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Well, we're back.

And this time, we're gonna
jump genres to funk.

I don't know if you've been
paying attention,

but funk is everywhere nowadays,

and it's not just in hip-hop.

Its rhythms are in just about every
genre of music you hear today.

In fact, it's so omnipresent,

that I think we hardly even notice it.

That's why it's always
struck me as odd

that are are almost no documentaries about
its history or the artists who created it.

So, with that in mind,

have you ever heard of
this guy, George Clinton?

♪ There once was a man from Peru ♪

♪ Who went to sleep in his canoe ♪

♪ He was dreaming of Venus ♪

♪ He took out his penis ♪

♪ And woke up with a handful of goo ♪

♪ Put your foot on the rod ♪

Now, hold on.

Before you dismiss
Dr. Funkenstein here,

and start thinking
you're above it all,

and switch over to PBS.

Just know that this guy's
music and his ingenuity,

have made him a cornerstone
figure in this world.

So, we're starting
this season at the top,

with the prime minister,

a man who built
a music empire on acid.

And when it all
inevitably went to Hell,

he kept going, and fueled
a whole new genre.

Even though he may not have been
fully aware of it at the time.

Oh!

One time, we was all trippin'.

It was in Ft. Worth,

it was either Ft. Worth or Evansville.

I guess it was...

Yeah, well, I know it was after
we came back from Africa.

Funk legend Bootsy Collins,

the bass player
with stars in his eyes,

will forever be linked
with George Clinton.

They were kindred souls
from the get-go.

George likes people
that take LSD, you know.

So, we get to this town,

and everybody's trippin',
the whole band.

We was all in the hotel,

and the manager comes in and says,

"We have to do the gig."

So, the next thing I know,

we were all up on stage at this club

full of people.

And George is coming from
the back of the audience,

behind everybody,

and he's wearing this white sheet.

So he gets up on stage,

and then he jumps up
on somebody's table.

And sure enough,
he takes off his sheet,

and he's got nothing on.

It's like, "No, George,
you didn't do that!"

Yeah, and he was happy about it.

And he stood up there,
had all his clothes off,

you know, had
the chicken feet going on,

and then he started
walking on the tables.

So dang, we just kept playing,

kept playing, kept playing.

Next thing I know...

...the lights came on...

...and wasn't nobody in there but us.

Yeah, that was... no,
that wasn't the first time.

For some reason... ,

at a certain point,

the kids we was playing for,

it was inevitable,
but they got us high on LSD.

We got flipped into old hippies.

And I don't think I got out of
it till I was 50-something.

George Clinton was born
in Kannapolis, North Carolina,

in an outhouse.

My mother thought
she had to take a shit.

Lo and behold...

...I was the turd that came out.

So I was funky right from the start.

The Clintons moved to New Jersey

when George was a boy.

Billy Bass Nelson remembers

that everyone in Plainfield
knew George Clinton.

I actually met George
in Plainfield, New Jersey,

when he came in for his first job

at the barbershop across the
street from the projects.

George had a job processing hair.

Back then, you know,

nobody's really wearing an afro.

We all had to be cool.

We had to have the wave,
that was the look of the era.

So we all started learning
how to fry each other's hair,

what they call today perm.

Back then, it was lye and potatoes.

You'd straightened your hair
and waved it.

George was sort of like a celebrity

because at that point,

nobody in Plainfield did processing.

His mastery of the
hot lye and potatoes

was matched only
by the sweetness of his voice.

- ♪ Doo ♪
- ♪ Doo ♪

We was singing a
Capella in the barbershop.

All of us got into the doo-wop.

You know, the Spaniels the Cadillacs,

all those different people who'd
be playing at the Apollo.

I used to go in and sweep the floor...

dance and sing with them.

George split his time
between singing and straightening.

He named his group after
a popular brand of cigarettes,

The Parliaments,

and dreamed up a scheme
to make it to Motown.

