Since we first conducted this interview in the Fall of '99, the music world has witnessed something of a second coming of George Clinton, Funkadelic, and the P-Funk All-Stars. Between guest appearances on chart topping albums, sell-out tours from coast to coast, and a series of hugely popular Nike television commercials, George "Dr. Funkenstein" Clinton continues to dish out his unique blend of funk, rock, and soul – and creating a sound that truly can be defined as his own. Despite reading this now, two years into the future from whence it was written, almost everything that Clinton has to say here stands as strong today as it did when we first spoke. It's an interesting journey, behind-the-scenes with one of music's most beloved artists.

When the Godfather of Soul, James Brown declared to make it funky, George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic took that command as gospel and created an entire cosmology based on the premise of rhythm, The One. More than a basis to keep musical pace, The One represents a vibe associated with the Unity of all people. Clinton's vehicle, the Mothership was formed and with it came the foot soldiers, Afronaughts, the Clones of Dr. Funkenstein to save the world from becoming ungroovy. For over two decades now, Clinton has been landing the Mothership and spreading the word because afterall, "funk is its own reward."

Besides a number of projects that he plans to produce, Clinton is gearing up for a 1999 send off with the Artist formerly known as Prince. No doubt, this landing of the Mothership is guaranteed to tear the roof off the century. He says, "We'd like to do it in two different places. We want to do it in the last time zone, which is in Hawaii, which will be the last time zone for this Millennium. And Chocolate City [Washington, D.C] would be definitely a place to simulcast. Maybe Bootsy [Collins, former Funkadelic bass extraordinaire] will be there...We gotta play in the Mothership." Like the George Clinton we all know and love, he shared his unique view of life with a lot of humor and lot of insight...nonetheless, it produced quite an interesting interview.

EXPERIENCE HENDRIX: You're getting prepped up to do this Millennium entrance with Prince, what does this new Millennium mean to George Clinton?

GEORGE CLINTON: [pauses, takes a deep breath] It's going to be so new that most people... are not going to know what exactly it's going to be. I mean, it seems that all logical explanations of things are going to take a real turn. I mean, it's going to be easy if you've been watching these things...like the cloning stuff, that's a reality. Virtual reality is pretty much real. It's going to be like magic. None of these things will be all that negative as [what we thought of] as the end of the world as we know it. I think most of the stuff has been already done. They're just waiting for that 21st century [to come]. We saw most of it in the movies. Since the '40's, we saw what the 21st century would be like...a revelation is going to occur to a lot of people but it doesn't have to be as negative as long as people don't get fearful and react to it the way they could.

EH: So you think that there's going to be a lot of reactionary response?

GC: Oh yeah because of all the different things that they're doing with money and security. Y'know patrols. There's definitely going to be a lot of things. Just like the way they treated farmers. There's going to be a real big reaction. Because those were the ones who were [effected] after the Civil War. A majority of ghetto people [know how to survive], we know how to get away and duck around and keep away from all of it. They're gonna catch a lot of middle America and the farmers off guard who have been basically thinking that it was one ethnic group as the problem, or the teenagers or what have you. But it has been 'social engineered' even the chaos. I'm doing a record called "Socially Engineered Anarchy-induced Chaos." Y'know, they're going to find out that all of it has been planned by some faction and not the government itself, but some faction within the government. You're going to see a lot of people who hold the country dear and they will react once that happens.

EH: How are you reacting to the change in technology? We're basically getting hit with something new everyday.

GC: Well, that's what I'm saying. Most of the stuff has been lying around waiting. They've kind of warned us throughout the '60's that it was coming. But now it's here and it is real...the thing is what do we do with it first. Most of the time, our instinct is to have fun with something or to make money out of it. They're going to have a field day with the interactive stuff or virtual reality. So that's going to mess you up. The money making side of it is going to be at work. You'll get a lot of craziness there. But stuff like cloning. That's the real deep one 'cuz from viruses to toy people, it's going to be tried. I mean a lot of big corporations have already put patents on life forms. They don't even know what life forms they're going to make. While they were still available, a lot of major corporations have acquired rights to create life forms. So oil companies will create life forms that eat up oil slicks. Y'know once they get full and there ain't no more oil [laughs] y'know, greasy head people better watch out! That Jheri curl? will get you into trouble! Y'know we tried to do a movie like that...we got that on the backburner too. It's called "Anything Greasy."

EH: From Kentucky Fried Chicken? to the oil companies...

