Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On [Paperback]

The story behind the making of the album that signaled the descent of Sylvester Sly Stone Stewart into a haze of drug addiction and delirium is captivating enough for the cinema. In the spacious attic of a Beverly Hills mansion belonging to John and Michelle Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) during the fall of 1970, Sly Stone began recording his follow-up to 1969's Stand! the most popular album of his band's career.

Miles Marshall Lewis is founder and editor of Bronx Biannual, the journal of hip-hop literature. He has contributed to The Believer, Dazed & Confused, The Village Voice and many other publications. Lewis is author of Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don't Have Bruises, a memoir. He currently lives in Paris, at work on The Noir Album: On Life in Multicultural Paris, due next year.Miles Marshall Lewis's absolutely essential 33 1/3 on Riot tells a good part of the storythe disillusioned national mood after the Death of the Sixties, Sly's post-Woodstock ambivalence towards the fame he once craved, and his sonic turn towards introversion and quietude that manifested in muffled vocals and a restrained drum machine in place of Greg Errico's thunderous backbeat. Nate Patrin, Pitchfork