George Clinton revolutionized funk music with Parliament Funkadelic, whose theatrical, sci-fi, performance art has captivated audiences worldwide for over five decades. P-Funk’s blend of psychedelic rock and deep, repetitive funk grooves helped bridge the R&B and rock worlds in the ‘70s along with acts like Sly and The Family Stone.
Known as Dr. Funkenstein, George Clinton orchestrated multiple solo acts under the P-Funk umbrella. By the ‘80s, Clinton was also charting as a solo artist with hits like “Atomic Dog,” all of which would later lay the groundwork for hip-hop’s classic G-Funk era.
On today’s episode Rick Rubin talks to George Clinton on Zoom about the origins of his original vocal group, The Parliaments. George also reminisces about the time he dared James Brown to do the splits 18 times in a row while on a music industry panel with Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic songs HERE.
Pushkin. I want to let you know that Rick has a new podcast called Tetragrammaton. After about four to five years of recording Broken Record, Rick decided he wanted to talk to him more than just musicians, So on his new podcast, he'll be talking to actors, directors, wrestlers, business people, anyone that Rick finds interesting. So make sure to subscribe to Tetragrammaton wherever you listen to podcasts. George Clinton forever changed music with Parliament Funkadelic, whose theatrical sci fi performance art has captivated audiences worldwide for over five decades and influenced a range of artists from Prince to the Chili Peppers to Doctor Dre. P. Funk's blend of psychedelic rock and deep, repetitive, unfolding funk grooves helped bridge the R and B and rock worlds in the seventies, along with acts like Slying the Family Stone, known for multiple characters like Doctor Funkenstein, George Clinton orchestrated multiple solo acts under the p funk umbrella, and by the eighties was charting with solo hits himself like Atomic Dog, all of which would lay the groundwork for hip hop's classic g funk Era and beyond. On today's episode, Rick Rubin talks to George Clinton on Zoom about the origins of the original vocal group, the Parliaments, and the time George was on a panel with James Brown and dared the godfather of funkensole himself to do the splits eighteen times. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. In true George Clinton fashion, he funked up his recording. But you know it's all good because we want the funk anyway. So here's Rick Rubin with George Clinton. It's a pleasure to see you, sir. Been a minute. Say yeah, I love your hat. By the way, Oh yeah, I have to keep don't know. But there was the hair before I got don't occupied at all. I like it. I watched a video of you from nineteen either from nineteen sixty nine or nineteen seventy, and everybody in the group had the best hots. You weren't wearing a hot everybody else had a hot. You had a mohawk. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. I always try to do so weird with the hair. You know. I was a barber I didn't know that. Tell me about your life before music, Oh gay Man, nineteen fifty six, we started the group, okay, thirteen years old. We started the group because of you know, like Frankie Lyman and the teenages, you know what, the foostball and love dwop was the main music. Yeah, dua was the music in New Jersey, and so I started a group and one of the first things you had to do in the group in those days was getta do you know you're here with the waves in it. We couldn't go to the barbershop, didn't get done because it's cost too much. So we learned to do each other's head. So while we was learning to sing in duop right up in the fifteen nineteen fifty nine, were working in the barbershop, singing at the Saint and rehearsing in the barbershop the Miracles smoking, the miracles come out, you know, the motown thing come out. So that was our destination from then on to be on Motown, singing duop and doing each other's head looking like the Temptations. We did exactly that from fifteen nine to like sixty six. When we got our first hit record, I just want to Testify incredible in Detroit, you know, after working for Motown, you know, Joe Bett most of that time, you know, as a writer, we weren't signed to you know, we never got a record out on the label. We were signed to the label for a minute, but we didn't get a record out. But the competition right down the street, Golden World from Motown. I got a job there and I recorded I Just want to Testify, and that became the hit of Detroit, you know, and we were like the competition for a minute, but we immediately changed, I don't think because it was too late. By then, the European invasion was happening, you know, it was, and the rollings on Beatles and led Zeppelins and all of that was happening. So we realized then because we had a real good backup band, which was like our little brothers, Eddie Hazel, Billy Nelson, your Tiki Fullwood, Tyle Ross and Bernie Warrell. But those were the first ones that we did for years they were called Funkadelic, But before Funkadelic, it was the Parliament's that star it in New Jersey, right, Because I think of you as Detroit, I don't think of you as New Jersey. When did you make the move? No, it started in New Jersey in the barbershop in New Jersey while I was doing these other that's when it started. At let's talk more about duop. I never