In Memoriam: Sly Stone (1943-2025) and Brian Wilson (1942-2025)
By Tim, with some help from Deke Dickerson, Jesse Dayton and Bevis M. Griffin.
This week broke something.
Sly Stone and Brian Wilson—gone, two days apart. Titans, architects, soul-benders. And while the world should’ve stopped spinning long enough for us to mourn? Technology decided to fuck me sideways instead.
This is the first post I’ve been able to get out all week.
Bevis M. Griffin and I already went off about Sly back in February, right after Questlove dropped his monster of a documentary on Hulu, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). It was loud, messy, brilliant, just like the man himself. And if you were already in awe of those upbeat psychedelic soul masterpieces he seemingly dropped out of his mouth whole every time he yawned— “Everyday People,” “I Want To Take You Higher,” and a hundred more—then the film unveiled how deep his fingerprints ran. Personally, until I saw the doc, I had no idea he had produced The Beau Brummels’ “Laugh Laugh” when he was 19! Click that link—that tune ain’t fluff. It’s proto-jangle. It’s garage royalty. Now factor in how many instruments he could play, in addition to his preternatural production prowess at that early age, and his supernatural songwriting talent. Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart was Prince before there was a Prince.
As musician and rockabilly scholar Deke Dickerson wrote this week, Sly and The Family Stone didn’t need “autotune, teleprompters, fancy light shows or pyrotechnics or all the nonsense that passes for live entertainment nowadays.” Just raw talent and hard work—and a lineup that was as radical as it was righteous: Black guys, white guys, “sharp-dressed soul brothers,” “raggedy hippies,” killer women, and—most shocking to Deke—“a really happening white drummer in a funk band.”
He concluded, “This band kicked some serious ass.”
“Sly wasn’t just a hitmaker. He was a social architect,” Griffin remarked back in February. “He wanted to create music that reflected the society he wished existed—multicultural, gender-inclusive, optimistic. But the same sensitivity that fueled that vision? It also made him fragile.
“I see the same patterns in a lot of the artists I came up with. And hell, in myself.
“That need for insulation when the world gets too loud?
“For Sly, that became freebase. For me? It was a long stretch of bad choices before I found the off-ramp.”
“The life of the party heading the greatest band on the planet did too many party favors and wound up living in a camper, nearly homeless, for the last couple of decades,” Dickerson concluded, “The dude really died a long time ago, it just took this long for his body to give out.”
I don’t think Sly Stone is merely a cautionary tale about how bad drugs are, though. I think he’s proof of what the music industry does to its geniuses—when the flame burns too hot, when you’re too sensitive to how fucked this world is, and when there’s no firewall between your brilliance and the damage.
It was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that took him on the 9th. But freebase? That’s what opened the door. Evidence confirms heavy freebasing can lead to COPD. So yeah… there’s your cautionary tale. But don’t forget the fire that came first.
So what links Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, the haunted genius behind The Beach Boys, a band far too many people love to dismiss for all the wrong reasons? Yes, they died just two days apart—Brian on the 11th. And yes, they both reshaped the '60s with miniature symphonies that rewired the world.
“Imagine being 24 and telling Carol Kaye & the Wrecking Crew exactly what parts you want them to play,” our old pal Jesse Dayton mused in his own Facebook post. “Imagine being 18 and not only knocking The Beatles and Phil Spector off the charts, but inspiring them to change their sound. Imagine having a mental breakdown in front of the entire world because the music in your head won't stop. Brian was a sweet man and a pure genius.”
He also had his problems with drugs, much like Sly. But not quite. Mostly, it was mental illness and being surrounded by the absolutely wrong people when you’re that sensitive and vulnerable which was Brian’s undoing, venal cowards like Mike Love and Dr. Eugene Landy. But how many masterpieces have you composed recently? How many “Good Vibrations,” “God Only Knows,” “California Girls,” or “Help Me Rhonda”s are you responsible for?
Yeah, I thought so.
Brian had been slipping away for years. Everyone who saw him perform after he broke free of Mike Love’s crass, bastardized version of The Beach Boys—the band Brian masterminded— saw that haunted look all over him. He looked like the melody was still playing, but getting harder to hear. He was fighting through a fog. After his wife Melinda passed, he was diagnosed with a neurocognitive disorder—dementia by another name. A conservatorship was set up just last year. The music never left him, but the world started to blur.
The ‘60s had so much promise, so much to offer. And these two gents, dead within days of one another, were major reasons why. It really is not coincidence that they did. They really were, through some twisted logic, alternate universe versions of one another. They both mattered, and had their demons. And now they’re gonna be forevermore connected in my mind.
“Music is life,” Jesse concluded two days ago. “When it's real, no matter what genre, it's the only thing worth trusting. RIP ”
🖤 This Post Took Everything. 🖤
The Tim “Napalm” Stegall Substack is reader-supported. And right now, that support is bleeding.
This tribute to Sly Stone and Brian Wilson? It was written through grief. Through exhaustion. Through 4AM silence after a brutal shift taking verbal abuse from strangers just to make rent. This post is love as labor. And it’s only possible because some of you have chosen to support this work.
But here’s the truth:
We gained two new paid subscribers this week. And we are so fucking grateful. You keep this alive. You make it worth it.
But we also lost one of our annual subscribers the other day. And longtime free readers have been quietly slipping away.
This is the churn. It happens.
But if it keeps happening—this ends.
No more heartfelt tributes at 4AM.
No more longform noise-soaked manifestos.
No more reminders that music matters because it saved our lives.
If you’ve ever felt something reading this—felt seen, or heard, or comforted—please consider going paid today. Or upgrading. Or sharing this with someone who might need it.
This work is sacred. But sacred doesn’t mean invincible. Support keeps it alive.
Because punk journalism doesn’t get corporate sponsorship. It gets you. You’re the part that counts. Thank you.
#TimNapalmStegall #TheTimNapalmStegallSubstack #InMemoriam #SlyStone #BrianWilson #BeachBoys #SlyAndTheFamilyStone #PunkJournalism #MusicMatters #GriefAndGenius #SacredNoise #SubscribeAndSurvive #ReaderPowered #ShareTheSignal