Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard on You?: A Memoir

by George Clinton

  After I jotted down pages of lyrics and ideas, I went looking through the tracks we had accumulated and found that there were pieces of new songs already in existence, fragments we had been playing live or had laid down in the studio. “Got to get over the hump” was a popular concert chant that Bootsy and Bernie and I built on; it was a feel-good experience when we played live, and I knew that it would work well in the studio. The song I wrote was about the Bop Gun, a weapon that thwarted any resistance to the funk. The lyrics also touched on everything from Otis Redding (“Turn me loose”) to Martin Luther King Jr. (“We shall overcome”).

  The singer was Glen Goins, and he did some serious work on that one. He got an epic gospel sound. As soon as we got onto the idea of a Bop Gun, we built a big prop gun, and we used it for what would become the cover photo for the record. The photographer we hired had a stop-motion camera, and he wanted me to move around a little as he got multiple exposures. I ducked down and spun around, and somehow they got all that in one shot, a collage of four or five of me in my Dr. Funkenstein outfit. I’m also the figure off to the left. I had just come from Rutgers, where my daughter Donna was graduating. I put on a suit to go to the ceremony, though I hadn’t dressed up like that in a decade. Even at the time, people didn’t really think that the figure to the left was me, not only because of the suit but because I’m so thin. We added in the waves from the Bop Gun to show how Dr. Funkenstein was shooting a dance ray at the straight George persona.

  That was one of two songs we thought of as singles. The other one was “Flash Light.” When Bootsy brought me the basic track, it sounded tremendous, but it was a traditional arrangement, guitar and bass. I kept the guitar, but took the bass off and replaced it with Bernie mimicking the sound on three connected Moog keyboards. The result was a bass bubble, a real eye-opener: it was like the beginning of Stevie Wonder’s “Maybe Your Baby,” but after six months in the workout room. That Moog circuit turned the song from straight James Brown to something more bubblegummy, the Jackson 5 but with a deeper bottom. Bootsy switched over to drums, which was something that didn’t happen often, but that worked well on this one. When we played it back to people inside the band, everyone got up out of their chair.

  As with every album, there were songs that held the concept together, glue tracks. “Placebo Syndrome” was the main one for Funkentelechy. Ever since Chocolate City, I had been moving toward a complete, comprehensive funk opera. In my mind, I was thinking all the way back to Davy Crockett, and then through the Beatles, through Motown, through Hair. Why couldn’t soul or funk music be just as sophisticated, just as wide-ranging, just as artistically successful? All the younger guys in the band were on board immediately. The only people who resisted were Grady and Fuzzy and the rest of them, the older singers who had been with me since the Parliaments were a new idea. It was hard for them to come out of the suits in the first place, and so it was hard to change from one thing to the next so quickly. Plus, I’m sure they thought I was becoming the center of the group in a way that was too obvious and self-serving, though the truth was that Neil and Casablanca Records wanted it that way. Funkentelechy was a collection of funk anthems about the anthemic power of funk. It described the illuminating power of the music using, as metaphors, common tools of illumination (a flashlight) and power (a gun). Almost everything on that record was about that record and the records that came before it. “Bop Gun” includes one of the best examples of this strategy:

  When the syndrome is around

  Don’t let your guard down

  This kind of self-referential writing made the entire experience extremely satisfying for hardcore fans, along with showing new fans that they had to learn their lesson before coming to class.

  We used each new album to introduce new characters, and the character that sprung up on Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome was one of our most enduring. Back in Plainfield, there was a kid named Berkeley Othello Noel. Noel was a nice-looking guy. Girls loved him. He was in a singing group, Sammy Campbell and the Del-Larks, that was our main competition; in fact Ray Davis, who eventually became one of the core Parliaments, was the bass singer in that group. As nice a singer as Noel was, that wasn’t his distinguishing characteristic. You could say that he was a little crazy but he was so much crazier than that. He would carry a straight razor for gang fights. Once he was roller-skating backwards down the street, and he passed by a girl and just flicked that razor out and sliced her skirt right off. Another time, he was sweet on Barbara Ford, the sister of my best friend, Ronnie, but he had a funny way of showing it. He drew a picture of her and hung it all around the neighborhood, along with a message that said ANOTHER ONE OF OUR SISTERS HAS DIED and collection cups hanging underneath every sign. Ronnie’s mother saw them and said, “Where that motherfucker Noel?” She could tell from his drawings that it was him.

