Dear Superstar: George Clinton

“Anything that parents don’t like,” announces George Clinton, “that’s the music I like!”

Even at 65, the Grandfather of Funk and pilot of the Parliament-Funkadelic mothership still cuts an impressively countercultural figure. He arrives at a Culver City, California, photo studio to meet Blender wearing a bright orange tracksuit, matching Timberlands and a woolly hat from which gray hair and multicolored dreadlocks protrude at crazy angles.

Now, almost 50 years after making his first record, Clinton is one of the greatest innovators that black music—or any kind of music—has ever known. From signing to Motown with the Parliaments, the doo-wop group he started in his Newark barbershop, to his ’70s peak as leader of the science-fiction-acid-rock-R&B Parliament-Funkadelic collective, which created some of the most sampled music of all time, all the while fronting a live show legendary for its length and lunacy, Clinton has been more influential and crossed more genres than even James Brown.

Now, putting some quiet years—and 2003’s bust for possession of crack—behind him, he’s about to release his first new album in nearly a decade, How Late Do You Have 2 B B 4 U R Absent?, and preparing to set off on yet another tour. “We live on the road,” he corrects. “We ain’t never stopped touring.”

Settling into a white leather couch, removing his tinted spectacles and tucking into an apple pie, he prepares to meet the Blender readers’ inquisition. “OK,” he says, in his gravelly drawl, “go ahead.”

What was the best ’do you ever gave anyone as a barber?
Bwebster88, Roxbury, MA
[P-Funk member] Bernie Worrell, his hair was so thin and fragile we used to call him the baby elephant. And he always wanted it so it looked like he had some hair. I used to just stand it straight up and bend it at the top and spray it real hard, so it looked like he had a little pompadour. I can’t see too good now, though. I wouldn’t want to cut nobody’s hair nowadays.

What was the worst thing you ever did when you were a kid in a street gang in New Jersey?
Sprewellz, Bisbee, AZ
Ha. A couple of older guys beat my ass—they held me down and beat the shit out of me. So me and one of my boys one night took bats and waited in the dark. We hit one of them and that one broke his leg. But the other one, we hit him and it didn’t hurt him. So we got scared and I hit him upside the head with the bat. He fell right down and we thought he was dead. It scared the shit out of me for a week.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Carl_p, Miami
Working in a tool packaging company—we packed hammers and wrenches in wooden crates. It was heavy as hell. And you had to get up at 4:30 in the morning, to go up to Englewood, New Jersey.

Did they teach you anything useful in Motown charm school?
Dammitjanet, Chicago
Useful for somebody else, but not for us. It just brought out the clown in us. We couldn’t see ourselves curtsying and bowing—we couldn’t keep suits alike, we couldn’t even keep our ties alike. By the time we got there we was actually ready to go the other way—to get a little Funkadelic, with sheets and diapers. So we got kicked out before we even got there.

I’ve read that before you made Free Your Mind…and Your Ass Will Follow, you wondered if you could make a whole album while tripping on acid. Did you ever succeed?
Teardaroofoff, Los Angeles
We made that album—tripping on acid all the way, for days. The whole record and them first few—from the first Funkadelic album right up to Maggot Brain. That whole era I can barely remember. We was tripping every day for two years. We took it like candy. We took it so much it stopped working. I mean, I took handfuls. It literally wouldn’t work no more. But I can tell you—it changed my life for real. I wouldn’t say that about nothing else—no other kind of drug. That was probably the best experience I’ve had. Acid was really good until they started making it commercial.

Do you ever have sex to your own records?
Starshine79, Concord, NH
[Aghast.] Hell no! Yuck! I can’t stand the sound of my voice.

The Parliament track “The Silent Boatman” may be the first and only funk record with a bagpipe solo. What was the idea—and was it hard to find a bagpiper to play with you in Detroit in 1970?
Gkwillie, Santa Barbara, CA
It was pretty hard to find a bagpiper—but the idea was that Funkadelic was the funky underground, dirty group. In Parliament, we was trying to make like the Beatles. We wanted to get ultra-pop instrumentation—I watched George Martin and Phil Spector—so we had the bagpipes, strings, oboes and cellos and everything, from the Detroit Symphony. We were just trying to do a real pop record.

You were obsessed with computer games for a while. what’s your No. 1 favorite one right now?
Halohero, Ames, IA
Still the same one: Galaga. I’m lost in space—I can’t keep up with the new sci-fi stuff they do nowadays. The physics got different all of a sudden.

The first outrageous costume you wore onstage was a Holiday Inn bedsheet with a hole cut for your head. Did you try anything else before deciding on that?
Headhunter123, Charleston, SC
Hmm…well the first thing I wore was, we went to a costume place and bought a Snoopy and the Red Baron helmet, old royalty-lookin’ robes and things like that. And then we got progressively worse, laughin’ at the fact that we could get away with it. People though it was something really deep—we thought it was funny. So we just started going into garbage cans and getting out our uniforms, wearing sheets, diapers … I used to wear Holiday Inn towels, take the coatcheck girl’s sanitary towel and put fake blood on it, throw it out into the audience. We was disgusting.

