Sly Stone, the veteran funk singer is currently homeless, and living in a van in Los Angeles’ rough-and-tumble Crenshaw district, according to a report co-written by Stone documentarian William Alkema for the New York Post.
Sly Stone, 68, parks the van in a residential street in the notoriously rough Los Angeles neighborhood of Crenshaw, where a retired couple provides him with a warm meal each day and use of a shower.
Sly Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, is the former Sly & the Family Stone frontman, known for such hits in the late ’60s and early ’70s as “Dance to the Music,” “Everyday People” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”.
During the height of his career, Sly Stone, the eccentric funk legend owned a sprawling Los Angeles mansion in Beverly Hills, and just four years ago he moved into a Napa Valley “compound,” complete with a vineyard.
But now Sly Stone is suffering with financial problems and he is living out of his white van.
Sly Stone told the New York Post:
“I like my small camper. I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.”
In recent years, a drug habit (Sly Stone has been arrested multiple times for cocaine possession) and fiscal difficulties (last year he sued his former manager, Jerry Goldstein, for $50 million, claiming that Goldstein had defrauded him) led Sly Stone into his current situation. Not that he appears to mind.
Despite it all, Sly Stone is still recording music, on a laptop computer in his van – and with reportedly hundreds of songs currently in the can, the musician is hoping that today’s hit-makers will reach out and help him stage a comeback.
“I see all the guys playing those old songs,” Sly Stone says.
“Let these guys know, like Lady Gaga, let me come in, just let me come in and pay me if you like it.”
It might be a while before Sly Stone gets another crack at the stage. His live performances have been exceedingly rare over the past two decades, and when he has taken the stage, the results have tended toward the shambolic – such as his brief, bizarre appearance at last year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival.
