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1974 was the year George Clinton\u2019s P-Funk philosophy went overground, taking the psychedelic black rock of Funkadelic and the horn-heavy dance grooves of Parliament into the charts, onto the stage, into the Whitehouse, up to outer space and beyond. Lloyd Bradley shines his flashlight on a black music revolution.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-main” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
Words by Lloyd Bradley<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/04\/gettyimages-86138940-594×594-1.jpg” title_text=”gettyimages-86138940-594×594″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n Can You Get To That: Parliament, Funkadelic and P-Funk founder and frontman George Clinton.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n DETROIT, 1973. MOTOWN, THE city\u2019s black music institution since 1959, has just moved operations to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, another less prominent Detroit concern is facing its own career crossroads.<\/p>\n In the space of 15 years George Clinton had transformed his New Jersey barber- shop quintet from doo wop harmonisers The Parliaments into a Motor City troupe of guitar-fuelled black hippies; Funkadelic, a group so adept, yet so committed to psychedelic revolution, that their 1970 declaration of intent \u2013 Free Your Mind \u2026 And Your Ass Will Follow \u2013 remained astonishingly cohesive, despite being recorded during a heavy group acid trip.<\/p>\n However, as relatively successful as Funkadelic had become, playing mid-sized venues in the hippified \u2018Draft Dodgers Triangle\u2019 of Detroit, Toronto and Boston and releasing five albums in three years on Westbound Records, the group had also become a black band without a significant black following. As soul music mutated into the far more self-determining funk, this was looking like an unworkable model.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were too black for white radio, too white for black radio,\u201d is how Clinton sums up Funkadelic\u2019s commercial positioning today. During the first few of years of the 1970s, the group\u2019s albums were minor R&B chart hits, barely troubling the mainstream Top 100. Their motivation had been to reintroduce a black take on the modernised blues upon which the rock world was built and put a contemporary Motor City spin on American black music as it shed the mohair suits and the afros got bigger. But the confusion resulting from the execution is understandable: theirs was a black rock, harking back to the blues, drenched in Timothy Leary-quality LSD, born in Motown but incubated in the Motor City\u2019s fiercely working-class, largely self-contained and genuinely alternative hippy scene. Unfiltered and unencumbered by major label constraints, Funkadelic\u2019s blues was furious, funny, wry, confrontational, existential, political, articulate, oblique and off-the-charts in terms of the rush of images and ideas, some familiar, some wildly imaginative.<\/p>\n Less circumspect as to the impact of albums with titles such as Maggot Brain, America Eats It Young and Cosmic Slop, is Tom Vickers, P-Funk\u2019s former in-house press officer. \u201cThe simple truth is Funkadelic scared the shit out of black audiences,\u201d says Vickers. \u201cThey simply couldn\u2019t get past the scary, dark, mysterious content of those albums\u2026 sleevenotes quoting the Process Church of the Final Judgment, stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The defining aspect was acid. \u201cIt meant a connectivity with a hippy audience as it opened up their minds to an alternative reality far less inhibited by colour [race],\u201d says Vickers. \u201c[But] it was never a mainstream drug among black audiences. It wasn\u2019t embraced the way it was in white youth culture, which put Funkadelic on a different plane to much of the audience they hoped to reach. And then, even if you had taken a pill you still had to be as far out there as the group themselves to get into what was going on.\u201d <\/p>\n Something had to change.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Enter a Jewish former crooner from Brooklyn called Neil Bogart. General manager at MGM Records at 22, dubbed \u2018the King of Bubblegum\u2019 at Buddah for successes with frothy pop acts such as Ohio Express and 1910 Fruitgum Co., Bogart had been financed by Warner Bros to launch his own label. Casablanca Records would bring the world Kiss, Donna Summer and Village People, but for the time being he wanted to do business with George Clinton of Funkadelic.