In 1974, many years earlier than Ye, then referred to as Kanye West, packed Madison Sq. Backyard for a twin album-fashion spectacular, Sly Stone, the cosmically groovy singer-songwriter who died on June 9, provided his personal extravaganza of dance, funk and flash on New York’s greatest stage.
The event was a sold-out Sly & the Household Stone live performance in entrance of greater than 20,000 followers, and the centerpiece was Mr. Stone’s wedding ceremony to Kathy Silva — a gold and black show of fabulosity. The bride and groom (and the entire wedding ceremony celebration, band included) wore coordinated Halston appears. Mr. Stone wore a gleaming cape and jumpsuit, the waist cinched with an enormous gold belt buckle, so he seemed like a cross between a disco superhero and a sci-fi lord come frivolously right down to earth. Behind them, a dozen fashions in black attire carried gold palm fronds.
It was, The New Yorker declared, “the most important occasion this yr.”
It was additionally seven years after Mr. Stone arrived on the music scene promising “A Entire New Factor,” and boy, had he delivered. He launched not only a complete new sound however an entire new type of fashion to the stage. Like his music, it crossed style, race, gender and viewers, providing unity in a psychedelic stew of fringe, rhinestones and lamé that was typically celebratory and typically chaotic, usually outrageous, however virtually at all times unattainable to neglect — whether or not it was on “The Ed Sullivan Present” or the Woodstock stage.
“He had a glance,” Questlove wrote within the introduction to Mr. Stone’s 2023 autobiography, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” He beloved an adjunct: a necklace, an arm band and, particularly, a hat.
He wore big, broad-brimmed fedoras lengthy earlier than Pharrell Williams stepped out in his 20-gallon Vivienne Westwood quantity in 2014, in addition to crocheted toppers and exaggerated newsboy caps — just like the silver-sequined fashion he wore together with his magenta-sequined shirt for a efficiency on “The Midnight Particular” in 1974. He was his personal “Spaced Cowboy” in Nudie fits, spangled vests and wigs.
“He challenged folks’s notion of normalcy,” Mr. Williams wrote in The New York Instances. “He wore critically fly garments, and to this present day, I don’t know how he walked round in these platforms.”
And it wasn’t simply him; it was the entire band. Mr. Stone had a principle of vogue simply as he had a principle of rhythm, one which emphasised the person inside the group dynamic. He would choose the colours for the crew — his favorites had been crimson, white and black, which had been additionally the colours of his lounge — however inside that spectrum, they had been free to go their very own means. At a time when many Motown bands nonetheless wore matching fits and ties, the concept band members ought to gown to precise their very own bliss was revolutionary.
“Sly had the concept we needs to be in the identical theme, however make or not it’s your personal character,” Jerry Martini, the band’s saxophone participant, mentioned in a video interview posted on the band’s YouTube channel in 2013. (He additionally described a day when Mr. Stone, dissatisfied with no matter outfit Mr. Martini had deliberate, seemed round, grabbed a razor and lower up a cow-skin rug for him to put on like a poncho.)
The purpose, Greg Errico, the band’s drummer, mentioned within the video interview, was “to be colourful.” Not simply to face out, although they positively did that, however “to be like music is. Music is Technicolor.”
Mr. Stone understood the ability that got here from connecting the ears and eyes, and he caught to that conviction by means of his struggles with medicine and the trade, as his look throughout a 2006 Grammys tribute in silver lamé and a large blond mohawk attested. He didn’t simply sing about embracing “the pores and skin I’m in.” He provided everybody a bedazzled primer for the way which may look.