GC: Oh but Kentucky Fried Chicken? will be in trouble. Well anyone that's got chicken all over their face – all greasy. Whatever this thing is, will bust them wide open [laughs some more].

EH: There's this concept of virtual reality and interactivity. Your Clinton artwork is now available online, you have your own website. You're really adapting into the expressive creation of art and tying that into the Internet. How's that coming along?

GC: I'm surprised that it's coming along good. I'm color blind and it's the last thing that [I thought] I'd be doing ...seems as if you're known as an entertainer, all the art forms are available to you. Since I like to doodle a lot anyway...it's the thing that keeps me tranquil...It made a lot of sense when I got the bright idea to sell it... I even find myself actually looking at pictures on the walls of class and real art [laughs].

EH: Do you find taking your art to the Net as positive?

GC: Well first of all, the Defense Department created that thing and the potential for something really crazy [is bound to happen]...pretty soon, we're going to have living chips and we've been talking about using DNA for storing data and if you put a life form inside a computer, well the intellect and the life [form combined], there's no telling what you might come up with. And it's going know everything about everybody [laughs], so that's how far fetched it's going to get. I don't know what it's going to be but if it's here, it's here, so it's too late to start back tracking. But when progress moves, it moves. I think it's all meant to be – one way or other; it's just how fast it goes. It's our job to keep up tempo with it and don't disregard the life of people or the environment. That's going to be our challenge. Some are going to want to do it, some won't. So between the yin and the yang, they should try to keep it balanced 'cuz it's going to happen.

EH: You've mentioned cloning several times so far...is cloning a good thing?

GC: I mean it's a reality. To know that we have the capability to do both the bad and the good; we can't just do it for scary [purposes]...there's the possibility of creating life forms as greedy and perverted and corrupt as we are...we would be making living toys. Y'know that's the reality....

EH: Your own philosophical outlook with Promentalshitbackpsychosisenemasquad...how does that all dictate your future and how all of this is really coming together?

GC: I'm doing the best I can to funk it...[that] is our outlook. You can do the best you can and not worry about it. You just try to make sure got a groove on you that you're capable of doing...and do the best you can to stay abreast of knowing it. When you don't know it, don't want to hear it, too scared to look at it, I think that's dangerous. A lot of people think that if you turn your head and don't look at those things, it goes away. But I think when you do that, you make it bad, you put the concept of bad on it. Like words, words aren't born bad. It's just if you identify them like that; they're bad when you give them life by reacting to them like that.

EH: The longstanding quote of the fear of the unknown is that something that's going to happen?

GC: That's going to peak right about now... There's definitely going to be some greater unknowns 'cuz the unknown can only be after you know it. Once we get through all the unknowns that we've been thinking about and not quite know what we thought of, those will come to pass then it will be "What Can Happen Now?"

And it may or not be something we are concerned about. If we go into another dimension, the things that may be something to concern us...might be fun things. The main thing that I think is going to happen, in my opinion...is going to be the next quantum leap and if that one is changed or altered in some drastic way like when we found fire or computer chips or electrolytes...when time has its major quantum leap, that' s going to alter everything...It seems like that's going to happen now...

EH: If time will become shortened like that, what kind of effect will that have. Will we cease to exist because time is so short?

GC: I don't think we'd ever go anywhere. I think everything is here and now. All our lives, every day, all the times that have been...I think it all depends on which dimension you're in. Like déjà vu, I think all of us are here and now somewhere...it's pretty weird now to believe that the faster you go, that someone is aging and someone is not aging. That's a hell of a thought right there. It's how time and space have [an effect] on you. But they still go to the moon and back...it doesn't seem like too much of a different thing to me right there. But somewhere along the line, you do change or reality changes if you go fast. It has to make sense 'cuz that's what Copperfield and them do. See, they manipulate time and your perspective on what you think you see. 'Cuz after awhile you can put so many things in your pocket....

EH: It seems endless the possibilities that can happen....

GC: Like I've been saying, all our logic and reality is not going to hold. That stuff is going to come unglued. That's why it's just interesting to know that [this will happen], so [if you're prepared], you won't be too upset when it happens. I mean people haven't really thought about that sheep that they cloned. The sheep is about two years old when they showed it to you. You don't clone nothing to come out that big. Most people never thought about it when they said, "Clone me this sheep.' They didn't think the sheep overnight. Y'know that thing had to grow up like anything else. By the time they showed it to us, that sheep had been cloned for some time. By the time they show you something, you can bet that the experiment had been a few years in the making. To me, it goes as far back as the '40's and the '50's.

