Sly Stone Is Living In A Van: With A Dead Baboon And A Dog Called Gun
IS Sly Stone, of Sly And The Family Stone, homeless and living in a van?
The New York Post say he is:
Today, Sly Stone — one of the greatest figures in soul-music history — is homeless, his fortune stolen by a lethal combination of excess, substance abuse and financial mismanagement. He lays his head inside a white camper van ironically stamped with the words “Pleasure Way” on the side. The van is parked on a residential street in Crenshaw, the rough Los Angeles neighborhood where “Boyz n the Hood” was set. A retired couple makes sure he eats once a day, and Stone showers at their house. The couple’s son serves as his assistant and driver…
“I like my small camper,” he says, his voice raspy with age and years of hard living. “I just do not want to return to a fixed home. I cannot stand being in one place. I must keep moving.”
Roger Friedman tells it another way:
Rock icon Sly Stone is NOT homeless even though he’s living in a van. The New York Post story that’s caused such a sensation was paid for by the writer of the piece. I can tell you both of these truths are according to a source close to Stone. This isn’t to say that Sly–real name Sylvester Stewart–isn’t in perilous financial shape… Sly is living in that van by his own choice. My source says that Sly’s attorney, Robert Alan, rented him a very nice home in Woodland Hills, California with four bedrooms, a pool, etc. (Alan declined to comment.) Sly just refuses to go there….“He’s too paranoid to come inside,” says a friend. This is the result of 40 years of drug abuse.
Popbitch provides an allegation that may or may not help you to sympathise with Stone, who, as Joel Selvin recalls, used to own a dog called Gun:
Back in the 1970s, when Sly was enjoying life in Beverly Hills, tanked up with PCP and cocaine, he amused himself by keeping a pet baboon who would regularly torture his other pet – a bulldog – by teasing it and then leaping up out of its reach onto a fence. After many hours of watching this, Sly decided to teach the baboon a lesson: he smeared the fence with grease. Next time the ape leaped out of the way, he fell back down at the dog’s mercy. In the words of witness Larry Graham, “that dog turned the monkey over and fucked it.”
Popbitch calls that karma for Stone. You might call it something else…
Posted: 30th, September 2011 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
