Moving Pictures
Sly Lives! revisits the heyday of Sly and the Family Stone, the band’s origin story, and the self-destruction that brought the group’s eponymous frontman crashing back to Earth from the airy heights of rock superstardom. It also finds director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson continuing to evolve as a filmmaker, attempting to create unique nonfiction movies that are the equal of their one-of-a-kind subjects.
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) assumes that most viewers don’t know much about Sly and the musical family he drew together with a mixture of funk, rock and pop psychedelia. But I’d bet most of The Contributor’s readers here in Music City know that Sly and the Family Stone were massive hit-makers and a live music phenomena when the group was at the height of its powers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sylvester Stewart was born in Dallas, Texas, but his musical career began after his family relocated to Vallejo, Calif. Sly formed a gospel group with his siblings. The Stewart Four released a local single, but the music man’s career started in earnest after he made a name for himself as a San Mateo disc jockey. Sly became a producer creating hits for The Beau Brummels, and coaxing the first version of “Somebody to Love” — then titled “Someone to Love” — out of Grace Slick’s first band, The Great Society.
Sly and his brother Freddie fused their bands together and added pioneering bass player Larry Graham to form Sly and the Family Stone. The interracial group also included men and women. They created songs about “Everyday People,” claiming it “makes no difference what group I’m in” during a time when the Black Panther Party and their separatist rhetoric were on the rise. Their appearance and cultural stances made the band standout, but their talents as performing musicians lead by a genius savant made their music a permanent feature of popular culture to this day.
Sly Lives! hits all the highlights, but I wish we could have seen this portrait of an American original given more than just the archival-footage-and-talking-heads formula. This documentary often feels more like a PBS special than a feature film. It’s nice to hear firsthand accounts from the original members of the Family Stone including the great Larry Graham, but it doesn’t take a leap of creative insight to interview the band. Sly has become reclusive in his older age and he may not have been available to interview, but why do the film if that was the case? Thompson also interviews Sly’s peers like George Clinton, and the musicians that Sly and the band influenced including Vernon Reid of Living Colour. But interviews like these always feel like unnecessary celebrity padding, and just sticking to the band would have made the film half-again more interesting and unique.
Sly Lives! has some good footage and a happy ending, but it’s an ordinary documentary about an extraordinary person. The going gets rougher when Thompson tries to ask his interviewees to “define black genius” or if Sly burned-out because of the “burden of black genius.” It’s an odd question to ask about an actual genius — no doubt — whose art specifically transcended race during a time when it took real courage to insist on togetherness and mutual respect. Sly built a wildly diverse band and called them his family, declaring “We’ve got to live together.” Most of the interviewees just look confused, like they’re not sure what the director is getting at. Thompson begins to explore the idea that black artists are burdened by the expectations — and jealousies — of their communities, but that conversation never really goes anywhere. I get the sense the director feels like he has to bring some profound insight to his work beyond simply focusing on his exceptional subjects. It’s the same problem that made Quest Thompson’s debut, The Summer of Soul, equally disappointing. The director knows a great subject when he sees one, and maybe his third film will be the charm. In the meantime, we’re still waiting on the great Sly Stone movie.
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is streaming on Hulu
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Most Nashvillians will know filmmaker Lana Wilson for her Taylor Swift documentary, Miss Americana (2020). Wilson also directed the Brooke Shields documentary Pretty Baby (2023) as well as an examination of extremism and abortion in America (After Tiller, 2015), and a meditation on suicide in Japanese culture (The Departure, 2017).
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The New Sly Stone Documentary is a Funky, Clunky Memoir of Misadventure
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The tragic show that marked the end of Sly and the Family Stone: “Thank you for letting us be ourselves”
Sly Stone was more than just a musician. He was an artist who completely transformed the way that people viewed sound. All of the exciting funk and soul bands that you love, be it Parliament, Funkadelic, or CHIC, would never have found their creative voice were it not for the power of Sly and the Family Stone.
“Thank you for letting us be ourselves,” he proclaimed to the crowd after a killer performance of some of the band’s best songs. This line isn’t just how he signed off a gig or the title of one of his biggest songs; it is the epitome of his career as a whole. His desire to transcend musical boundaries, merging styles of music and creating a band that didn’t adhere to racial or gender stereotypes was one big show of individualism, creating a rock star unlike any other.
When had someone who made funk music ever been on the cover of Rolling Stone? When was an artist who wrote songs that veered on disco considered the perfect choice to headline a rock festival? It was all a part of Sly’s genius, and it led to the creation of one of the greatest musicians to ever take to the stage.
Of course, while Sly Stone enjoyed his success, he also had some trouble as an artist and an individual. Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson recently explored Sly’s life in the new documentary Sly Lives, which covers his career and the pressure that came with his success.
“Even though my experience with Summer of Soul was one of the most magical, transformative moments of my life,” he said when discussing his Oscar-winning documentary, which came before his exploration of Sly, “There’s a fear of winning, because if you’re too successful then you’re singled out […] And being singled out for positive reasons or negative reasons is such a nightmare for most Black people.”
Sly’s life wasn’t just music; there were a number of other contributing factors that led to both his rise and his fall. Drugs, relationships and jaded friendships led to him losing himself in his success, which Questlove says is not only the result of success but also a sense of guilt that often sets in with Black artists.
“As with most Black artists, the guilt of being the chosen one, the guilt of being the winner sort of sets in, and Sly will be kind of the first domino in a long list of people that will self-sabotage a good thing,” he said, “And so that’s what this film explores, like, why do we self-sabotage?”
Sly Stone’s issues led to his band, Sly and the Family Stone, breaking up, and their final shows marked an incredibly depressing end to what was one of the most successful bands of the time. The group had always been celebrated for their unity and exciting playing style, but this dwindled in the face of arguments, separation, drugs, addiction and creative differences to the extent that their final gigs were those which people had no interest in attending.
They took place at Radio City Music Hall, where only a few hundred people turned up to what ended up being a borderline empty venue. A scathing review from the 1975 show highlights just how upset people were at the quality of the gig. It begins by discussing how the venue was too big for the band and highlighting that Sly went on stage nearly an hour late and only played for 45 minutes. It finishes by referencing the fact that the time Sly played was dull and dreary.
“In the not‐toodistant past, Sly was one of the most exciting and significant forces in American pop music. But now he has taken to the stalest of rehashes of his greatest hits, ignoring his most recent work, submerging the communal energies of his band under a silly ego trip and rushing perfunctorily through the music he does play,” said the review, “It would be easy to dismiss Sly out of hand. Except that memories of what he used to be make one more sad than angry.”
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