Funkadelic - When funk went cosmic

George Clinton was born on July 22, 1941 in Kannapolis, a small town within the metropolitan area of Charlotte, the most populous city in North Carolina. After moving with his family to New Jersey, to Plainfield (a kind of bedroom community for New York), George learned the barber's trade as a teenager, soon becoming co-owner of a barber shop that quickly became a hangout for local singers and musicians. It's precisely the back room of that shop, in the mid-1950s, that serves as headquarters for the first band Clinton tries to put together, with the aim of entertaining the shop's customers. It's a doo-wop group, a genre that identifies an offshoot of rhythm & blues popular among African-American teenagers in major U.S. cities during the 1940s, based on vocal harmonies, melodic lines, very simple structures and bare-bones instrumentation, if not entirely absent, making it perfect for performing in a cramped space, drawing inspiration from successful acts such as the very young Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers. Clinton names the fledgling project The Parliaments, borrowing the name from a brand of cigarettes made by Philip Morris: it's only the beginning of what will become a memorable story.

During the 1960s, Clinton splits his time between working as a songwriter behind the scenes on Motown's staff of composers and trying to achieve success with the Parliaments, who settle into a line-up of five singers: alongside the leader, the group includes Ray Davis, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas. Clinton, who contributes to writing minor hits for other acts on the black music circuit, travels to Detroit almost every week, where he produces singles for various soul labels, coming into contact with a huge number of talented musicians along the way. In 1967 he finally manages to land a hit with the Parliaments: it's "(I Wanna) Testify", which climbs all the way to number three on the r&b charts, allowing the group to put together a tour with a backing band made up of five musicians: Billy "Bass" Nelson (bass), Eddie Hazel (lead guitar), Tawl Ross (guitar), Tiki Fulwood (drums) and Mickey Atkins (keyboards).

The label that releases "(I Wanna) Testify", Revilot Records, soon goes bankrupt, however, and because of contractual red tape Clinton finds himself unable to use the name Parliaments. In order to keep recording with other labels, he comes up with a workaround: changing the name of his outfit, turning it into Funkadelic, a word obtained by merging the terms "funk" and "psychedelic", a move that clearly signals the intention to pull off a major stylistic shift: abandoning doo-wop to try their hand at a psychedelic rock with black-funk contours. In the original plan, Funkadelic consists of the five musicians recruited as the Parliaments' backing band, while the five founding singers appear as guests.

At the same time, once Revilot Records' failure is confirmed, starting in 1970 Clinton revives the name Parliaments, changing it to the singular form Parliament (again because of the usual legal red tape), while keeping the same line-up, backing band included. In this new version, Parliament is destined to become a soul-funk collective enriched by a horn section, while Funkadelic is tasked with exploring the more psych-rock side of things. In Clinton's ingenious scheme, Funkadelic and Parliament would work for two different labels, developing two distinct approaches to funk material. It's the start of a stunning, gripping adventure that will define the shape of modern funk music, first drawing from the finest sixties-rooted psychedelic rock, then blending even more thoroughly with jazz and black musical tradition. "Psych-soul" territory had already been explored in the past, but never with this much force, and never with the avant-garde vision of Clinton and co., who stand out from many of their contemporaries thanks to an outlandish, alien-like look that partly anticipates the costumes and glitter of glam. From Prince to Earth Wind & Fire, from Michael Jackson to half the disco scene, many will draw from the wellspring of their brilliant ideas, both musical and aesthetic. But let's take things in order...

February 1970: Funkadelic

In February 1970, right at the dawn of the new decade, Funkadelic arrives on Westbound Records, the band's self-titled debut, in which the newly formed group poses programmatic questions, trying to provide some answers: "Mommy, What's A Funkadelic?" and "What Is Soul" are two perfect titles for addressing the sonic innovations that Clinton and co. set out to outline. In the opening track, chosen as the album's explosive incipit, the band isn't afraid to have fun for almost ten minutes playing around with the riff from "Whole Lotta Love", recorded by Led Zeppelin just seven months earlier: these are only the first glimpses of the still partially unveiled talents of young Eddie Hazel, a virtuoso destined to secure a place among the small circle of the most iconic guitarists of all time.

