This trivia article was originally released for Bluescentric's release of official Funkadelic merchandise in 2024.
1) Parliament Funkadelic started out as a doo-wop group... named after the Parliament cigarettes. They sang doo-wop while cutting hair in a barber shop in Clinton’s hometown of Plainfield, NJ. Then the group took their show on the road to audition at Motown. They had a single on the top 20, "(I Wanna) Testify". But when the doo-wop didn't work out, George Clinton kept adding funk to the group, which toured as a series of variations on what eventually became Parliament-Funkadelic.
2) While high on LSD, Funkadelic once stumbled into a town FULL OF ZOMBIES!
In actuality, while looking for a shortcut they wandered into Evans City, Pennsylvania and right onto George Romero’s set while filming Night of the Living Dead.
There's a great video segment on this incident straight from the horses' mouth in the show
Tales From The Tour Bus, which we'll cover more below.
3) George Clinton worked for MOTOWN in the 1960s as a staff writer. While he didn’t write any major hits at that time, it was a steady job. The Jackson Five recorded Clinton's "I'll Bet You" in 1970 on their hit album ABC. A few months before, Funkadelic released the song as a single which charted at #22 on the R&B chart in '69.
4) Clinton routinely hired former members of James Brown’s bands. Several of Parliament’s horn section, The Horny Horns were formerly members of Brown's band, including Fred Wesley, Richard "Kush" Griffith, and the indelible Maceo Parker. A year after Bootsy & Catfish Collins replaced The JBs, he fired the brothers for their psychedelic tendencies, and again, Clinton was there to scoop up & nurture the massive talents.
In fact, it was this hawkish habit of hiring Brown’s band that lead to a breakthrough in Clinton’s funk...
5) George learned a James Brown trick by hiring Bootsy Collins. One secret to James Brown's success is placing the emphasis on the FIRST note. BUM bum bum bum. Hence, everything is on the one. Bootsy relayed this to George, who used the technique to superfunky effect.
6) Despite having more success and objectively many more pop hits than PFunk ever would, Sly Stone of and the Family Stone also joined the Funkadelic family in about 1980 after his own band fell apart due to substance abuse. Sly made some major contributions to PFUNK, including "The Electric Spanking of War Babies" and the '83 album "Urban Dancefloor Guerillas"
7) Warner Bros. signed Funkadelic, but not Parliament, in 1976.
8) George Clinton was hired to make the soundtrack to the movie CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND… it did not go well.
It was shortly after the success of MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION, and producers must have saw some kindred connection between alien crafts. Those familiar with both Close Encounters and Parliament might think this could be a controversial choice, and they would be right.
Clinton’s playful superfunk clashed poorly with the big screen’s tense & suspenseful Alien encounter, and legendary composer John Williams was ultimately hired to create the now-iconic soundtrack.
But that wasn’t the only time Clinton would be in the movies...
9) George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic music was featured on the soundtracks of Free Guy (2021), Cloverfield (2008), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), and Howard the Duck (1986). Clinton has also had cameos in How I Met Your Mother, The Bernie Mac Show, Good Burger, and Good Burger 2.
And there’s also been must-watch TV made about The FUNK…
10) Mike Judge, the writer for Office Space, Beavis & Butthead & King of the Hill, once featured George Clinton in his series Tales From the Tour Bus, where Judge waxes poetic about the funk legend in a Hank Hill-esque voice.
11) The key difference between Funkadelic and Parliament is the HORNS! A few Funkadelic songs do have horns, but not many. However, Parliament always features horns (known as the Horny Horns). While Parliament and Funkadelic are close to (and occasionally) the same band, they’ve at times been signed to separate labels.
12) Atomic Dog was a “happy little accident”. Coming into the studio one day, George Clinton demanded to hear a new beat, and when the tech was rewinding the tape to play it, Clinton began rapping over the backwards melody, thus creating one of his biggest hits,
and the most iconic hip-hop samples ever made…
13) Clinton’s "Atomic Dog" has been sampled 80 times – more than any other P-Funk song. It’s been featured on Snoop Dogg's "What's My Name?" and Ice Cube's "My Summer Vacation".
14) Parliament-Funkadelic was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, voted the 56th greatest Rock n Roll Artists by Rolling Stone Magazine, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.