Over the years since 1967 when his barbershop-based do-wop group the Parliaments (named after the members’ favorite cigarette) had a Top Ten hit with “Testify,” George Clinton has worn many hats on top of his signature neon-colored dreadlocks. In the early ’70s he formed the collective of musicians and freaks known as Parliament/Funkadelic. The hopelessly entangled groups which both relied on the genius of core members Eddie Hazel, Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins, fused R&B, jazz, funk and rock ‘n’ roll while dousing the whole funky fray with splashes of the burgeoning psychedelic movement. Clinton and family continued to break new ground throughout the ’70s chalking up 40 hit R&B singles (including three number ones) and recording three platinum albums. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine that had ruled black music in the ’70s splintered in the next decade largely due to legal issues resulting from recording under several different names myriad labels, but the bop gun was far from out of ammunition. Clinton then formed George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars with original members of Parliament/ Funkadelic in addition to a more than a few fresh faces. The dawn of the ’90s would prove to shine some much overdue light on Clinton and his influence on popular music through the explosion of hip-hop and alternative rock. Hip-hop giants like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, De La Soul and countless others began to rampantly sample Parliament/Funkadelic on their albums, hailing Clinton as the chief architect of hip-hop. At the same time, rock and punk bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus and Fishbone looked up to Clinton as their direct ancestor crediting him with the blending of funk and psychedelic rock which was responsible for the birth of their own unique sounds. Today Clinton continues to create, producing albums for numerous clients. His influence on today’s music cannot be overestimated and his humble, down to earth (or rather down to Mars) attitude make him one of the most creative and respected figures in the music world today and certainly, the undisputed Captain of the Mothership.
Tell me about the transformation from what you were doing in the Parliaments, your originaldo-wop group, to what you were doing with the insanity of Funkadelic.
The first time it started really was when we played with Vanilla Fudge up in Massachusetts or Connecticut or one of those places and we had to use Vanilla Fudge’s equipment and of course they had the big Marshalls [amplifiers] and things, and we realized that this was what was giving them that big psychedelic sound and so we went on to Boston and bought every kind of psychedelic costumes we could find ’cause we was tired of the suits anyway. ’Cause we couldn’t keep ’em all clean at the same time. We went to the costume store and bought all kinda stuff, went to Manny’s [Boston area music store] and got a whole bunch of amps. We musta had 15 amps on the stage for three musicians [laughs] and so we was extra loud and it changed the whole image of the Parliaments.
So it was that fast, one gig to the next almost?
Yeah, overnight really! They didn’t want us to play our gig at the Sugar Shack in Boston ’cause we didn’t look like our picture. They thought they was gettin’ the suits! But I told ’em if they let us play, and if it didn’t work all they had to do was give us expenses back home. We were only supposed to play two nights there but we ended up playin’ a whole week and it sold out pretty much every night. Then we was back there about every two months and then did it all up and down the east coast.
So then y’all were into the whole psychedelic thing before you ever went to the west coast?
Oh yeah! By the time we got to the West Coast we was deep into Funkadelic.
That same thing happened on the West Coast too even where we showed up and the club owners didn’t know what was up.
Living in New Orleans we hear the word “funk” about 20 times a day. Do you remember where you first heard the word or where it actually originated?
Well, a lot of blues guys would use it, a lot of jazz guys would use it. I mean, when they would improvise they would say it was real funky, and then when the blues guys would sit in and they would just tell ’em the key and they would just start playin’ that was thought of as like a funky attitude. Ya know, the jazz musicians would play real tight to a certain point and then they’d let go and get funky, and just improvise and go on the strength of, um…the force [laughs]. Gospel was the same way, they didn’t use the word “funk” as much but… I also always heard the word in terms of sweat or odor but to me it was all the same, it was more of a feeling really. And we [Parliament/Funkadelic] set out to make funk a positive force even though we knew there wasn’t much respect for it musically because it implied vamping and bein’ loose and not sophisticated. But we had also seen rock ‘n’ roll go through that same procedure.
Were you and the rest of the Parliament/ Funkadelic collective influenced by New Orleans funk?
Yeah! I mean to us the only funk band around was the Meters. The New Orleans stuff is really what we based the real stanky funk stuff on. Like “Get Out My Life Woman”—all that stuff, man. All that stuff we pretty much based the funk on. ’Cause musically it was so close to Motown most people don’t realize how close that beat is to Motown. ’Cause Motown came with such good pop melody that it’s hard to realize how funky they were. They were some of the first ones to use electric bass on their records.
All that is essentially due to the Funk Brothers (Motown Records’ house band, responsible for the music on nearly every Motown hit) isn’t it?
Yeah man, that’s what I’m sayin’ [laughs]. They was the Funk Brothers and people used to call us the young Funk Brothers [laughs]. So then we just added the “-delic” to it, you know.
Parliament/Funkadelic had a string of hits in the ’70s and then in the ’80s “funk” became sort of a dirty word, commercially. Why do you think that happened?
I mean it was so popular in the ’70s that it just got too popular. And plus nobody wanted to be a funk band ’cause you didn’t get no money from the record companies, you got less than an R&B budget if you had the funk label on you.
Photo: george2.jpg
Caption: “I mean to us the only funk band around was the Meters.”
But then in the ’90s funk became popular again…
Yeah around the time when I did the Red Hot Chili Peppers record [Freaky Styley] it was time for the funk to become to pop culture what rock ‘n roll and the blues had become before it. Like with what happened with Hendrix, I mean, nobody gave Muddy Waters and Lightnin’ Hopkins the respect that they gave Jimi when they were playin’ basically the same thing. I guess if they’d had some Marshalls it might’ve been different though [laughs]. The blues is really the parent of all of it. Our intention though was to just be around when the funk came back around.
It really came back around for you with hip-hop.
Funk is the DNA of hip-hop. We knew funk would come back around again but for a while we thought it would be a British thing but the Chili Peppers were the ones that said ‘What makes you think it’s not gonna be an American group?’ [laughs] Hip-hop came along with the sampling and everything and we had done the album The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein but that was more cloning than we ever expected! [laughs] Ice Cube used to call himself one of our clones. Then all the bands who tried not to be funk in the ’80s were wishin’ they had been funk then or wanna be funk now. But I refuse to do old school concepts because that plays into the hand of how they can get rid of you when they done exploitin’ you as an oldie but goodie.
Do you see the disposable nature of artists in the eyes of record companies as a detriment to making quality music?
Right, I mean, there’s so many things going against the industry now and they’ve tightened up the Top 40 list so much tighter now that it’s gonna force ’em [artists] to do what rock ‘n’ roll and hip-hop did and that’s to sell it out of the trunk of their cars. And kids will buy records like that. Like I said it all comes back around. The internet will help a lot too. Pretty soon you will be able to get a record right from the group to yourself through downloading.
So you think that will be a good thing?
Oh yeah, its gonna be a good thing without a doubt.
How do you feel the level of sophistication of the technology used to make music will affect it in the near future?
I mean they are sophisticated to the point now where they can play jazz with samples and turntables. Then they got groups where they put two and three guys together on turntables.
Kid Koala uses three turntables and does jazz type solos with the sound of a trombone for instance.
Yeah man! I heard of him. I dig anything that’s new, man! I dig anything that’s new and that’s the funkiest you can get when you start making music with other people’s music and have it come out to be totally different music! We been puttin’ out records with music from rehearsals, live shows or whatever for that specific purpose and kids can do it at home at their own parties. ’Cause with computers you can do it easy.