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d known Neil for the longest time,\u201d explains Clinton. \u201cWe were on Invictus [for Parliament\u2019s first album, 1970\u2019s Osmium], with Holland, Dozier and Holland, and their other label was Hot Wax, which Neil had distribution for at Buddah. But more than that, I grew up with his business partner at Buddah and Casablanca, who was Cecil Holmes. I\u2019d known him from the \u201950s back in New Jersey, when I knew Neil as Neil Scott, the singer. We\u2019d wanted to be with Neil for a while, and he\u2019d always been interested in us, so we\u2019d been flirting for some time, but he couldn\u2019t do it until he had his own label. With Funkadelic signed to Westbound and me having got the Parliament name back from Invictus, that\u2019s what he signed us to Casablanca as.\u201d<\/p>\n Casablanca\u2019s first Parliament album was 1974\u2019s Up For The Down Stroke, George Clinton\u2019s most consistently conventional set of recordings since The Parliaments\u2019 harmonising 7-inches 10 years previously. Safe to say it didn\u2019t tear up too many trees. Vitally, though, it shifted the group\u2019s direction out of the underground. The man who had only recently been referring to himself as \u2018the Maggot Overlord\u2019 relished such an opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were promotion people, Neil and Cecil \u2013 they were good at it,\u201d says Clinton. \u201cThey\u2019d done all the bubblegum things at Buddah. You give them a character and they would know what to do with it \u2013 we gave them plenty to promote. We were a circus! I knew this was the shot I was going to get at taking it big \u2013 pop big, like super bubblegum, because we had spaceship ambition even back then, and we had some substance to go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/04\/gettyimages-459568554-594×594-1.jpg” title_text=”gettyimages-459568554-594×594″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n One Nation Under A Groove: Clinton in Miami, Florida, 2014<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n TIMING WAS EVERYTHING. BOGART\u2019S RECORD LABEL launched at exactly the point acid rock had played itself out. Following the social and political upheavals of the previous decade, black America\u2019s middle and professional classes had become far more visible to the country in general. Mainstream advertisers soon learned there was a new dollar to be pursued. Black radio boomed and major record labels, acknowledging this new spending power, started taking the new black music \u2013 music they might not listen to themselves \u2013 much more seriously.<\/p>\n It was a winning situation for musicians and consumers alike. Acts had bigger budgets and greater creative freedom, and as radio programming expanded, so did the myriad of genres and sub-genres within \u201cblack music\u201d. Funk, the more robustly representative soul music that emerged at the end of the \u201960s, rose to the occasion with gusto. From 1973 to \u201974 albums were released as stylistically varied as The Fatback Band\u2019s Keep On Steppin\u2019, Herbie Hancock\u2019s Thrust, The Ohio Players\u2019 Skin Tight, Kool & The Gang\u2019s Light Of Worlds, Donald Byrd\u2019s Steppin\u2019 Into Tomorrow, Curtis Mayfield\u2019s Sweet Exorcist, Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s Winter In America, Earth Wind And Fire\u2019s Open Our Eyes, The O\u2019Jays\u2019 Ship Ahoy, 24-Carat Black\u2019s Ghetto: Misfortune\u2019s Wealth, The JB\u2019s\u2019 Damn Right I Am Somebody and The Payback and Black Caesar by James Brown. Musically adventurous, with heavy grooves, politically pertinent and instinctively black, this broader marketplace had overtaken Funkadelic, evolving from what Clinton had called the \u201cbeating on a box records\u201d of Soul Power-era James Brown, to a more sophisticated, stimulating music. It was the ideal environment for the arrival of the reborn Parliament.<\/p>\n \u201cRight then was the right time for us,\u201d Clinton agrees. \u201cNot just with Neil [Bogart] coming along, but black audiences had evolved, just as they would do if they were exposed to something constantly which itself is allowed to change. The best example of that is The Beatles: they would hit you with all kinds of shit, all kind of good music \u2013 rock, funky, classical, pop, witty, folky \u2013 and their audience would go with them because once they put it up there and it was good, people wanted to get into it, they wanted The Beatles to take them with them. Wherever they were going. It was the same with funk once it had the commercial power to take care of its own business and could move forward on its own terms, the audience wanted to evolve right along with it. In fact they expected it to take them somewhere else, funk weren\u2019t no different from any other type of music.