Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey all, It's on pay Bill from Team Supreme. For
Speaker 2: this classic episode of Questlove Supreme, we are speaking with
Speaker 2: the incredible, the Only George Cliffe Parliament Funkadelic Part one,
Speaker 2: George updates QLs and something's going on with his music
Speaker 2: while taking a look back at an incredible sixty five
Speaker 2: year career. This was taped in mid twenty twenty during
Speaker 2: those early days of the pandemic, so Team Supreme was
Speaker 2: still learning to get along virtue. But the quality of
Speaker 2: the conversation is amazing. I love this one.
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoyed.
Speaker 4: The Ladies and gentlemen Funk upon a Time and a
Speaker 4: galaxy far away and the land of cheese steak Utopia. Well, well,
Speaker 4: the five year old April head boy with dreams, aspirations
Speaker 4: and power hour of creative abundance, and he wished upon
Speaker 4: a star one day that this young and would utilize
Speaker 4: his talents so that one day he could bug and
Speaker 4: pester from the Jesus out of his musical idols who
Speaker 4: raised him. And this is that moment. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 4: you know the show, and you know the crew. You
Speaker 4: know Fonte. You know six Steve unpaid, Bill Laya. Let
Speaker 4: us get into it. This is the moment I've been
Speaker 4: waiting for all my life, my first real conversation with
Speaker 4: God himself.
Speaker 5: George Ship, Yes, yes, all of that, uh North Carolina building.
Speaker 6: How that sounds like some ship I wanted to say
Speaker 6: to Smokey Robinson and I was growing up. Man.
Speaker 4: Now you know, I know, man, this is This is
Speaker 4: a rare moment where you know, I have access to
Speaker 4: somebody that has had major input on my all of
Speaker 4: our creative juices, I mean all of us are everybody?
Speaker 3: We all your sons?
Speaker 6: Yea illegitimate?
Speaker 4: All right. I'll try not to make it this like
Speaker 4: it's your eulogy, but you know this is definitely Where
Speaker 4: are you right now?
Speaker 6: I'm at home. I'm in Tall, Florida. I'm sitting back
Speaker 6: and kicking it, and I'm been painting and shit, I've
Speaker 6: been chilling. This has been the RESTful part of my life.
Speaker 4: Really good.
Speaker 6: I ain't going nowhere.
Speaker 4: Stay in that bubble wrap.
Speaker 6: No, I'm cool.
Speaker 4: Is this the first real rest that you you've gotten?
Speaker 6: You know, since I was a teenager. I put it
Speaker 6: like that, We've been on the road since we was
Speaker 6: twenty two when Testifact came out, right, Okay, I had
Speaker 6: never left the road since then. We lived on the
Speaker 6: road and moved to city to city and you know,
Speaker 6: raised kids, get married, moved country and c you know.
Speaker 6: But this is probably the longest that we've been down
Speaker 6: and not doing anything.
Speaker 4: And you're not at all, are you?
Speaker 6: Oh? Hell no, because I had to do it this time.
Speaker 6: So I take it like, I don't stress myself. If
Speaker 6: I can't do nothing about it, I do the best
Speaker 6: I can and funk it. You know. I have a
Speaker 6: good excuse to paint, and we make music now. I mean,
Speaker 6: we were sending ship back and forth on nineteen studio
Speaker 6: only about five miles from here. But I send this
Speaker 6: ship down there in back. I don't even chance that ship.
Speaker 6: But I don't know. I'm I have I go fishing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say, I know you're big on fishing. Like,
Speaker 4: are you doing a lot of that now?
Speaker 6: Oh? Oh hell yeah, that's the only I sneak to
Speaker 6: the boat, get on the boat, we mask up. But
Speaker 6: I do a lot of that. Okay, I've been I've
Speaker 6: been chilling for real, just and you know, luckily been
Speaker 6: chilling that you know, ready for it this time, right,
Speaker 6: because we got a lot of ship that's getting ready
Speaker 6: to come out when this thing is go down. We
Speaker 6: was working on some bad ship, you know, with the
Speaker 6: group the kids, they was killing them. We was getting
Speaker 6: ready to do some hell of ship. But it's good
Speaker 6: because it gave us a chance to sit down and
Speaker 6: get it together and do it properly.
Speaker 4: That's good.
Speaker 6: At the same time, you know, I just got a
Speaker 6: lot of my catalog back, you know, yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: I got it back. Now I'm going getting ready to
Speaker 6: go through some things that publicize it. You're gonna see it.
Speaker 6: Ben Crump is my lawyer, you know, civil rights part
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 4: Right right? What would this mean for funketeers everywhere? Like,
Speaker 4: are we all?
Speaker 6: I'm a matter of fact, I want everybody that has
Speaker 6: worked with us that that's gotta be got a beef,
Speaker 6: you know, the contact Sheila Jackson, Lee, we all we're
Speaker 6: all doing together. She wants me to get all the
Speaker 6: people that has a beef together so we can make
Speaker 6: a one proper announcement. All those people get their copyrights back.
Speaker 6: They can get them back right now. They you know,
Speaker 6: recapture their copyrights. Said although this is this I'm telling
Speaker 6: this is the civil rights. This is gonna be a
Speaker 6: civil right. Yeah, like I said, yeah, how long is this? Well,
Speaker 6: I've been I've been in the battle almost thirty years,
Speaker 6: but I've been, you know, fighting to get it to
Speaker 6: that level of you know, get it to where the Congress.
Speaker 6: I was with John Kanye's he took it up for
Speaker 6: a long time. You know, we couldn't get up the past.
Speaker 6: But now every you know, it's the copyright capture thing
Speaker 6: is over now. So I got a lot of min
Speaker 6: in on time, and a lot of other people got
Speaker 6: theirs in. They just don't know it, and they're not
Speaker 6: telling and they're not telling them that they got it.
Speaker 6: They trying to make them think that they have to
Speaker 6: fight it something they don't have to fight. It's theirs now.
Speaker 6: So we're gonna make a big announcement, especially everybody with us,
Speaker 6: but not only us, a lot of people that work
Speaker 6: with us, even the people that sample the music. They've
Speaker 6: been in long enough now for some of their rights
Speaker 6: to be coming back to them. Yeah, you know, Prince
Speaker 6: Prince got his back, you know. So it's that it's
Speaker 6: that time and this generational wealth. It's what it's about
Speaker 6: you can't you can't pass it onto your airs if
Speaker 6: they tie you up, which is what they're trying to do, right,
Speaker 6: you know, trying to make it. There's a whole new
Speaker 6: law thing going on that you know, you they tell
Speaker 6: you just how they do it. And we got the help.
Speaker 6: We got the writer report, the Child Jackson need to
Speaker 6: explain all those things that needed done. So if you
Speaker 6: know anybody that's stuff that's that's having a problem with
Speaker 6: the copyright recapture, yeah, they should definitely get in touch
Speaker 6: with Ben Crump and Child jacksually or myself.
Speaker 4: Wow, So does this mean that for the first time
Speaker 4: your post seventy six funk a deck delic catalog will
Speaker 4: finally see the light of day, Like Yeah, Nomina One,
Speaker 4: Nation on the Groove or Uncle Jim or Hardcore Jolly.
Speaker 6: I got that album that masterback, Kneed Deep, I got
Speaker 6: those back. I own those two. I was I was
Speaker 6: hesitant to put them out till I got them all
Speaker 6: off the market people that was putting them out illegally.
