Funketeers of all ages: put on your seatbelts and open your minds.
This edition of the Joy Beat is not broadcasting from GBH Studios. We’re coming to you directly from the mothership.
From the psychedelic swirl of Funkadelic to the outrageous cosmic funk of Parliament, George Clinton reprogrammed the groove as we know it. Without him, there’s no P-Funk. There’s no Prince as we know him — pretty much any modern funk. No Outkast, Kendrick Lamar … pretty much any Hip-Hop.
But before the mothership, before the platinum records, before Dr. Funkenstein and Sir Nose, there was a stage in Boston — actually, a sound stage.
It was 1969. Funkadelic had yet to release their first album. It was an experimental sound that many stations were hesitant to feature, except for one little show that aired right here on GBH — back then, WGBH — called “Say Brother”, which went on to become “Basic Black”, and is now “GBH’s Rooted”.
Fifty-six years ago, George Clinton and his crew took over Boston’s airwaves and dropped a groove so deep the city is still shaking. Clinton joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to reflect on the experience and share some behind-the-scenes secrets. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
George Clinton: You know, just hearing you talk about that period, as I recollect, going on that show and being able to do it live, the same way we used to do at the Sugar Shack, which was in Boston at that time. We were able to go in and do it live.
I mean, that was the beginning of our psychedelic experience. We were very lame coming up there, thinking we were players from New Jersey and New York. We hit that city and they hit us with that … Um, uh, what is it? Lysergic diethylamide — LSD? That was our first time, and we were live on TV doing that show.
As I look at that, every time I see it on YouTube, I almost feel that feeling [from] that day. That was a very good beginning of our career.
Arun Rath: Are you telling me — and this video, we’ll have it up online, and people can watch it — are you telling me you were tripping during that performance?
Clinton: I was trippin’ my butt off! As a matter of fact, everybody in the band was. I mean, it’s kind of what we wanted to do anyway, and we just didn’t know it. We were still trying to be cool, but we had just turned to Funkadelic, probably a couple of weeks before that.
I got out of the suit, and we were, for real, we were liberated. But you can see it on our faces and our intent with the hairstyles and the clothes. We were destined to get a mothership somewhere along the line.
Rath: It’s amazing, going back to the time — 1969 — again, we’re talking about public television in Boston. I mean, “Say Brother” is not “The Ed Sullivan Show”, but that must have been something to bring that to live television. What did that feel like for you?
Clinton: I mean, it was funny to us because there was no playing live, unless it was a big [show], like you said, at Sullivan with the big orchestra and things like that. For rock and roll, those amps being as loud as we were, that was very weird for them to be able to do the sound of live television.
That’s why we never did [performances at the time] in concert, or those big shows, because we couldn’t take the amps in there. [WGBH] was one who didn’t know about the rules yet, and they let us actually get away with that. And we were actually making up stuff, you know? We went on past the record, and we started just making stuff up on live TV, which was like a freestyle.
Rath: Was that the first, like, P-Funk-style jam that we all got to love in concert right there, live on GBH?
Clinton: Yeah, on television, live. We went on to do it at the [radio station] CKLW later on. And in Cleveland, they let us do it after seeing that particular show; they actually let us do it on the [show] “Upbeat”.
Most of them thought it couldn’t be done. Once their people saw that show … And they only showed it around Boston for a minute. Later on, when it was in concert and different things came out, they saw that clip. And when YouTube came out, it was all over the place.
Rath: It’s wild hearing about this because, obviously, that was an important moment for us in Boston, for people who were able to witness it and what it led to, but to hear that — that was a time when you were actively creating the sound, and then bringing in all these different elements. What was everything coming into play? What were you going for with that?
Clinton: Well, it was actually. You know, Motown was peaking. You had The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and the English Invasion was coming over, so by the time we got to Boston, we ran right into Led Zeppelin.
You know, we were already trying to do Black rock and roll, and then we realized that it was getting stronger at that time. 1969 — it really cut loose. We realized we could actually do that. You know, the same Jimi [Hendrix] had done in ‘67. We knew that we could go ahead and do it, but [when] we got to Boston, we had a chance to do it on television.
We hadn’t even done the album “Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow”. When we got back to Detroit and got the album done, it was, you know, you could tell that was the beginning of it on that show. “I Got a Thing, You Got a Thing, Everybody’s Got a Thing”… When I see that haircut, [it] lets me know that I was off to the races.
Rath: That’s that kind of element — like that funk, that hard rock — you know, like in “Maggot Brain”. That kind of guitar that sort of cuts you to the bone.
Clinton: It hadn’t even come out yet. But we were just building up to that.
Rath: You know, this segment is the Joy Beat. We honor people who, in various ways, bring joy to others and make the world a better place. You’ve spent six decades now doing that full time. Would you say funk is another word for joy? Or vice-versa?
Clinton: It’s always been fun — you know, “fun” with a “k-y.”
