Happy Birthday, George Clinton, 85 today!

NYC 1993. Pic Grant Fleming

PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC - THE MOTHERSHIP

It’s late 1976 and George Clinton’s small army of singers and players, sporting a dazzling array of exotic space costumes and outsize nappies, are thundering through the scorching funk-rock hybrid that recently reached an artistic peak on Mothership Connection and The Clones Of Dr Funkenstein. Leading the action in long blond wig, Clinton the cosmic pimp is gesticulating and testifying like a street corner preacher turned intergalactic ringmaster, dirtying up nursery rhymes and leading chants of “Shit, goddamn, get off your ass and jam” at the planet’s biggest party, attended by 20,000 guests of all stripes and colours.

The lights dim and Clinton disappears as the incessant groove eases to choral singalong “swing down sweet chariot and let me ride”, stoking anticipation for the approaching big moment. Gazing at the heavens, singer Glenn Goins announces, “I think I hear the Mothership coming, I think I see the Mothership coming” as the band stops playing and drop to their knees in genuflection as flashing lights hover over the cavernous arena, momentarily misled by a mini-mothership arcing from the rear of the hall. Finally, in a senses-blasting barrage of deafening noise, billowing smoke, flaming sparks and flashing lights, the gargantuan silver Mothership descends onto the stage.

The crowning moment is its hatch opening to reveal Clinton, standing regally as Dr Funkenstein; a vision in white with wig, cane, huge feathered hat and floor-length ermine coat, swaggering and pimp-rolling down the steps as the band launches into the next call-and-response killer groove.

The mid-70s had seen theatrics in rock balloon into extravagant presentations that, for various reasons, often failed to transcend indulgent novelty status and achieve any desired dramatic effect. The Stones’ giant tulip-todger was poleaxed by poor sound, Bowie’s Hunger City stood cold and imposing as its coked-up single resident and ZZ Top found themselves dwarfed by a Texas-shaped stage being dumped on by perplexed cattle. It took Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic to top everyone by landing a colossal mothership on arena stages across America through 1976-77’s P-Funk Earth Tour. Mercilessly ensnaring the white rock hordes, this extra-terrestrial Mardi Gras became one of that decade’s biggest box-office draws and established Parliament-Funkadelic as one of the biggest bands in the US, their riotous funk-rock mutant delivering such an impact on music its shockwaves are still felt today, from rock to hiphop.

No black band had ever been granted such big budget opportunity, Casablanca Records’ backing partly enabled by the success of label-mates Kiss’s Alive album. Clinton took it and ran as his mission to unite late 60s hard rock he loved with the soul and funk he was grounded in came to life like a blaxploitation film on funky Broadway and struck a huge chord with the masses.

Clinton’s rise from struggling songwriter to galactic funk overlord began 50 years ago. Influenced by Hendrix’s acid-drenched virtuosity, James Brown’s primal funk, Cream’s power-riffing and Sly Stone’s multi-racial uproar, Funkadelic mixed R&B, gospel, Motown and Beatles studio experimentation to forge their humping mix of high-energy rock, astral guitar solos and sweaty groove chorales, teleporting ghetto life in war-torn America to a hallucinogenic parallel world. Or as George put it, “I took all the different things and threw the shit together.”

The Mothership was a triumphant culmination of elements, individuals and experiences that started with the original Parliaments relocating from New Jersey to riot-torn ‘67 Detroit, a suitably anarchic warzone to blossom in. Sharing bills with the MC5 and Stooges, they built a reputation for untamed, orgiastic live shows, further liberated by discovering LSD. Then Funkadelic’s 1970 debut album spread its lysergic funk-rock virus in the underground water supply, continuing Hendrix’s tragically-curtailed space mission as they demolished racial barriers with the live onslaught and albums that, however surreal, presented role models and self-contained idealogies for beleaguered black communities while attracting white audiences as the craziest, hardest-rocking band on the planet.

After the mind-blowing Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain, Clinton created 1972’s America Eats Its Young, his ambitious double album masterpiece that saw him take production reins as the original Funkadelic splintered in drug-addled disarray. In came bassist William ‘Bootsy’ Collins and brother Phelps (’Catfish’), who’d left James Brown after propelling milestones such as ‘Sex Machine’.

“I took that groove I got from James to Parliament-Funkadelic,” remembered Bootsy. “You could take that line and add fuzz, aeroplanes and stretch it! George already had the craziness going. All he needed was a serious groove. That was my contribution: bringing over that groove. The P-Funk was just being born then. George and me was mixing our chemistries together and it just started to work. Some of the craziest stuff happened with George. We fed off each other so much it was like a right and a left arm. It was always a natural thing. We didn’t know what we was doin’; we was just doin’ it.”

The double-album marked Clinton’s coming of age in the studio, moulding its complex ghetto prog. “That album was really a test to see if I could do it straight after all that acid,” he told this writer. “All the ones before that I did on acid. I wanted to see if I could make any kind of sense!”

It was time to take P-Funk to the next level, 1973’s Cosmic Slop Clinton’s first stab at being radio-friendly with shorter songs. He knew he had to up his game to tap into the mainstream, so recalled Parliament, last heard three years earlier on Osmium. He developed P-Funk as a code of life, even a cult, with hardcore followers calling themselves “maggots”, “clones” or “funkateers”, and words previously used negatively, like “funky”, “stupid”, “nasty” and “bad”, became hip and cool. Still approaching P-Funk with surreal ghetto humour, Clinton was really propagating a 70s continuation of Black Power, then remanifesting in blaxploitation films, but weighted with enough unfettered fun and killer rock ‘n’ roll to continue seducing white rock audiences.

He needed a new record company to make it happen. Enter old friend Neil Bogart, key figure in the 60s bubblegum pop explosion who enjoyed huge success with Ohio Express and 1910 Fruitgum Company and had started Casablanca Records. Bogart’s first signing was New York glam hopefuls Kiss, who struggled with early albums but gaining popularity with their pyrotechnic stage show. Clinton felt Casablanca would be a good home for the expansive concepts trapezing around his brain as they fit Bogart’s raging ambition to hit mass markets.