Speaker 6: I had to clean it up first, So I got
Speaker 6: I owned those been on those for a long time,
Speaker 6: but lawyers was keeping me from getting to them. You know,
Speaker 6: but I got those and especially need to be in
Speaker 6: one nation. That's why you hear so much about Antomic Dog,
Speaker 6: even your capital stuff. I got Atomic Dog, the computer game.
Speaker 4: So loop Zilla all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so now we put all of them in. And
Speaker 6: that's what we're making sure that that whole catalog recapture
Speaker 6: thing is. You know, it's it's true for Elvin's president
Speaker 6: and his family. It's true for John Lennon and his family,
Speaker 6: So it need to be true for everybody that that
Speaker 6: don't got nothing to do with race.
Speaker 4: So what does this also mean for the westbound catalog?
Speaker 6: Same thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, same thing. So is armand but lady and is
Speaker 3: he still alive? Is he still alive?
Speaker 6: He's still alive. He's still alive, and and all that.
Speaker 6: That's all that's from a big issue. It's gonna be
Speaker 6: a big issue because it's you read the book, the
Speaker 6: book I put out, You read the Jane Peters thing
Speaker 6: in the back.
Speaker 4: That's you got to explain to the audience. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: that's the thing recapture.
Speaker 3: So I want to treat.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna try to not ask such a your questions
Speaker 4: because this is not just might be a book. So
Speaker 4: I might have to break it down. Can you explain
Speaker 4: to them the situation right now? I'm so elated that
Speaker 4: that you own this stuff now, I know you've been
Speaker 4: trying for the long.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had the book, the brother's video, like George,
Speaker 6: ain't that phone count hard on? You know? That came
Speaker 6: out and it was out for a while, and they
Speaker 6: took me to court on that book. So I'm still
Speaker 6: in court five years later for the book. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean the thing was to kill that information, to kill
Speaker 6: the information in that book. They said that the deformation
Speaker 6: of the farm because I told everything that was he already
Speaker 6: said himself, you know, in deposition. But yeah, they got
Speaker 6: me in court right now. The main thing is to
Speaker 6: keep it slowed down to where I can make no moves.
Speaker 6: You know. Long. I've been in court for the last
Speaker 6: fifteen years with my lawyers and and him and Armor
Speaker 6: and the major record companies. So all of that's coming
Speaker 6: to a head now because they're gonna investigate the whole
Speaker 6: copyright recapture. We got our back, but we need everybody
Speaker 6: to get out of the way to let us make
Speaker 6: those collections because it's still hard to collect from the
Speaker 6: different societies. If you know, if you ain't got your
Speaker 6: powerful set of people behind you and lawyers. You know,
Speaker 6: that's pretty hard for them because they got to be
Speaker 6: in business. They got business with the companies, so they
Speaker 6: mess up their business trying to protect you, especially a
Speaker 6: catalog as big as ours. There's a lot nobody don't
Speaker 6: nobody want to get at us. But they've been stealing
Speaker 6: with that, you know, But they'll go down fighting. That's
Speaker 6: a lot of you're talking about a lot of years,
Speaker 6: a lot of careers of people that sample those songs,
Speaker 6: use those songs, license those songs that we never not
Speaker 6: only myself, but none of the band members. You hear
Speaker 6: them all something. No, they didn't get money. I agree
Speaker 6: with them, they didn't get it.
Speaker 3: So I'm sorry, just for claborication.
Speaker 7: You're saying that you guys never received anything from any
Speaker 7: of these songs until.
Speaker 6: No, No, I ain't gonna say never receive anything. I'm
Speaker 6: talking about that sampling and that license, and no we don't.
Speaker 6: We're not. We don't be participating in that at all.
Speaker 6: You know, we got Atomic Dog recently in that three years. Okay,
Speaker 6: but no, no, the money. Even since I got it,
Speaker 6: I've been fighting my own lawyers to get the money
Speaker 6: that's owed to me for it. The main thing was
Speaker 6: to get it out of my possession right and you know,
Speaker 6: and they did that for a long while. But I
Speaker 6: thought it, I got it. I got it back, paid
Speaker 6: four million dollars to my own lawyer. You know, take that,
Speaker 6: pay got it back.
Speaker 4: Just to clarify it, what I was going to say
Speaker 4: is probably the most endearing thing about your personality is
Speaker 4: the fact and your business acumen was the fact that
Speaker 4: you were so open to working with rappers because unlike
Speaker 4: your counterpart, and I use this word lightly, of course,
Speaker 4: you know, people consider the pillars of soul music and funk,
Speaker 4: you and James Brown. James Brown's attitude towards it was well,
Speaker 4: I hate samplers, sampling, you know, rapper sampling my music
Speaker 4: and all that stuff, but really not seeing that that's
Speaker 4: going to just bring it back and make it. And
Speaker 4: you called it early in an interview, like even in
Speaker 4: the mid eighties that no, I like, they asked you, like,
Speaker 4: what do you think about you know, day lost soul
Speaker 4: taking you know, needy for me myself and I and
Speaker 4: you were so open to it. You're like, that's great
Speaker 4: because what it will do is it will lead a
Speaker 4: whole flock of people to my music and to my
Speaker 4: concerts and whatnot, Like you saw the vision of it.
Speaker 4: So it's not that you're anti sampling and reached structuring
Speaker 4: the music, but the fact.
Speaker 3: That pave me my money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so many people have.
Speaker 6: To you know, right part of it, the sampling part
Speaker 6: of it, I welcome. I welcomed the sampling part of it.
Speaker 6: You know, they got them too. Most of them didn't
Speaker 6: get paid either.
Speaker 4: I've gotten bit by armored a few times almost.
Speaker 6: And we never got anything that and he was doing
Speaker 6: that on behind of us. He's supposedly we never got
Speaker 6: any of it, got any of it. So now that's
Speaker 6: what's happening. And now that's getting meant to be open
Speaker 6: up and everybody will be able to see that nobody
Speaker 6: in the band got their money or the other artists
Speaker 6: that had you know, all the companies band together on
Speaker 6: those sampling because nobody wanted to acknowledge it. So now
Speaker 6: it's going to come out because we didn't fade the wait,
Speaker 6: we didn't die all. We're supposed to be out of
Speaker 6: here by now. But we said one nation and the group.
Speaker 6: We meant that we uncle Jim's Army. We was on
Speaker 6: the March then, and the clones with the sampling, to
Speaker 6: me was just the clones. You have to have DNA
Speaker 6: clones to make something new. That's what making the music.
Speaker 6: When we said clones of Dr Funkenstein, we meant that
Speaker 6: that far back we knew it wasn't gonna be music
Speaker 6: on television. How they sell those k tail packages that
Speaker 6: you didn't have to worry about that, no more, nobody
Speaker 6: got paid for that. The new thing was gonna be samples.
Speaker 6: And they didn't know how far they were gonna get
Speaker 6: away with it. Not the artists that do. A Kid's
Speaker 6: gonna make music whatever way they can, whatever new way
Speaker 6: they have to, they gonna make music. And I'm welcome that.
Speaker 6: I just have to learn how to participate, how to
Speaker 6: hang in there. But the business people around that used
Speaker 6: us against each other. You know that he don't want
Speaker 6: you to sample it, he charging you. Most artists wouldn't
Speaker 6: even talk to me. They were scared to talk to
Speaker 6: me because they thought I was mad about the samples.
Speaker 6: They told them, you know, and and I'm assuming you
Speaker 6: so everybody knew that. But like I said, it's coming
Speaker 6: out now, and yeah, and they sued me for the book.