I did the album back in '76, "The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein." And people was like, 'What the devil are you talkin' about?" It's weird because I wrote that song over here in Seattle and in Portland.

EH: You're looking at the future and what does the future hold for the Mothership?

GC: We've already saddled between dimensions. It will just be a lot of people at the party. There's going to be a lot of people at the party because there here!

EH: When you look at the future of the Mothership, do you see it as the vehicle of Cosmic Oneness, the chariot to the Promised Land, One Nation?

GC: I think the positive vibe of being One Nation, in being on The One together, no matter where it goes and no matter what the New World is about... it's all right as along as we can maintain that vibe...the one thing that I believe holds true, no matter what dimension or reality you're in, love seems to have a place in there. That's the one phenomenon, it don't seem like that changes. I mean, what you may want to call love, it has its own degrees; but the concept of love unconditionally is a reality no matter where it's at or what it is. That vibe, as long as we can be One Nation, One Planet, or One Whatever, then we'll pulsate together as motherships of all kinds...

EH: When looking at love, would you say that love of oneself is paramount over love for another?

GC: I think that if you could love oneself, you can love another...I think that we are all one...we're part of that Big-Consciousness-Self...I don't think it's possible to do one with the other.

EH: When you're looking at the Universal Love, we're all one entity working, existing together. The proclamation of George Clinton as the "Galaxy Traffic Cop" is interesting. We've got the Universal, we've got the galaxy and we've got the cop which indicates that there's a bit of control...but there's the traffic, what traffic are you directing?

GC: [laughs] Everybody that moves and everything that's got a booty...that seems like the part that will always be hangin' out. As long as you can move and groove...I think that everything has a rhythm and everything's got a frequency. I don't think that will fade. You can do that way, you can go this way...but what do you call those things that build particles?

EH: Particle accelerators?

GC: Yeah, we've been doing that forever. They late with that!

EH: Looking at that and directing the traffic of these people, where are you directing these folks towards?

GC: Wherever they want to go! Just know that you can run into each other in this dimension; we get out of this dimension, then you can run right through each other and just be cool.

EH: What kind of influence did Hendrix have on you?

GC: I think the vibe that came through him or Sun Ra or ourselves or the Beatles, just comes through you, it's the same vibe, the same rhythm...But it let me know that that reality can be strange 'cuz I never heard feedback before [Jimi]. To be able to make that melodic and have people appreciate it; y'know when people before them was worried about majors and minors. That psychedelic [movement] destroyed that whole concept...we were able to appreciate what we formerly called noise. Now we got hip-hop, which is taking it another step further. They make noise sound appreciable too. For him, he made it religion even with the chaos. There's a beauty in it...he was one of those people that the vibe of love came through him and it's still here.

EH: Musically, you look back at Jimi; he had fuzz, the feedback, the wah-wah, that unique sound that continues today. Was there something about Jimi spiritually...

GC: [chimes in] He made it religious...it wasn't just feedback 'cuz people played noise before. But he mastered it. While he was playing, if he burned up his guitar or broke it, it still sounded good with the feedback that he left while he was playing it. Just the tone of his whole being was definitely spiritual...and it still is. That vibe is going to be there. Like the Old Testament, wherever we go, it will be there. That whole '60's era will be there but he will be at the pinnacle of it. Like Sun Ra, I didn't know much about him but now that I've find out a lot about him; it's wild that he had it coming through him and he joked with it and had fun playing with it.

EH: Looking at Jimi's major breakthrough of relaying to his audience and people (in general) as being experienced...how would you respond if you were posed the question, "Are you experienced?"

GC: I am experiencing...I mean, I understand the vibe of this whole thing...the big spirit seems as if it is final but have you recognized that something is going on? Yeah, then I'm experienced to know that something else is happening to that logic and reality. It's going to make a move. It's not all that scary...but it's ready to make that move and has made that move. Yeah, I'd definitely say that I'm experiencing 'cuz it's making a whole lot of moves...

EH: Looking at the forms of music that Jimi created in his very short career particularly in the '70's. It is said that the formation of the Band of Gypsys was an early grass roots formation of funk and soul. How would you respond to that?

