George Clinton’s sci-fi voyage: The life of P-Funk’s Mothership – Far Out Magazine
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still / UMG Recordings)
“Funk ‘em just to see the look on their face.” – George Clinton.
George Clinton, the merrymaking maestro from outer space, has had a befittingly berserk life since he descended from ‘Another Planet’ on his benevolent quest to conquer Earthly banality as the pioneering force behind the roving P-Funk party empire. He emerged from the ‘Mothership’ with the gift of funk in the back pocket of his flared pantaloons and a heavy, wildly conceptual brand of the genre at that, and he hasn’t looked back since.
In 1976, Clinton took that conceptual element to new heights, stratospheric heights even. The crowd at the Municipal Auditorium in New Orleans waited anxiously for the band to take the stage, but rather than simply wandering out of the wings, they descended to the stage in the Mothership. Clinton strode forth as ‘The Star Child’, and suddenly, the concept of their album, Mothership Connection, seemed frighteningly close to reality for the many inebriated members of the crowd.
The spaceship in question was discovered by Clinton in a prop house in Los Angeles. The craft had originally entered pop culture via the 1951 sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still before being stowed away for decades. Clinton wasn’t prepared to let a perfectly good piece of space kit go to waste, so he purchased it and came up with a plan.
At the time, the likes of David Bowie, The Who and Pink Floyd were reinventing the scope of a stage show. Audio technology had developed to the point that speaker systems could fill stadiums and drown out any rumbling mechanics; thus, acts were taking advantage of this new creative opportunity. But Clinton wanted to go beyond what these classic names were crafting; he wanted to go interstellar.
So, using his humble Hollywood prop as inspiration, Clinton secured a loan from his record label and commissioned Broadway designer Jules Fisher to create an actual craft that could house the band before a show. The result was an 11-foot high, 20-foot wide silver monstrosity weighing in at a little over 1500lbs and sporting nine legs, disco ball antenna, a look-out dome, and more flashing lights than a council estate in Whoville. Now, they had the perfect way to make an entrance.
However, they soon realised that there are some entrances you can’t live up to. Their shows were peaking before they had even begun. So, they rejigged their sets so that their descent occurred midway through and kept the adulation up for the second half. To the sound of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, the craft would mark the departure of ‘The Star Child’, and through a haze of smoke, Dr Funkenstein emerges.
The “cool ghoul with the bump transplant” would then “administer funk” to the baying crowd. Sadly, the craft was often merely alluded to due to the obvious impracticalities of incorporating a huge human-carrying spaceship into your act. So, it often wouldn’t arrive at many concerts, and eventually, after the b and almost funked themselves to death, the craft was sold for cash in 1982 or 1983.
Nobody knows what happened to it; there are rumours that it was scrapped at a facility in Maryland, while others say it simply took off. But there is a cracking little replica at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. to keep its mission of goodwill alive.
