George Clinton’s P-Funk musical universe was based around Parliament and Funkadelic, a pair of bands with a shared, shifting membership. (‘P-Funk’ is, depending on who you believe, either an abbreviation of Parliament / Funkadelic or stands for ‘Pure Funk’). In his book Funk, author Rickey Vincent describes the P-Funk collective as a “fifty-plus member aggregation of geniuses, lunatics, has-beens, wannabes, architects, saboteurs, and hangers-on.”
Broadly speaking, Parliament was a funk band with a horn section and Funkadelic was a psychedelic funk-rock band without horns, but both bands changed and developed over their lifetime. Many individual members were also involved in spin-off projects including Bootsy’s Rubber Band, The Horny Horns, The Brides of Funkenstein and vocal trio Parlet.
At the centre of this sprawling musical circus was the P-Funk ringmaster George Clinton. A barber by trade, he formed his first group, do-wop outfit The Parliaments, in 1956, who had a small hit with I Wanna Testify in ’67. Funkadelic began life as the Parliaments’ backing band and Vincent describes the distorted acid rock/funk and country/folk oddities of their 1970 debut Osmium as “just as badly mixed, endless and unforgettable as one of their concerts.”
Early Funkadelic albums were psychedelic acid-rock/funk odysseys, mixing James Brown licks, a carnivalesque atmosphere, gospel harmonies and the searing guitar work of Eddie Hazel into what Clinton biographer Kris Needs described as “weighty funk-rock littered with experimental urges and surreal comedic touches.” But by the time of their biggest hit One Nation Under A Groove just a few years later in 1978 Funkadelic had mutated into a globe-dominating funk force.
Key to this transition was the addition of a series of talented musicians. Classically trained keyboardist Bernie Worrell joined in 1972, bringing a sophisticated musical sensibility and his influential championing of the synth as a funk instrument. Bass legend Bootsy Collins joined, left again, then signed up for good in 1974, bringing his legendary space bass sound and songwriting acumen. Former James Brown horns Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker and Richard ‘Kush’ Griffiths joined in ’75, bringing jazzy, intricate horn lines and Wesley’s infamously sharp arrangement skills. And a series of top tier drummers, Tiki Fulwood, Tyrone Lampking, and Jerome Brailey, provided the rhythmic pulse of the P-Funk groove.
Collins and Clinton found they were a formidable songwriting team, their musical partnership described by Vincent as possessing “the social insight of Lennon and MacCartney, the folksy warmth of Simon and Garfunkel and the strength of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.” With all the pieces in place, P-Funk entered their peak period and for the second half of the seventies, Clinton and crew would be unstoppable.
Escalating drug use, issues over royalties, creative differences and legalistic chaos gradually engulfed Clinton and in the ‘80s the P-Funk empire faltered and declined. Disgruntled band members had begun to leave at the end of the ‘70s, sometimes recording musical critiques of Clinton, who carried on as a successful solo artist and worked with Prince, Sly Stone, Thomas Dolby, Primal Scream and others, to varying degrees of success.
But the impact of P-Funk on popular music was substantial. According to Needs, “…the albums released under the P-Funk banner stand among the most influential in music, kickstarting black rock, laying foundations for hip hop and inspiring the likes of Primal Scream, Talking Heads and Red Hot Chilli Peppers.”
P-Funk’s pioneering synth bass and electronic handclap sound has become standard for much of dance and pop music. It was hugely influential in the soul, funk and disco world but also in the birth of electro and early hip hop too. Likewise, techno artists like Carl Craig, Underground Resistance and Robert Hood all pay tribute to the influence of the P-Funk aesthetic. Worrell’s use of Moog and Arp synths for those thick, punchy basses, gothic strings and silvery burbling leads all link P-Funk to the new wave and new romantic pop music that characterised the early 80s.
Then in the late 80s, a whole new generation of musicians, artists and fans rediscovered Parliament, Funkadelic and the rest of the P-Funk eco-system via the West Coast G-Funk hip hop sound. Producers and artists like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Warren G constructed their hugely successful G-funk subgenre almost entirely from P-Funk’s snakelike Moog riffs, weighty synth basses and funk rhythms.
The achievements of George Clinton’s P-Funk collective are many and they leave an impressive legacy; the P-Funk catalogue they created is incendiary, innovative, influential — and also superbly, supremely funky.