Speaker 6: In the book, you know, I'm the last one in
Speaker 6: five years. Everybody else they got sued with me got off,
Speaker 6: and I'm still there, you know, hoping I would go away.
Speaker 6: That's what I did, Shake Shake the Gate and Medicaid
Speaker 6: Fraud Dog. I did those two albums just to reignite
Speaker 6: my energy, you know, to start to get the kids
Speaker 6: going and the and that's how I inspired I was.
Speaker 6: Once I got the book out, I'm ready to make
Speaker 6: brand new music with whatever we're going from here. This
Speaker 6: is a new generation.
Speaker 4: You know. I'm glad you mentioned that. Normally I start
Speaker 4: from the beginning, but I think for this particular one,
Speaker 4: I kind of wanted to start go backwards. Definitely, the
Speaker 4: Medicaid Fraud Dog project. Can you, for one, what is
Speaker 4: your obsession or what is the the ideology behind dogs
Speaker 4: in the metaphor your metaphors for everything. But because that
Speaker 4: album in particular is such a clever outlet, like political
Speaker 4: commentary but using dogs as your main characters, what what
Speaker 4: was the genesis of that album?
Speaker 6: I did called Dope Dogs right, Yes, indeed, okay, Dope Dogs.
Speaker 6: I have a whole story for that that I wanted
Speaker 6: to do cartoons, animation and everything, but I never would
Speaker 6: give it to anybody because I have all the characters,
Speaker 6: and so I tried to do as many you know,
Speaker 6: dog related songs just to keep that concept alive. So
Speaker 6: I use it in Medicaid Fraud dog because it was
Speaker 6: based on laboratory studies on dogs, when they used to
Speaker 6: do studies on dogs for perfumes and ship like that.
Speaker 6: That member, that's when the dope dogs come from. Not
Speaker 6: only the drug dogs, but this time the dogs were
Speaker 6: sniffing out the political bullshit in the in the Obamacare,
Speaker 6: you know, all the different names they want to call it.
Speaker 6: On the political drug scene, everything is about dope. Everything's
Speaker 6: about drugs. The whole world is talking about how they're
Speaker 6: gonna get their medicaid, okay, and so that whole thing.
Speaker 6: The dogs are sniffing out that information, and most of
Speaker 6: us are being hooked on stuff on medicine and create
Speaker 6: new diseases with the drugs they give us. They given
Speaker 6: the certain drugs and those drugs to give you side effects,
Speaker 6: which to be a whole new flock of patience. Okay,
Speaker 6: now they do. That's what I'm saying, And it's designer,
Speaker 6: designer side effects, like designer drugs. That's the era we
Speaker 6: live in now, where we evolve into some you know,
Speaker 6: between robots, androids, human and that shit's gonna be a
Speaker 6: blurred line in a minute, you know, it's you know
Speaker 6: and wait, So the dog is take a dog to
Speaker 6: sniff that out. The instincts of a dog is primal.
Speaker 6: You know, whether this maiden or whether it's sniffing out
Speaker 6: whatever you're training to sniff out, learn it. And if
Speaker 6: he's sniffing out the drugs, you get high from sniffing
Speaker 6: on drugs. So the dog's gonna have it, so they
Speaker 6: have to. You know, the dogs are doped up. So
Speaker 6: these are the dogs, the characters. I got this dope dog.
Speaker 6: They all got their own relationship to drugs, whether it's
Speaker 6: a police dog or whether it's a dope dealer who
Speaker 6: like to make their dogs fight. And the dog and
Speaker 6: the dogs are like, shit, you don't you used to
Speaker 6: give me a reward, you know, used to give me
Speaker 6: a joy, true sniff a treat. You know, that's how
Speaker 6: they how they train the dogs so that they don't
Speaker 6: even want to get a dog no treat. You know,
Speaker 6: these dogs get together and they got their own like
Speaker 6: you know, remember the Ninja Turtles. These dogs are like that,
Speaker 6: you know, kind of like who Tang clan, you know.
Speaker 6: And they they got a thing on drugs. They don't,
Speaker 6: you know, they impartial to the political book, you know, discrepancy.
Speaker 6: They just deal with drugs. So that's my part, My
Speaker 6: partiality to sucking with dogs and drugs.
Speaker 3: Makes sense.
Speaker 6: Now we can't hear the news.
Speaker 4: You know, got more dogs for us.
Speaker 6: I got one that's coming I got one that's coming out.
Speaker 6: That's that's gonna hurt you. Oh man, oh yeah, who dogs?
Speaker 6: You know it's gonna be they're gonna be stepping on it.
Speaker 6: You know how they be doing dancing to Atomic Dog. Yeah,
Speaker 6: they're gonna stop. They're gonna stepping on this. They're gonna
Speaker 6: be stepping up. They're gonna be stepping up this and there.
Speaker 6: I dare your booty not to move your but your butt,
Speaker 6: your butt to betray you.
Speaker 3: I when that happened, I love it, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying.
Speaker 6: From when she shaked by itself and you ain't got
Speaker 6: nothing in voluntary?
Speaker 4: Yeah, can How long did it take to make the
Speaker 4: Medicaid Fraud Dog album? You know I I thirty eight
Speaker 4: years but since the last Parliament record, but.
Speaker 6: Well between that would shake the gate and that it
Speaker 6: took about three years, you know. But I had a
Speaker 6: couple of songs that I was hold on to the
Speaker 6: I've done maybe five or six years ago. Then I
Speaker 6: just kept them, kept them until I got them right.
Speaker 6: I did them a thousand different ways, but medicaid fraud.
Speaker 6: When I got the concept together, I got Fred Wesley
Speaker 6: down there, I got you know, Chris Days. You know,
Speaker 6: I knew the people that I needed for that outside
Speaker 6: flavor to what we were doing now. And we were
Speaker 6: sampling our own self, but now we're learned. Everybody else
Speaker 6: was sampling, and then everybody got scared to sample anymore,
Speaker 6: so we started sampling that self.
Speaker 4: You're I think you're your best sample source.
Speaker 6: So that's only right, but you know, it's still is
Speaker 6: it's an art form to picking that shit out.
Speaker 4: How many reels do you reckon of just unused source
Speaker 4: material do you have?
Speaker 3: And can we have them?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Because for me, for me.
Speaker 4: Like my all time favorite p funk song is new Spaceship,
Speaker 4: a song which musically is created twenty years before you
Speaker 4: even completed it in ninety seven, So how many other
Speaker 4: like uncooked is do you have just sitting in the
Speaker 4: vault that could come out today and still work. Have
Speaker 4: you heard?
Speaker 6: Have you heard the sample some of this and sampled
Speaker 6: some of that? All right?
Speaker 4: I have a slight confessional, yes, so check this out.
Speaker 4: I purchased sample some of this, sample some of that.
Speaker 4: Never opened it because I think in my mind, I
Speaker 4: always thought, well, this probably throwaway stuff. And you know,
Speaker 4: I'm sure that all the prime P funk stuff is
Speaker 4: on actual P funk records. And so it wasn't until
Speaker 4: I talked to DJ Premiere. This is about four or
Speaker 4: five years ago, and I asked him a question about
Speaker 4: a sample. It was a NA sample and he says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: these drums I got because my favorite premiere sounding drums.
Speaker 4: I asked like, where do you get these drums from?