The album doesn't crack Billboard's Top 100, having to settle for position 126, but it reaches a respectable number eight on the soul albums chart. Funkadelic will later be reassessed far more favorably over time, and is now considered one of the band's best albums. In the 2005 reissue, the seven original tracks are joined by alternative versions and B-sides never included on any of the collective's albums. Among these bonus tracks, the only real point of interest comes from listening to "Can't Shake It Loose" and "As Good As I Can Feel" (recorded by the Supremes in 1968, with Clinton as co-writer), recorded in 1969, during the group's very earliest period of activity, in which their more traditionally soul roots still come through strongly.

One of Funkadelic's distinctive traits is, in many respects, its structure built around long jams, during which the musicians' inspiration is allowed to run free: an early – already remarkably well-focused – version of what will become one of the collective's trademark modus operandi, a sort of free-form musical orgy that will find its full realization in their live shows. Clinton and co. prove they have perfectly studied the path blazed by James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, making themselves pioneers not just of a sound, but of a thoroughly innovative overall attitude that will go on to influence generations to come.

Funkadelic lays down the foundations of a new grammar for black music, building the groundwork for a new funk empire. An explosive blend capable of shaking up funk and psych territory ("I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody Got A Thing", the eight-minute super trip of "Good Old Music"), of transfiguring and modernizing the blues ("Music For My Mother" and, even more so, the sweltering "Qualify And Satisfy"), of spinning what remains of doo-wop's vocal interplay into the future, as happens on the single "I'll Bet You", soon after covered by child prodigies the Jackson 5 on their album "ABC". The Beastie Boys will sample it years later for "Car Thief" (from the indispensable "Paul's Boutique", 1989), while the Red Hot Chili Peppers will often perform the riff from "Mommy, What's A Funkadelic?" live, layering in portions of the lyrics from "What Is Soul" (a version will appear as the B-side of the 2002 single "By The Way").

Luglio 1970: Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow

These were times when albums were churned out at breakneck speed: just six months later and Funkadelic's second act was already set in stone, promoted at the time through an ad that billed it as "a new concept in soul music". Starting with the title, and with the torrential title track placed at the opening to establish what amounts to a genuine statement of intent, the record comes across as a hard soul version of the opening of the doors of perception prophesied a few years earlier by the Doors. But in place of Jim Morrison's intellectual solemnity comes a humor derived from Zappa, which will always characterize much of Funkadelic's lyrics. A humor that over time proves sharp, irreverent, at times even macabre, alternating with a spirituality (underscored by vocal harmonies reminiscent of gospel) of unmistakably lysergic nature, well fueled by drugs of the most varied kinds (it's said that this album was conceived and recorded entirely on acid), together with Clinton's willingness to welcome into the collective musicians heavily affected by excessive drug use, as in the case of the Collins brothers, who instead had a hard time under the strict rule of James Brown.

Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow rounds out and refines the contents of the debut, helping to perfectly define the band's aesthetic, which confirms itself, even more fully, as the standard-bearer of an unprecedented soul revolution, a pioneer of an unmistakable style capable of revealing spectacular flashes of insight. Tracks like "Friday Night, August 14th", "Funky Dollar Bill" and "I Wanna Know It's Good For You" are overloaded with blackness, but reinforced by tons of electricity, psychedelia and rock interference, as had never happened before.

The black consciousness flaunted on Sly & The Family Stone's records finds a new, unprecedented strength, Hendrix's lesson becomes a megaphone for a style never heard before, the seeds scattered by James Brown blossom to an extent even he himself could never have imagined. This opens up an exciting new chapter for black music, one that will go on to inspire a multitude of artists in the future, thanks to the talent of musicians who are never anything less than extraordinary: besides the already-mentioned Eddie Hazel, this line-up deserves credit for at least Bernie Worrell, who plays the keyboards as if they were yet another diabolical guitar, and Tiki Fulwood, whose drumming miraculously manages to keep all the overflowing material on the right track, a molten stream onto which voices grafting themselves, invoking lust, salvation and redemption.

July 1971: Maggot Brain

After the first two albums, recorded within the space of a few months, and the simultaneous start-up of the Parliament project, George Clinton doesn't have much left in the drawer, apart from a killer "Super Stupid" that alone invents half of Lenny Kravitz's discography. But he knows he can count on the towering talent of Eddie Hazel, a man who had memorized Hendrix's lesson and made it entirely his own. Maggot Brain, released in July 1971, contains the track that represents him better than any other, and that will make him immortal forever. The anecdote is well known: one day Clinton put Hazel in front of the microphone and told him to play as if he'd just found out his mother had died. What followed, nailed on the first take, is a ten-minute solo that goes down in history as one of the most significant tracks of Seventies black music (though in this case we could just as well call it rock).

