his van for some stupid traffic violation and claimed they found cocaine rocks in his clothes. Freedom from all that bullshit was going to be a brand new high. But the high didn't last. Just 11 months after winning his court case, in December of 2015, a superior court judge ruled that Slystone would not be able to collect the $5 million after all.

In his decision, the judge said that when Sly Stone assigned his royalties to Evenstreet in 1989, he was given a 50% ownership of the company in return. Mr. Stewart entered the agreement with the assistance of advisors, the judge wrote, who received a substantial benefit. At the time of the ruling, Sly Stone was 72 years old. For 11 months in 2015, Sly Stone lived in a dream, a dream in which he got what he was owed, and then some, a dream in which things finally went up for once instead of down. A dream where the world took Sly's stone higher. But just like the final years of the 1960s,

when Sly and the Family Stone channeled a dream of inclusion, acceptance, and joy into their groundbreaking music, this dream wasn't meant to last. It ended, like all dreams do, leaving Sly's stone living in the here and now, in the real world, a world that is full of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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