made the connection because you said you did each other's hair. It's the name duop. Does it come from the dude? Is that why it's called duop? No, it was a dude, duop, dude, dude, But just so happened the dudes. You know, getting your head done was what it was called, getting the dude. So it did come close to that, but you related it together. That was the style. Remember that King Cole and his whole Bobby Sugar, Ray Robinson, those waves. That was the current style back in those days. So you if you're gonna go into the Apollo, you better have had to have a dude. You know, everybody was cool. You know on Friday, even you got that dude, your head was laid. And that was the style. When we think of a barbershop quartet, now you go, that's essentially duop. Even the gospel versions of that was basically the background singers singing the things that the bass player would play with the drummer. You know what I'm saying. They were singing the musical parts, who do up? Who do up? They would do the harmonies and singing the instrument parts, and that was basically duop. You know, you had a lot of acapellas that didn't even use music at all. You know, like if you ever remember Take six, Yeah, remember there was like experts on singing all the party, Bobby mcphern, that's basically I mean, you take the essence of du wop and making it all the way into jazz. But yeah, that's what duop basically was. We were singing in the barber shop. That's when we rehearsed that. In New Jersey. Was it always four or five in the duop group or it didn't have to be that, It didn't have to be that. But if five was basically saying that, then you got like the impressions they went. They took it to the three. You know, you had Gladys Knight and the Pips, who was four, but the three background was like a group by themselves, even though that he was backing her up, they were like another whole group. Did they come out of duop? Gladys Night, Yes, oh they then first things would have been like it was on Fury Records, would have been like it's in that sixty Yeah. So in the duop it was still happening. Yes, you know, Motown just slicked it up a little bit. It was still duop, you know, the tempts and all that, but they just slicked it up, you know, with the strings in the instrumentation. Motown took due up to the next level. What was the first duop do we know? No, that would have been in the forties. That would have been in the forties, I mean the ink spots, you know. Lewis Jordan would have been one of my favorite of that era that his was like du wop big band like count basically in Duke Ellington all that. Lewis Jordan was like the funk band of that era and they did a lot of duop type stuff. But do but dup. I think of duop as a vocal group. I don't think of the band as part of duop, Like the band is a backing band and the group are the singers. Yeah, but they kind of like did both of that. Lewis Jordan kind of like did like we did in Parliament Funkadelic. Yeah, they had the singing and the big the band part like U Ta. Sun Rock did duop. Most people don't know it he did before he went out of space. I didn't know that. There's a collection of Sunrone records out of Chicago where he was doing basic duop groups. You know when the Deals first started. Yeah, they were. They were like big in fifty four, the DALs over the Night and that stuff. They redid it in the seventies, but they were like one of the groups around when we was still around seventies that we compared our stuffs too, because we had both been there a long time. Let's talk about what a big doop group was, because now when we think of what a big group is in music, it's different today than it was then. What would be a big doop group? How many people would they get to play too? What would that be like? Tell me okay your eyes aspirations. Basically it was Cocavanna or the Vegas. That's all they thought about at that point, and you would have gotten like the Platters, Flamingos, Moolows I mean, Franky Lamon and teenagers. They they went away to like Michael Jackson. They got to that level international and they were a group. They didn't even have festivals then, so it was big. It was a big club. Basically, it was as big as it god and that was cool. We were probably ourselves in slash Stones, probably the first one that started playing to you know, black bands. They started playing to the arenas like the Soldiers Field and things, you know, and that would have been over into the seventies, but we started in the sixties along with the Ted Nude, Amboy Dudes, iggy Pop. We all was from Detroit with the same agent. So we played festivals in anne Arbor in Toronto, in places like that, you know, of the rock and roll side, you know. We was called the Bad Boys of anne Arbor at one time Funkadelic when we put out Free Your Mind and ass would follow up. Mama went in Maggot Brain. Basically when Maggot Brain came out, we played all the rock festivals. Why did you move to Detroit Motown? I see. The thing was was to get out there to record with the Motown sound you know musicians, And we went out there and I started writing with one of the competitive companies, which Motown bought out. Later, I started writing for them, and they did the Edwin Stars and you know, Dall Banks, stuff like that in parliaments, the parliaments still, you know, we did first records with them, and that's where we got our