George Clinton hunkers down into the couch in the conference room of Capitol’s Manhattan offices, pours himself a tall noontime glass of orange juice, and rubs his eyes. He looks very tired—he’s four weeks into a grueling (26 people traveling by bus, playing clubs and small halls) four-month tour. He also looks very happy—it’s his first tour in two years, which is a long time off for a workaholic like Clinton.

Not that Clinton was completely idle during this period. He mastered Galaga and got passably good at a few other video games, a recently-acquired obsession that provides the cornerstone for his current (and great, and even successful) Computer Games solo album. He also produced “about 15 to 17 albums” (all unreleased) by various old and new acts within his funk axis. But Clinton is the man who spent most of the last decade revolutionizing black popular music as surely as Ray Charles, James Brown, Sam Cooke, Motown, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone did before him—and unlike most of them, he did it without benefit of white radio airplay. The last couple of years have seen a veritable funk explosion, among blacks in America and blacks and whites in England, and it hardly seems appropriate that Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton’s two chief vehicles, should have been silent the whole time. “It all crumbled right around us for a second,” Clinton admits the afternoon before a show with the aptly-named P-Funk All Stars, the umbrella group behind him on both his solo album and tour. He says that calmly, matter-of-factly, but for a while there, Clinton would have been justified in hitting the panic button. Due to his unorthodox business set-up—especially the way he records essentially the same band on two different labels under two different names, but also his various spinoffs—George Clinton is no stranger to legal wrangling. But even by his standards, this last one was a doozy.

Blame it on the business.

Though it didn’t boil over until 1981, he says, the troubles really began in 1978, with Funkadelic’s One Nation Under A Groove. Clinton wanted to include a bonus seveninch EP at no additional cost; Warner Brothers, the group’s label, balked, and Clinton wound up eating the cost himself. Dissatisfaction escalated the next year when Warner’s made him change the cover art on Knee Deep/Uncle Jam Wants You. The dispute over 1981’s The Electric Spanking Of War Babies was the last straw. Clinton turned in a double.album, planning to forego his royalties so it could be priced the same as a single album, which Warners told him was impossible. (Since then, Clinton notes, the company has released double-for-theprice-of-singl'e albums by George Benson and Prince.) Surprisingly, the single album Clinton then gave them turned out to be the best Funkadelic LP in years.

“That’s because I changed the album concept. Warners had already told me they were printing just 90,000 albums when we had just come, off an album that sold 70-80,000. It occurred to me that they weren’t behind this one at all, that they had no intention of being behind this record,” he says sardonically. “So I cut an album like Hardcore Jollies or Maggot Brain—like the ones I know ain’t necessarily gonna get on no radio, but I know the fans will like it over the y.ears. When I know there ain’t no possibility of having a commercial hit or of getting any commercial attention, then I cut the record I know' has the most sustai'ned staying power, and that’s the old-fashioned Funkadelic records on Westbound—you know, Maggot Brain, Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On. They’re not commercial, but they last to this day, because they’re for the hardcore fans.

“I mean, ‘Icka Prick’ on the Electric Spanking album, people will be talking about that; they haven’t even started yet, but.it built a heavy inroad into that thing of really naughty music. They could never play that on radio. I did that one particularly because I like Prince a lot, and I said I got to make this statement since I don’t do that kind of music a lot—naughty music, I call it—since I don’t do it all the time, Prince was gonna get all the credit1 for doing that. So . I said I gotta make one heavy statement that it will take him five years to work up to. I mean, even as heavy as he is, it will still take him a long time to do ‘yucka fuck, icka prick iron pussy...’ and all that shit. He won’t get none of that on no radio; ‘giviri’ head’ and all those songs he can get on the radio, but he’ll never be able to do one like that and get it played.”

The Electric Spanking issue then got tied into contractual disputes involving Bootsy Collins and Roger Troutman, two of Clinton’s spinoff projects. Both Bootsy, who’d been signed to Clinton’s Rubber Band production company while his albums were released by Warners, and Troutman, who’d cut his The Many Facets Of Roger solo debut ostensibly for Clinton’s then-new Uncle Jam label (distributed by CBS), were suddenly signed directly to Warners (which already had Zapp, the group Troutman ifronts). George’s deal with Troutman had been done on a handshake, but CBS/Uncle Jam financed the album, Clinton says, adding that he thinks Warners was worried about him having too much power within the company because he controlled three acts.(including Funkadelic itself). He also claims that Warners reneged on certain monthly payments and album advances due his organization. (Warner Brothers spokesmen declined comment.)

You think the freaks nowadays in the new wave is deep? Wait 'til they start genetically making them...

