Stone’s albino project

last updated 8 January 2015

Sly Stone insists he isn’t finished yet, says Alexis Petridis in The Guardian (U.K.). Since the early 1980s, the leader of the funkadelic rock band Sly & the Family Stone has rarely appeared in public, and it was recently reported that after years of drug abuse and mental health problems, he was homeless, living in a van in Los Angeles. (In fact, his agent says he has a house nearby.) Yet in the 1960s, his band—the first racially integrated major rock band—changed the face of pop music. It sounded, and looked, spectacular—a riot of Afros, tassels, and sequined capes. “I wanted people to look on stage and see the world and how the world can get along,” he says. Now, at age 70, he says he plans to make America truly colorblind, by recruiting a new backing band, made up of albinos. “My feeling about it is that it could neutralize all the different racial problems,” he says. “To me albinos are the most legitimate minority group of all. All races have albinos. If we all realize that we’ve all got albinos in our families, it’s going to take away from the ridiculous racial tension, if you’re black or white. People will get happy when they see [an albino band]. People,” he says firmly, “have got to be happy for that.”