Rath: The music expresses a lot of joy, but it’s also rooted in reality — hard reality. I mean, I think about how we were just talking about Sly Stone in the same way as we’ve been grieving him. You know, Parliament Funkadelic lyrics took on the political realities of the time. How do you go about you’re combing the joyful, the funky, the silly, with things that are serious and sinister? I remember sitting down and reading those lyrics on the albums and just... My mind was blown in a different way.
Clinton: I always make sure that I wasn’t trying to be no preacher, but I always say, “What if?” You know, I always question the situation socially, and just lifestyles and things. I always liked to question that, and I thought it went well in music, almost to the point of a play. You know?
Back in those days, I went from thinking of ourselves as a group, but more like a thing. We called it “Parlia-funka-delegment-thang,” where you’re able to do lots of stories and lots of “What if society was this way?” or “What if the world was like that?” You know, question all of the information we’ve been taught. I’ve always thought that was a good way to entertain, but always make it fun.
I ain’t never trying to preach because [expletive] changes on you as soon as you start a movement. And you change yourself, so I was careful not to like, preach, but always say “what if,” and I like this particular situation.
One thing I would be cool enough to say is, you know, love really is the only consistent throughout whatever civilizations change to. That seems to be [something] people attempt to do, even when they mess up. To me, that’s my question, but I like to mess with it because I don’t know.
Rath: So, rather than preaching, you know…
Clinton: Just dance to it. Just dance to the question.
Rath: Free your mind and your ass will follow.
Clinton: It’s like dancing underwater and not getting wet. You can dance underwater and not get wet. The stuff you have to go through, you know, you live through, between molecules of wetness without getting wet. That’s what I feel life is like — the stuff we have to live through, you can dance underwater and not be wet.
Rath: You know, I’ve gone to concerts of every kind of music in all different parts of the world, every genre. I can say, without a doubt, by a mile, the most diverse audiences I’ve ever encountered have been at your shows. I mean, like diverse race, gender, age, economic background — every kind of diversity. Did you have that crossover from the start, or did it develop?
Clinton: Well, no. It was actually — you know, the majority of it was too Black for white folks, too white for Black folks.
Rath: Negative crossover.
Clinton: The ones that really liked us never went anywhere. They always multiplied — it always multiplied. The young ones, we get a new version of them. Any time we go on tour, we go to colleges. We always get a new set of young people, so I’ve always catered to young people, no matter what generation. When the music started getting on my nerves, I knew that was the new music.
I kind of catered to that. Coming from a songwriter’s thing in Motown, you learn kind of like the marketing of music. I was always pretty good [with] styles changing, from the barbershop, I did hair, so I had to correspond the hairstyles with the dress. I was able to merge all of that together really early — you know, looking at The Beatles, Motown, all the different people that were really making it. Things that really worked on a phenomenal scale, I kind of copied. You know, we call it trending now, so I’ve been on trending stuff for a long time.
Rath: Along those lines, you’ve not just inspired so many of our best musicians because you’ve been so active — you’ve collaborated with many of them directly. What are some of the most satisfying for you, among the younger artists, along the way that you’ve worked with or produced?
Clinton: When I look back, I gotta say… Tupac. That whole crew of, you know, Dre, Snoop, all of them. They did G-Funk, and they took it a long way. Scarface, Kendrick Lamar… I mean, just everybody. You know, I was all up in everybody’s business.
Everybody around us, and everybody that I work with, pretty much had a lot of fun. Prince, of course. Because most of them are into the funk, it’s good to see somebody new actually understanding. Kendrick especially — we did “To Pimp a Butterfly”, and the questions he asked … He sounded like he was my age. He was destined because he knew what he was reaching for. He knew what time it was. And he is actually doing it today.
Rath: It was quite a moment when I first heard “To Pimp a Butterfly” — and then, there’s GC. There you are, right there.
Clinton: Oh, yeah. I mean, that whole crew, they call themselves the “New P-Funk,” and I had to agree with them when I went out there and met with them and saw how much all of them work together. It’s pretty much the way we did in Detroit with Parliament Funkadelic, so hats off to [Los Angeles] for what they’re doing now, because that was like our second home outside of Detroit.
Rath: Thinking back, looking back on all these accomplishments — and keeping in mind, I mean, you’re still active. You’re still going strong.
Clinton: Oh, no. To me, I feel like I’m just getting started!
We just did a show this past weekend in D.C., and it felt like… it felt like “Say Brother”. It was actually the same type of, you know, block party, almost. I knew it was the kind of place that was responsive to raw [sound]. We didn’t have to do the big lights and pretend. We had to just sit there and play. It was so much easier, and you actually heard what it sounded like as more than a theatrical [performance] — what it looked like.
We were actually, like, just sitting down in the backyard — or in the front yard, in this case — just jamming. And it felt really good.
Rath: Looking back again to that performance on “Say Brother”, what would 2025 George say to 1969 George?
Clinton: Oh, wow. Thanks for that day. Thanks for that period. Thanks. Whatever it was that set us off into that direction of freeing our minds, all the stuff we went through, I’m still thankful for that day.