first hit. But that the time we got to Detroit, you moved out to want to join Motown. Yes, become part of that situation, which I see the same way people see hip hop today. That's the way it was to be at Motown. I tell you what, I'm going back and forth to Detroit. You know. I go to Detroit, do the week Monday to Friday. I go back to New Jersey and I'm working to barbershop Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and I'm and I go back to Detroit, you know, to write and stuff with Motown. I do that for a year and a half a thing, and then we get a hip record. I do the last record that I do for the Golden World. This guy's getting ready to sell the company to Motown. I do the last record for them, and I leave and go back to the barber shop. I'm there two weeks before the record comes out on the biggest station in the country, which was ckl W and w ABC in New York and I had no idea it was coming out. And when everybody started hearing on radio saying your record is out, and that was the I want to testify, which became the smashup that you know, sixty seven along with Beetles, um Geergeant, Jimmy Hendrix, the Cream and those was one imprinted in my brain from then on when that became a hit, and those were the records that came out with it, you know. And right after that, sly Stone came out. Before we left Plainfield, his manager got to Dave Kaepolick, that was his manager, told us that, you know, we were good, but he had a group called Sliding the family. Stone was blah blah blah blah, and I had to brighten up because we were too dark, you know, in our concepts, and he was actually I managed for a minute. We was on Stone Records with Dave Catholick managed for a minute and then Slat broke big. We went to Detroit. We had when we had that the hit single out, but we went separate ways for a minute because years get to that later. So I want to ask you about the commuting between New Jersey and Detroit for getting Motown for a minute. How different was just your experience of life in those two places or was it the same? And how would you say they were different worlds? Like this, I work in the barbershop in New Jersey, so you're dealing with New Harlem and they're like the first one that was doing those processes. Not the first, but the one that what we call elevated to where we were looking smooth and soft and natural and really fly as opposed to it's still being done and being hard and you know, glue to your head. So that was my only way of looking at it. There was lots of what they called players in Detroit, Cleveland. They was like preoccupied with that former lifestyle New York, New Jersey though we thought we was cooler with that lifestyle, same lifestyle, but just thought you was cooler in it. So I had to analyze going back and forth to you know, the players in Detroit and the players in the barbish chops around New Jersey who subdued it a little bit, and um you did to deal with what's called it abducing a quarter being the desired car as opposed to um El Dorado or Mercedes. You know what I'm saying being the car of choice. But Motown was there, which made the difference. You know, everything at Motown in my head was the who is in the world. No matter what, we just we just had to change their hairstyles. Yes, could Motown have happened to anywhere else? Or do you think that the nature of Detroit had something to do with Motown blossoming? I think it has something to do, you know, with the city in that whole factory car company thing, you know, and it's just been that place. When Chicago started like that, they just didn't get one place to zone in like Motown did. Like a lot of the records came out of Chicago, but they were different labels, And the same thing could have happened in Minneapolis when prison all of them were together. It's always been how do you keep it together? Because the industry aint going to let you keep it together. You know, the main thing is to break it up and get whoever's big, and everybody want to be big, so it's you know, kind of easier to get the good people and giving them some money and they lead before you get to a Motown guy. Motown was magic. It was like so magic. The particular band, you think of it like all the musicians, the one that played on it was unbelievable because then all those singers was like one big fan. That was like the first Motown the review were all those superstars was on the same buses. It's like, I don't know. It was like college. Yeah, everybody sharing information back and forth. And yeah, I mean and at that particular time, which was the sixties, school was happening, College was happening. A lot of kids in college was sharing knowledge all over the planet. We have to pause for a quick break here, but then we'll be back with more from Rick Rubin and George Clinton. We're back with Rick Rubin's conversation with George Clinton. It's interesting that your first song was Testify. Testify as is a word that I associate with church. Was there a spiritual component for music for you? From the beginning, I was around um barbershop a group called the Gospel Clefts. They rehearsed there and to see the show in the vibe that they would put on was unbelievable. It was like the coasters in church, and that that always let me know that that was the root of all the music, no matter what the tone was that was the root. So that vibe you know rap from to get