Maggot Brain became an OndaRock "milestone" in 2015, and in the feature written for the occasion, authors Giuliano Delli Paoli and Salvatore Setola draw a striking parallel: if Hendrix's guitar seized on the bursts of machine-gun fire in the hell of Vietnam, Hazel's guitar lifts up the limbs of marines sent home in coffins and the corpses of Vietcong left to decompose on the asphalt. Hendrix was the war, the catastrophe, the apocalypse; Hazel is the day after, the tallying of the damage, the grief, the fear, the distrust. The fragile levees of lysergic acid behind which an entire generation had believed it could take refuge from the attacks of a treacherous world were beginning to crack. The curtain was falling on an entire era, on the brash vitality of the beat generation, on the youthful utopias of flower power. "Maggot Brain" (the song) stands as a genuine requiem: Hazel draws on Hendrix not so much to imitate him as to absorb him, to chew him over and spit out something new.

Another track that plays a decisive role in qualifying Maggot Brain as an essential work is the closing "Wars Of Armageddon", over nine minutes of psychedelic delirium, a long space-funk bacchanal built on frenzied polyrhythms, a mad, organized chaos that lays out new possible voodoo rituals. Songs like this perfectly sum up Funkadelic's alien spirit, underscored by their extraterrestrial look of metallic vests and bikinis, ethnic headdresses and feathered tunics, which would be recognized as a forerunner of Afrofuturist aesthetics, a cultural movement aimed at reinterpreting the historical condition of Black subjugation to white people through a science-fiction lens, loading the genre's key elements with racial symbolism: robots enslaved by the white man, spaceships deporting them the way slave ships once did. A pioneering role shared with another giant, Sun Ra, another clear source of inspiration for the aesthetic of Clinton and co.

The album's reissue, many years later, would include an alternate version of "Maggot Brain", recorded with the full band. Although over time the record has become one of Funkadelic's most iconic, for many their very best, at the time it failed to make a dent in the sales charts, settling for roughly the same results as its predecessors: number 108 on Billboard's general chart, number 14 on the black chart, nowhere to be found on the UK charts. One final mention goes to the cover, which features a striking shot immortalizing the face of model Barbara Cheeseborough, who in the early Seventies represented one of the highest standards of African-American female beauty, so much so that she was chosen for the cover of the first issue of the famous magazine Essence.

May 1972: America Eats Its Young

After three albums whose revolutionary impact on black music was comparable to that of the first three Led Zeppelin records on rock music, the follow-up — America Eats Its Young — was recorded without the contribution of Eddie Hazel's guitar (except for a couple of crucial appearances on "Miss Lucifer's Love" and "I Call My Baby Pussycat", a new version of a track already included on the debut of "cousin" act Parliament), due to disputes over financial matters tied to the split of royalties and proceeds. Without his acrobatic six-string, Funkadelic's sound shifts register: having lost some of its rock electricity, it focuses more heavily on a pronounced hard-funk. A longer record than its predecessors (it would come out as a double album), America Eats Its Young — as the title suggests — sets aside the by-now established sense of humor (though something vaguely Zappa-esque lingers in the lyrics and certain vocal choices) to make room for protest songs, with references against the Vietnam War and in favor of black consciousness, following in the footsteps of Sly Stone, who had meanwhile achieved success by blending funk, soul and protest on the two bestsellers "Stand!" (1969) and "There's A Riot Goin' On", released only a few months earlier, in November 1971.

The result is a crossover that, while still searching for a precise stylistic direction, begins to set the standards for the new funk-r&b scene, which would flourish in the second half of the Seventies. The organ takes on a more central role compared to the guitars, as well represented by the explosive opening one-two punch of "You Hit The Nail On The Head"/"If You Don't Like The Effects, Don't Produce The Cause", the first an energetic dancefloor-filler of over seven minutes (with no shortage of brilliant variations on its theme), the second entrusted to a predominantly female chorus of voices.

To make up for Hazel's absence, and look for fresh ideas to inject into the mix, the collective brings in bassist Bootsy Collins (who also provides vocals on the excellent "Philmore" and "Balance", memorable concentrates of Hendrix and James Brown, with whom Bootsy had played in the past), drummer Ginger Baker, previously of Cream and Blind Faith, and the extremely young — just eighteen — guitar hero Garry Shider, who stands out for his work on the title track, a kind of personal "Maggot Brain".

