What The Funk?! 

George Clinton and The Parliament Funkadelic

by Adam O'Connor | August 30, 2011

Never has a genre of music been so synonymous with a particular artist than it has been with George Clinton and his travelling circus of funk. A gravely misunderstood man, he's much more currently involved with music than most people would think. Perhaps it's been the negative media that has dogged him through certain turbulent times in his life, or maybe it's simply that he just marches to the beat of a different drum overall. All it takes is looking past the (now removed) colored locks and patchwork faux-hippie funk ensembles to see that the man is not only a musical legend in his own right, having spawned multitudes of offshoot musical endeavors, but he's also been smack-dab in the middle of more than his share of copyright lawsuits than he'd care to recount. Who'd have thought that law and funk mixed so commonly? The Prime Minister of Funk does, and he's not giving up the fight anytime soon. Not even at the age of 70.

The first thing I had to do before speaking with Dr. Funkenstein was familiarize myself with all things funk. For starters, there is a lingo that it behooves you to understand when speaking with an individual of Clinton's funkmanship. It's not entirely different from punk, in that sense. A person might say, for instance, that something that is against the mainstream is "so punk rock." As in, "dude, the way you just called that mall security guard a 'rent-a-cop' to his face was so punk." And so it is with funk. Secondly, I had to make sure I was entirely sure I understood where Clinton was in terms of his legal woes. And by that, I mean who was he suing and who is he supporting that is being sued in the Battle Royale of copyright infringement and artistic freedoms that he's been dealing with for years. And yet I still felt entirely unprepared.

Forget whatever it is you think you've heard about George Clinton. The man is not, in fact, batshit crazy. Perhaps a little eccentric, but overall, he is a man who is passionate about music. And his musical legacy is the one thing that stands out most when the topic of George Clinton or Parliament or Funkadelic or any other funk-based musical project is brought up. He was able to merge his own brand of musical mischief with what was a burgeoning movement of music that encapsulated blues, rock, jazz, soul, disco and a slowly evolving strain of Motown. "Funk itself has been around forever," says Clinton. "Motown was probably the funkiest label ever, but there were no bass lines in it."

So, Clinton and his funky followers (he travels and performs with anywhere between six and eight members nowadays, although his 1997 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame consisted of him and a whopping 15 of his cohorts) set forth to create something that contained more of a psychedelic and doo-wop vibe than what was previously being unleashed upon the masses. It wasn't a far departure from the hybrid musical genres that were being experimented with at the time, but they sure brought an advanced style and atmosphere to the table.

In all fairness, funk truly didn't actually start with Clinton, but that's not to say that he wasn't one of the prime vehicles behind the music's movement. "James Brown. Muddy Waters. Little Richard. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the funkiest rock n' rollers ever," says Clinton. But the emergence of a supremely trendy and well-liked pop music phenomenon was threatening what the legends of funk, soul and R&B had been working towards. "We had to overdo the funk to overtake where pop was," he says. And overdo it they did. If you've ever even seen pictures of this wonderment of a performing troupe, you've no doubt noted the elaborate costumes, colors, props and overall eccentricities.

So what, at the earthly age of 70, keeps him going? "Funk is its own reward, the gasoline for the mothership," he says. "The fumes from the funk keep me going. When I work, I'm not tired. When I'm not working, I get tired." Sometimes a slight translation is needed from the man, but again, he's not so entirely out-there that these ramblings don't make sense (prior to what I guess I was expecting). "I keep playing for the music, because it has become so important to the world."

One of the more interesting things currently happening in Clinton's life, and there have no doubt been plenty over the course of his seven decades here in the Milkyway Galaxy, is the legal battle he has been injecting into over the sampling and stealing and borrowing and bickering of both his music and the music of others. But more important to him is how things are affected by the copyright laws and those who enforce them. He's even got his own blog (funkprobosci.com), which he himself updates out of his home, devoted to the protection of music and artists and the fight against those who unfairly benefit from the improper handling of music "ownership" (i.e., goliath record labels such as Universal). In fact, he not only crusades on cyberspace and appears in court and with politicians when needed, he's out there pounding the pavement for his cause. "To be fighting the fight, fighting for the music is totally funky," says Clinton. "We go up to our local copyright office, they know us all so well."

The problem began when the music catalog company Bridgeport Music seized control of the rights to several of Clinton's songs in the '70s and has held onto them for the sole purpose of suing whatever artists have used or sampled even a single note (literally, they have sued over the use of a single chord). This goes against the very thing that Clinton stands for: making music for the music's sake, so that people can enjoy it. (At the conclusion of this interview, he literally made me promise and repeat back to him that I would "keep the funk." I still don't even know what that means, but I did it anyway.)

"Messing with the copyright laws, that's fucking with history," he says. Many of the artists who this process has harmed the most are those who fall into the hip-hop genre, who have been known to sample Clinton's work the most of any style of music (you've likely heard parts of "Atomic Dog," in particular, in several rap and hip-hop songs), which does not please Clinton. "We get along with all the hip-hoppers. The fight isn't with them," he says, "the fight is with the big record companies."

"I love the fight because we're making noise, so we can make a difference," says Clinton. "We put it right out there in the open. Everybody's getting into it. I'm having fun." But other than legal battles, what's next for funk, you might be wondering? The man's career has got to be winding down (although you wouldn't think so when speaking with him, the man sounds so determined to keep up the funk). "We could go to other planets, we could do a whole new tour of Broadway plays," he says. And somehow, from the very beginning and despite all the serious and passionate legal discussion, I had a feeling the conversation was going to return to space exploration. | RDW