By Reuters
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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.

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“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.

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.