These days, George Clinton is perceived as an affable free-spirit, a court jester from Chocolate City. The trail of admiration that follows him around is nothing but positive, but what sometimes gets overlooked in a maze of neon hair and funky slogans is his immense influence on the music of today. As the frontman and ringleader of seminal funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic, he combined gospel, jazz, rock 'n' roll, doo-wop and more to form a new, fresh sound. Parliament focused more on horns and ornate arrangements while Funkadelic had a harder rock sound, but both have had an immeasurable impact on music to this day. They spawned a number of successful side acts as well, like bass player Bootsy Collins' Rubber Band and Maceo Parker's Funk All-Stars.
Clinton fell on hard times on the in the mid-'80s, but regained prominence as bands that grew up listening to his music sought him out as a collaborator. Over the past 15 years, then, Clinton has released projects with Public Enemy, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Michael Bolton, among many others. He brings his free-flowing funk show to the Orpheum Theatre, 216 State St., tonight at 8 p.m., and he sat down with the Cardinal to talk about Michael Jackson, sampling and NBA Jam.
The Daily Cardinal: Let's talk about your live show. What do you do to get ready for each performance?
George Clinton: We get three buses of people, just fill up and unload. You know, we've been playing for so long, I just call off a chord for the organs to play, and we go.
DC: How many people are in your touring band right now?
GC: About 24.
DC: How would you say your shows have changed since you first became popular in the '70s? Is there a big difference?
GC: Well, we don't have the Mothership, first of all. And we have to incorporate the current vibes, you know, the hip-hop type stuff. My son is a rapper, and him and a couple of other guys got me doing certain things. We do a lot of rock 'n' roll now, too, like \Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On,"" we've been doing that for about eight months, but it's been working real good. We got about three or four new people in the band. Girls singing their ass off.
DC: You mentioned the Mothership. Do you have any plans on bringing that back for a tour in the future?
GC: Oh, yeah. We're trying to get it for the world tour next year, with Dave Stewart.
DC: From the Eurhythmics?
GC: Yeah. We're talking with him right now, trying to get a world tour going. We're trying to put it together to have two or three spaceships. That's something we're working on now. Hopefully, we'll have that all put together. We're doing this before we go to Broadway, because that's another thing some people are talking about trying to put together. Not us, but actors doing the whole concept of P-Funk.
DC: How long you plan on touring? Do you ever want to retire?
GC: This is retirement. I retired into this, because if I did anything else that'd be hard work. If I stopped, that'd be hard work for me. I could do this and fishing forever.
DC: Do you have any new album plans?
GC: We got an album coming out. We just made some deals with a European company, and are getting ready to work out some things hear. I think it looks really good, and there will be a bunch of smiles on people's faces in a few months.
DC: You get sampled more than anybody, except maybe James Brown.
GC: I got more than him, now.
DC: Do you have any favorites?
GC: I guess I like the way Public Enemy's ""Bring the Noise"" did it. They had arrangements with the samples, funk on every track, and not just the loop either. But I'm a fan of all of it, because funk's the DNA of hip-hop, and techno. A lot of it now is getting so creative that you can no longer say that it is my music. I mean, they can actually sample solos, or some of them will sample a record and then learn to play it with their instruments, like Rage Against the Machine. I love the way they were doing that.
DC: What bands today that you have influenced do you really like, besides Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine?
GC: The band I really like broke up'Soundgarden. I liked the hell out of them. I really like the older bands. I also like Beck.
DC: Have you ever met Beck?
GC: Oh, yeah. He's really clever. He really cracks me up. I used to like that silly song he made, ""somebody, why don't you just kill me.""[Loser] I thought that was cool, and didn't know how much talent he had, but he really has a lot of talent. Eminem, and also Mystikal are probably my favorite artists right now. They have it all, clever words and styles everything. I mean, I like a lot of things. Outkast, of course. They're like part of us now.
DC: Yeah, with the Dungeon Family release it's like they were moving towards the P-Funk vibe.
GC: That's just where I've been recently. As a matter of fact, they're mixing some of my stuff right now, the Dungeon Family.
DC: Anybody else you'd like to collaborate with that you haven't?