Speaker 4: And he said, the George Clinton sampled some of this,
Speaker 4: some of that PET like, so NAS's represent drums come
Speaker 4: from that practice. All of the Hard to Earn album,
Speaker 4: the drums come from that. Some of Jaybrew's second album,
Speaker 4: The Wrath of the Math mind Blown. And then when
Speaker 4: I went to it, I wanted to kick myself because
Speaker 4: like it took me fifteen sixteen years to open up
Speaker 4: this record. If I just had the patience and just
Speaker 4: sat down and listened to it, I could have been
Speaker 4: ahead of the game.
Speaker 6: But you know, Eric Sermon used to use it of
Speaker 6: that too. Yes, I gave I gave. I gave him
Speaker 6: a copy of it down at Gallous Austin studio, and
Speaker 6: most people, like you said you said, they didn't open
Speaker 6: because people like, if you give it to them, then
Speaker 6: it's not interesting that they could find it. So it
Speaker 6: took a lot of people a long time to even
Speaker 6: look at it because we were saying here, Now, what
Speaker 6: I was saying about that album is that most of
Speaker 6: where those samples came from, we have the whole tracks
Speaker 6: to those songs. Those are songs came out in the
Speaker 6: Family Series, but a lot of the them came out
Speaker 6: at all. So those that's what A lot of those
Speaker 6: samples came from. The songs that were released, you know,
Speaker 6: except for maybe some of the film was in the
Speaker 6: Family Series, which a lot of people don't know about
Speaker 6: those Easterns.
Speaker 4: Well, I was gonna say, even with the Family Series. Okay,
Speaker 4: so there are some captain obvious questions. I'm gonna ask
Speaker 4: you the Junior Marrison song on that family series Super Spirit,
Speaker 4: Super Spirit. I think that's the most eccentric creative moment,
Speaker 4: and in a life that was always eccentric. Can you
Speaker 4: talk about Juni Morrison and how like, what's his what's
Speaker 4: the process of his creativity? At least how did you?
Speaker 4: My god, how did you utilize it?
Speaker 6: Me and him, we did like person myself, I do
Speaker 6: my part and do you you do your party and
Speaker 6: say it back. We didn't question the Whatever I did
Speaker 6: was lokay. Whatever he did, I knew. I just had
Speaker 6: to figure out what my part was, and that's to me.
Speaker 6: We started to do and it's a song on that
Speaker 6: Famihi's called Tryune Yes. Yeah, that's when we actually was
Speaker 6: getting ready to actually come up with a concept. He
Speaker 6: thought I was weird and I thought he was weird.
Speaker 6: So we got along really good on the weirdness part
Speaker 6: of it. And we couldn't get quite together, you know,
Speaker 6: because of the political stuff that was going on around
Speaker 6: us that we had no idea who was actually being orchestrated,
Speaker 6: you know, And that's a whole other story that we
Speaker 6: could talk about later. But we could never get together
Speaker 6: even when we was doing computer games I was, you know,
Speaker 6: of course the you know at the time I was
Speaker 6: into my drug thing. But I always commnaged to figure
Speaker 6: a way the work, to get the work done. But
Speaker 6: you can't get the work done and watch people that's
Speaker 6: you know, intentionally trying to keep you from getting the
Speaker 6: work done. That's a little more than you're bargaining from
Speaker 6: what you say. I'm getting sucked up. You don't realize
Speaker 6: when you get fucked up, you fuck up everything. You know,
Speaker 6: everything around you get fucked up. You know, it takes
Speaker 6: you a minute to grow up, if you know, to
Speaker 6: get out of that, if you unless you can wigre
Speaker 6: your ass out of it. Before the duo, but that's
Speaker 6: what the Junie and I had a lot of stuff
Speaker 6: we was was gonna do and even like a medicaid fronto.
Speaker 6: I had to call him get him out of retirement.
Speaker 6: You know, you know he's going trying to do nothing.
Speaker 6: He was doing some electronic music, but he wasn't trying
Speaker 6: to deal with the business. But I got in the
Speaker 6: same thing when we did, when we did the pour
Speaker 6: a phone, got got Booty and him the you know
Speaker 6: the summer swim, the some some swim song. I know
Speaker 6: every time I do a song with him, it's gonna
Speaker 6: be a level of cleverness and real and you know, intentional.
Speaker 6: He know what he's doing. He can do what he wanted,
Speaker 6: you know, he do what he wants to do. Once
Speaker 6: he analyzed what era w in, that's all we have
Speaker 6: to think about, is what era is this? It's not
Speaker 6: our old days. It's knew whether they doing that, what
Speaker 6: is the feel? He analyzed it like that, and he
Speaker 6: used to come up with the arranger whatever the kids,
Speaker 6: and we would relate to kids. I think I said
Speaker 6: that before. I always try to relate to nine, ten, eleven,
Speaker 6: and twelve. Then the ones you got bubble gum, they
Speaker 6: get on your nerve everything they think about. But if
Speaker 6: you notice, that's the music that always comes back, the
Speaker 6: music that gets on your nerve that you know, how
Speaker 6: could they get away with this? That's the way it was.
Speaker 6: When we came out with powerful, powerful, power, powerful, What
Speaker 6: the hell are y'all talking about? That was due same
Speaker 6: thing come along, you know, kids, take get back to
Speaker 6: elementary and it meant to get on your nerve, to
Speaker 6: get your os out of the way. But if you
Speaker 6: pay attention to him, how danced with you? As I can,
Speaker 6: but otherwise I'm gonna recognize it and try to hang
Speaker 6: at least paying attention to what they do. I can
Speaker 6: spot a young artist even knowing anything about it. I
Speaker 6: would have bet my life on let's say, Rihanna.
Speaker 4: With S O S.
Speaker 6: Cardi B as soon as I heard her. There's certain
Speaker 6: type of styles that's meant to provoke him. But certain
Speaker 6: people have an artistic thing about it. Certain people can
Speaker 6: take like Frank Zapfler, he could do he could go
Speaker 6: all the way out with but he was intelligent as
Speaker 6: hell with what he was doing. And he wasn't even
Speaker 6: doing drugs. That's that's really out there.
Speaker 4: Was that always your theory because a lot of I'll
Speaker 4: say that, a lot of the themes of your initial
Speaker 4: wave of Funkadelic a p funk word ice yeah, laced
Speaker 4: in the nursery rhymes and limericks. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And me and Bernie Bernie myself only throw the cartoons
Speaker 6: was you know, cartoon used classical music, Okay, you know,
Speaker 6: so Bernie could play anything he wanted to play in them,
Speaker 6: and at the height of it, how intense and intellectual
Speaker 6: would get, he could still play Mary have a little
Speaker 6: lamb in there.
Speaker 4: He didn't that.
Speaker 6: That's how comfortable he was, you know, and the jazz
Speaker 6: thing he had his time was impeccable. He was just
Speaker 6: free to do what he wanted to do. And at
Speaker 6: the same time we had Eddie Hazel and Billy Bass
Speaker 6: who was probably the Funkys Roys kids, and then Gary
Speaker 6: Side later on. They even church kids. They all went
Speaker 6: the church together, you know, Glenn going. The whole neighborhood
Speaker 6: was and they was on fourteen and fifteen when I
Speaker 6: met him, I had a barbers shop. They hung out
Speaker 6: and bought Billy his first guitar. Eddie is Eddie had
Speaker 6: the guitar, but I both Billy his person. Okay, really,
Speaker 6: so you brought Eddie Hazel his first guitar, not Eddie's first.
Speaker 6: Eddie had one the Big Gipson had the Big Gibson,
Speaker 6: but he was like fifteen years old. I bought him
Speaker 6: his first rock and roll and he played the Big Gibson.
