Clinton is the chief of two necessary funk bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. In 1975, Parliament launched Mothership Connection, a free idea album about funk musicians as galactic invaders.
TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
That is FRESH AIR. George Clinton is the chief of two groundbreaking funk bands, Parliament and Funkadelic. As the author, producer and performer behind quite a few hits, Clinton helped outline the sound of funk within the Seventies and past. Whereas he hasn’t obtained as a lot business success as his influences James Brown and Sly Stone, his impression on music is simply as profound. Rock critic Ken Tucker is utilizing the fiftieth anniversary of Clinton’s basic album, “Mothership Connection,” to have fun this pioneering innovator and the enduring energy of his funk.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “P-FUNK (WANTS TO GET FUNKED UP)”)
PARLIAMENT: Good night. Don’t try to regulate your radio. There may be nothing fallacious. We’ve got taken management as to carry you this particular present. We are going to return it to you as quickly as you’re grooving. Welcome to station W-E-F-U-N-Ok, higher often called WeFunk, or deeper nonetheless, the Mothership Connection, dwelling of the extraterrestrial brothers, sellers of funky music, P-Funk, uncut funk, the bomb.
Coming to you instantly from the mom ship, high of the chocolate Milky Approach. 5 hundred thousand kilowatts of P-Funk energy. So relax, dig, whereas we do it to you and your eardrums. Oh, me? I am often called Lollipop Man, alias the Lengthy-Haired Sucker. My motto is…
(Singing) Make my funk the P-Funk.
Make mine the P-Funk.
(Singing) I would like my funk uncut.
I would like my funk uncut.
KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: Fifty years in the past, George Clinton was at a creative peak, the primary of many. He was writing a lot materials that with the intention to get all of the music recorded and heard, he fronted two separate teams, Parliament and Funkadelic. By a really tough distinction, Parliament’s funk music was extra gentle and catchy, whereas Funkadelic’s was heavier and extra given to improvisation. In 1975, Parliament launched “Mothership Connection,” a free idea album about funk musicians as galactic invaders, full with a spaceship that may land on stage in the beginning of each live performance, disgorging George Clinton wearing what appeared like a spacesuit made out of aluminum foil.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (STAR CHILD)”)
PARLIAMENT: Effectively, all proper. Star Little one. Residents of the universe, recording angels, we’ve returned to assert the pyramids. Partying on the mom ship, I’m the Mothership Connection. Getting down in 3D. Mild-year grooving. All proper. Hear any noise, ain’t no one however me and the boys getting down. Hit it, fellas.
(Singing) When you hear any noise, it is simply me and the boys. Hit me.
Grooving.
(Singing) You bought to hit the band.
All proper, all proper. Star Little one right here. Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip and are available onto the mom ship. Unfastened booty, doing the bump.
TUCKER: For George Clinton, science fiction was a metaphor for the alienating expertise of attempting to make it as a Black pop star. He was on the forefront of what got here to be referred to as Afrofuturism, together with Black writers such because the critic Greg Tate and the novelists Octavia Butler and Ishmael Reed, whose landmark work, “Mumbo Jumbo,” had been revealed simply three years earlier than “Mothership Connection.” On tour, Clinton blended his world-building and his bands right into a sprawling spectacle he known as the Parliafunkadelicment Thang – or, extra merely, the U.S. Funk Mob.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “GIVE UP THE FUNK (TEAR THE ROOF OFF THE SUCKER)”)
PARLIAMENT: (Singing) You have acquired an actual kind of factor happening, getting down. There’s an entire lot of rhythm going spherical. You have acquired an actual kind of factor happening, getting down. There’s an entire lot of rhythm going spherical.
(Singing) Oh, we would like the funk. Hand over the funk. Oh, we’d like the funk. We acquired to have that funk. Oh, we would like the funk. Hand over the funk. Oh, we’d like the funk. We acquired to have that funk.
(Singing) La, la, la, la, la.
TUCKER: That tune – “Give Up The Funk, Tear The Roof Off The Sucker” – was each a live performance showstopper and the band’s first million-selling single. It is a groove, a temper, a rhythm Clinton and his platoon of gamers, together with guitarist Eddie Hazel, bassist Bootsy Collins and the keyboardist Bernie Worrell, might preserve for lengthy stretches on report and particularly in live performance. Assume the Grateful Lifeless, however with a far superior sense of rhythm.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “P-FUNK (WANTS TO GET FUNKED UP)”)
PARLIAMENT: Effectively, all proper. Hey, I used to be digging on y’all’s funk for some time. Sounds prefer it acquired a 3 on it, although, to me. Then I used to be down south and I heard some funk with some Primary Substances – like, Doobie Brothers, Blue Magic, David Bowie. It was cool. However are you able to think about Doobie in your funk? Ho, W-E-F-U-N-Ok. We funk.
(Singing) Make my funk the P-Funk. I would like my funk uncut. Oh, make my funk the P-Funk. I needs to get funked up. I would like the bomb. I would like the P-Funk.
P-Funk, y’all.
(Singing) Don’t need my funk stepped on. Make my funk the P-Funk.
House of the extraterrestrial brothers.
(Singing) Earlier than I take it dwelling.
Getting deep.
TUCKER: Clinton has at all times preached a utopian imaginative and prescient of, to cite a Funkadelic tune title, “One Nation Beneath A Groove. From the mid-70s to the mid-80s, he launched greater than 30 albums on quite a lot of report labels and below an array of various band names. His affect is huge. Prince idolized Clinton and signed him briefly to his Paisley Park label. Scores of hip-hop artists have sampled his melodic hooks. However he could not maintain it. Clinton’s empire crumpled below the burden of poor enterprise offers, the business racism that saved him off white pop radio throughout his busiest years and, most sadly, medicine and the wear and tear and tear on a physique that nonstop touring will inflict.
George Clinton is now 84, and he is nonetheless performing. Again in 1984, I wrote a chunk for the Village Voice during which I described Clinton as the nice pop mind of our period. And for a quick interval, he actually was. I additionally lamented the truth that he by no means achieved the ambition he asserted once I first interviewed him – to be as well-liked because the Beatles. The subsequent time I noticed Clinton to talk with him, he quoted John Lennon again to me, saying, the dream is over. He was smiling when he stated it. However I might really feel his frustration, his ache, as profoundly as one of many genius funk riffs he is been composing for greater than half a century.
MOSLEY: Rock critic Ken Tucker on the fiftieth anniversary of the discharge of George Clinton’s album “Mothership Connection.” Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, Peter Guralnick. He is the creator of the definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. His new ebook is about Elvis’ longtime supervisor, Colonel Tom Parker. Guralnick says researching the ebook led to many surprises and made him query the various preconceptions about Parker. It is referred to as “The Colonel And The King.” I hope you may be part of us. To maintain up with what’s on the present and get highlights of our interviews, observe us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (STAR CHILD)”)
PARLIAMENT: Are you hip to Easter Island? The Bermuda Triangle? Effectively, all proper. Ain’t nothing however a celebration.
MOSLEY: FRESH AIR’s govt producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and evaluations are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and John Sheehan. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Our consulting visible producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorrock directs the present. With Terry Gross, I am Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (STAR CHILD)”)
PARLIAMENT: (Singing) When you hear any noise, it is simply me and the boys hitting it. You bought to hit the band.
Star Little one right here, doing it in 3D. So good, it is good to me.
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