YouTube Gold: Everyday People

For a time, Sly and the Family Stone was one of the greatest bands in the world.

San Francisco in the late 1960’s must have been alternately thrilling, terrifying and hilarious, perhaps occasionally all at the same time.

At more or less the same time you had the hippies and the Summer Of Love with Charles Manson roaming Haight-Ashbury, The Zodiac Killer, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Steve Jobs was a restless teenager and Silicon Valley was starting to bloom.

It was a bizarre and uniquely American time with a million different influences, with what would be a long-running duel between vitality and decadence.

Out of this maelstrom came one of the most striking bands of the era, Sly and the Family Stone.

True to its time and place, the band was integrated and progressive and, at its best, their music was great.

One of their earliest hits was Everyday People, which was about exactly what you would expect, and you could dance to it.

The music was very much of its era, but unfortunately Sly Stone developed a serious and long-lasting drug problem.

He was apparently homeless for a time and though he eventually re-emerged, he never recaptured his early brilliance.

Somehow still alive at 81, despite decades of hard living, his early music remains hugely influential and still gets played a lot. We hope he’s doing okay.