Speaker 4: For a long time really, but when he.
Speaker 6: Got to the studio, you know, yeah, I had to
Speaker 6: get him all because we didn't know we we played
Speaker 6: with the Vanilla Fudge and they had the Damps and
Speaker 6: they let us choose that ship and we heard what
Speaker 6: we sounded like. We went back to Mannies in New
Speaker 6: York and bought everything that We spent all the money
Speaker 6: we had and got the loudest We was the loudest
Speaker 6: member of the band in all of the East Coast.
Speaker 5: I mean we Oh, I was I wanted to ask
Speaker 5: you had mentioned him in passing Glenn Goings. He was
Speaker 5: like my favorite singer out of the coming amazing and
Speaker 5: he died so young.
Speaker 3: What was his story kind of what was his deal?
Speaker 6: Him and Gary shot all like I said, they all
Speaker 6: went to church together. He was a ram Salent freak.
Speaker 6: Really yeah, oh man, that was him and him and uh,
Speaker 6: what's the d J Rogers. They saw the background, they
Speaker 6: saw the background for Bobby woo mack okay, and they
Speaker 6: were showing out so much in the background. Bobby said,
Speaker 6: this is the Bobby, this is the Bobby show. This
Speaker 6: is not y'all show. He fired both of them. That's
Speaker 6: when good, That's when Glenn came with us. You know,
Speaker 6: Gary them said, you know he was singing the background
Speaker 6: with you know, Bobby wo mack. He said, but he
Speaker 6: goes he ain't got no job. And Gary and Eddie
Speaker 6: and now Edie can sing his ass of him. Any say,
Speaker 6: somebody can say, you really want to hear what they
Speaker 6: sound like? Yeah? That dreaming right, yeah, dream it's up
Speaker 6: from the down stroke. It's a lot of stuff with
Speaker 6: you hear Old Lord, Why Lord, Old Lord. I'm sorry
Speaker 6: to take that back father, opened our eyes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's some singing backwards. Okay, that's that he's saying.
Speaker 6: No, you can you can hear forward too, yeah for yeah.
Speaker 4: So that okay, because well I know that that's open
Speaker 4: our eyes backwards.
Speaker 6: On like you like, yeah, but have you heard it forward? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've heard the four person yes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so that that group used to practice in my
Speaker 6: bomber shop. That nade the gospel clubs, they're from Newark.
Speaker 6: They used to practice in the barbershop. And so that's
Speaker 6: why we was parted. We was partialshped to that song,
Speaker 6: you know, uh from the gospel clefts they was they
Speaker 6: was a mel and any just you know, we would
Speaker 6: jump from gospel to jet you know anything. That's what
Speaker 6: we did when we did free your mind, your ass
Speaker 6: will follow. We were never gonna get caught in the
Speaker 6: position of having to follow up. I want to testify,
Speaker 6: you know. Forty five trying to get another forty five.
Speaker 6: We went so far out because I mean remembering that
Speaker 6: we was at Motown and that during that time we
Speaker 6: know how to make a straight record. They a clean record,
Speaker 6: and we knew what was we intentionally you know, got wrecked,
Speaker 6: got tripped out and just free your mind. Your ass
Speaker 6: will follow, you know, we just we You know you
Speaker 6: got Martha the van Bella singing in the background, or
Speaker 6: you know she wanted to what Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 6: we was. I'm telling you we had all of them,
Speaker 6: was doing had didn't uh what's his name? Did his coffee?
Speaker 3: Did his coffee scorpio? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he played on I Gotta I Got a thing, Yeah,
Speaker 6: I got a thing. He put on quite a few
Speaker 6: of the songs, you know, Dennis Coffee. Really the engineers
Speaker 6: didn't want to have his name put on the on
Speaker 6: the record of Maggie Brain because we you know, I
Speaker 6: was doing so much feedback and circling, you know, sound
Speaker 6: on sound, and I ain't know what I ain't know
Speaker 6: what I was doing. I was just doing what sounding
Speaker 6: named Jimmy Hendrix, you know, And as long as I
Speaker 6: keep it out of keeping out of the red, you know,
Speaker 6: I was cool. And so I did. I did an
Speaker 6: engineer when when he put his name on the record,
Speaker 6: and years later like you.
Speaker 4: Were engineer's nightmare even back then.
Speaker 6: Like oh hell yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Really. They were dressing up in those lap coats and
Speaker 4: still trying to maintain levels and all those things.
Speaker 6: Oh they're trying to be you know, keep it normal.
Speaker 6: But I mean, all we have to flashlight. I told
Speaker 6: him when we did the handclaps on flash light, I
Speaker 6: wanted they had to be so loud that if you
Speaker 6: ran your hand across the CD, you feel the bumping it.
Speaker 4: This is yo, this bro, you let them talk.
Speaker 3: This is sixty years of music. Bro, Like we're not
Speaker 3: gonna get it. This rapid fire like.
Speaker 6: Just those other kind of those are the kind of
Speaker 6: things that we you know. The baseline, Bernie was imitating
Speaker 6: Larry Graham on a move. Yeah you hadn't heard no
Speaker 6: moves do nothing but make sound effects. You're going to
Speaker 6: make sound effects, but you didn't Nobody actually play the
Speaker 6: bass line like a baby. Bernie had so much interpretation
Speaker 6: of the mini move and the pro solos. He could
Speaker 6: imitate anything he could. Joy was up there and they
Speaker 6: programmed it and write it out and he'd be turning
Speaker 6: off while Bernie's playing. And he can play like a
Speaker 6: bass player, like on Flashlight. And we made Bernie the
Speaker 6: lead instrument. The bass is the lead instrument on flash
Speaker 6: Light in the hand class back up.
Speaker 3: And that's just like you Bernie and.
Speaker 6: His brother.
Speaker 4: Whis He told me that he's playing drums on Flashlight?
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 6: Yeah? He played drums on Flashlight?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 6: Wow, he played drums on quite a few, you know.
Speaker 6: And our our bass player, Boogie played drums on quite
Speaker 6: a few of his balance you know the song yeah.
Speaker 6: And Gary Cooper, Gary Cooper, he played yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Okay, well boy, you brought up Glenn Goin's earlier. And
Speaker 4: there's so many singers in the p funk year that
Speaker 4: we can name. But dare I ask you of all
Speaker 4: of the singers represented in that army, and that means
Speaker 4: Gary down the winds, Davis for your money?
Speaker 6: Who is your?
Speaker 4: Who is your? Michael Jordan, who is your? Who is
Speaker 4: the singer? And this is everyone singer?
Speaker 6: Wow, that singer. It was gonna it would be Gary
Speaker 6: and Juni because of the creativity. Not only did the
Speaker 6: you know, the singing voice, they could come up with
Speaker 6: parts and JUNI could come up with lyrics parts and
Speaker 6: sing it. So, I mean, but then there's a lot
Speaker 6: of me you can't take. You with Mayby, I mean,
Speaker 6: she's like excellent. When Gary Cooper, you put Gary and Gary,
Speaker 6: you get Gary, Peanut and Gary and them three together,
Speaker 6: you can do anything. We never got a chance to
Speaker 6: We never got a chance to see all what Glynn
Speaker 6: was gonna do. He did everything in about two years
Speaker 6: that he did with us.
Speaker 3: Were you involved in that Quasar album that he did?
