At first glimpse, the only thing that the Stone Roses and Sly and the Family Stone have in common is the word "stone." But both bands offer a peculiar cautionary tale of skyrocketing success followed by spiraling failure and seclusion.

Two compelling new books in the music-criticism 33 1/3 series take on these bands' stories, and of their hits and missed potential. Alex Green's The Stone Roses looks at that British band's 1989 breakthrough debut CD, and the inevitable downfall that arrogance and complacency brought, while Miles Marshall Lewis takes on Sly and the Family Stone's 1971 swamp-funk magnum opus, There's A Riot Goin' On. You wouldn't necessarily think to link the Roses' psychedelic guitar-rock and Sly's funky groove, but their stories have strong parallels.

Of the two, Sly and the Family Stone have indisputably left a larger impact on American music. Party anthems like "Dance to the Music," "Stand!" and "Everyday People" sound as fresh and fun as they did when they were recorded nearly 40 years ago. The integrated rock/funk/soul of the band was pioneering, and as its headmaster and sonic king, Sly Stone seemed poised to take over the world.

Then, in 1971, There's A Riot Goin' On came out. It was unlike anything the band had done before – menacing, simmering, often murky, lyrics barely audible, funky yet in a kinda depressed way. It's the hangover after the party, 3 a.m. and coming down hard. Lewis, in his sharp little tome, aims to clear up some of the myths around Riot, digging into the band's tumultuous history. It's a leisurely approach — his analysis of the album proper doesn't hit until halfway through the book, and a curious dialogue-driven opening chapter did little for me -- but Lewis has a lot of smart stuff to say about Sly's Riot daze.

Riot was recorded in a coke-bleached haze. "There was no real separation between life and drugs," one of the band's acquaintances recalls. The band's huge success left Sly's fans wondering where he'd go from there. Fans have called Riot a depressed look at the American dream 1971, post-Martin Luther King's death, at the height of the Nixon years -- but Lewis eschews delving too hard into that kind of analysis; "The mood is the thing," he writes.

And with deft narrative skills he meditates on the melancholy drift of the album. It's a shame, though, that the end of Lewis's book feels a bit rushed, where the story of Sly's reclusive later years is brushed over in a few pages. "Sly's post-'Riot' decline isn't pretty at all," he writes.