  The best thing about Noel was his voice, which was a high Peter Lorre–like quaver. Once, Ronnie and I were at a house party, lights low, cool dancing, and the next thing you know there was a scuffle. Noel and Billy Johnson, who had danced with Barbara, were fighting like mugs. The next thing we knew, Noel was hitting away at Billy with a paper bag, but it wasn’t just a paper bag—there was a glint of metal, and we could see that there was a hatchet in the bag. Ronnie shoved Noel back. Noel pushed past a group of boys and ran out the door, shouting, “Ronnieeee, why’d you do this to meee? I love you like a brother!” Another time his car stopped in front of the barbershop one day, just cut off. He jumped up on the hood and in that same high, wobbly voice, said, “I haaaate you!” to his car before he started stabbing it.

  Noel, or at least Noel’s voice, became Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk. He was an extension of the principle we sketched out on “The Pinocchio Theory” on Bootsy’s second record: if you fake the funk, your nose will grow. But he was also the first real enemy in the P-Funk universe, the nemesis of funk emissaries like Star Child. Sir Nose only cared about his look and his presentation. He was too cool for everything real: too cool to dance, too cool to play, too cool to swim. Sir Nose was even too cool to fuck. It messed with his pimp shit. What I want with jumping up and down on a bitch? But Sir Nose was only fooling himself. Everyone likes pussy. Even pussy likes pussy.

  Sir Nose was in “Flash Light” (where we taunt him by saying, “Dance, sucker,” and “Get on down, Nose”), but he also had his own song, “Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk (Pay Attention—B3M).” That song scared every motherfucker in the group. It was Bernie and Fred, both independently doing horn arrangements, coloring around the singing and the rhythm track. The lyrics extended the idea: Star Child was going to make Sir Nose dance no matter what, and his weapons, apart from the Bop Gun, included jokes, philosophy, and persistence.

  Sir Nose was one of our most popular characters, to the point where we couldn’t even get fans to go along with us as we cracked on him or shot him with the Bop Gun. That was especially true in New York, where they booed us for mocking him. They loved the idea of the pimp. Being cool was the most important thing there, even more important than the pleasures of funk.

  At around that time, Ronnie Ford started working with us more closely. He cowrote “Wizard of Finance,” which is a folky soul ballad on the record. I don’t know if I ever told him specifically that Sir Nose was based on Noel because I didn’t need to. He knew it immediately. Everybody knew it. It was unmistakable to anyone who grew up in Plainfield, except maybe Eddie, who was one of those kids who wasn’t allowed to come out of the house. We didn’t keep in touch with the actual Noel. He got into more trouble, ended up in jail. He appeared in the movie Scared Straight, in fact, which came out just after Funkentelechy, and he’s since passed on. But he lives forever as Sir Nose.

  As usual, we needed visuals to complement the music. Around the time of Mothership Connection, we met a young guy named Overton Loyd; he used to draw caricatures of us as we came out of nightclubs. Overton started drawing for us, and his cartoonish, energetic artwork was a great counterpoint to P
edro’s elaborate mythology. Over time, Pedro became more closely associated with Funkadelic, and Overton sort of took over the look for Parliament, although we didn’t maintain a strict division internally. For Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, Overton created an eight-page comic book that was an origin story for Sir Nose. His first idea of the character was a little different than it ended up, slick but darker. Neil got a look at it and had him redo it to be brighter and popper, more like a Saturday-morning cartoon. But he kept his personal touch in there—if you look right on his shoes, you’ll see a little sign that says “Ouch.” That’s a perfect example of Sir Nose being cool at the expense of comfort.

