I was far from the first white teenage boy to fall under the spell of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic’s cosmically sloppy funk. In that respect, my documentary Funk Getting Ready to Roll (airing Aug. 12 on CBC Radio’s Inside the Music) has been decades in the making. Over time, my fascination changed from worship to respect as the whole funk mob shifted from seeming like cartoon characters from another universe into real human beings just trying to keep their unique show on the road.
A few years after coming across the still-bonkers videos for “Atomic Dog” and “Do Fries Go With That Shake?” on late night TV, I found out, by means of a surprising revelation by my former high school music teacher, that funkmaster George Clinton had lived in Toronto for a few years in the early ’70s. My teacher had jammed with Funkadelic and recalled the session with awe. Wow.
It was deeper than that, though. Books by Nelson George and Robert Pruter and liner notes by Rob Bowman and Cliff White educated me to the reality behind funk and soul: no matter how surreal, rainbow-afro’d and silly the music got onstage, times out of the limelight were usually pretty harsh. Black artists – to say nothing of iconoclastic Black artists – faced a rough road. It’s a point of view I grew up with as I learned more about R&B.
It got me thinking: what would it have been like to have met George Clinton in Toronto? Why was he here? What was it all like?
Clinton has always been a shrewd observer of the music business and has usually stayed a step ahead, despite problems with drugs, health and money. This impression was only reinforced after I chased after him for 11 months trying to get an interview. He really warmed up to talking about Toronto. It was one those times in his long, long career that things were changing for the better.
By the time P-Funk got to Toronto, Clinton was already 30 and had sung professionally for 15 years. If you look at his ’60s discography alone, you’ll find mostly above average singles that hew pretty close to the norm in Detroit at the time. They don’t tell the story behind the scenes. Members of the Parliaments, as they were then called, shuttled back and forth between Vietnam and Detroit and Clinton’s childhood stomping grounds in New Jersey, all the while chasing a fading dream. When a success finally materialized in 1967 with “Testify,” the band couldn’t sustain it and seemed destined for one-hit wonder status.
That’s what’s interesting about the period covered by the documentary. It sees the band transition from a bunch of talented, inspired amateurs with hustle into a more professional and ambitious concern. This documentary is about transition; it’s about when people take stock of their lives and make moves in a different direction. Not every move worked out. Some fans look at this period as an irrelevant side trip before they hit big, but living in Toronto broadened the band’s horizons. Frankie “Kash” Waddy, who signed on to the organization around that time, said: “I came from Cincinnati, which was highly prejudiced. It was like this side of the track, that side of the tracks. Toronto was like no tracks. It gave us a whole different perspective on life.”
Kash’s POV is a little suspect to those of us who have lived in Toronto and witnessed plenty of racism over many decades, but his attitude underlines that P-Funk’s experiences in Toronto in the early ’70s can’t be viewed in terms of liner notes alone. This story isn’t easy to tell, but it’s also not so easy to write off.
Making this documentary is an experience I’ll never forget. I’m not so naïve as to claim I bonded with any of the interview subjects, but to hear Clinton giving his perennial outsider’s perspective on my town, making the point that these years and this city remain close to his heart, made him a more realistic person to me. Toronto brought out, if not the best from him, then something worth expanding on.
Funk Getting Ready to Roll will be airing on Inside The Music on Sunday, August 12th at 3 pm (3:30 pm in NL) on CBC Radio 2, and 9 pm (10 pm in Atlantic Canada, 10:30 in NL) on CBC Radio 1.
If you live in Toronto, check out Funk Getting Ready To Roll: Party People!, a night of psychedelic soul celebrating the documentary.
Related:
Parliament-Funkadelic
Inside the Music
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