GC: I wish I get Rakim or Sly together. That, to me, would be the bombest shit in the world. Rakim and Eminem would be some fun shit if they could work it out, because he's the cleverest motherfucker I know in the hip-hop scene, Rakim. I mean, he's probably the best, to me, that ever did it.
And Eminem, I've known him since he was about 14 or 15, and believe me, we haven't even seen nothing yet. He's got old shit that he could do right now that would peel people's caps. I know of a couple others who haven't gotten big that are on that level, but nobody would know of 'em. JC-001 over in London is in the same league, but nobody knows of him.
DC: Who do you see carrying on the funk tradition that you helped invent?
GC: D'Angelo. Musiq Soulchild has the same potential, too. Both of 'em, if they keep their nerves about them and the music industry doesn't change them. What D'Angelo did last time was one of the best things that can happen in R & B, but his company didn't push him. Everyone else got a hit doing what he was doing. You know, R. Kelly and everyone else got hits after him, and his was definitely the shit. You know, it's definitely a takeoff of Prince, but Prince only does it once in a while. If Prince were to do it all the time, to me, it would be all over.
The best record that I've heard, though, in the last couple of years, is Michael Jackson's album. I don't care what nobody says, that's one of the best-produced records I've ever heard. That is one of the baddest records, but for some reason the politic thing gets in his way. A lot of people don't realize that when you get that big, they won't let you be John Lennon or those other acts from the '60s. I mean, look at Richard Gere. He lobbies for the Dalai Lama, and they do him the same way. Put a gerbil up his ass. Not only in music, but in anything, in the future you won't have any more superstars. They got to stay out of foreign policy. As long as you keep your nose clean and stay out of that, you're all right. The minute you start lobbying for where they store missiles at, though, you're in trouble. Do that very selectively.
DC: How do you feel about digital music?
GC: You just have to make it funky. It's a reality, so you can't sit there worrying about it'you just have to make it work for you. It's going to be hard, because it was the Defense Department's first, so they're way ahead of you in the game. But since it's there, there's nothing to do but make it funky. The whole world's gonna be virtual in a minute, and the record company ain't doing anything worth a damn anyway, so if you sell your record for 25 cents, you'll be making more than if you worked for the record company. Just have to learn how to deal with it, and it's going to be real good for a lot of people because it'll make them resort to finding new ways of getting their music to the public. Some people, like Too Short, were just selling their music out of their car. You just have to learn how to pay your taxes while your doing it, because they'll sure get you for that.
DC: I read a quote from you, I think it was pretty old, where you said you hoped that funk would become as legitimate as jazz or rock 'n' roll. Do you think that point has been reached yet?
GC: It'll be there real soon, because hip-hop is embracing it. It will become embraced as its own. You know, rap at first didn't want to be related to funk. But then, what else could be as funky as taking another record and making a record out of it. That's the funkiest shit you could do. I mean, it couldn't get more funky than that. So funk is the DNA for hip-hop, and so is techno. So funk will come out as its own thing, even while it's being incorporated into other music. It's like the blues, which I'm sure will have its own Grammy soon, as well as funk.
DC: You were a secret character in the video game NBA Jam. Did you ever play that?
GC: A couple of times. My grandson played the hell out of it. You had to know the code. [At the name entry screen, enter D I then hold the cursor over S and push C] I was really a video freak before it got virtual reality involved in it. We're living in the fourth dimension right now, whether people know it or not. Between music and video games and all that, reality is suspect right now. What goes up doesn't have to come down. That was the epitome of the proof of logic, what goes up must come down. Or all we have to do is stay black and die. Ain't none of them motherfuckers true anymore. Michael [Jackson] proved the stay black part ain't true, and cloning has fucked up that dying shit, and what goes up is definitely out of control. With those three right there, logic has some sort of condition. You can't rely on nothing no more. Love is the only constant.
DC: One last question. You obviously know how to have a good time. What advice would you give people on how to throw a good party?
GC: Oh, of course you need the influence of some funk. You know what I'm saying. Get naked. Turn the lights down low and turn the music up loud. Dispense with all of your preconceptions, and just see what happens. Most likely you'll have a good time because most people are good-natured at heart.
