ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE

Strap in for the ride of your life as funk, rock and R&B are mixed with psychedelia and a pinch of sci-fi. Nigel Williamson gets down with George Clinton

- Nigel Williamson

Take a banging dose of R&B, lace it with mind-bending quantities of LSD, season it with rock, gospel and psychedelia and add some outlandish sci-fi fantasies and you have the glorious sound which George Clinton called the "Parliafunkadelicment Thang".

Recording both as Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton revolutionised black music in the Seventies, deconstructing soul music until it turned into a funk-rock monster by adding influences as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone.

One of his Parliament albums was titled Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow and nobody squared the equation of headspace and dancefloor or united brain and booty more than Clinton's P-Funk collective.

Clinton aka Dr. Funkenstein - was the ringleader of the Parliafunkadelicment Thang' but the mothership could not have taken off without his fellow Funkateers, who helped to realise his vision. Over the years the lineup was in a state of constant flux, but prominent among the "funkiest muthas in the universe" were Eddie Hazel, the master of wah-wah guitar, Moog maestro Bernie Worrell, the world's most rhythmically inventive bassist Bootsy Collins and The Horny Horns, who included James Brown refugees Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley.

Freak of the week

Along the way there were deaths, prison sentences, army call-ups, business fallouts, and drug psychosis, but through it all they created a sound world that effectively became a genre in itself. It wasn't R&B and it wasn't rocking. It was simply P-Funk.

The sonic maelstrom was topped by Clinton's scattergun lyrics. On songs with titles such as Maggot Brain, Cosmic Slop, America Eats Its Young, and One Nation Under A Groove he played preacher, poet, pimp, professor, prophet, psychoanalyst, politician, hustler, acid dreamer, myth maker, subliminal seducer, cosmic riddler and all-round free spirit.