While "Everybody Is Going To Make It This Time", "We Hurt Too" and "That Was My Girl", from a purely musical standpoint, look back to the soul tradition of the previous decade — and are for that reason less interesting — on other occasions the band shows a more distinctly funk soul, complete with horn inserts (the instrumental "A Joyful Process", the longer and more structured "Wake Up"), or else it pulls out all the stops of a potential chart-smashing hit ("Loose Booty").

"That Was My Girl", already recorded in 1965, was dug up from the Parliaments' back catalogue. The string arrangements are credited to David Van De Pitte, who for many years worked for Motown, contributing to the success of some of the label's biggest names, including the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and Marvin Gaye, for whom he was responsible for the arrangements on the immortal albums "What's Going On" and "Let's Get It On".

July 1973: Cosmic Slop

The shorter running time benefits the following Cosmic Slop, which, while not matching the level of the opening trilogy and proving somewhat weak from a compositional standpoint, points toward a more precise direction than the previous record. On this occasion Funkadelic set out to find a new aesthetic and stylistic identity through a process of streamlining their structures. Clinton, also focused on relaunching the Parliament project (shelved for three years, and one that in the following years would bring greater satisfaction in terms of sales), has to split his time between the two groups, as do other members of the line-up. To make the most of their time, the making of the records (nearly always one a year for each project) boils down to recording long sessions, partly the fruit of improvisation, held during breaks from touring: free sessions from which ideas are extracted to shape songs, and during which drugs play a far from secondary role.

Later reassessed by critics and fans, Cosmic Slop is nevertheless yet another (and, with hindsight, inexplicable) commercial flop for Funkadelic, who once again fail to crack Billboard's Top 100 (peaking at a modest 112), settling for a modest number 21 on the r&b charts. From this record through to 1981, Funkadelic's artwork would be handled by Pedro Bell, an artist and illustrator who was a forerunner of the modern graphic novel and of the entire afro-punk movement, an American subculture rooted in a predominantly white scene.

The key track on Cosmic Slop is the title track, which, despite little commercial traction, was also released as a single, complete with a promotional video clip: the entertaining lyrics tell of a child who secretly overhears his mother begging God for forgiveness after prostituting herself to feed her family. The record's other standout moments are those that continue building the new Seventies sex-funk imagery, and in this regard the opening "Nappy Dugout" and the ironic "You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure" — a reworking of an old track already recorded as the Parliaments back in 1965 — prove interesting.

Just as on the previous record, Eddie Hazel once again plays only a marginal role in the writing and recording process, contributing as co-author on just two tracks. To compensate for his absence — which inevitably confirms the band's move away from the more pronounced psych-rock tones of their early days — Clinton hands the guitar duties to Ron Bykowski and Gary Shider, who really let loose especially toward the end of the tracklist, on the Hendrix-esque "Thrash A Go-Go".

Luglio 1974: Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On, released in July 1974, is the album that marks Eddie Hazel's full-time return, and you can feel it right from the sprint of the opening notes of the ferocious "Red Hot Mama" and "Alice In My Fantasies" (very "Foxy Lady", in pure Hendrix-style), the two super-funk tracks placed, not by chance, at the start of the tracklist, worthy successors to the sound of "Super Stupid". This time Hazel is the author of most of the material, though he appears under a false identity, using his mother's name, Grace Cook, to avoid contractual issues.

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On regains an enviable overall cohesion and marks Funkadelic's true second rebirth, as the band strive to channel their ideas into an effective, tightly-focused song format, achieving truly remarkable results.

"I'll Stay" is a sublime bedroom guitar ballad, the use of falsetto on "Sexy Ways" would give young Prince plenty of material to draw on, the title track has an irresistible proto-disco groove (and remember, this is still 1974) that would lend Mick Hucknall the basic idea for half the chorus of the Simply Red hit "The Right Thing", while the poignant "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts" is a masterly attempt at writing a new "Maggot Brain".

For completist fans, it's worth noting that during the recording sessions "Red Hot Momma" continued on into an instrumental jam, which would be used for the single's B-side under the title "Vital Juices", the result of a compositional effort by Eddie Hazel and Ron Bykowski. Despite being recognized as one of the best albums Funkadelic ever released, Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On too had to settle for a modest 163rd place on Billboard's general chart, and thirteenth on the R&B one. Pretty slim pickings, given the quality of the material.