Speaker 6: No, that's that's when they that he was he had
Speaker 6: three months to live when he got with us. He
Speaker 6: was with us three years and then he left and
Speaker 6: they did the Quasar album, you know, and then they
Speaker 6: think they did Mutiny album. I didn't have anything to
Speaker 6: do with either one of those.
Speaker 4: And he died at twenty four. Like to me still,
Speaker 4: it's like when I hear when I hear Glenn Gons's voice.
Speaker 6: That's what I'm saying. He had that rants Allen on
Speaker 6: him and he had complete controlled over any tone that
Speaker 6: come out of his mouth.
Speaker 4: Wow, back to my bone. Gary, in my opinion, is
Speaker 4: your best animated voice sounding character. How are you able
Speaker 4: because you know most music fans don't even know that
Speaker 4: Gary is the voice of the group's slide fox Let's
Speaker 4: Go all the Way right of which you know that
Speaker 4: was a big hit in nineteen eighty five. And he's
Speaker 4: singing in his natural voice. But how are you able
Speaker 4: to convince your frontline army to adapt to these new voices?
Speaker 4: And the same for Bootsy Collins as well, Like, how
Speaker 4: are you able to tell them, like adapt your voice
Speaker 4: to more of an animated tone, because to me, like
Speaker 4: my bone is has one of the greatest animated voices ever.
Speaker 6: Well, when we we was on the roll, when and
Speaker 6: when you got momentum going for you, when you're on
Speaker 6: the road and you in that zone they call it,
Speaker 6: and we had the character of Sir and those we
Speaker 6: had the character of mister Wiggers uh cash for the
Speaker 6: friendly Ghost. You know, we was into making cartoons, Rhymestone Rockstar,
Speaker 6: Monster of a Dour Baby Baba. We was into making
Speaker 6: toy music, you know, so it was easy for going
Speaker 6: to go into it. Why are you asking that charge?
Speaker 6: We had a thing in that zone. We was writing cartoons.
Speaker 6: Then that's what motive. Booty Affair is the motion picture underwater,
Speaker 6: you know them the rhythm it takes the you know
Speaker 6: what saying, oh that's from you know. That's when your
Speaker 6: boy Eli, you know, I bid off of that and
Speaker 6: when I so DJ was getting ready to be the thing,
Speaker 6: and that's when we did Mothership Connection. I was imitating
Speaker 6: Frankie Krocker, in In Jocko and all of them. So
Speaker 6: I could tell DJ was beginning to be the thing
Speaker 6: because they was cutting them off of the radio. They
Speaker 6: started to play five songs and no commercials and you
Speaker 6: start missing, You start missing that DJ talking dedicated song
Speaker 6: to your girl and da da and on that. Uh.
Speaker 6: DJ started getting political, especially in Philly Georgie Woods. That
Speaker 6: was my boy, you know. So we intentionally played our
Speaker 6: own record on our record, w E f U k
Speaker 6: we funk Cody freaking habit. For me, that was all
Speaker 6: the sit that you're on your favorite DJ. You wasn't
Speaker 6: hear it on the radio no more, so, I mean
Speaker 6: let me hear it from me. We love dude, funk you.
Speaker 6: All of that was our version of DJ. As soon
Speaker 6: as we did that, they started having what you call
Speaker 6: DJ pools. You started taking your record to the DJ
Speaker 6: and they would tell you they record pools. They would
Speaker 6: tell you who records should get played, you know, radio was,
Speaker 6: and then no sooner than that. Then hip hop came
Speaker 6: along the bucket. We just DJ's on record.
Speaker 3: And and that's what it's, that mothership connection. I have
Speaker 3: to have to ask. It sounds like you got a
Speaker 3: three on it to me, what is what does that mean?
Speaker 4: You know what that means?
Speaker 3: It was cool.
Speaker 6: All all that was was that what we called it,
Speaker 6: a trendy chemical substance, whatever it's trending at that time,
Speaker 6: the chemical consumption was happening. That's where we were at.
Speaker 6: You know. It was just that language that people was
Speaker 6: conveying with you. The street talk they do it nowadays
Speaker 6: to just seem harsh because their kids they gonna make
Speaker 6: it worse than yours. They're gonna do your ass no
Speaker 6: matter how bad you did it. They gonna I don't
Speaker 6: even say nothing to them, because if you say something
Speaker 6: to them, you gonna make him do it work. They
Speaker 6: know they got your attention, you know so. But that's
Speaker 6: what it was, trending, chemical septance on it. Funk would
Speaker 6: take a ten.
Speaker 5: That is is it true that for the for maggot
Speaker 5: brain that you told Eddie Hazel to play like his
Speaker 5: mom had died.
Speaker 8: I've always heard that story, and he said, fuck you,
Speaker 8: and I knew that once I said it, he understood
Speaker 8: the intense because it was a regular three quarter blue song.
Speaker 6: Ain't too much. But when you if he played it
Speaker 6: psychedelically like he could do it, and with all the
Speaker 6: echoplexes we had on it, and he was beginning to
Speaker 6: manipulate the echo next, and I was manipulating the echoplex
Speaker 6: in the studio on top of his. So it was
Speaker 6: just a vibe. He could play all of the blues
Speaker 6: and soul like Jimmy was doing all that he wanted,
Speaker 6: and all those echoes on top of each other. But
Speaker 6: that was some brilliant shit, especially when you took the
Speaker 6: instrument other instruments out, take the base and drums out.
Speaker 6: You ain't got nothing of the rhythm, guitar and the lead.
Speaker 6: You could take up all the space with all those delays,
Speaker 6: and it worked pretty real good with it because he
Speaker 6: was so soulful. An't even the sound he made was
Speaker 6: you felt it.
Speaker 3: You were born in North Carolina.
Speaker 6: Correct in Connapolis, Napolis, right outside of Charlotte, Canapolist.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm from Greensboro, so I know I got a.
Speaker 6: Whole bunch of family in Greenboro right now, a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of family. I got a whole bunch of family, sisters, nieces, brothers.
Speaker 3: It might be that's home. How did you get from?
Speaker 7: Go ahead, say you're born in North Carolina, But I've
Speaker 7: been to Plainfield a lot, and that's all they talk
Speaker 7: about is y'all in you.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting.
Speaker 7: It's like it's two different towns that got that you
Speaker 7: the pride of.
Speaker 6: But I came from North Caroline plumb about ten years old,
Speaker 6: to Virginia, Chase City, Virginia. In about ten. I went
Speaker 6: to Newark, New Jersey, Okay, And that's where I went
Speaker 6: to school that Nork I went to, you know Avon,
Speaker 6: that was south side, same school. Shack went to Mars, Okay,
Speaker 6: I went there. But I had a barber shop ten
Speaker 6: miles outside of New York, which is Plainfield. I never
Speaker 6: lived there. I just had the barber shop and shoveled
Speaker 6: there every morning on the bus. The surs so funny,
Speaker 6: and Plainfield was like suburbia. It was like, you know,
Speaker 6: for rich folks, you know, middle class people, and then
Speaker 6: they got really funk, got really funky. Hitting the late
Speaker 6: sixties in the early seventies, you know, their riots and everything,
Speaker 6: but it was some soul for folks there. You know what.
Speaker 6: It just hit me.
Speaker 4: I worked with Nona Hendricks on a project a couple
Speaker 4: a couple of years. A few decades back. She told
Speaker 4: me that you were her original hairdresser.
Speaker 6: Is that undress I did? I did what you mean?
Speaker 4: Said?
Speaker 6: No, no, no, I used to wave here. They used
Speaker 6: to have, you know, waves close to the end.
