George Clinton, 84, is the connecting thread running throughout the inaugural P-Funk Festival.
The funk pioneer Rock & Roll Hall of Famer plans to spend the day and evening making guest appearances onstage with such supporting acts such as Grammy-Award winner Kendra Foster, 48, and singer Scottie Clinton, 39, before the fest finales with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic.
“It’s going to be a whole lot of songs from our repertoire because it’s going to be a whole lot of people who don’t play with us anymore,” Clinton said. “Many of them have their own offshoots of our band. So, they’re going to be covering a lot of songs that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do…. So, it’s going to be a hell of a set list.”
The P-Funk Festival is being held April 11 at Phipps Farm with 12 hours of live music. An opening ceremony with Clinton and such political leaders as commissioner Nick Maddox, state Sen. Allison Tant, commissioner Rick Minor and former Lt. Gov. Bobby Brantley kicks off the day at 11:30 a.m. with a formal proclamation recognizing “85 Years of Funk History” with opening performances by the Godby Marching Band followed by an onstage ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“I am proud of that,” Clinton said. “It’s good to still be around and receive those things. It gives me a good excuse to stay out here funkin’. I ain’t going nowhere.”
Clinton, who will turn 85 on July 21, marks more than half a century shaping modern music.
Deep Tallahassee roots
Clinton, whose hits include “Atomic Dog” and “Flash Light,” has called Tallahassee home since 1994 and maintains a recording studio off Apalachee Parkway. “Oh, I love Tallahassee,” Clinton said. “It’s nice and quiet. I can just chill. It’s just beautiful. And I can fish and I can make my music.”
Since Clinton’s move to Tallahassee, he has not been a reclusive person. He has performed many music shows at The Moon, where he met his friend and promoter Scott Carswell. When a Beatles tribute band appeared at The Moon, the players were dumbfounded to see Clinton seated in the front row.
Always stretching boundaries, Clinton collaborated with Florida State University world music professor Micheal Bakan and his percussive gamelan orchestra. Dropping by the now-defunct Bradfordville Blues Club on the weekend, it wasn’t surprising to find Clinton in the crowd.
When R&B singer Freddie Jackson hit the Tucker Civic Center, Clinton sat down front. These days, Clinton is honored by colleges and holds an honorary doctorate degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston. But he got his humble start in the ‘50s as a hairstylist in Plainfield, N.J. His shop, the Black Soap Palace, became a hangout for neighborhood crooners during the heyday of doo
Detroit start: ‘The Mothership looks good’
It didn’t take long before Clinton formed The Parliaments, a doo-wop group that dressed in matching suits and sported heavily processed hairdos. In 1963, Clinton landed a job as a staff writer for Motown Records and relocated the band to Detroit.
The Detroit scene in the ’60s was a crazy quilt of musical styles that included the polished Motown artists, the feral Iggy Pop and the Stooges, shock-rocker Alice Cooper, the politically charged The MC5, the madman Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes and the working-class The Bob Seger System.
“We played all those rock ‘n’ roll scenes and changed from Parliament to Funkadelic,” Clinton said in a 1994 interview with The Tallahassee Democrat before he embarked as a star attraction on the Lollapalooza Tour. “We realized then that we didn’t have too much competition. So, we had time to perfect whatever we were doing, the funk with the jazz overtones, the classical, rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop. We put in everything.”
The group’s flamboyant costumes and funhouse visuals became a trademark. If you dropped in on a Parliament-Funkadelic concert in the ’70s, you would see Clinton descend to the stage in a flying saucer (aka The Mothership) and play a four-hour show with band members who went by names such as Sir Nose and Diaperman. The original Mothership is on display at the Smithsonian African American Museum in Washington D.C.
“I’ve been there a couple of times, the Mothership looks good,” Clinton said. “You know we have a new one being built. The Essence Festival in New Orleans will be the first place to see the Mothership in July.”
During the late ’70s, the Parliament-Funkadelic world churned out a string of classics such as “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker),” “Make My Funk the P-Funk,” “One Nation Under a Groove,” “Cosmic Slop” and “Chocolate City.”
Nearly all the catchy riffs would be sampled a decade later when rap and hip-hop arrived on the scene. Clinton won a Grammy for all his music used for Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly” album.
Connecting with other generations
Besides Lamar, Clinton has always maintained close musical links with younger artists. In the 1990s, Clinton worked with Prince, who was a P-Funk fan.
“Prince was very easy to work with,” Clinton said. “He was very quiet and very exact. He knew exactly what he wanted.”
The funk king also went in the studio with rap legend Tupac Shakur to bridge the two genres of music styles.
“He was quiet, similar to Prince,” Clinton said. “He was from suburbia in the Bay Area. Not like his hardcore image. He was a soft-spoken, nice kid.”
The funkmeister is still listening to the younger musicians. When asked why he signed up for the P-Funk Festival, he laughed and said, “It was my grandkids’ idea.”
Mark Hinson is a former senior writer for The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com.
If you go
What: P-Funk Festival: “Let’s Take It To Tha Stage” with George Clinton & Parliament-Funkadelic as headliners with more than 15 acts performing during the fest
When: Opening ceremony with various civic leaders and Clinton at 11:30 a.m. on April 11. Gates open at 11 a.m.
Where: Phipps Farm, 4300 N. Meridian Road
Tickets: $108.03 up to $447.31
Contact: pfunkfest.com
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: ‘Hell of a set list’: George Clinton ready for Tallahassee P-Funk Festival
Reporting by Mark Hinson, Tallahassee Democrat correspondent / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
