Sly & The Family Stone
at Woodstock 1969
Sly & The Family Stone electrified the Woodstock crowd with their unprecedented blend of funk, rock, and soul, turning the early morning hours into a dance party.
Sly & The Family Stone — Woodstock 1969
Sly & The Family Stone was the most forward-thinking act at Woodstock 1969, and their early Sunday morning performance is widely regarded as the most purely exhilarating set of the entire festival.
Led by Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart, the band was groundbreaking in multiple ways: they were racially integrated (Black and white musicians together), gender-integrated (men and women on equal footing), and musically innovative, blending rock, funk, soul, pop, and psychedelia in ways nobody else had conceived.
Their performance at Woodstock took place in the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17, after the Grateful Dead, CCR, Janis Joplin, and The Who had all played. Much of the crowd was exhausted or sleeping. But Sly Stone's sheer force of personality and the band's irresistible groove turned the field into a dance party.
"I Want to Take You Higher" became the centerpiece of the set, with Sly conducting the crowd in call-and-response chants that had hundreds of thousands of people on their feet. The performance was captured in the Woodstock documentary and remains one of the film's most joyous sequences.
The band's albums "Stand!" (1969) and "There's a Riot Goin' On" (1971) are considered masterpieces. Sly & The Family Stone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and their influence on funk, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B is immeasurable.