George Clinton reveals why he keeps his mouth shut about new music that pisses him off [Video]

Yesterday in Singapore, Parliament/Funkadelic’s George Clinton aka Dr. Funkenstein met classic rap group The Sugarhill Gang („Rapper’s Delight“). He had a nice two-part Periscope chat with them about the origins of P.Funk and rap, touring together, his musical backgropund and collaborators (including Skip McDonald/Bernard Alexander and Doug Wimbish, members of Sugarhill’s house band, plus Philippé Wynne, Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins), and the story behind several of P.Funk’s greatest hits:

Funk-A-Hall-Licks Wooing the World (1991 Bernie Worrell interview from the New Funk Times archive)

Bernie Worrell in 2009 – concert with SociaLibrium at the jazz club Porgy & Bess in Vienna (Photo: Manfred Werner/Tsui. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

I was sad to hear that Bernie Worrell, P.Funk’s „Wizard of Woo“, passed away yesterday at the age of 72. I last saw him in person a long time ago – he, his wife Judie, his band and I were holding hands backstage at New Orleans‘ Tipitina’s club, praying for a good show.

On a personal note: My favorite P.Funk has always been about George Clinton, Bernie, Bootsy Collins and Garry Shider – the hustler and the three musical geniuses. (I am sure George won’t mind – he and I talked about this. 😉 )

Here is a phone interview about his album „Funk of Ages“ I did with him in 1991, for the P.Funk newsletter New Funk Times I used to publish from the late ’80s to early ’90s (continuing the great work of Archie Ivy & Co.).

New Funk Times: I was wondering if you cut any of the basic tracks with the whole band present in the studio, or were there a lot of over-dubs going on?

Bernie Worrell: There’s a lot of over-dubs. You won’t believe the size of the studio I had to record it at! It’s pretty small, but the one good thing about it was… a lot of recording studios in New York don’t have windows, you can’t see out to the street. But this one was in what we call the Tribeca area, and it had two windows. So at least we could see outside.

R.I.P., Jack Bruce! (George Clinton on patching up things with Cream)

Jack Bruce (Photo: Christian Sahm / licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

John Symon Asher „Jack“ Bruce passed away yesterday (Saturday, October 25, 2014) at age 71. In his just-released autobiography „Brothas Be, Yo, Like George, Ain’t That Funkin‘ Kinda Hard on You?“ Parliament/Funkadelic’s George Clinton (73) remembers running into Cream’s founder member in the spring of 1993 – before and during the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

(…) Cream was inducted, which was a kind of brain twist: I got to watch two of my most important influences [Sly Stone was there as well – PJ] and think about the way that I had built Funkadelic on the intersection between their two bands. Jimi Hendrix had it right when he said that Cream was quitting just as everybody else was getting started. I also got to watch how a band acted when they put old rivalries and infighting behind them.