I came into a cache of money.

It was a million, two-hundred
thousand dollars of counterfeit 20s

we bought from some kids.

We used to take the 20s,
put 'em in coffee,

get 'em dark and ball 'em up,

so they looked like they
was used when they dry.

That was how I was able
to pay my way into the studio.

He offered his musicians
and engineers $200 in cash,

or $1,000 in counterfeit.

That's how we cut records
for The Parliaments.

George left Plainfield for Detroit

and "Hitsville USA," Motown,

and he took The Parliaments with him.

We drove out there in a raggedy
Pontiac, right up to the boulevard,

parked in front of Motown,

and watched everybody
go in that morning.

You know, "That's The Miracle.
That's The Four Tops.

Oh, that's Diana. That... "

Every one of 'em!

We watched The Supremes
come in there, The Temptations.

So, we go in for an audition.

♪ Doo, doo-doo-doo, doo-wop! ♪

They told us we was too ugly.

Undeterred, The Parliaments
hit the chitlin' circuit,

with the backing band
from the barbershop.

After several years on the road,

George wrote his first hit record.

"Testify" was released
in 1967, the Summer of Love.

All of a sudden, they're playing

with Iggy Pop and the Stooges,

and Ted Nugent, and MC5,

and Bob Seger,

all the legends of Detroit rock.

Tom Vickers would hold the title

Minister of Information,

which, I guess, is
a necessary position

when you go through
so many name changes

and more than 120 known players.

"Testify" was on Revilot Records.

The label owned the name,
The Parliaments,

so when the label folded,

George took the back-up band,

and christened the whole
thing "The Funkadelics."

They were playing a club
in, uh, Boston, Mass,

called The Sugar Shack.

And some Harvard students,

who were under the Timothy Leary wing

of the psychology
department at Harvard,

they came up to the stage
after the show,

and said, "Hey, you guys are cool.

Have you heard about this thing LSD?"

George was like, "No, what's that?
Where do we get some?"

Dr. Leary had set up a
laboratory program at Harvard,

before he was fired,

to study the effects of psychotropic
drugs on the human mind.

So, we end up going to Harvard,

the university, yeah,

and they did this thing there

when they gave everybody acid.

So, we all took it.

Let them watch you for four hours.

You know, got the $64
or whatever it was.

It was the best job that I'd ever had.

All of a sudden, boom...

You take the Motown sound,

the white rock crowd,

put some LSD in the mix
and you've got Funkadelic.

One hit and that was it.

It don't seem like we ever came down.

♪ You don't drink what I drink ♪

♪ You don't smoke what I smoke ♪

♪ You don't think like I think ♪

♪ You don't joke like I joke ♪

♪ I got a thing ♪

♪ You got a thing ♪

♪ Everybody's got a thing ♪

A generation before
The Village People,

George Clinton was into role-playing.

They began touring
the country in costume.

We was on the road,
maybe outside of Pittsburgh,

high as hell, tripping or
something, going to the show.

And Billy Bass, he was always
looking for a shorter route.

I did used to, um,
find all kinds of shortcuts.

And we just went around this blockade,

he gonna take this shortcut, and
so he come 'round this corner,

and... bang!

Zombies,

everywhere,
coming straight towards us.

We didn't know what
the fuck was happening,

'cause we was high on LSD.

They scared me so bad,

I was peeing in my pants
and screaming.

Turns out, Billy had driven the band

through Evans City, Pennsylvania.

No one ever told George
it was the set location

for the film,
- Night of the Living Dead.

We got the hell out of there.

But to this day, I still think
that shit was weird.

Promoters meeting the
group for the first time

likely shared that sentiment,

in part, because, George
had more than just a band.

They even toured under multiple names.

We was The Parliaments,

we took the beginning off of it,

The Parliaments,
then it became Parliament.

Then we started Funkadelic,
which was our band.

And now you had the
Parlia-Funkadelic-Ment-Thang,

because psychedelic had come into...

