Publishers Weekly
10/02/2023
Funk legend Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart revisits the ups and downs of his life in this electric tell-all. One of the most creative and controversial musicians of the 1970s, Sly went from singing gospel in his Vallejo, Calif., church (“My mother said that I really came alive in front of a crowd. More than that: If they didn’t respond I would cry”) to getting married on the main stage at Madison Square Garden in 1974. With a unique groove and swooning swagger, his band—Sly and the Family Stone, formed in 1966 and disbanded in 1983—revolutionized popular music and helped shape funk, soul, and R&B with such hits as “Everyday People,” “Stand!” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Though the narrative sags when Sly rehashes variety show interviews verbatim, readers will be captivated by the candid renderings of his struggles with a range of mind-altering drugs across a 50-year period and his accounts of interactions with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Doris Day, Jimi Hendrix, and George Clinton. By the end, this chronicle of how a man can go from being “High on life. High on coke. High on everything” at Woodstock through living in his car “by choice” to now, in his 80s, keeping “my ears open for songs that connect back to my music” strikes a melancholy and poignant note. It’s unadulterated, unapologetic Sly. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
MOJO Magazine Book of the Year
Sunday Times (London) Music Book of the Year
“It is difficult to convey how unlikely it is that this book exists. Sly Stone is one of pop music’s truest geniuses and greatest mysteries . . . No one else has fully conjured the remarkable balance of virtuosity and universality, joy and pain . . . Thank You gives a strong sense of this giant’s voice and sensibility."
—Alan LIght, The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“A frisky, remarkably vivid and cogent account of [Sly Stone’s] life and career . . . A full-fledged, surprisingly forthcoming and witty memoir . . . An amazing, epic story.”
—Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle
“Thank You is a brisk, crackling tour through the highs and lows of Sly’s life… It’s a fascinating, revealing, and sometimes difficult read…an unusual, fitfully beautiful, and surprisingly emotional reading experience, and by its end I realized that it had left me with something previously unthinkable,
one more act of self-reinvention from a genius of American music.”
—Jack Hamilton, Slate
“In Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), Sly Stone recounts his career without shame, pity,
or biting his tongue, giving us the really real of his fruitful but chaotic life.”
—Michael A Gonzales, The Wire (UK)
“Exquisite. ★★★★”
—MOJO
“Frank [and] illuminating . . . Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) is a reclamation. Its reward: a centering of Stone’s inimitable voice, a showcase for the flair with which he makes language dance.”
—Lynell George, Alta
“There’s a lot to enjoy in [Thank You] . . . Accessible and charming . . . [Sly speaks] from the heart (with a certain cool reserve) while providing a time trip filled with melancholy, wit, and soul.”
—Ellen Fagan, CultureSonar
“[Thank You] overflows with wit and wordplay . . . Fans will certainly appreciate the vivid accounts from recording studios, concert stages and star-studded parties.”
—Christopher Weber, Associated Press
"[Stone’s] memoir is a gift to fans, a forthright telling of his extraordinary rise from musical prodigy to genre-bending superstar, followed by a decline wrought by the intense pressure of success and heavy drug use . . . Stone’s language is vibrant, laced with playful rhymes and clever turns of phrase . . . Thank You is as complicated and beautiful as Stone himself."
—Booklist (starred review)
"It’s unadulterated, unapologetic Sly."
—Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
10/01/2023
Stone created one of the most influential and revolutionary groups of the 1960s and '70s, Sly and the Family Stone. His story of music and fame is at the heart of this engaging memoir, coauthored with Ben Greenman, who also cowrote Questlove's Mo' Meta Blues and Brian Wilson's I Am Brian Wilson. Stone, born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 in Denton, TX, moved with his family to Vallejo, CA, in 1950. As a young adult, he became one of the most popular DJs and songwriters in the Bay Area. In 1966, he assembled a multiracial group of talented men and women musical artists to create Sly and the Family Stone. Their music incorporated funky beats, candid wisdom, and playful wordplay, all of which united masses of people and fans. This book is full of remembrances of songwriting, performances, and collaborations with other musicians such as Bobby Womack and George Clinton. The authors also offer much insight and do not shy away from stories about Stone's many years of excessive partying and drug abuse. VERDICT Stone's memoir will certainly appeal to curious readers and fans of this icon of rock and soul music.—Leah K. Huey
NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
Dion Graham doesn't just embody the spirit of musician Sly Stone's voice--his performance also accentuates the lyrical rhythm of Stone's prose. Sly and the Family Stone's early albums in the 1960s are landmarks of popular music, a feat Stone worked meticulously to craft. His stories place listeners firmly in the spaces he occupied then and give perspective on why he disappeared for so long. Throughout, Graham sustains an authentic cool. His voice subtly slows down, pauses, and cracks as Stone expounds upon his older years. It's a kind of music unto itself. This production includes clips from Stone's early years as a radio DJ and more recently produced music, as well as an opening tribute by Questlove. All contribute to making this listening experience indispensable. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-08-17
An autobiography by the recording artist who scored numerous hits with his band, Sly and the Family Stone.
Sylvester Stewart (b. 1943) was born in Texas but moved to California at an early age. In this memoir, written in collaboration with Greenman and Stone’s manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, Stone writes about his upbringing in a musical family, chronicling his experiences singing in church with his parents and siblings and teaching himself to play instruments. Bored in school, he began to focus entirely on music, writing songs and working as a session player with other musicians. Stone adopted his stage name while working as a DJ at a local radio station. “I went on the air and introduced myself as Sly Stone,” he writes. “I was cooking with a bunch of ingredients. It sounded right. I was already smoking marijuana. And there was a tension in the name. Sly was strategic, slick. Stone was solid.” Along the way, he met various musicians who would become members of his band, which began playing gigs in 1966. At this point, too much of the text becomes a list of venues with vague comments on events the author remembers from several decades earlier. Stone offers interesting commentary on individual songs the band recorded, and his recollections of various offstage incidents offer insights into the era—especially given the band’s racially mixed personnel. The author is candid about his full embrace of the rock-star lifestyle and time lost to jail or rehab. After the mid-1970s, when the hits were slower to appear and the original personnel began to fall away, the book becomes unfocused. Stone’s voice isn’t sufficiently compelling to compensate for the shift to largely non-musical material, too much of it finger-pointing at those he blames for his troubles. Questlove provides the foreword, and the book includes a discography.
An inside look at an important band and its music, but it loses interest when the music is no longer central.