  Anything like that—the comic book, the growth of Sir Nose as a character, the way that we settled on a Parliament logo to match the Funkadelic skull logo that was already pretty popular—was a breeze for us, in the sense that many of our people came from editorial. Archie Ivy had been a reporter and an editor. Tom Vickers had, too. Neil respected us for our ideas and as long as we didn’t cost him money or get in the way of the band’s success, he was completely on board. Or mostly completely on board. When he first heard what we wanted to call the album, he rolled his eyes. “Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome?” he said. “I’m telling you that no one’s going to get it. They won’t even read it right. Some kid is going to come up to you at a show and call it Funkadelic and the Place-Bo Syndrome.” I told him he was underestimating our fans.

  The same week he passed me the notes that led to the creation of Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome, Nene took us to see Star Wars. He must have known someone, or at least said he did, and he got us into the premiere. Twenty-five of us walked right in through the side door. That was one of the first big movies to use the Dolby four-track stereo system, and it blew my motherfucking head off. During the opening sequence, when the writing is going across the top and then you see the taillights of the spaceship, everyone stood up and applauded, not just because it was a cool image, but because they couldn’t resist the sheer physicality of the sound. Later on, when I saw the movie again in a smaller theater, it was softer, not as visceral or as dynamic. I liked Star Wars fine as a western. The robots were cute. But it didn’t have the kind of philosophy that I was looking for. I wanted space movies to answer my questions about where our world came from. Did aliens come down and help Egyptians build the pyramids? Were they going to come back later and pick us all up, whether or not we had our thumbs up to hitch a ride?

  Later that year, there was a movie that did more of that kind of thinking, and we got into the premiere for that one, too, and almost into the actual movie. That was Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which we found out about from Julia Phillips, who had produced it along with her husband, Michael; Julia knew Nene because the two of them had developed a Che Guevara project together. It was Julia’s third hit in a row, after The Sting and Taxi Driver. She was a huge name in Hollywood and also a huge nightmare, and if you asked around enough you’d hear plenty about her temper and her aggression and her appetite for cocaine. I mostly knew her as a hotshot producer, and like all good producers, she kept her finger on the pulse. One day her office called us up to ask if I would come in for a meeting.

  We met at her place; Julia told me about Close Encounters, describing it so vividly that I almost thought I was watching it. She went through the scene where Roy, Richard Dreyfuss’s character, sees the flying saucer on the highway. She told me about the Devil’s Tower obsession. Then she told me that she wanted us to do a funk version of the John Williams theme song. People were calling the movie CE3K; she wanted to call our version CE3funK. I wasn’t sure about the title, but I was pretty sure that a song was a good idea. Why wouldn’t I want to make good on the space funk I had started back on Mothership Connection? Plus, we had just started recording Funkentelechy, which was scheduled to come out the same month as the movie.

  People now think of Close Encounters as one of the all-time greats, but back in the fall of 1977, the powers that be were anxious about its prospects. Spielberg had shown it to a preview audience somewhere in Texas, and they hadn’t gotten it. It went over their heads or under their radar. He went back into production for another month or so and fixed up what he thought was wrong. Finally he was ready, and Julia called me back and invited me to the premiere.

  The movie had events all over the world. There was a New York premiere; I think Bruce Springsteen went to that. There was a London premiere with Queen Elizabeth and a Tokyo premiere with the Japanese equivalents of Springsteen and the queen. But we were in Los Angeles, which meant that we had a Hollywood premiere, an event at the Cinerama Dome with a red carpet and plenty of stars. After everything I had heard about the movie, I wasn’t sure what to expect: I knew almost too much about it, and for the first few minutes my head wasn’t clear. But I got into it. By the time they got to the theme music, I had a good understanding of the broader concept. Those notes weren’t just there for the enjoyment of the audience. The characters heard them and, more to the point, the aliens played them. It was the music from their world, their way of communicating basic needs and ideas.

  Julia had invited us to a party at her house after the premiere. We stood outside the theater for a few minutes, unsure about the protocol. Who went into what limo? One car and then another pulled away, and eventually it became clear that we all had to fit inside the remaining car. Julia went first. Some actor I didn’t know went second. Then there was a guy who seemed like he worked for the studio; he had his shirt open almost to his navel. Then I went, and then two girls, and then there was no more room. We knew there was no more room because the next person out on the street got one leg into the limo before it became clear that he wasn’t going to be able to get the other one in. “We have to go,” Julia said to the driver. We drove off without the poor guy—and by poor guy, I mean Ringo Starr. We left the Beatle there on the curb and drove off to Julia’s house.

