Clinton pens funky memoir

The first thing you notice about funk legend George Clinton’s new memoir is the title, which – take a deep breath – is a typically off-the-wall mouthful: “Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?”

This, mind you, from the man behind the rock-funk-soul groups Parliament and Funkadelic, who regularly titled songs the likes of “Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobeta- bioaquadoloop)” and “The Electric Spanking of War Babies,” so we really shouldn’t be too surprised.

Still, when the 73-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician and producer comes on the phone from his home in Tallahassee, Fla., you do want to know, and Clinton’s happy to explain.

“Dude ask me that,” he says. “He says, ‘Yo, George, ain’t that funkin’ hard on you?’ And I thought that sounded so much like a Curtis Mayfield song” – he sings a bit of the line – “so I went in the studio and recorded a song called that.

“And then I thought, ‘Damn, this makes sense for the whole book!’ ”

The book is a classic American success story, tracing Clinton’s path from his doo-wop dreams and hair stylist realities in New Jersey in the ’50s through his P-Funk triumphs in the ’60s and ’70s when his groups were huge concert draws in part thanks to the Mothership, a huge spaceship that descended over the stage. There’s plenty of women and drugs, too, but it ends with his clear-eyed battle in courtrooms where he’s spent years now trying to wrest control of his copyrights and royalties away from those he argues unfairly hold them.

It’s that current chapter of his life that Clinton points to as the reason why he decided to write his memoir now.

“Look on page 379,” he says, which later scrutiny reveals to be a court deposition from a witness in one of his lawsuits. “That’s my whole reason for doing the book right now. Because I feel like I got a lot more fun to have, if it hadn’t been to do with all the court cases going on.

“They’re so powerful, I haven’t been able to get my story out,” he says of his courtroom opponents. “So I said, ‘If I do my book, I can tell it.’ ”

Clinton knows his life makes for a tale as colorful as the rainbow of hair extensions he’s often seen wearing on stage.

“I’ve been notating and documenting things for years because I know it’s a hell of a story,” Clinton says. “And I’ve been in entertainment for most all of my life, so I knew what I was doing, the Mothership, the crazy antics of the ’60s, the psychedelics and things that all are part of the era.”

The book, which was written with Ben Greenman, is full of anecdotes and memories, from growing up in New Jersey to forming his first group, the Parliaments, in the ’50s, writing songs for Motown and other labels, and eventually coming together with some of the players, such as Billy Bass Nelson, Eddie Hazel and Bernie Worrell, who’d be part of Clinton’s musical collective for years to come.

As a pioneer of mixing together threads of rock and soul and funk and R&B, Clinton and 14 of his longtime bandmates in Parliament-Funkadelic are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and their influence isn’t just locked in the past when albums such as “One Nation Under A Groove” or “Mothership Connection” were hits.

“We were lucky enough that funk became the DNA for the next music behind us, which was hip-hop and electronic and disco,” Clinton says. “You know as long as you got (a rear end) you gonna dance. So we identified with all this (rump)-shaking music and we were able to stay alive.” His music also survived thanks to its frequent use as samples in hip-hop songs, too.