The final settlement was reached out of court. Funkadelic left Warners, with Clinton receiving rights to the group’s masters and back, catalog, along with what he calls “a substantial amount of money.” The label also erased the band’s debt of over one million dollars. Zapp is now signed to Warners instead of to Rubber Band, and so is Troutman, though whether Troutman and Warners owe damages for releasing the Many Facets album has yet to be determined. And Bootsy is now without any affiliation, though he and George, their fences mended, have begun work on his next album, which George thinks will probably go straight to Warners. Funkadelic will not likely wind up with Uncle Jam. Got all that?

...I think this new thing happening with Culture Club and all that is the first legitimate new thing white radio has got that's gonna stick.

Meanwhile, around the same time this was happening, Parliament released Trombipulation, which Clinton intended to be a more commercial album, on Casablanca, which was promptly bought up by the Polygram conglomerate. Despite the hit single “Agony Of De Feet,” that album got lost in the changeover, and it looked like the whole group might; only in the last few months has Clinton’s organization begun talks with the new boss.

Needless to say, while all this has kept some lawyers very busy, it hasn’t done much for P-Funk’s musical output. But Clinton himself had been showing signs of overwork two years ago, and most of the albums coming out then, as well as the 1981 tour, were unusually shaky. Was George feeling the strain?

. “Hell no, 1 don’t never deal with that one, that’s the funniest thing,” he snorts. “I wasn’t tired or anything. It’s just that once I saw what was happening, then I stopped. I just said, forget it. But then I cut ‘Hydraulic Pump’ just for that reason you just said, to tell myself, are you worth it still?). Because enough people said they didn’t wanna talk to me that I thought, damn, maybe you .better check this shit out.”

That single and the 1982 “One Of Those Summers” were both on the one, but both flopped. Along with a version of James Brown’s “It’s Too Funky (In Here)” and , several other tracks, they’ll soon be released (probably on Uncle Jam) as an album by the P-Funk All-Stars, including Sly Stone, Bobby Womack, Philippe Wynne, Junie Morrison, Maceo Parker, Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins, and more others than you can shake a licking stick at. Clintpn also cut albums with Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy, the Brides of Funkenstein, Parlet, and five new groups, the most noteworthy one being Tray Lewd, which js led by George’s 18-year-old son Tracy. (“He is Prince for # real. I mean, Prince is Prince for real, but he’s taking his time, he’s doing it very cautiously; he’s very smart, so he’s tiptoeing. The only reason Tracy doesn’t have his record out is that he wouldn’t tiptoe. He writes songs that make me flinch, and I don’t flinch at too much.”)

He vented the rest of his frustrations in the video arcade. “It’s because of the aggressions you can get out,” he laughs. “You know, you can shoot down the presidents of record companies without actually shooting them. You leave there fairly drained of that uptightness. The better you get, the less and less you pay, too. In the beginning, you lose your quarters fast. Now I can go in and after two quarters, I’m pretty good and tired, and I don’t need to play no more,”

Since he himself was contractually free as a solo artist despite the difficulties with his groups, he pulled himself away long enough to cut Computer Games, which was released late last year, started slow, and has been coming on strong ever since. Nearly every black group of the post-disco era built its foundation on Clinton’s innovations, but in his absence, funk had evolved further. Thanks to young rappers like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, it had grown harsher, tauter; thanks to young inner-city ensembles like “D” Train, it became more mechanized. Clinton stays fresh by incorporating these developments into his own sound. In keeping with the album’s title, the music is full of the blips and bleeps of computerized instruments, of high-tech synthesizers and syndrums. But Clinton makes these machines grind and moan and writhe and sweat until you remember that one of the first usages for the word “funk” was in reference to sexual body smells.

“I made sure we got some new blood into our organization,” he explains. ‘That way the new vibe that’s happening on the street influences us older ones, and the experience of the older ones helps the young people. When we match ’em together, we got the best of both worlds. First you gotta get the basis of it, which is 2-4 funk, the backbeat, and then you color it with a lotta stuff.”

The album may be called Computer Games, and George may take 15 or so hand-held games on tour with him, but the true centerpieces musically remain the hit singles. The first, “Loopzilla,” concerns the pervasiveness of radio hits, from Motown in the ’60s through Parliament and Funkadelic in the 70s right up to Afrika Bambaataa and “Planet Rock” in the ’80s. “Atomic Dog,” the followup, was originally planned as the album’s title song.