Aprile 1975: Let’s Take It To The Stage

By 1975 Funkadelic had a new great guitarist, and his name was Michael Hampton. At just 17 he left Clinton stunned by playing the entirety of "Maggot Brain" note for note, and was soon after recruited, keeping his role even when the former title-holder Hazel sporadically decided to take part in studio sessions; live, the two would sometimes end up side by side performing "Maggot Brain" as a twin-guitar piece: try searching for it on YouTube.

But while Hampton had the same technique as Hazel, at that point he certainly couldn't match his compositional talent, so much so that on Let's Take It To The Stage, released in April 1975, aside from the solo that marks the final section of "Baby I Owe You Something Good" and the understated work running throughout "The Song Is Familiar", to witness any real guitar heroics Clinton had to turn to a mysterious guest. Legend has it that during the sessions a drug addict asked Clinton if he could play something in exchange for 50 dollars: the guy played a genuine piece of history, "Get Off Your Ass And Jam", and he did it as if possessed by some mysterious entity (the magic of drugs...). Only in 2009, during an interview, did Paul Warren reveal that it was actually him playing it, a session musician who worked — among others — with the Temptations, Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Richard Marx, Joe Cocker, and for several years even with... Eros Ramazzotti.

Let's Take It To The Stage has all the hallmarks of a transitional record and, despite the strong start of "Good To Your Earhole", sails through a series of ups and downs (the plodding closer "Atmosphere", built on a keyboard solo that drags on for over seven minutes, doesn't help), proving to be a clear step back from the previous year's work. It's Funkadelic's last outing in which traces of their glorious psych-rock past can still be spotted, just before diving completely into all-out funk: records like this would nonetheless be studied closely by many figures of the emerging hip-hop scene, both for the technique used in the spoken parts, soon perfected into rap, and for the sheer amount of samples looted from them to build dozens upon dozens of new songs.

Let's Take It To The Stage, while not exactly winning over new fans, consolidated Funkadelic's reputation with their existing audience and beyond, as a major label finally took the initiative to sign the collective: it was Warner Bros, which would be able to provide Funkadelic with a promotional budget worthy of the moment, in an attempt — about time too — at the big leap forward.

October 1976: Hardcore Jollies

The first album released through a major label, Hardcore Jollies, put out by Warner Bros in October 1976, showcases the calibre of young Michael Hampton, even though Eddie Hazel — working behind the scenes, uncredited — continues to make valuable contributions. The result is a funky record with a forcefully electric mood, at times once again Hendrix-esque, on which, besides the instrumental title track, the standouts are the torrential "Comin' Round The Mountain" and an explosive new version of "Cosmic Slop", recorded live in New York on September 26th, just days before the album's final mastering.

Leaning more toward soul-funk territory instead are "Smokey", "If You Got Funk, You Got Style" (a genuine statement of intent...), "Soul Mate" and "You Scared The Lovin' Outta Me", while the interplay between organ and guitar on the closing "Adolescent Funk" edges dangerously close to bulky prog-fusion territory. The band still had plenty to say and, despite the change of label, no major shifts in sound are yet apparent compared to their immediately preceding work.

Settembre 1976: Tales Of Kidd Funkadelic

But to close out the deal with Westbound, one more album was owed. To settle the matter, Clinton gathered the "leftovers" from Hardcore Jollies and assembled them into what became Tales Of Kidd Funkadelic, quickly released by Westbound a month earlier, in order to beat to the punch its bigger sibling put together by Warner Bros. "Kidd Funkadelic" was the nickname given to young Michael Hampton, and some of his guitar flashes of inspiration are among the few reasons to justify listening to what, if not quite a modest collection of outtakes, can certainly be considered a minor entry in the band's prestigious discography.

The ideas on the opening "Butt-To-Buttresuscitation" are engaging, complete with a dazzling closing solo, but most of the seven tracks included here fall below Clinton and co.'s usual standard, including the anemic single "Undisco Kidd" and the endless twelve-plus-minute jam that gives the whole album its title, on which Hampton's guitar is often quite literally swallowed up by Bernie Worrell's increasingly dominant keyboard washes, which on this occasion lend the sound a more "cosmic" imprint.

