Sly Stone, leader of 1960s funk band, dies at age 82

(Reuters) -Sly Stone, the driving force behind Sly and the Family Stone, a multiracial American band whose boiling mix of rock, soul and psychedelia embodied 1960s idealism and helped popularize funk music, has died at the age of 82, his family said on Monday.

    Stone died after a battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other health issues, a statement from his family said.

"While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come," the statement said.

Stone was perhaps best known for his performance in 1969 at the historic Woodstock music festival, the hippie culture's coming-out party.

His group was a regular on the U.S. music charts in the late 1960s and 1970s, with hits such as "Dance to the Music," "I Want to Take You Higher," "Family Affair," "Everyday People," "If You Want Me to Stay," and "Hot Fun in the Summertime."

But he later fell on hard times and became addicted to cocaine, never staging a successful comeback.

The confident and mercurial Stone played a leading role in introducing funk, an Afrocentric style of music driven by grooves and syncopated rhythms, to a broader audience.

James Brown had forged the elements of funk before Stone founded his band in 1966, but Stone's brand of funk drew new listeners. It was celebratory, eclectic, psychedelic and rooted in the counterculture of the late 1960s.

"They had the clarity of Motown but the volume of Jimi Hendrix or The Who," Parliament-Funkadelic frontman George Clinton, a contemporary of Stone and another pioneering figure in funk, once wrote.

When Sly and the Family Stone performed, it felt like the band was "speaking to you personally," Clinton said.

Stone made his California-based band, which included his brother Freddie and sister Rose, a symbol of integration. It included Black and white musicians, while women, including the late trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, had prominent roles.

That was rare in a music industry often segregated along racial and gender lines.

Stone, with his orb-like Afro hairstyle and wardrobe of vests, fringes and skin-tight leather, lived the life of a superstar. At the same time, he allowed bandmates to shine by fostering a collaborative, free-flowing approach that epitomized the 1960s hippie ethic.

"I wanted to be able for everyone to get a chance to sweat," he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1970.

DISC JOCKEY TO SINGER

Born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, he moved as a child with his family to Northern California, where his father ran a janitorial business.

He took the show business name Sly Stone and worked for a time as a radio disc jockey and a record producer for a small label before forming the band.

The band's breakthrough came in 1968, when the title track to their second album, "Dance to the Music," cracked the Top 10.

A year later, Sly and the Family Stone performed at Woodstock before dawn. Stone woke up a crowd of 400,000 people at the music festival, leading them in call-and-response style singing.

    Stone's music became less joyous after the idealistic 1960s, reflecting the polarization of the country after opposition to the Vietnam War and racial tensions triggered unrest on college campuses and in African American neighborhoods in big U.S. cities.

In 1971, Sly and the Family Stone released "There's a Riot Goin' On," which became the band's only No. 1 album.

Critics said the album's bleak tone and slurred vocals denoted the increasing hold of cocaine on Stone. But some called the record a masterpiece, a eulogy to the 1960s.

In the early 1970s, Stone became erratic and missed shows. Some members left the band.

But the singer was still a big enough star in 1974 to attract a crowd of 21,000 for his wedding to actress and model Kathy Silva at Madison Square Garden in New York. Silva filed for divorce less than a year later.

Sly and the Family Stone's album releases in the late 1970s and early 1980s flopped, as Stone racked up drug possession arrests. But the music helped shape disco and, years later, hip-hop artists kept the band's legacy alive by frequently sampling its musical hooks.

The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and Stone was celebrated in an all-star tribute at the Grammy Awards in 2006. He sauntered on stage with a blond Mohawk but bewildered the audience by leaving mid-song.

In 2011, after launching what would become a years-long legal battle to claim royalties he said were stolen, Stone was arrested for cocaine possession. That year, media reported Stone was living in a recreational vehicle parked on a street in South Los Angeles.

Stone had a son, Sylvester, with Silva. He had two daughters, Novena Carmel, and Sylvette "Phunne" Stone, whose mother was bandmate Cynthia Robinson.

(Reporting by Reuters; Additional reporting by Lisa Richwine;Editing by Diane Craft and Rosalba O'Brien)