<\/p>\n \u201cBy that time, black was going pop, and it had evolved to the point at which it knew that and groups could make the most of that and there really was no limit to where it could go. Up until then the music itself didn\u2019t even realise how popular it was, and it was still defending itself and it even didn\u2019t realise that it was the shit at the time. It took us a long time to catch up with where we actually were, because we were up in there so busy trying to fight for the right to be what we already were! When I signed us with Neil, there was no reason we couldn\u2019t shoot as high as we wanted. We knew it, the industry knew it, the audience knew it.\u201d<\/p>\n While at Buddah, Neil Bogart had played a considerable part in that evolution, striking distribution deals with embryonic independent black labels \u2013 Curtis Mayfield\u2019s Curtom, The Isley Brothers\u2019 T-Neck and Sussex, home to Bill Withers and Dennis Coffey \u2013 affording them promotion and racking clout but maintaining their creative autonomy.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n With a new label and a new name for, essentially, the same bunch of players, Clinton needed a new sound. \u201cI knew there was a lot of elements to the funk as it was, so I came in and said, \u2018OK, gimme all of that shit and Motown, because Motown was at the centre of everything, and The Beatles and the English rock groups. So we had Funkadelic with the guitars, the James Brown horn players, the Motown rhythm sections, the Sly Stone mentality \u2013 which is a lot of music to play with \u2013 and because I worked at Motown, [Clinton was a staff writer and producer there in the \u201960s] I knew how to stack the different elements together, then move things out of the way when something else is coming through, so you can have any weird combination, but everything will be heard. We had Bernie [Worrell] who was a conservatory-trained classical pianist, but we also had Bootsy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n It was Bootsy Collins\u2019 extraordinary musicianship upon which the Parliament vibe was built. A bass player in the JB\u2019s, who quit to join Funkadelic for America Eats It Young in 1972, Collins\u2019 technique brought the discipline of the James Brown band and the ambition of a former lead guitarist to the freedom of Funkadelic, elevating the bass to a featured instrument.<\/p>\n \u201cFunkadelic had been established as a black funk rock band,\u201d explains Collins, \u201cso each act [Parliament; Funkadelic] had to have their differences. We were very aware of that. George, being the overseer, wanted Parliament to be more James Brown danceable. That was really easy, and challenging at the same time. I knew the James Brown grooves and band hits, the breakdowns and dynamics, but I always wanted to be a part of a big band sound. I loved how big bands sounded back in the day \u2013 Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Williams \u2013 they had that tension, drama, they could be emotionally charged, or innocence and silence, then\u2026 Jaws breaks out of the water! That was the challenging part, because it plays with every emotion you have and a few others you don\u2019t know you have.\u201d<\/p>\n The main thing Collins brought to Parliament was something he\u2019d learned from his time with James Brown, funk\u2019s big beat and metronomic timing, aka \u2018The One\u2019. Collins, who had just turned 21, had a youthful rawness to his playing, the perfect foil for more seasoned P-Funkers such as former Juilliard School graduate Bernie Worrell and jazz-oriented trombonist Fred Wesley. However, the bass player also brought order to proceedings, a by-product of growing up under the Godfather of Soul\u2019s command. \u201cI loved to rehearse,\u201d says Collins, \u201cso I brought a certain discipline to a very chaotic situation. It worked out really well as a balance. George needed someone like me and I needed someone like him.