to God Up was always the vibe of you know, church like I can remember the Staple singers or Mahellia Jackson that stuff when you know, waking up the breakfast too, and it sounds like hit records to this day when I go to Texas, all the all the bands, all the funk bands is in Texas and church. Yeah, all the best players, all the best musicians, absolutely, yeah, the best. So in the Detroit scene, how was the Motown world and the Detroit rock world part of the same thing when you were there, did you feel like it was all part of one thing or did it feel like the Motown thing is really separate from like the Ted Nugents and the and the Iggy's. When we got that funk and Testifi was out, we bridged that one instantly because Motown was already like a Motown played with those groups on shoulder with them, but we were immediately a funk psychedelic band, So it changed immediately at first. By the time Ted Nugent in Iggy Pop MC five, yeah, you know, it was merging right there. Would everyone play at the same clubs like with someone on Motown and MC five play at the same venue we did. We played with MC five and all of them, and they were separate R and B venues. Oh yeah, except for like the Rooster, tell you that's where pop and R and B played, The Fox, Pop in RB played. You know, most of those kind of places. The theater is everybody played there. What would you call the first funk record from anybody? Oh god, it would be, but it would have to be one of those blues things that you know it's in forties. Those are basically punk records, most of them. I look at, uh, you know the New Orleans stuff, you know, the Motown early records, James Jamison, those basslines, everything. They just had so much string on top that it was music for young America. That was the name. That was their theme. Their music, if you the basic rhythm tracks, was the funkiest thing that there was. That's what made us. That's who called us the Funk Brothers. They called us the Young Funk Brothers. You know, I'm backup band, and that's why we named it funka Deli. They had a New Orleans vibe on it, but Motown had its own chord changes with it. But basically everything they did, you know, was seriously funky pop. Nobody identified it with funk because we came along. We did it. Basically, we went to real raw funk, the simple lines, chants and extremely you know slow. What's the first time you were ever aware of James Brown? Please please and try me those two. I mean, as you know, they were like blues songs, but you see, you can feel the vibe in it that it was dead. But when he started doing Papa Gotta Ran New Bag, from that point on it was something else. You know, That's when you start seeing bands pop up that imitate him. You know, once they got to that point, he was like he was like a TikTok artist. Every city you go to, you can find a band that could perfect his show so good that they could actually substitute us. I mean, you know, I mean, I mean I knew some band it was more James Brown than James Brown. But the work that they had to put in to get those horn precision. I mean, you watch May She'll do it with us, You watch him do it with Prince Fred did the same thing. But the account basic they all bootsy, I mean, came our whole style. You know, from the Funk Funkadelic, like we were doing Funk first to the Parliament new stuff when we did Chocolate City up for the downstroke than Mothership and all of that, and it was still he brought the hornie horns, you know. Then with me and Bernie Warrell being a classically trained keyboardist, was able to have them played horn parts but with that same kind of precision. So it was like we had two or three generations of styles, you know, the Jimmy Hendricks, the James Brown, the Motown in Parliament funk up all at one time, you know, And that's what we were having, like ten albums out at one in a year with all the of the same people. Yeah, I always wanted to know about why, why the different band names and why the different labels, How did that happen? And was it on purpose? And tell me about it. It was the only way to get everybody, says about everybody wanted to be upfront start, So whoever was the gotta hit, that's who we all become. We was a backup band for the ads and you know, saying it didn't matter at the time, we realized that it was hard from one act to survive after you know, seeing you know, Motown get to its peak, we realized we had to have them on different labels and know that where you could accommodate all the new acts that was coming up behind us that we had, We had loads more in a way. You did what basically how the Funk Brothers was the root of all of the Motown. You did your own version of that, but instead of building a label, you had artists at all the different labels. Yeah, you know like Wotan did it right after us. Yes, and they stayed together as a group and was all on the thing. That was what we would you know, telling do had anyone done that before? You? Not? Not that many, I tell you, Phil Specter did. Remember he had that Darlene love song on everybody's record, and they had all the groups, the Crystals, you know, all the Royal raw teams and and Ike and Tina did it a little bit, remember that I gets in Ike and Tina. Yeah, they didn't, but we just spreaded it out a lot further because that's you them was was starred themselves as you know as the Jabs. We named him the Horny