The many fans who despaired of ever hearing more Sly Stone music after his misfiring 1982 album, Ain’t But The One Way, will be delighted – or at least intrigued – to learn of a five-track hoard of unheard songs that have been surfacing online since September 2023, and are now available on all streaming services.
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READ MORE: Sly Stone’s Greatest Albums Ranked
The five singles – Destiny, Without A One, Role Model, One More Hit and Big City (the latter featuring a guest appearance from rapper Del The Funky Homosapien) – represent Stone’s most fully realised batch of new music since 1982; there’s even an elaborate music video for One More Hit on YouTube, with a starring role for Stone himself, his final onscreen appearance.
The tracks are the result of a collaboration with LA musician/ producer Sal Filipelli. “I was born in 1983. My whole life, Sly was a ghost,” Filipelli tells Stevie Chick in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale now. Filipelli first met the supposed recluse at a party in 2009. Some amount of time now lost to memory later, he found himself in a motel room with Stone, setting up his recording gear. “Suddenly there’s a hammering at the door, the hotel manager pointing at Sly and screaming, ‘Get that guy the fuck out of there!’”
This, Filipelli learned, was how things rolled in Sly-world. Relocating to Stone’s RV, they got to work. “He’d give me fragments to work with,” Filipelli remembers. “He was very generous with his ideas. He had a lot of music he wanted something to happen with.”
Stone was no longer writing entire songs of his own – “an attention-span thing,” Filipelli explains – but even in those fragments, the method in his madness remained undimmed. “When he began, tracks would sound kinda questionable. As he stacked tracks on tracks, it’d sound even weirder. Then he’d add one more part, and it became brilliant, like a counterpoint puzzle.”
"My whole life Sly was a ghost."
Sal Filepelli
Work was slow and tracks went through endless revisions over numerous years – classic Sly. And while Stone’s not a lead voice – his contributions are limited to composing, keyboards and background vocals – the simmering blues of Role Model, the anthemic Destiny (featuring Family Stone members Greg Errico and Jerry Martini) and the widescreen funk of One More Hit are unmistakeably Sly, and like nothing else released this century.
“It was a lot of hard work,” Filipelli acknowledges. “But I feel grateful. I got to work with Sly Stone! And he was so confident in the studio – he just wanted to make music. He had that superstar mentality. He still had that grit and that grime to him, but he was just beautiful, man.”
“I couldn’t get through to Sylvester, because Sly was in the way. The demon was always stronger…”
Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our full tribute to Sly Stone. The genre-mashing genius whose peak, multi-hued music preached unity and transcendence before his world darkened and drugs took over. However, as the fruits of his recent, unlikely renaissance tantalisingly suggested, “Sly still had all these amazing creative talents…” More info and to order you copy HERE!