\u201d<\/p>\n If Collins brought discipline and how to keep it on the One to Clinton, the leader opened up a new world of freedom and experiment for Collins. \u201cI could not sleep with chicks with James Brown,\u201d says Collins, \u201cbecause he was more of a father figure. George, however, was my older brother or like an uncle. I could do anything I wanted to in front of him. In fact he endorsed it. George looked like the craziest mother on the planet but he was actually the complete opposite. He was very Funkentelechy [aware] he knew how to mix chemicals \u2013 meaning the musicians and the songs. Well, drugs too, but at this time we were all pretty focused on the newness of playing together, riding in cars together, writing together. I\u2019d love seeing George\u2019s face light up when I hit the studio because he knew that I knew something, but I never knew what it was, neither did he, but we both knew and it was magical. It was not a job, it was an adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n THEIR ADVENTURE CAUGHT THE audience\u2019s imagination. Whereas Up For The Down Stroke consolidated the sound, the following set, 1975\u2019s Chocolate City, established an attitude: smart, articulate, constantly surprising and funny, building an alternative reality that was both recognisable and cartoon-crazy in its depiction of a black US Presidency (this was nearly 40 years ago). It struck a chord and gave the group their biggest-selling album (150,000 copies sold in Washington DC alone) and became the basis of a committed fan following.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to say something because that was our background as Funkadelic,\u201d says Clinton, explaining the Chocolate City concept. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just about putting ourselves in an unusual situation. We had to do it so it was something we could be proud of, something we could look up to. We thought, Where would we most want to be in America? And that was in the White House, with Richard Pryor, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin forming the government. And that was what the whole Chocolate City thing was: where would we like to be but haven\u2019t been allowed? Since that worked so well, we figured we had to find another place that ain\u2019t used to seeing blacks, somewhere else we would like to be but haven\u2019t been allowed, and that was in outer space.\u201d<\/p>\n The result was 1975\u2019s Mothership Connection. <\/p>\n \u201cWe got us a space ship and started making out like black folks would do if they had a space ship,\u201d says Clinton. \u201cA low ridin\u2019 space ship! Then there was The Motor Booty Affair, when we thought, Where else can we take black people where they never been before? Under the sea! So that took the whole story down to Atlantis for that underwater vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n Neil Bogart got behind Parliament\u2019s potential as something bigger than just another funk band. \u201cNeil totally understood it,\u201d says Clinton. \u201cThe succession of the Mothership, then the Clones, then Motor Booty. He knew how to market it like one big book \u2013 a comic book. He worked it as one chapter at a time, leaving people always looking forward to the next one as they get taken along with the story, they feel part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Bogart also knew how to sell Parliament to the mainstream pop market. He broke the first single from Mothership Connection, P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up), on black radio, but when he heard some pop stations playing its B-side, Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker), he reissued the record for mainstream stations and stores with the labels reprinted as a double A-side. On another occasion, he sent his teams out to bribe security guards at rock and pop stations to let them in to super glue the current Parliament single to every turntable in the buildings.<\/p>\n But Bogart surpassed himself in terms of promotion in October 1976 with the P-Funk Earth Tour, a massive $250,000 touring stage show complete with a full-scale model space ship that landed and took off to facilitate George Clinton\u2019s entrance as the funk overlord, Dr Funkenstein. \u201cWhen we got Chocolate City we knew we had it,\u201d smiles Clinton, \u201cbut when we got Tear The Roof Off The Sucker, I knew I had to take it out live. I told [Casablanca] to get me a space ship. I wasn\u2019t even going to chase them down for the royalties on the albums, because you gonna catch hell trying to get paid on the back end anyway, but I wanted them to do that for us.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n \u201cHe did it too, because the one thing Neil would do was invest in something that would help the record sales \u2013 and he wasn\u2019t scared of doing it on a big scale, because he\u2019d already done it with Kiss. He spent all that money on their stage show when they couldn\u2019t sell records worth a damn and it turned them into the biggest group in the country. That\u2019s what broke us across all audiences, because it was so big. Even if you didn\u2019t go to the shows you were aware of us as something you ought to get into.