September 1978: One Nation Under A Groove

For the first time, two years went by before producing an album, but this time it's the right one — the one that will take Funkadelic into the American Top 20, climbing all the way to No. 16, still their best chart placement ever. The result comes thanks to the visibility that a major label like Warner Bros. can guarantee, compared to the far more fragile promotional support provided by Westbound. But the commercial success is also the fruit of a record that embraces modernity by appropriating a genre (funk) that Clinton's collective had itself helped forge with its earlier albums.

One Nation Under A Groove, released in September 1978, is a true tribute to rhythm, and while it isn't considered Funkadelic's best record, it contains some of their most accomplished and representative compositions, chief among them the title track — very likely their most famous song (six weeks at the top of the American soul chart, the best result of all of 1978, and finally — if only this once — a UK Top Ten hit), and "Who Says A Funk Band Can't Play Rock?", whose title alone announces the firm intention to break down the fences between musical genres. And then there's the miracle of the lengthy "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo Doo Chasers)", which charts the very road that Prince would later cash in on so successfully in the years that followed.

One Nation Under The Groove is the album that marks Funkadelic's definitive transformation into a horn-less Parliament, in the sense that any psych-rock digression is now firmly set aside in favor of a dancefloor-oriented groove steeped in black-music flavors. It's one of the collective's least experimental works, but also one of its most solid. Originally made up of just six tracks, it came with a bonus EP containing three more songs: a live version of "Maggot Brain", performed by the full band in Monroe, Louisiana in April 1974, the heavier rock cut "Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It Ain't Illegal Yet!)", and an instrumental excerpt of "Enema Squad". In later pressings, the two records would be merged into a single album.

September 1979: Uncle Jam Wants You

If it ain't broke, don't fix it: in September 1979, Uncle Jam Wants You follows in its predecessor's wake, riding the momentum, and lands a decent chart position. But quality is starting to slip, and for Clinton, always juggling two fronts at once, it isn't easy to keep the overall standard high while having to guarantee a yearly release for each of his projects. On top of that, we're right in the middle of the disco-funk boom, with plenty of acts who, having learned Funkadelic's lesson, are now developing and broadening the idea, and reaping far greater commercial rewards in the process. Just think of the polished sound of collectives like Earth, Wind & Fire or Kool & The Gang, who are living through golden years at the time. But funk is everywhere by now, ruling the glittering kingdom of the discotheques, starting with New York's Studio 54, which sets international trends. Even a former pop band like the Bee Gees strikes gold everywhere after converting to disco music, a direct offshoot of Clinton and co.'s lesson, cashing in big thanks to the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever".

Uncle Jam Wants You is a call to arms with a distinctly militaristic flavor (just read titles like "Uncle Jam", "Field Maneuvers" and "Foot Soldiers"), yet it deserves to be remembered almost exclusively for the contents of its explosive first side, home to two tracks that manage to codify the very meaning of modern funky music: "Freak Of The Week" and, above all, "(Not Just) Knee Deep", which at over fifteen minutes is practically a mega-mix of itself, a multicolored carousel that seems to want to spin on forever. "Knee Deep" hits No. 1 on the American r&b singles chart and becomes a legendary track for dancefloor lovers: Bernie Worrell's synth-bass line would not only form the backbone of "Me, Myself And I", the worldwide hit released in 1989 by De La Soul, but would also be plundered by a host of other artists, including LL Cool J (for "Nitro"), MC Hammer (for "Straight To My Feet"), Snoop Dogg (for "Who Am I?"), Black Eyed Peas (for a remix of "Shut Up", a case that would end up in court in 2010), Everlast, Tone Loc, Bobby Brown, Geto Boys, Dr. Dre, 2Pac and Vanessa Williams.

1980: Connections And Disconnections

As often happens with bands that, after years of hard graft, finally break through to a wider audience, the success of the two albums released on Warner Bros. brings fresh contractual and financial frictions back to the surface, sparking discontent within the collective. What's more, the original core members increasingly feel sidelined after the arrival of new musicians who push the sound further and further toward a P-Funk direction. A split soon becomes inevitable, and Funkadelic breaks into two factions.

Connections And Disconnections, released in 1980, is the product of recordings made by Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas alone, without Clinton and without most of the historic collective.

Connections And Disconnections is a minor entry in the Funkadelic catalogue, a record that owes more to craft than to inspiration — certainly in line with the sound in vogue at the time (in places, such as on the smooth "Come Back", the ideas are perfectly suited to the disco circuit of the day), but its plasticky, cut-rate sound, lacking any real spark and at times even flat, fails to stand out amid the wealth of excellent funk-oriented material being produced in that period. As one might expect, the use of the "Funkadelic" name sparked a bitter legal dispute with Clinton's management, and it's likely that this helped speed up the breakup of the whole collective.