GC: Yeah, I could get to that... I could see that at the time when all the Black Power/Revolution and black people had to have a hand in someone who was black too. To me, it rescued the blues, which I was guilty of thinking of as old music that my mother [played], and I didn't want to hear either. I was a doo-wop singer. I was into love songs and thinking that was a cool thing. I was so glad for him 'cuz he brought that music back as our roots. And at the time when the Band of Gypsys showed up, I think it was leading to the bridge that gap back to our people with our music and to the rest of the world – to white people and other people [that] he had really touched already and that was the last emphasis he had to put on it to show where he came from and how he got to those places. Y'know, he was bluesy. When he with the Chambers and The Isley Brothers...but when he did "Axis Bold As Love" and "Experienced," he went to wherever that place was and then came back and said, 'Okay, I did live here too.' Y'know this is the funk; the blues is the basis for all of it. Y'know that earthy groove. Yeah, I can see Billy Cox and Buddy Miles as being the beautifying thing of the last thing needed but it was also the first thing too.

EH: The same spirit of Jimi Hendrix existed in your late guitarist Eddie Hazel....

GC: That's what Jimi was telling him. Y'know it freaked Eddie out to even know that he had even heard our records. I think it was on our "Free Your Mind" album.

EH: With the passing of former Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel how does this loss reflect on your music today...

GC: I think that there's more awareness in the band of what we did on those first albums. When we did them, we were making up our own thing to survive. We were clowning for the most part and I don't think the band appreciated as much as the people did. The band seemed to be the last ones to realize we did some great music and now in the past five years, groups like the Chili Peppers taught us our old songs! Until then, we never realized that those songs could be played [by other musicians]. We did them in the studio and never did more than do a lick or two after that...once they started doing it, then they realized what Eddie was really playing...they all recognized that he can play but they didn't get intricate in all the stuff that he created in his head.

EH: Today when you're on stage and you bring on a blistering rendition of "Maggot Brain," how much is that is a tribute back to Eddie?

GC: All of it. Always. I mean, each time we play it, you can tell when Michael or Blackbyrd or Garry...believe me, all of them can play. Garry probably plays like Eddie more than anybody but you very seldom hear Garry play...since Billy's (Billy "Bass" Nelson) back with us, all of the Eddie stuff, he can tell the musicians what Eddie was playing because he played on all of those records. Between him and Garry, like when they do 'Fly On' [the Jimi Hendrix tribute] now it really do sound like Eddie and Jimi. It's just like the violin. Blackbyrd can play Beethoven. Note for note too. I mean, especially for you, the whole band did [show off at the show the night before], they really showed off. Not only were they loud, right, groovy and commercial, they were playing...Eddie is their undeniable peak. They know it now. They realize it.

EH: Back to Jimi Hendrix and his influence, do you think there's a common connection between your Mothership and his Electric Ladyland?

GC: There is a feminine dominance in the world period. I mean if you take a look at old things, things were 'she' with ships and I think the whole world is that way...and I'm a lion [referring to his astrological sign] and the female dominates where the dude just looks dominant [laughs]...Jimi, like you said was spiritual, highly sexual, highly of another world...

EH: What made the music back in the Sixties so special?

There was so much power in the music back then...I knew then it just comes through you and you had nothing to do with it...Because with the Beatles, from where they started to where they got to was unbelievable. When you got the momentum going, you don't do no wrong. Everything is right on your side, it comes through you and boy did they have all kinds of songs. It was like, "How could they know anything about this?" But there was four of them and they had a chance [to experience a lot of different things] and bring it back together which I base my group on. I experienced it with Motown, my experience walking up and down Broadway with Phil Spector...all the different kinds of music that was around and then the psychedelic era and then Sly, who to me is phenomenal as all get out...I didn't know where he came from...All of that energy at that time, like Woodstock, to me that was the end of what that vibe was about as far as being an esoteric movement...after that it was like everybody going back to work, like it's your job and listening to music as part of the regular system. But then it was like, 'Stop that War' and before they dropped the bomb on another country like they did in Japan, the breeding [of that spirit] and the music, to me, I believe that they would've dropped the bomb if it hadn't been for the kids in the '60's ... all that vibe of "Are You Experienced?" and "Love, Love, Love" [sings "All You Need Is Love]...really did it...but by '70 and '71, it was like 'Go get you a job.'

EH: If Jimi had lived longer, do you think that you would've worked with him?

GC: Yeah... he was probably gonna get hooked up with Eddie ...[Jimi] said that he had some big hands and he had that vibe [too]. vibe was that we had the blues and the funk and the rock-and-roll mixed together and we even included Motown and I think that he was, like Miles Davis, interested in wherever music was going. I'm sure we would've worked together. There wouldn't be no way around it.

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