\u201d Back at Funkadelic, the catchy chorals of the title track to 1974\u2019s Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On presaged a series of almost normal (by their standards) LPs for Warner Bros as Funkadelic moved closer to Parliament. On-stage the two concepts blended seamlessly, on record the unification was best illustrated by the collective\u2019s biggest hit, One Nation Under A Groove. Originally intended as a Parliament song, Clinton knew Groove was going to be massive and gave it to Funkadelic as they were, for him, where it all started. The track charted all over the world at the end of 1978 and became the P-Funk stage show\u2019s rallying closing number.<\/p>\n Yet, just as P-Funk came to dominate and define the 1970s, it struggled to gain traction in the 1980s after Sugarhill Gang\u2019s Rapper\u2019s Delight drastically moved American black music\u2019s goalposts. By that time, George Clinton\u2019s empire had expanded to include two girl groups, Parlet and The Brides of Funkenstein, Bootsy\u2019s very successful and superfunky Rubber Band, Fred Wesley & Maceo Parker\u2019s Horny Horns and the Bootsy-produced disco-flavoured Sweat Band. He\u2019d also launched his own label, Uncle Jam Records. Under the weight of administration difficulties, financial disputes, internal jealousies, and Clinton spreading himself too thin, the P-Funk empire began to crack and crumble. It was a demise hastened by changing tastes and what Clinton called \u201cthe built-in obsolescence of the music business. Nobody expects you to be on top more than five years.\u201d<\/p>\n The irony was, even he didn\u2019t expect it to last that long. The Parliament album Gloryhallastoopid (Pin The Tail On The Funky), was so titled to mark the ridiculousness of the fact they were still around in 1979.<\/p>\n Another significant contributor to Parliament and P-Funk\u2019s shift in fortunes was Neil Bogart\u2019s absence. He and Cecil Holmes had personally shepherded the group to the heights of success, but by 1978 Bogart was making arrangements to sell to PolyGram and start again. It made a difference, one that Clinton is now stoical about. Although Clinton recorded a few very good albums with Parliament personnel in the early 1980s, it was essentially all over 10 years after the Mothership first took off in 1976. But Clinton, a naturally life-affirming soul, has few regrets. He\u2019s back on tour with a band that mixes a few veterans with a number of original members\u2019 children and grandchildren. Still recording, he\u2019s about to star in his own TV reality series and will have his memoirs published later this year.<\/p>\n \u201cI know where I stand,\u201d he says, in conclusion. \u201cThose records are still around today in one way or another, either out in their own right or on somebody\u2019s record, and the spaceship itself is in the Smithsonian Institute. That was such an incredible thing at the moment we did it, that it\u2019s still doing what I thought it would do. Forever. We could ride the Mothership forever.\u201d<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in issue 250 of MOJO.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Words: <\/strong>Lloyd Bradley Images:\u00a0<\/strong>Getty<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “George Clinton knew how to mix the chemicals, I mean the musicians & songs. Well, drugs too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1326,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions\/1326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}“We were a circus with spaceship ambition ready to pop big like super bubblegum”<\/h2>\n
“George Clinton knew how to mix the chemicals, I mean the musicians & songs. Well, drugs too.”<\/h2>\n
\n\u201cI brought the mighty One,\u201d says Collins, \u201cand I had band arrangements that were playing in my head, which George Clinton gave me the opportunity to let out. I was always wild, so the band and I fit right in, as if we had been together from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n“That was such an incredible thing at the moment we did it, that it\u2019s still doing what I thought it would do.”<\/h2>\n
The tour captured the music, mayhem and excitement of P-Funk in full flow, lives on in a DVD \u2013 1976 Live: The Mothership Connection (see sidebar) \u2013 and brought together both of Clinton\u2019s vast band projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to take us with him,\u201d he says, \u201cbut all the time he was fixing to sell I was too out of my head on drugs to be paying attention so wasn\u2019t aware of what was going on. Once the company was sold, we definitely didn\u2019t get the attention we\u2019d been getting before.\u201d<\/p>\n