George Clinton began his career singing doo-wop with his group, the Parliaments, while he was working in his barber shop in New Jersey. They relocated en masse to Detroit hoping to be signed by Motown, but to no avail; Clinton kept body, soul, and band together by running a series of successful hair salons. The Parliaments added a horn section (Funkadelic) to update their sound and finally scored a regional hit (as Parliament) in 1967. By this time, the band was experimenting with a fusion of James Brown, Hendrix, MC5, rhythm and blues, Stax Soul, electric blues, and Sly and the Family Stone. The result was psychedelic and heavy but laid back at the same time, a quality achieved by playing just behind the beat. Clinton dubbed the results funky music. For contractual reasons the band recorded as Funkadelic from 1967 into the 1970s, but the Parliament name was reactivated as soon as possible.
Though Parliament/Funkadelic is considered a single unit, in fact, they are two separate bands that happened to have the same personnel; in the 1970s they were even signed to different labels! Funkadelic records are satirical, guitar-oriented explorations of psychedelic rock; Parliament albums feature the vocalists and harmony singing, riff-driven arrangements, and extensive use of the horn section and keyboards.
Beginning with the 1974 album Up for the Down Stroke, Clinton reframed funk as a language of black nationalism that stood in opposition to everything square and repressive. He did so by way of a complicated mythology that pitted his Star Child and Dr. Funkenstein, who want only to bring peace to the world by returning it to its primal funky state, against Sir Nose D'Void of Funk, who tries to stop this new liberation. This space framework—which cast the rest of Parliament as "Afronauts"—allowed Clinton to comment on commercial exploitation, threats to free speech, and the continuing struggle for civil rights without being viewed as a reactionary. The Afronauts, Dr. Funkenstein, and even the Mothership became part of P-Funk's mind-blowing stage shows, which involved elaborate costumes, freaky hairstyles (crafted by Clinton), and a giant spaceship. While this may sound like theatrics influenced by David Bowie and Alice Cooper, the first rock artist to create a persona and elaborate stage act was Screaming Jay Hawkins, the black rock and roll star who wrote "I Put a Spell on You." He adopted the character of a witch doctor on stage; he dressed in zebra skins and rubber snakes, was wheeled onto the stage for performances in a coffin, and had a human skull named Henry who smoked cigarettes and talked like a ventriloquist's dummy.
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"Up for the Down Stroke"