It was no longer just a group.

It had to be, like,
almost like a play.

It became, arguably,
the longest-running,

acid-fueled production
in music history.

Parliament Funkadelic
was a free-for-all, you know.

Everybody was really serious
about being a character.

One of the characters,
Ronald "Stozo the Clown,"

remains quite serious about
the whole thing to this day.

When I started, I was Snowman.

I had a more complicated job to do,

because I used to have to
shoot snow out of my nose.

I loved it, man.

By 1972,

George had five bass players,

17 back-up singers,

and he'd even convinced
the House Guests,

the guys who had backed up
James Brown, to join forces.

We were in Detroit,

and this chick says,

"Man, y'all need to meet
George Clinton."

She said, "Y'all look like Funkadelic.

Man, y'all sound
just like Funkadelic."

And I'm like, "Damn,
who is Funkadelic?"

Drummer Frankie "Kash" Waddy

would learn the hard way.

When we became Funkadelic,
it was like a curse word.

You couldn't put it in print,

couldn't say it on the radio.

We were, uh, underground.

You know, there would be a caravan

that would follow us
from city to city,

and they would pass out fliers,

and that's how we would
sell out shows.

Mainly, white colleges.

One time, we was playing
in Norman, Oklahoma.

So we playing, and you could see
this girl coming down the aisle.

You know she gonna do something,

'cause she's walkin' so peculiar.

So, she walked right past
everybody that's sitting down.

She walked right past 'em.

Stepped up on the stage,

and she got a joint in her hand,

and everybody just, "Yeah!"

I think she was a stripper.

And if I remember right,
her name was Vicki.

But anyway, the chick got onstage,

and she... she came there
to blow our minds, and she did.

She had overalls
on, and one was buttoned.

She took a puff, hit the button,

and like she had rocks in her pocket,

her pants fell straight
down to the floor.

They were around her ankles.

She ain't got no drawers on, she...

You can see her lil' nappy dugout.

She turned around,

scooted around with her
pants around her ankles,

bent over...

Now, the people are screaming already.

And put it up her butt...

and puff, puff, puff.

Three smoke rings.

Looked like the Ballantine beer logo.

Or the Olympics.

We was laughing so bad,

we had to stop the show that night.

We tried, at least, four times.

Took a break...

come back.

We couldn't do it.

George kept on recording albums,

and he kept his options
open for a hit.

He released Osmium
with Parliament in 1970,

and Free Your Mind,
and Your Ass Will Follow

that same year with Funkadelic.

I'd started out writing for
Rolling Stone as a journalist.

One day, I got two albums in the mail,

Parliament and Funkadelic,

and I realized this is the same band

with two different labels,

two different names,
two different sounds.

So, I did the article
for Rolling Stone,

it came out.

George called me up
about a month after it ran,

and he says, uh,
"Can you come and work for me?"

I go, "George, I'm a white guy
in San Francisco."

He said, "You could be
a purple guy from Mars.

"Uh, you know what the funk's about.

"I'm going out with this
big Spaceship Tour,

and I need someone
to spread the word."

And I was like, "George? A spaceship?"

And George said, "Yeah!

A fucking spaceship."

And to his credit, George
put all of his resources,

and all the money that he was making,

and all the advances he could get

from various record labels

into building that mothership
for live shows.

The crowd would see
the mothership fly in,

then, all of a sudden,
the stage would light up,

and the mothership would descend,

and smoke would go off,
and George would appear.

People went batshit crazy!

I mean, I'm telling you.
People went fucking nuts.

They'd never seen anything like it.

The mothership connection
landed George Clinton

and his bands their greatest
public exposure.

And he backed it up with his
biggest song to date.

♪ We want the funk, come on ♪

♪ Get up off your ass now ♪

- ♪ It's that time now ♪
- ♪ We need the funk ♪

♪ Gotta have the funk ♪

♪ We want the funk ♪

With "Give Up the Funk,"

George Clinton, Parliament,
and Funkadelic

left the underground behind.