  At the party, everybody filed in, already high, ready to get higher. Nene had warned me about Julia’s predatory ways. “Bring Stephanie,” he said. “Otherwise, I can’t protect you from her.” When I walked in the front door, Julia pulled me into the bedroom and showed me a picture of myself on her wall. It was two or three weeks old at most. “This is how much I love you,” she said. I figured that she was trying to impress me so that I would do the song for the soundtrack. There wasn’t any funny business, at least not as far as sex. She did offer me some coke, of course. I shook my head and pointed at the chain I wore around my neck, and specifically at the little bottle that dangled from the chain. I called it my Casablanca bottle. “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m all set.” Julia wrote about that incident in her memoir, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, and though most of the rest of the book is spent burning bridges left and right and running people through, I somehow earned a compliment. I had the good manners to bring my own blow.

  We ended up doing the disco version of the theme. When we cut the song, it was for a new group I had in mind called the Brides of Funkenstein. It was led by Lynn Mabry and Dawn Silva, both of whom had been singing backup for Sly through the mid-seventies, and who also sang backup for Eddie’s solo album. Lynn and Dawn had tremendous range and innovation in their vocals, like the Pointer Sisters if they had come to Earth from another planet. In fact, that’s where the idea for the Brides started: they were part of the story we developed for The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein. They sang great, and Bernie went absolutely fucking crazy on the keyboards. I loved the sound we were getting. As it turned out, after all that, Julia didn’t use it. Hollywood. I brought it to Neil, who loved the song but thought the concept was too dark. Instead he wanted Casablanca to sign a different girl group we were developing for some of the other backup singers: Mallia Franklin, Jeanette Washington, and Debbie Wright. It was called the Parlets, after a group I had started way back in the doo-wop days. That was what you did in those days: you took your male group and feminized the name. Bobettes, Pri
mettes, that kind of thing. So we worked it all out. The Brides went to Atlantic and Neil got Parlet. The P-Funk world expanded further.

  Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome came out Thanksgiving week in 1977, and it started to get the gravy immediately. “Bop Gun” was the first single, and the R&B stations jumped right on it and started to play it regularly. But our promotions guys were working the other songs, too. We had a guy who did promotion for us, Henry Mayer—he was a local, a corner kid who was friends with many of the DJs—and he went to one little station in Detroit, WGPR, where he talked to a jock who called himself the Electrifying Mojo. Mojo’s real name was Charles Johnson, and he had started out in Little Rock, Arkansas, before coming to WAAM in Ann Arbor and then to Detroit. When he started at GPR in 1977, he had nothing, really, just seven P-Funk records and an idea about what a perfect radio show should sound like. He didn’t hold to any existing formats. He might play a new song, then an old one, then talk for twenty minutes, then go back and play another song by the same artists he had already played. He bought his own time on the station so they couldn’t tell him how to do his show, and almost immediately he started to develop a local following.

  When Henry went to Mojo with Funkentelechy, Mojo started playing “Flash Light,” and after that, Henry went to JLB, the big urban station, where Donnie Simpson had started out. Henry’s contact there was Al Perkins, a big Detroit DJ who was one of the leaders of the national consortium of black jocks. Al liked power games, so he William Telled (or is it William Told?) Henry his conditions for jumping on board with “Flash Light”: he said, “Let me shoot the cigarette out of your mouth and I’ll put that song on the radio.” Henry was so crazy that he let him, and “Flash Light,” with Mojo and JLB behind it, started shooting straight up the charts. Later Al told me, “That guy was crazy. I was drunk as a motherfucker.” It was almost an exact repeat of what had happened with Mothership Connection: release a strong R&B single, watch as a few other stations find their way to a pop song elsewhere on the album, sit back and let the charts draw us on up into the top ten. “Flash Light” went right to number one on the R&B chart—the first song by any P-Funk group to do that—and even made top-twenty pop. Everything exceeded my expectations. Well, almost everything: there was one afternoon when a fan buttonholed Archie to tell him how much he liked our music. “Man,” he said. “I especially love that new record, Funkadelic and the Place-Bo Syndrome.”