Horns, and they were already their own stars. So it was easy and Bootsy was Bootsy, so we made him into Bootzilla. We made him an instant star right from the get go. You know in Parliament Funk that we had built our reputation as the psychedelic band. So it was when the mother Ship happened. It was like we had a ship with all these acts on the The backup girls would become the Parletts and the brides. Was there a particular their inspiration for going psychedelic or was it more the whole movement or were there any like key artists were like, we need to do something more like this. We had a friend that worked with us, Jimmy Miller. He was the producer the Rolling Stones. Eventually we used to practice out Due our thing and we recorded some records with him and a guy named Jimmy Fallon, And just as we got our first record together, we gave it to New to Brunswick Records. They released the demo We Game on Jackie Wilson. He went on to do a group called Spencer Davis give Me Some Loving even on the Due Traffic. Stevie. Now this was like my partner. We wrote together and I saw what they had did with with Spencer Davis, give me some loving and I'm a man, and I realized that's where it was going, that that, you know, rock and roll European type of thing. Then Jimmy's records came out. You know, we knew Jimmy Jamie in the Flames, you know, with King Curtis, and you know you knew him as a gut top where that did tricks play. He came out with all you experience that wouldn't let me know we had to do something like that. And the edit was about fifteen years old and he was experimented with to get to be just He could play blues to death, so it was easy for him to get the gadgets and do it. Were you ever aware of Arthur Lee and Love at any point? Yep? That was Slides heroes really, yeah, that was his heroes, the Love Family. Yeah, yeah, that was Slide. He put me onto them. What's the first time you got to meet and see Slide? The first time? Like I told the manager, David Kaeperlick was his manager and our manager. He invited me to see Slide in the East Village and how was it? It was through that place away? Plus of all you know, at that time, you know, you tripping your ass off. You know, he played that and told that place down, and I'm trying to think he played another club that same weekend and it was unbelievable. He told that place up. That sounds great. I mean, that's I think he had. It was a dance to the music out that was, you know, and that simple song. When that came out, it was all over. For all the different scenes that you've seen. So you've you've witnessed the dwop scene, you witnessed the birth of the funk scene, You've witnessed the birth of g funk. He've witnessed the birth of hip hop before. For that, would you say that there's a similarity between these things that happen or is each one of them really different? It's a similarity. It's a similarity. You know. It gets to that point where it peaqus and it's people. Somebody started changing it and you don't think it's the music at first, but then sudden it takes over. It becomes the new music, and it works, it becomes the thing, and a new one comes along. Whenever I hear something like PA, you know that was a do out play and when you hear people explaining about what that ain't music but you're talking about And then then you get to a few years later it's the same thing. Yeah, it all gets to a point of sophistication that the kids have to take over again and bring it back to elementary so you can go somewhere else. You know, it gets to that peak and everybody gets sophisticated and get jazzy or whatever the off our guard thing is. And then some kids will come along and do something so dumb, get get on your nerve, but it becomes the new ship that you if you want to stay around, you better pick them on how they're doing it. It makes it fun again. It's like it gets fun again. It makes it fun again. You know, whenever I hear somebody that, like I said, you know, my nerve for whatever reason, if it get on the good enough, I know it's for the good. I know I need to pay attention. Did you ever get into go Go DC go go? Oh my god, yeah, I give a good so on. One of the first things chuck them Chuck Browning and the soul searches. One of the first things they did was I don't care about the cold baby, when You're hot, You're too much, when you hut, You're hut. That was from one of our songs called Up for the Downstream. Yeah, I know that record. I used to DJ that record all the time. That was the That was the birth of their version of the Go Go. Then they used to vamp on that part and our drummer, Ticky Food, we used to play with them and nothing I can said it was. It was the Soul Searchers, you know, at that time, and they did that group with everything after that. Yeah, they did everything with that beat after that worked so thoroughly they could do. We used to do the same thing with the group Mama with the Whoa Hi, Hey, whoa Hi. We did that for the entire show, like doing the early seventies. All our songs would be in that beat and we just changed the melody of the lyrics and the beat of the lick, but the pocket would stayed the same. We did that and it sound like we did one song all night with different themes than it. It sounds great though, because it creates this like hypnosis you get. The pocket just keeps getting deeper and deeper and it turns into something else, you know, even without changing, it turns into something else without changing. Well, James Brown could do that forever. But one of the best was Failor Couter see Failer from Nigeria. They play in the morning to the evening and it'd be that same pose all day. But you know, I know there was something that was changing, but it was always that groove. Yeah. Instead of one nation undergroove, it's one groove over the nation, really over the planet. Now we have to take another quick break and then we'll be back with more from George Clinton. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with the legend George Clinton. Yeah, it's amazing the power of a groove. I think that's for me. That's the thing that separates funk from the music that came before it is that the music that came before it relied on the melody, relied on the words. But once once we got to the groove being the dominant element of the music where it didn't even matter if if it was a song on top, because a lot, I mean for a lot of James Brown songs, they're interchangeable. It's just the groove. Yeah, Yeah, James, James could switch from one groove to the other one so precise that you forgot about the first groove instantly. Yeah, I know. They can change timpoles and things and in one and start another one when a scene in it, but a complete different field. It was almost like a drum machine. Yeah. Matter of fact, the drum machine enhanced the grooves a lot. Once um one thing he was able to lock in on the clock. With the drum machine, you could group yours because you knew that wasn't gonna change, and you can just write everything around it, which is uh had a lot to do with a lot of what hip hop was doing. Once they was able to do that lock in those samples with those beats and you know what, it was gonna stay. But the beats per minuted and all of that. You could just do any kind of pocket over top of that, and if you got a good you know, rhythm in your voice and like somebody like say rock him, I mean he was the smooth as I know against the beats that that they lock into. Did you ever get to meet James? Oh yeah, yeah, what was he like? I never got to meet him. It was funny when I first met the Chili Peppers, James myself. Madonna was on a pound together for silverman Um New Music Seminar Music Seminar, right, and that's where the Chili Peppers said. James and I was on the panels together, and I tried to be cocky and you know, say something funny. So I say, James Brown, give me eighteen splits, and Mama goat up and did eighteen splits. Wow, and then said George Clinton, give me two. I got one of them. I couldn't get up on my nuts now that the first time, you know, Flee and Anthony and him asked me what I do a record with him? Was that a fun experience for you? Working with those guys? Oh my god, it was fun. You know. They came out to the farm and they were like really kids, you know, and I forgot what it was like to be really kids. And at the time, you know, I guess they had they a little fan club. People knew him about then already, and so I had to get them into talenting for the weekend and let him out of the weekend do our recording and let him out and then they go party in Detroit. That's great, but we had lots of fun. I think it was fleeing out, went to see a Wreatha. Wow, you know, friend of mine took us in his white roses pimp player and they they were just having the fun of their life and took us and took him to meet a Wreatha and a sister at ball And was it a concert or was it more like a regular thing where she would just get up sometimes? No? No, this was this was a contrt because she was really being and hunt at that time. In a matter of fact, her and Annie Lennox did a record during that same period of sisters doing it for themselves or something. Yeah, they did that record, matter of fact, in the same studio at the same time we were there. There was some crossover between musicians between James's band and your band. How did that? How did those things come about? Um? Boots Boots. He had been with James and they was called the house guests when we ran into him, and that was the rhythm sector, him and his brother in the rhythm section. And I guess they just left James about six months or so, and they the girls, Mallian Franklin said, just got bootsy. He looked like a funka Delhi And so she brought him around him we've met, and Danny looked definitely looked like a funka Delhi, And then we played a show and he came around hung out, and then we just got together and did a couple of that up for the Downstake album. We did some songs for that, and by the next time we get rid of to the next record, you say, Mason and Fred, Michelle and Fred had left until he called him and to do the session. They all had left. James by the time that, um, they came around. There wasn't never There wasn't no thing between me and James about that. A lot of people thought that there was some words or something. Now we actually recorded together him, Boots and myself and Gary Cooper afterwards, you know, after that came out on the Family series. But yeah, no, we never had any He's funny dude, but he was. He was mister Brown. Did you call him mister Brown? No, I'm not called him James. He was kind of scary. He thought I was crazy. Michelle told him, Joe, he think you're crazy, skinner, use it. Don't let him out the hook man. So I always always played