Soon as we put the record out,

Star Wars came out.

And it was just like, "Wow."

But I think what got me
going into the sci-fi

really was Star Trek.

I was a Trekker. For real.

Matter of fact, when Close
Encounters came out,

Julia Phillips, the producer of it,

wanted me to do the soundtrack.

That did not end up going so well.

He was, at this point, the
dark prince of weirdness

of this whole enterprise.

Ben Greenman is a former
New York Times reporter,

who helped George write the book

Brothas Be, Yo Like George,

Ain't That Funkin' Kinda Hard On You?"

It wasn't really satanic,

but it was frightening in a way.

He'd wear weird clothes, collars,
capes, this kind of thing.

And he would do scary faces,

and part of it is his shyness.

He wanted to project a character.

Everybody was scared of George.

I mean, you know,
especially the chicks.

So much so, that we would
call him "The Pres,"

and what The Pres mean was it meant

that you don't get no "mouf."

We call it "mouf" with a "F"
instead of a "T-H."

And mouf was very important
being on the road,

because it was about
getting that mouf, okay.

They started calling George "Pres,"

'cause he was the president of
the club that couldn't get laid.

George had that whole
scary thing, man,

that worked on stage so great,

but, you know,
he wasn't getting no mouf.

The Pres was pretty proud
of that at the time, okay,

but it began to be such a thing

that he was like, "Okay.

Something is wrong with this picture."

So, he figured, "If I start
smiling like Bootsy doing,

I'll get some mouf."

And sure enough, he started smiling.

Every magazine you'd pick up,

he had this big smile.

I was like, "That's my... "

The women in the band were all fine

and foxy and sexy.

And we'd call them "in-house mouf."

And they weren't pushovers either.

I mean, they had their own share
of groupies too, you know.

I came from a background
of, uh, rules.

My uncle was a minister.

Um, I was a good girl.

I looked very conservative, you know.

And they looked like aliens.

One Nation... Scarves, funny boots.

And I looked around,
and I said to myself,

"You know you gonna have to have
sex with one of these people."

Satori Shakoor was
one of dozens of artists

who joined George Clinton on the road

as his bands began to multiply.

It was Parliament, Funkadelic,

The Brides of Funkenstein,
Parlet, Bootsy.

Bernie Worrell,
Eddie Hazel, Horny Horns.

He's producing this myriad of acts

which became known as P-Funk Nation,

so George had this empire
similar to Motown

going and growing at an alarming rate.

When we went on tour in Europe,

obviously it was arranged

that we visit the House of Parliament

while we were in London, England.

Uh, and everybody was invited.

It was just a stately place.

It looked like a big museum,
like with the big paintings.

And here we are,
a bunch of Funkadelics.

And so, we were instructed
of how, you know,

the kind of decorum
we were supposed to have.

So, I'm in the bathroom,
and I'm getting high.

I'm in the stall snorting,
taking 'em one and one.

You know, up to no good.

Thinking ain't nobody could hear.

So when I come out,
there was a guy in there.

He had this white wig under his arm.

He was washing his hands.

He looked at me in the
mirror, and he said,

"Oh, don't pat yourself
on the shoulder.

You're not the first."

Between the live shows,

and then going in the studio,

he was working non-stop.

And he'd have cassettes
in this big bag

that he would carry around with him.

And none of the cassettes were marked.

He wouldn't write anything
on any of 'em.

And when I was with him one time,

we're driving around,
and he said, "Aw, man!

I gotta play you something.
You're not gonna believe this"

And he starts rummaging through
this bag full of cassettes.

"Ah! Here it is!"

He puts it on in my
cassette player in my car.

That was the first time
I heard "Flashlight."

♪ Now, I lay me down to sleep ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

♪ I just can't find a beat ♪

♪ Flashlight ♪

And I said, "God,
this is gonna be huge."