You played one of Bill Clinton’s inaugural balls. Did he ask to play sax with you?
Josecanyousee, Galveston, TX
Twice he’s almost played with us. One other time he was going to play with us in Chicago, where he got caught in traffic and couldn’t get to the show in time. But the inaugural ball was nice—him and Mrs. Clinton got up onstage and danced. We was doing “Atomic Dog,” but “I Call My Baby Pussycat” was the next song—we tried to mask it and not go into it. We didn’t realize they was gonna be up there during that particular song.

Your records are among the most sampled of all time. Who do you think put your music to the best use?
Mixmasterspike, Oneida, TN
I think the most creative use of a sample is when you don’t know what it is, and not just a loop that works pretty much the same way we did it. Public Enemy used to have so many samples that they made an arrangement. To me they was the artsiest. Dre and Snoop just had a whole thing on the “Atomic Dog” vibe and “One Nation …” But I like the real radical ones, where you can’t tell what it is.

What’s the first thing you would do if you became president?
Kmbooker, Gainesville, FL
I wouldn’t take the job. I’d get me a banana and go look for—what’s the girl’s name?—Monica Lewinsky. I mean, what is there left for a president to do?

Dr. Funkenstein, Uncle Jam, Sir Nose, Starchild: Which is your favorite character you’ve created, and why?
Jrdouglas, Allentown, PA
Sir Nose, because I copied his voice, his style, from a good friend of mine when we was teenagers, who was crazy as hell. The guy used to go [adopts weird, nasal, Sir Nose voice]: “Owwwww! I heeaaate you! I heeaaate you!”—he’d jump up on his car and just yell—“I haaate you! I haaate you!” He would go to gang fights on roller skates—cuttin’ people and skatin’ away in the dark like the Shadow. So that one was one of my favorites.

What happened to the original mothership you used to use onstage in the ’70s?
Zfunk69, Stone Harbor, NJ
People took it apart and pawned and sold different parts of it. The people that it was in storage with took the hydraulics off of it and sold that to somebody else. We just found the motor for the elevator in Maryland, in somebody’s garage. We might assemble that again pretty soon.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you onstage?
Scarygary, Denver
I used to get naked and jump off the stage, chase people around in the audience. After years of doing it, the band pulled a fast one on me: cut the music off, the lights came on after I’m in the audience, naked as hell. So I fell on the floor and crawled between peoples’ legs. I got to the side and opened the door and ran out. I thought I was going to run into the back of the stage. But I ran into the hallway; we were playing at a school and people was walking up and down who didn’t know nothing about the show. That was embarrassing.

Do you think there’s intelligent life on other planets?
Hal9000, Bethesda, MD
Oh, I’m sure of that. Yeah. I’ve actually seen something, driving through Canada, with Bootsy Collins, after finishing his album Bootsy? Player of the Year—a light, by the airport, right out of the clouds, like a laser. And I wasn’t high either.

What’s in your pockets right now?
Dirtydog848, Boston
I’ve got some dope. No money. Oh, no. I’ve got about $3,500 in my pocket. And if I stick my fingernail and rake the bottom of it, probably got some dope in there, too.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been given by a fan?
Cactus_3, Lordsburg, NM
Someone gave me a cooler with some Kotex in there, a diamond ring, cards, a couple of album covers of ours—and a dead dog. He brought it to my house for my birthday. His name was “The Pencil Sharpener”: He wrote songs about pencils and sharpening pencils. He used to give me pencil sharpeners for a few years; his finale was the dog. And after that I was through with him.

What’s the craziest thing you ever did while you were on crack?
Csgregory, Tulsa, OK
Run out? [Laughs.] Oh—there’s some fucked up shit. My old lady, she’d got tired of me, so she left me at home, to see her people across the country. I called her up—when she answers the phone, I told her that she’s not there, ’cause I could I hear her voice next door. That’s crazy.

You’re 65 years old, and you’re still playing four-hour shows. I’d like to be capable of that when I’m your age—do you have any tips for me?
Atomickid, Salem, OR
Viagra. I got some of that in my pocket, too. [Searches through pockets.] They’re such little things … [Comes up empty; rifles in wallet; finally finds pill and holds it aloft in triumph.] Yeah!

Does it bother you that people think you’re crazy?
Tomcat, Newcastle, WY
That’s a prerequisite for being in this business in the first place. I think it’s better that you plan it for yourself rather than to let it sneak up on you for real. Because, let’s face it, you’re gonna be crazy one way or the other. At least you have a better chance if you do it yourself.