Speaker 3: O used to make the waves, the finger waves.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and she was she's living uh Jillian Trenton. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I did both of them there and that you know,
Speaker 6: we we we worked together for years though known. I
Speaker 6: didn't know us in parents, you know, years later, just
Speaker 6: for you know magazine, you know, PR but there in
Speaker 6: Patty Sarah, they were like neighborhood punk and they were
Speaker 6: spunking a long time. Eliament started fifty six. I think
Speaker 6: they might have started in like fifty nine.
Speaker 4: Really, so you.
Speaker 6: Let me ask you something. Yes, was your family Andrew
Speaker 6: and the Hearts?
Speaker 4: My father was Lee Andrews.
Speaker 6: Yes, okay, I thought so, yeah, yeah, I'll go that
Speaker 6: far back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. When I yeah, when I read that in the book, man,
Speaker 4: I was like, Wow, this is my dad would love this,
Speaker 4: Like my dad gets mentioned and divided soul in George's book. Well, no,
Speaker 4: explain to me, You're like, I know that the Parliament
Speaker 4: started off in uh as a do op group, as
Speaker 4: typical for the day. Could you just explain like that
Speaker 4: that that what that environment was like with trying to
Speaker 4: break into do wop? And really I want to I'm obsessed.
Speaker 4: I'm obsessed with Ray Davis for me, more than Melvin Franklin,
Speaker 4: more than Barry White, more than anyone with a deep voice.
Speaker 4: Ray Davis to me is the yeah he was to me,
Speaker 4: how did you guys like form?
Speaker 6: Well? Which form? Like you know most kids in grade school?
Speaker 6: I had two or three other people in the band
Speaker 6: before them, but by the time we got to that lineup,
Speaker 6: we went out to Detroit auditioned, didn't make it, but
Speaker 6: I ended up writing songs for him. Then I did
Speaker 6: a song called I Want to Testify, and I did
Speaker 6: that song with Ron Banks from the Dramatics, Wow, Pat
Speaker 6: Lewis from the Hot Butter and Soul, myself and the
Speaker 6: guy named Eddie from the Holidays. That was the background. Course.
Speaker 6: Parliament couldn't make it out to Detroit. We got a
Speaker 6: hit record on that song, and that was the beginning.
Speaker 6: That record carried us out into the world. I'm want
Speaker 6: to test by it. Like I said, Vanilla for Lenister
Speaker 6: guitars nams. That changed our life. We became Funkadelic that night.
Speaker 6: Were getting tired of with the record companies with the
Speaker 6: name Parliament couldn't use the name, so we took our
Speaker 6: backup band, which Billy Edding burning them made them Funkadelli.
Speaker 6: We became their backup singers and so you see the
Speaker 6: five of them on the Funkadelic first Bunkadelic album. But
Speaker 6: that that's how I did it with the record company.
Speaker 6: And when funk Partmer got his name back, we did
Speaker 6: a Parliament album called Osmia with Hollandoja. Holland stayed tied
Speaker 6: up there for years and ended up on Castle Blanca
Speaker 6: with Neil Bogart.
Speaker 4: How did you How did you meet Neil Boardguard and
Speaker 4: how did you stay out of the disco phray because
Speaker 4: everything that Neil did was theater and disco. How did
Speaker 4: you stay before that?
Speaker 6: Before that, Neil was the king of bubble gum, thember
Speaker 6: Neil did. He had Buddha Records. Oh, Wow.
Speaker 4: He had Border.
Speaker 6: Records, and he had Gladys Knight and The Fifty the
Speaker 6: Stairs Steps and Curtis Mayfield and all of that. Neil
Speaker 6: had that labor first. Then he had Hot Wax with
Speaker 6: Hollandojo Holland, which was the Honeycombs. So he wanted us
Speaker 6: to be on his label when he had Hot when
Speaker 6: they had Hot Wax, you know, Hollandoji Holland. But they
Speaker 6: put us on Invictis, so we missed Neil. A couple
Speaker 6: of years later, when we got up for Invictis, I
Speaker 6: looked Neil up and he had a new labor called
Speaker 6: Castle Blanker. He took us and Kiss and Donna at
Speaker 6: the same time. Wow, and we all went three different directions,
Speaker 6: and he was so hot. They went through the disco thing. No,
Speaker 6: I wasn't going. As close as I got to disco
Speaker 6: was knee deep. That was my dad rescue dance music
Speaker 6: from the blogs. You know, I like, I like disco,
Speaker 6: but I didn't want to do the same beat on
Speaker 6: every song. He you know, there was a silver Convention.
Speaker 6: I was a civil convention free you know, no that
Speaker 6: you know, but you can't. You can't do every song
Speaker 6: like that. That's what that was my own thing. They
Speaker 6: had measured your heartbeat. And when you start fucking with
Speaker 6: music like that, no, it gets you know the facts
Speaker 6: that shit in you know?
Speaker 4: So is that okay? Because also probably the most notable
Speaker 4: thing about your your your concerts versus you're probably the
Speaker 4: only act I know that will do a song slower
Speaker 4: in concert than you do on the album. The anytime
Speaker 4: I've ever seen Doctor Funkenstein performed, and any of those
Speaker 4: like those seventies concerts, you guys go half the speed
Speaker 4: of that and each song is like fourteen minutes, like longer,
Speaker 4: way longer, and way slower?
Speaker 6: Is there? Like where you get we got got that from?
Speaker 6: You ever see feel a Cool? Yes? Yes, they used
Speaker 6: to do songs all day long for an hour, one
Speaker 6: one song and it start on the song to me
Speaker 6: in the afternoon and be dust and they be still
Speaker 6: playing another version of that same song all kind of
Speaker 6: And we used to do that back in the sixty
Speaker 6: eight sixty nine when we first started Funkadelic. It was
Speaker 6: a groove like a boom boom boom boom boom, and
Speaker 6: we vamped that ship forever, and people were so fucked
Speaker 6: up that they just we always fucked up. Everybody enjoyed
Speaker 6: the groove all, you know, and it took us. We
Speaker 6: are reels of the same song. We are reel we got.
Speaker 6: They put up another reel and we keep going.
Speaker 4: And you tape them ships together. It's just one long
Speaker 4: reel we got.
Speaker 6: You know how they say they have twenty four he
Speaker 6: had seventy two tracks?
Speaker 4: Okay, and a man. Now we're doing rapid fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know other way to do this.
Speaker 4: Can you explain how pedro Bell comes into the system?
Speaker 6: And oh, that's good, that's good. When I moved to Toronto,
Speaker 6: he's he's a you know, fan, used to write me letters,
Speaker 6: you know, a fan, and he would draw on the envelope.
Speaker 6: On the envelope, it looked just like the album covers,
Speaker 6: the whole cartoon whatever, even they even drawing. He was
Speaker 6: drawn on the envelope. The postmaster general. I thought I
Speaker 6: was part of some kind of organization and they were
Speaker 6: getting upset with me. But you know, was I asking me,
Speaker 6: was I part of some And I told him, you know,
Speaker 6: blah blah. But then I said, I want this dude
Speaker 6: to do the album. Now says if draw that much attention,
Speaker 6: and it sounded so clever. He was right out of
Speaker 6: high school. I contacted him and he did had him
Speaker 6: do Cosmic Slot. Yes. From then on it was like
Speaker 6: I would have to tell him the story of what
Speaker 6: I'm talking about, and he would give me his interpretation
Speaker 6: of whatever that meant to him, and his and his
Speaker 6: own weird ass language. He could write. He could write
Speaker 6: his ass song, you know. But he did it intentionally
Speaker 6: the same way he could draw, draw. He could paint
Speaker 6: a picture that looked like a photo. Okay, but he
Speaker 6: was he was fed up with that. He didn't like
Speaker 6: doing that, so he did his own pagro bell art
Speaker 6: and his own payro bell language, and that It was
Speaker 6: funny to hear his interpret And I got him when
Speaker 6: I did an album called some of My Best Jokes
Speaker 6: of Friends Friends.
