Behind it all was Sly Stone, the visionary who died Monday at 82 after a long battle with the lung disease COPD. He wrote, produced and arranged the music, winning acclaim as the author of invigorating anthems and an inventor of new,

By November of the same year, Sly Stone seemed to pose an answer: “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.” At the time that album was released, Stone, who died this week, at the age of eighty-two, was facing a make-or-break career inflection point.