crazy around him, you know, like a Slide would wear him out. Though Slide would pick you know, we pick out him, you know, just the hell of it. You know, I think Roger and Boots, what's calling the mister Brown? And Slide would be like, ain't called him, no, mister Brown. Let call you Henna call you mister Brown. They gonna call me mister Oh. He was a clown. That's so funny. I'm gonna tell you a funny story. This is probably I don't know. I'm gonna say eighteen or so years ago, a friend of mine came to my house and he said, I want to show you this new thing and it was YouTube. I'd never heard of YouTube. It was just in its infant see and he said, I want to show you this thing. And then the first video he showed me was Funkadelic from it seemed like even older than the thing that I said, with the hots like it was in a like a local TV station maybe in Detroit, Cleveland, Cleveland. It was unbelievable. And that was my introduction to YouTube, was that video. And it made me love YouTube like it was. It wasn't that YouTube was great. It was that I got to see this funkadelic thing that I didn't never knew existed. Yeah, that's when I was crawling around on the floor. Yeah yeah, yeah. That was in Boston. That's a Brothers or something like that. But the other one, just like that, is Upbeat in Cleveland, Ohio. It looked like it was on a TV set, but we was playing live. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. It was incredible. Yeah yeah, that was that was we actually did those kind of shows live on on regular TVs because you know, its psychedelic. You can actually get away with that, you know. And then there's another video that they came that came out years later. It was a cosmic slot. We was in Central Park, running through the tunnels in the city. You know. It was that was like we were tripping the I ass off and that they never came out to years later to you know, years after that record was out, but it's one of the first things you see on as Funkadelic when you look up on YouTube. Now, has it always been fun making music for you? Oh yeah, I mean even now dealing with my grandkids and figuring out how they do that, the new things and being a part of that with Oh yeah, that's the fun part of it. Trying to come up with some different being being involved. How did the idea for changing the song structures, because like, coming from duop, song structures were more traditional. And then when when you moved into funk, it broke free. Tell me about that, Well that was it, you know, coming from all those songwriting days of the fifties. You know, you had to write a structured song, two verses of bridge and another version out. That started changing when they started becoming having your own band, especially if you've around when Jimmy was playing, or Grateful Dead or all those groups. Was just rock and roll into the you trip it out, need to wake up and go to sleep with music playing and wake up at the same song playing. That was the whole thing of the rock and roll grooved. And then when we got back into funk from the James Brown point, you know, only one and that was back into the you know, the long pockets and Boost had a lot of changes in the songs that I would take out you don't have to record. He liked a lot of breaks, you know, but that pocket I fell in love with, and then that just became the thing, just trying to make it loop by itself, you know, get into a loop and then, like I said, when the hip hop came and could only focus on the one, you know everything, the example was in you Know one too, you know even time and no beat breaks, and so that made you really lock into the one. But you know, by the time we did something like Atomic Dog, we could go crazy around the track. Even though it was backwards, we could still It's still that group. That's like one of the hardest groups that we have, you know, it's the Atomic Dog. We just did another version on the que Dog version of Tommy Dog. It is phenomenal. Way to you see this thing, I can't wait video is crazy in some ways. Also, disco was another movement that really unified the pocket. It was the whole movement was about the pocket. The same pocket, danceable pocket again. That's where it like that like a drum machine came in and locked it one he wants to That was, you know, all of the trump music like that came in with a pocket. After that, you mean, like the disco I should like a remember Fly Robin Fly, Yeah, sil Silvil conventions that stuff like Blew Me Away, Yeah, I Feel Love, Donna Summer, Donna Summers. I mean, you know, we just with Neil at that time. So we had a thing going with with Neil, Donna, Summer's Kiss and Ourselves. Wow. You know, that was his new label. That's when he had just thought his new label, you know. And I had been knowing him since his Buddha days, so we knew we had the thing captured with him because he had the promotion and we had a spaceship and we had that pocket. Talk about how important radio was back then, well it was every radio was everything. You know, you had to go from the R and B and to cross. So when too, we were lucky. If you was in Detroit, there had been a good relationship between you know, a lot of R and B records in this label station KLW, which was in the Windsor. You know, if you got a good record in Detroit, you could get on Windsor and you had a good shot to get half of the country. Wow. So