In 1992, on the occasion of a reissue overseen by Rhino Records, the album was retitled Who's A Funkadelic, the same title as its closing track.

Aprile 1981: The Electric Spanking Of War Babies

In the months that followed, Clinton rejoined the rest of the group for The Electric Spanking Of War Babies, released in April 1981, a sharply political title alluding to the Vietnam War and to the rising baby-boomer generation. The flame, though, no longer burns as brightly as it once did, and ideas are running low too: Funkadelic prove no longer capable of raising the bar, settling instead for falling in line with the sounds most in fashion at the time — sounds produced by artists they themselves had previously influenced. The best tracks on offer simply pick up where Earth, Wind & Fire's productions left off (indeed, the title track isn't all that far removed from a "Let's Groove" or a "Boogie Wonderland", though it comes across as a pale, poor copy), or else head down musical paths similar to those Michael Jackson had already trodden two years earlier on "Off The Wall", as happens on "Electro-Cuties".

To broaden the stylistic palette, the band turns to the Caribbean flavors of the percussion-driven "Brettino's Bounce" and of "Shockwaves", which instead leans toward Jamaican reggae, though the results are mixed. Things fare slightly better with the melancholy "Oh, I", a blend of sax, piano, guitars and cocktail jazz that in its own way anticipates certain sophisticated sounds of the Eighties.

Of the original members, besides Clinton, only Ray Davies and Eddie Hazel remain in the line-up, and even Hazel only plays guitar on a single track. What we hear on The Electric Spanking Of War Babies is therefore the work of a completely overhauled lineup compared to the one from ten years earlier, and in an attempt to liven things up, Sly Stone (co-writer and vocalist on the lackluster "Funk Gets Stronger") and Roger Troutman both take part in the sessions. That the album wasn't up to much was clear first and foremost to Warner Bros.' management, who decided to press just a hundred thousand copies and censored the cover art by Pedro Bell, deemed inappropriate because of its drawing of a spaceship with an unmistakably phallic shape, carrying a naked woman. The drawing was partly covered up by a multicolor patchwork bearing the words "Oh look. The cover they were TOO-SCARED to print". A kind of declaration of war against the label.

The Electric Spanking Of War Babies is the swan song, the final nail in the coffin of Funkadelic's most fruitful period — by then appreciated by an ever-wider audience and carrying far greater commercial appeal than in their early days, yet soon destined to be written off as a sideshow curiosity, despite the general reappraisal of their earlier discography.

George Clinton nonetheless proves he's not short of ideas, and amid this chaos he decides to launch a solo career. Many of the key figures from Funkadelic's final phase, formally disbanded in 1981, as well as from Parliament, will stay by his side both in the massive "P-Funk All Stars" collective and on the records released under his own name. The Electric Spanking Of War Babies was originally meant to come out as a double album: once Warner Bros. rejected the idea, Clinton funneled some of the songs toward other projects, and "Atomic Dog" ended up as the lead single (it would hit No. 1 on the American r&b chart) of his self-titled solo debut, Computer Games, released by Capitol Records in November 1982, which reached No. 40 on the Billboard chart and No. 3 on the r&b chart.

Later works would grow progressively less interesting, never managing to reach the heights of the two main collectives Clinton led throughout the Seventies.

2007: By Way Of The Drum

But between 1981 and 1983, one of the many Funkadelic line-ups reconvened to record several sessions that would never be released at the time. Not until 2007, when they were gathered together on By Way Of The Drum. It's essentially a record for completists, leaning more heavily on electronics than in the past, with very few genuine sparks ("Freaks Bearing Gifts") and a dispensable cover of the Cream classic "Sunshine Of Your Love".

Meanwhile, in 1992, Eddie Hazel passed away at just 42, the man who proved how far funk and rock could coexist. Widely considered the true heir to Jimi Hendrix, Hazel also released a handful of solo albums, without ever achieving major success. A few months before his death, it seemed an opportunity was taking shape to form a trio with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, reforming Band Of Gypsys with him stepping into the shoes of the great Hendrix. He didn't live to see it happen. At Eddie Hazel's funeral, "Maggot Brain" was played: the song that, more than any other, made him immortal.

In 1997, Clinton, Hazel and 14 other members of Funkadelic-Parliament received the honor of induction into the prestigious Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame, taking their place among the all-time greats.