Speaker 3: Yes, I did that.
Speaker 6: He did what you talk about? I said, you come
Speaker 6: up what you think I think? To think I'm talking about?
Speaker 6: That was the funniest one in the bowl because I
Speaker 6: didn't give him nothing to go.
Speaker 4: He would do the commentary and and all the the
Speaker 4: mythology on it was that you were.
Speaker 6: Me and him. Yeah, tell him what I'm I'm telling
Speaker 6: what I'm talking about. But he would interpreted and put
Speaker 6: it in his language.
Speaker 4: Speaking of cosmic slop. Okay, the question I always wanted
Speaker 4: to know, the first time that I ever heard cosmic
Speaker 4: slop was in the most unlikely platform. I first heard
Speaker 4: cosmic slop on the Cosby Show. Yeah, of which Robert
Speaker 4: and Vanessa I remember that are doing their homework and
Speaker 4: I hear cosmic slop and this is you know, it's
Speaker 4: so weird because you know, now, Phil, a lot.
Speaker 6: Of music does not get a twist. He definitely was.
Speaker 6: He definitely was.
Speaker 3: He yes, he will. That's that's one way we could
Speaker 3: describe it. That's one way.
Speaker 4: That was revenge.
Speaker 3: Okay, So.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know I let it. I didn't know
Speaker 4: what it was, but it was. It was during the
Speaker 4: era in which like VCRs like at first started infiltrating
Speaker 4: everyone's household and you recorded every show on the show,
Speaker 4: and so I recorded and watched that episode like forty
Speaker 4: two times. So, uh, my history teacher tells me, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's from caadelic cosmic slop, And you know, it really
Speaker 4: didn't hit me until I started digging in the crates
Speaker 4: and then once I heard the lyric output. Of course,
Speaker 4: you know, cosmic slaps about a sort of a regretful
Speaker 4: mother that's treated.
Speaker 6: Like a jes because she has to turn tricks meet
Speaker 6: her kids.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, how did this song wind up on
Speaker 4: The Cosby Show? Did you have any warning whatsoever that
Speaker 4: they used that song so prominently on that episode?
Speaker 6: No, I was surprised when I heard it too, But
Speaker 6: I know he I know, he like Parliament. You know,
Speaker 6: he was in Detroit for a while himself with a
Speaker 6: record label, so he knew of us and it didn't
Speaker 6: surprise me.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: Well, speaking of TV, while we're on the TV movie
Speaker 5: side House Party, you'll count your uh your cameo housewrights
Speaker 5: the DJ?
Speaker 3: How did how that play?
Speaker 6: That was really fun? I still see play out in Tallahasse.
Speaker 6: He comes here a lot of fam you but Reggie
Speaker 6: husband that was his when he first got out of college. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 6: his mother told me he was like that when he
Speaker 6: was a kid. So he had posters and stuff. She thought, I,
Speaker 6: you know, because that skirt I had on on one
Speaker 6: of those boats, she say in the Wig at the
Speaker 6: Wig on TV. She didn't know what was gonna happen
Speaker 6: to him. And that's the same thing, same thing with Humpty.
Speaker 6: He had that same poster. His mother says, she used
Speaker 6: to carry it around with him. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Boy, So seeing all those groups that you influenced, man, Like,
Speaker 5: what was that like for you? Did you feel like
Speaker 5: inspired by? Did you feel like they were copying?
Speaker 6: Like what was your? You know, I love it. You
Speaker 6: know that you're gonna feel good as hell, you know.
Speaker 6: But it was always always like the one to be
Speaker 6: like Motown, you know, all the different artists that was around.
Speaker 6: That was family that that was a hell of a place.
Speaker 6: We used to just ride by there and watch them
Speaker 6: all in the front yard, so many stuffs, And that's
Speaker 6: the way we felt, you know, with Boots scene Roger.
Speaker 6: A lot of people don't know we did Roger more
Speaker 6: about to the Elms, you know, all about making that record,
Speaker 6: like how that was Funky Bounce, the song he had
Speaker 6: called Punky Bounce. We took the little snippet of the
Speaker 6: first part of that song and cut tate. We copied it,
Speaker 6: copied it, cut it with a tape, copy, copy, cut it,
Speaker 6: and then tape tape and tape it together. Second we
Speaker 6: stampled it. They didn't have a sample machine yet, so
Speaker 6: we just know just loop, just cut that loop piece
Speaker 6: until we got like ten seconds or something like that,
Speaker 6: and then we looped around a pencil round the head
Speaker 6: of the two track machine and just let it loop
Speaker 6: around it and until we got ten minutes of it.
Speaker 6: The ten minutes and then put that on two on
Speaker 6: the twenty four track and back and then called Roger
Speaker 6: back and he hated it. He hated Oh, he hated it.
Speaker 6: But that was the deal. We gave him the deal. Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's why we got him this deal that it wasn't
Speaker 6: We had to use that as the name because that's
Speaker 6: his younger brother. I told him, make up another He
Speaker 6: didn't want it to be Roger. Make up another name.
Speaker 6: You know, there's some money for you this. We was waiting.
Speaker 6: His record was gonna be on Uncle Jam. Remember Yeah,
Speaker 6: his record was gonna be on that. So we made
Speaker 6: that just in the meantime so you can get some money.
Speaker 6: We put it out in the record hit so Big,
Speaker 6: They had to become zap and he hated it.
Speaker 3: Circle back to you. After that, After hit what was
Speaker 3: he was?
Speaker 4: They ended up leaving.
Speaker 6: They were they were, they were so big, they were
Speaker 6: so big. And then then we then they put out
Speaker 6: I did grape Vine, You did that the grape Vine,
Speaker 6: More Bounce, and there's one more Uh only have eyes
Speaker 6: for you? Yeah, I just I just started him to
Speaker 6: doing it. I didn't finish with him. But and there's
Speaker 6: one that Wilson picking up again with thing great by
Speaker 6: midnight hours and I said, those songs you can always
Speaker 6: do and and get you know, get on the radio
Speaker 6: back at that time and end up doing them all
Speaker 6: and they worked pretty good for him.
Speaker 4: Did you work on the Roger solo album as well?
Speaker 6: Or just the first album that was that was that
Speaker 6: was the album that was supposed to have been on
Speaker 6: Uncle Jam. That was Uncle Jam's album.
Speaker 4: We paid so doing Roger do it? All that stuff is?
Speaker 6: All that stuff was done from Uncle Jam.
Speaker 7: Wait, hold up, As you can see, we are just
Speaker 7: scratching the surface when it comes to the legendary and
Speaker 7: iconic George Clinton.
Speaker 6: So I'll tell you what we're gonna do.
Speaker 7: We're gonna split this thing into coming up next Wednesday,
Speaker 7: Part two of George Clinton. And if you think you
Speaker 7: found out something this episode, wait until episode two. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Part two of our sit down with George Clinton. Quest
Speaker 7: Loves of Heart Radio and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
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