♪ Flashlight ♪

"Flashlight," in fact,
sparked a rock-n-roll movement

at concerts all over the world.

We noticed when the band
would hit "Flashlight,"

the place would light up
with different people

flashing their flashlights,

because the fans were
bringing in flashlights,

actual flashlights.

But this created an issue
with a lot of venues

where they didn't want people bringing

heavy metallic objects into the venue.

So then, our merch guy
got the bright idea,

"Well, wait, we got this
Star Wars thing happening

"and 'Flashlight' is happening,

why don't we sell these lightsabers?"

This eventually morphed into
people lighting their lighters,

and then holding up their cell phones.

The whole thing started
with "Flashlight."

As the concerts took
on a life of their own,

the empire itself began
to go the way of all empires.

For some reason, at a certain point,

LSD just stopped working
for everybody.

It was no longer that beautiful trip

that made you think and feel good.

That was gone.

So I started doing crack.

I went to a party at George's farm.

He had chickens
in the front yard of the farm,

and stuffed animals for furniture.

Just big, gigantic stuffed animals

that you might win at a fair,
big teddy bears.

And the night I was there,

they had $50,000 worth of raw cocaine.

I didn't even know that
I was addicted to cocaine.

That's the trouble with crack.

It took me 30 years to figure out

that you're just spending
money and chasing it.

It was a slow decline.

The quality of the music
was on a decline.

The records sold less and less,

like, uh, Trombipulation,

it has this ancient Egypt
sort of concept

based on these illustrations that
one of George's artists had done

where he's got this
big elephant trunk.

George wanted a real prosthetic nose,

and they kept looking around and they
couldn't figure out how to do it,

so they went into
the adult film industry,

and they got a guy
who did prosthetic dicks

to make a prosthetic
elephant's trunk for George.

Because it had the right hold,
and it wouldn't fall off,

and George could move
around with it properly.

Yeah, I can dig it!

I think, to date,
he still has some of those

prosthetic, uh,
nose dicks at his house.

Trombipulation would
be the last studio album

made by Parliament
with the original band.

As crack cocaine
became the drug of choice,

George's Motown-like empire
of funk fell apart.

We went from top of the world

to what George called the "Anti-Tour."

No props, no costumes,

and everybody's dressed
in Army fatigues.

George said, "Okay, guys,
we gotta... we gotta cut back.

So I'm gonna send half the band
home in the middle of the tour."

Sheila Brody, stage name Amuka,

was one of the Brides of Funkenstein.

She remembers the whole band
enabling the boss's habit.

We were on the road.

He would come and say,

"Loan me a hundred."

I'm like... How can you tell
your boss... He just paid you.

He says, "Loan me some money."
How do you tell him no?

So, I was doing it.

And then the road manager
came to me, and said,

"Stop giving him money!

"Because when you're giving him money,

"you know what he's
doing with that money.

And you're nailing
the nail in his coffin."

At that time, I needed a hit.

I came into the studio, tweaking.

I can't even remember when it was.

Snow was up to your ass.

George's crack-induced
paranoia was at an all-time high.

I came in, said, "Y'all
trying to record without me.

Give me the microphone.
Give me the thing."

So, they all looking at me
through that window there.

So, when the track come on,
it's backwards.

The sound engineer was
simply rewinding the tape.

Now, I don't know what...
I ain't never heard it before,

but I don't know what... I don't know.

I can't tell what key it's in,
'cause it...

It's all... So I...

I'm trying to play it off,

like, I knew what the fuck
was happening.

So, I start talking.

"This is the story of a famous dog.

"Why must I feel like that?

Why must I chase the cat?"

Real atonal.

I ain't committing
to no key or nothing.

And then, "Do the dogcatcher."

I said, "Wow, that make sense"

"Do the dog." So I did a Capella
just like that with the beat.

Instead of them telling me
that the track was backwards,

they left it like that.