“I forget why I named it the dog. I know one intention was I need that heavy vibe; we always had that aggressive thing like ‘Tear The Roof Off The Sucker.’ I knew that dog had that king of vibe from the old days of Rufus Thomas. But I think ‘atomic’ had more to do with it than ‘dog’,” says Clinton, who has been known to liken himself to an underdog. “It was all this computer age stuff and high technology. I wanted to get the two vibes, one futuristic and the other primal. That seems to be what the magic in the song is.. .that technology in the synthesizer, then that raw vibe of the woof. ‘I’m chasin’ the cat’ and lines like that, I was just doing that symbolically, like chasin’ a woman or chasin’ whatever, those instinctive things that you don’t have much to do with, the automatic muscles.”

If we got white airplay our sales would be phenomenal.

Like “Atomic Dog,” “Free Alterations” digs into the vein of native American soul surrealism that Clinton’s mentor James Brown first tapped with songs like “Licking Stick” (People standin’, standin’ in a trance/Sister’s out in the backyard/Doin’ a outside dance”) or “There Was A Time” (“In my hometown'/Where I used to stay/The name of the place/Is Augusta G-A/Down there we have a good time/We don’t talk/We all get together/in any kind of weather/And then we . do/The camel walk’’). Clinton’s view, though, is more unsettling; his song begins with the undeniably endearing images, “There’s gonna bp free alterations/Let me suit you in a suit of love,” then ’‘leaps to disturbing references to “somebody’s dead daughter/somebody’s dead baby son.” The former came up one night in a talk with his son, the latter came after George watched a TV news report on the conflagaration in Lebanon. Somehow, they fit together.

“But it’s alsb about the fact that if we don’t go ahead and alter our minds willingly, it’s gonna be done genetically,” he cautions. “That’s another big thing of mine, cloning, and there’s gonna be a free alteration done without your help if we don’t go ahead and do it ourselves, if we aren’t able to think and figure out what’s going on and be able to change that reality. With the technology we got coming, you watch—they gonna take it and use it to alter the lowest-things. Like ugly people. If you got a potential ugly child coming, they gonna alter that for you if you want. So you got to know that you better be able to give yourself free alterations to deal with those things. That’s a funny one, though...ugly people. They gonna be able to plan your sex, your height. If they want a good athlete, they gonna genetically manipulate that—a good fighter, a good singer, a different color of hair. You think the freaks nowadays in the new wave is deep? Wait ’til they start genetically making them, the musicians and everything—I can visualize an instrument being built right into the person.”

When that happens, you can bet George will have the freak up onstage in no time. The touring version of his P-Funk All-Stars features such veterans as guitarists Garry Shider, Michael Hampton and Eddie Hazel, bassist Cordell Mosson, keyboard whiz Bernie Worrell, vocalist Gary “Mudd-bone” Cooper, hornman Maceo Parker and more. Like the woolly tours of the 70s, it combines the vocal group sound of Parliament; the sassy horn arrangements and razor-sharp rhythms of the classic James Brown sound hold the whole sprawl together. It’s part medicine show, part R&B revue, and part psychedelic freakout. When the tour ends in Europe late in June, George plans to stick around and do some producing.

“Funk music is coming out in England bigger than it is here. It’s the pop music over there,” he enthuses. “I really like those groups like Culture Club that’s got that newsounding funk. It don’t even sound like us, but I can still feel it when I listen to the records.”

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The irony, of course, is that the cannibalized funk of Culture Club and other groups Clinton hopes to produce is already getting tons more airplay than he himself ever got. But Clinton has mixed feelings about this process, and doesn’t believe white radio reflects white tastes anyhow.

“Believe me, it’s the sponsors. Kids like all music. People have a much wider scope than radio, but Sponsors want to corral listeners into one area so they can sell to them. Man, if we got white airplay our sales would be phenomenal. But I would never change for that reason. It took black people a long time to get into our music, too, but in time, our music gets to most anybody. So instead of changing for white airplay, I’d just try to find a new way to get to ’em. And I think the best way is to go through Europe, because one thing white radio here respects is European radio,” Clinton says.

“At the same time, once you get to a certain amount of commercial, you have to know how to put the brakes on that. You get three or four of them serious No. 1 records back to back, you can get in real trouble. Once you get that much airplay or that much TV, people get tired of you. Plus in your own mind, you can get the feeling that there ain’t nothing else to do. If you can keep it spaced and growing at the same time, but growing sideways as opposed to straight up, you can last a lot longer. I’ve deliberately made sure we don’t get no Grammy—if I have to I’ll put a ‘Doo Doo Chaser’ or some song on the record that’ll make Grammy people say, ‘Hell, no!’

“But I think this new thing happening with Culture Club and all that is the first legitimate

new thing white radio has got that’s gonna stick. And as long as I’m producing it, I could care less if it outsells my own records. It’ll be like Jimi Hendrix—he got more respect by going there and then coming back over here.” '