We were among the first news outlets to report on Sly Stone's disastrous gig at this year's Coachella festival:

Sly would sing a few bars of the classics (“Stand,” “Family Affair”) but he'd soon stop and start asking what time it was and how long he had to stay onstage to get paid. He also shared with the audience some of his current legal troubles (at length) and berated his band, a random assortment of instrumentalists decked out in absurd outfits right out of a Eugene Ionesco surrealist drama.

But nothing was more surreal than the spectacle of grown people pretending everything was ok and not removing poor Sly from the stage.

Well, that part about “sharing with the audience some of his current legal troubles (at length)” has come back to haunt the troubled entertainer.

On Tuesday Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney denied a motion by Sly's lawyers to dismiss his former manager's claim that the musician had implied he was a thief during his rambling onstage monologue.

According to Associated Press, Sly said the following at Coachella:

Fuck slander. The white boy's name is Jerry Goldstein. He's part of it. What he did was he stole so much money; at the same time, I made so much money that I didn't know I was being stolen from.

(We do recall him saying something like this, though not the precise words.)

Sly and a previous manager sued Goldstein over his management practices and Goldstein's countersuit included a defamation claim based on the Coachella speech. The judge allowed the claim to be included in the countersuit.

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