That became "Atomic Dog."

♪ Yeah, this is the story
of a famous dog ♪

♪ For the dog that chases its tail ♪

♪ Will be dizzy ♪

♪ Atomic dog ♪

♪ Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah ♪

♪ Bow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah ♪

♪ Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah ♪

♪ Bow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah ♪

Suddenly, George Clinton,

self-made king of the P-Funk Empire,

was back on top as a solo act,

even though the players who surrounded
him were all the familiar faces.

George knows that if he goes back

and he starts using again
to any great degree,

he's gonna fuck up
the Atomic Dog tour.

So he's with some friends,

and they're at some drug dealer,

and he buys drugs and he goes
and he makes one crack rock.

Let's say it's this big.

And that becomes his good luck charm.

That rock becomes his rock.

And he decides he's not gonna
smoke it the whole tour.

Every time he's tempted,

he's gonna look at that,
and he's gonna realize,

"I need you to stay intact.

That's what's gonna
get me through this tour."

So he plays marbles with it backstage,

jingles it with his pocket change.

And he keeps to it.

This rock keeps him off of using

for the whole tour post-Atomic Dog.

They finish up the tour. They
have an extra date or two in LA,

and he decides, "Okay,
now I'm gonna reward myself."

He chose to take his victory lap

at the Renaissance Hotel.

So he gets into full lotus position,

naked on the bed,

and he decides he's gonna
smoke this good luck rock.

And he's lighting it up,

and he would put,
uh, tissues in his nose,

'cause the fumes would get to him.

So he's lighting it, and the tissue
that's in his nose catches on fire.

So, in kind of a panic, he sneezes

and the tissue paper
shoots out across the room,

and it lands
at the base of the drapes,

and like there's gasoline on
them, they go up like crazy.

And George realizes... "Oh, shit."

So he tries to get off the bed,
but he's in lotus position.

So he falls off the bed like a crab,

or an open pair of scissors
or something,

and he's just there
floundering on the ground.

Crawls over, reaches up,

grabs the drapes,
rips the curtains off the wall.

And then he stands up, and the
hotel backs on an office,

so everybody who's
in the office is looking

at a full frontal naked
George Clinton,

with charred curtains in one hand,

crack pipe in the other.

Now, he doesn't even care
if they see him naked,

and he's fanning the smoke
alarm and freaking out.

And then, he calls down to the desk,

'cause he's sure the cops are coming.

And with his calmest voice, he says,

"Yes, hello, this is George
Clinton in room whatever.

"I was smoking a cigarette,

"and your smoke alarm
accidentally went off.

"I extinguished it immediately,

but I just wondered if there had
been any problem with that."

And the woman at the desk says,

"No, no, Mr. Clinton. It was fine."

Then he becomes incredibly paranoid.

He gets dressed,

and he goes down to the lobby.

And he does these
kind of slow movements

up and back past the desk

to see if they're
looking at him funny.

I think by the third or fourth time,

they probably are
looking at him funny.

No one says anything.

He's calm. He goes back up,
and the next day, I think,

he tips the maid an extra $75

to get the whole place cleaned up.

While Atomic Dog was
the last number one hit

for George Clinton on the R&B charts,

it was the beginning of something new.

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Hell, yeah ♪

♪ Know what I'm sayin' ♪

♪ Bow-wow-wow-yippie-yo-yippie-yeah ♪

Nearly 300 artists have released music

sampling Atomic Dog.

Ice Cube alone has done it
eight times and counting.

When all the rappers started sampling,

most of the beats that everybody
used was P-Funk beats.

All of the younger rappers
find bits of old songs,

and build them up into new songs,

and George gets a
whole new lease on life

as a, kind of, happy grandfather

in the history of hip-hop sampling.

You know, sampling
keeps up old folks alive,

and jamming forever.

They all made a million
on those songs,

and we never got nothing,

but, hey, man...

...the funk is its own reward.