that's what Motown was doing. Everyone they put a record out and they got it going, They get it on k l W, and they was on the charts all over the country. We had a good relationship with stations myself because I went to the station with the distributor every time he took a record to to the legislation. I would go as a you know, guest artist and talked to the DJ and so I had a pretty good relation with them. So by the time we got back when Neil, what I want to say is when he come up with this label called Castle Blanca, we signed with him, Donna's signed with him, and Kiss. We all signed at the same time. And the first time he put out Donna's Kissed, it didn't work at first, but then we put out Chocolate City and Mothership it worked, and then Donna's worked, then Kiss the fan club. Things start working, you know, and the label was phenomenal. They're doing a movie of that right now, and which Collegia's playing myself. Oh great, that'll be great. My grandkids are in the movie. My kids are in the movie. They're playing Parliament Funkadelic. So cool. I can't wait to check that out. Yes next month. How did the concept for the Mothership come? What do you remember about that Pink Floyd? You know, I had watched them, you know, become so big with their production of their show, you know, and how long there was on the charts forever, you know, and I wanted to do something like that. Because Friends of Ours was in Remember to play here, Prince Bower was in the place. So I realized that we had to be more than a group. We had to be like a Broadway play or big production or something to elevate past the concept of being a band or group. And so I said, I wanted to get a prop that was bigger than did anything anybody had done. You know, Broadway was the when they found most of the props that So we got a guy, Jules Fisher, off a Broadway that was doing Broadway plays, to dud build the Mothership. And that's after I went to Neil No One. Neil was a promotion and promotion free and and you know, and we have a hit record already. The Mothership was a hit record, and we knew that, and we said, you get me a spaceship. I'll be able to bring the next two or three albums, you know, with the promotion of the spaceship. You know, he ain't gonlasted just one album, and he knew, he knew what I was saying, and he got hooked me over the bank, got me a collateral loan, and we got to the Spaceship and all the costuming was the explicit part of it, those leather costumes. We vote, was Sunrit inspirational at all? Or no? Oh yeah, definitely he was inspirational and the concept. But I was in the Star Trek already. I was a Star Trek freak for days. So it was about that. And then do the play. I knew it had to have a theme behind it. So the theme was to travel to bring the flunk to the planet, you know, and Sunri was doing that. A lot of jazz musicians was doing that, you know, intergalactic concept. And tell me about when did you first meet Bambada? Wow? You know he had to be he had to be about fourteen something like that, and that ever have been since seventy seven seventy six, wow, something like that. And I just know by the time we got the album about Uncle Jam. If you look on the back of Uncle Jam's album, we have the names about fans on that, you know, because we had a fan club for each city. And after about it is a b his name is first New York. Amazing years later when he thought when he thought without music, you know, we always connected like through the fan club thing. Already, I didn't know what the electronic go to hip hop thing they was doing yet I was just getting familiar with it, you know. It was like part electronic, part rap, part hip hop. I didn't know what they were calling it yet. Yeah, but yeah, we stayed in even when they got the Zulu Nation. Yeah. And the Soul Sonic Force was very much inspired by by the Mothership very much. Yeah. They looked like they could have been in the band, in your band, yeah, I mean yeah, Yeah. Isn't it amazing how like you're a fan of something that it inspires you, and then you make something new, and then when the new thing comes out, people think it's this new thing. There's never been anything like it. But all of the roots, like in all the things you've done, the roots of the things that are in it from before, whether it be Pink Floyd, which I never would have guessed in a million years, or Sunride, which I would have guessed because of space is the place. It's just amazing how through our love of these things we make something new. Now I'll tell you something else. You know, I've been doing paint lately, you know, fine art paint. Didn't know we're gonna be at the Mint with Blon Osley. She check her out. She's a new artist. Her theme is on the metaphor of the funk. You know, the pyramids with trumbipulated noses. It's gonna be at the Midas. Check it out. I definitely will. Beautiful cool Man. Well, it's a pleasure talking to you as always. Thanks Man, take care, I love you. I'll see you soon, see little Way. Thanks again to the one and only George Clinton for hopping on zoom with Rick. You can hear all of our favorite parliament Funkadelic and pe funk adjacent songs on the playlist at broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell, Bentaladay, and Eric Sandler. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast. App Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.