2008: Toys

In 2008, Westbound Records scraped the bottom of the barrel and released Toys, a compilation featuring nine previously unreleased tracks dating from 1970-1974. Originally scheduled for 2002, the release of Toys was delayed due to legal issues over the use of the Funkadelic name.

Although more than half of the tracks dredged up from the archives are instrumentals - a sign they were shelved and never finished, clearly never meant for release - there's real interest to be found in the opener "Heart Trouble aka You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure", featuring the voices of bassist Billy Bass Nelson and guitarist Eddie Hazel. The CD version also includes the video for "Cosmic Slop", filmed with the band roaming the streets of New York.

Novembre 2014: First Ya Gotta Shake The Gate

In November 2014, Funkadelic returned with a sprawling triple album, First Ya Gotta Shake The Gate, featuring - alongside Clinton - Bernie Worrell (who would pass away on June 24, 2016), Michael Hampton and Sly Stone. An imposing record with a full 33 tracks, one for every year of Funkadelic's existence, First Ya Gotta Shake The Gate represents an encyclopedic effort to reintroduce the Funkadelic brand into the new millennium. The results don't always live up to the ambition, but the typically Black-oriented songwriting is shot through with the most varied and only seemingly irreconcilable influences.

There's plenty of hip-hop, some of it well crafted ("Creases", "Not Your Average Rapper"), appealing forays into jazzy atmospheres ("Baby Like Fonkin' It Up"), fusion digressions ("In Da Kar"), interminable slow jams (a full twelve minutes for "Mathematics Of Love"), and even forgettable excursions into autotune and metal-adjacent guitar riffing. A messy stew at times, through which Funkadelic deliberately keep on sounding "strange".

Almost simultaneously, George Clinton published his autobiography "Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?", in which - among other things - he recounts a series of incredible anecdotes. In 2016, the track "Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?" was remixed by Kendrick Lamar featuring Ice Cube.

The Funkadelic legend has continued to be kept alive over the years through the periodic release of compilations and "greatest hits" sets, usually assembled to gather material from particular moments in the band's career. Among the best and most focused, worth singling out are at least Finest, released by Westbound in 1997 and centered on the band's early period, and The Original Cosmic Funk Crew, which instead covers material from the Warner Bros. years.

Funkadelic's influence on their contemporaries and on later generations is incalculable, and tributes keep surfacing at regular intervals. Among the most recent worth mentioning is the one paid by a group of Detroit musicians on "Reworked By Detroiters", released in 2017 by Westbound. The record collects 17 remixes and reworks created - among others - by Dirtbombs, Moodymann and numerous key figures from the local club culture scene. A work that crosses genre boundaries while keeping the city of Detroit as its common thread. Released as a double CD and triple vinyl, "Reworked By Detroiters" also comes with a spacey artwork harking back to the Motorcity collective's tradition.

Clinton's standing remains absolutely central even beyond music: American rapper and actor Wiz Khalifa will portray him in a biopic dedicated to the legendary Casablanca Records, which released no fewer than eight Parliament albums between 1974 and 1980. His legendary status has also been honored by Plainfield: the town where he took his first artistic steps has decided to name a street after him.

Just as these lines were being written, on January 6, 2022, news arrived of the passing of Calvin Simon, 79, who had stood by Clinton's side since the earliest days as a founding member of the Parliaments. Sadly, March 2023 would bring the turn of Clarence "Fuzzy" Haskins (81), who had likewise been with Clinton since the original lineup back in the Sixties.

The deaths of Simon and Haskins are merely the most recent losses to strike the many musicians who, over the years, have been part of the collective. In 2020, Mickey Atkins, the band's first keyboardist, passed away, and in 2017 it was Junie Morrison, a multi-instrumentalist (previously with the Ohio Players) who was part of the lineup during 1978-81, the period of their greatest commercial success.

Despite his advancing years, his retirement from live performance (though a tour taking in 17 US cities has been scheduled for summer 2022) and a delicate surgical operation, Clinton still occasionally collaborates with other artists, almost always from the Black music scene. One of the most prestigious guest appearances of recent years came on Flying Lotus's 2019 album, "Flamagra", for which he co-wrote and helped record the track "Burning Down The House". The same year also brought one of the most coveted and prestigious honors: the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award presented to George Clinton and the entire P-Funk collective (Parliament + Funkadelic).

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