In 1974, decades before Ye, then known as Kanye West, packed Madison Square Garden for a twin album-fashion spectacular, Sly Stone, the cosmically groovy singer-songwriter who died on June 9, offered his own extravaganza of dance, funk and flash on New York’s biggest stage.
The occasion was a sold-out Sly & the Family Stone concert in front of more than 20,000 fans, and the centerpiece was Mr. Stone’s wedding to Kathy Silva — a gold and black display of fabulosity. The bride and groom (and the whole wedding party, band included) wore coordinated Halston looks. Mr. Stone wore a gleaming cape and jumpsuit, the waist cinched with a big gold belt buckle, so he looked like a cross between a disco superhero and a sci-fi lord come lightly down to earth. Behind them, a dozen models in black dresses carried gold palm fronds.
It was, The New Yorker declared, “the biggest event this year.”
It was also seven years after Mr. Stone arrived on the music scene promising “A Whole New Thing,” and boy, had he delivered. He introduced not just a whole new sound but a whole new kind of style to the stage. Like his music, it crossed genre, race, gender and audience, offering unity in a psychedelic stew of fringe, rhinestones and lamé that was sometimes celebratory and sometimes chaotic, often outrageous, but almost always impossible to forget — whether it was on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or the Woodstock stage.
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