#276 - Parliament - Mothership Connection (1975)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – PARLIAMENT
George Edward Clinton was born on July 22, 1941 in North Carolina. Clinton first formed the doo-wop group The Parliaments in 1955 out of a barber shop in New Jersey. For a period in the 60s he was also a staff songwriter for the Motown Label. The Parliaments scored a minor hit with the 1967 single, “I Wanna (Testify).” Clinton wanted to form a touring band on the heels of this success, planting the seeds for both his bands. However, by the 1970s, the group had formed into a collective that found success under the names of Parliament and Funkadelic. Clinton’s earliest albums for the collective included Funkadelic’s debut Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow, as well as Parliament’s Osmium. However, it was Maggot Brain that first established the collective as a force to be reckoned with, made evident through Clinton’s trippy musical vision. The collective would record many albums after that, ranging from 1972’s lengthy America Eats Its Young to 1975’s energetic Let’s Take It to the Stage. But it wasn’t until the critically acclaimed Mothership Connection that P-Funk would truly break through as a musical deity, combining surreal lyricism with eccentric fashion sense and strong musicianship.
Throughout the latter half of the ‘70s, P-Funk was at its peak, spawning acclaimed albums such as Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome and One Nation Under a Groove, while simultaneously diving deeper into new concepts and ideas. However, by the time the '80s came around, Clinton embarked on a solo career, but kept on doing the earlier stuff with the P Funk All Stars. In 1982, he released the album "Computer Games", and three more albums over the next four years, as well as a live album. He was signed to Prince's label in 1989 and released two more albums there. He would continue to produce, release, tour and collaborate well into the 2010s, and was a heavy influence on hip-hop music in the early 1990s. In April 2018, Clinton announced that he would retire from touring the following year. Billboard reported that Clinton had undergone pacemaker surgery, but he said that was not a factor in his decision. He expected Parliament-Funkadelic to continue to tour without him, saying "Truth be told, it's never really been about me. It's always been about the music and the band. That's the real P-Funk legacy. They'll still be funkin' long after I stop." He also mentioned in 2018 that he had made a hologram for use during live performances.
Clinton is regarded, along with James Brown and Sly Stone, as one of the foremost innovators of funk music. He was inducted into the RnR HOF in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2009, Clinton was awarded the Urban Icon Award from BMI. The ceremony featured P-Funk associate Bootsy Collins, as well contemporary performers such as Big Boi and Cee-Lo Green. Also in 2009, Clinton was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. In May 2012, Clinton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Berklee College of Music. In December 2018, the Recording Academy announced that Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic would be given Lifetime Achievement Awards, and were given Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2019.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION
Mothership Connection is the fourth official studio album from the American funk band Parliament. It was released in December 1975 and produced by the band’s leader (and of the P-Funk collective entirely) George Clinton. It was the first P-Funk album to feature saxophonist Maceo Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley, both of which had left James Brown’s backing band, The J.B.’s a while earlier. The definitive Parliament-Funkadelic album, Mothership Connection is where George Clinton's revolving band lineups, differing musical approaches, and increasingly thematic album statements reached an ideal state, one that resulted in enormous commercial success as well as a timeless legacy. Besides the dazzling array of musicians, Mothership Connection boasts a trio of hands-down classics -- "P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," "Mothership Connection (Star Child)," "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)" -- that are among the best to ever arise from the funk era, each sampled and interpolated time and time again by rap producers
The theme of the album incorporates unique P-Funk mythology of outer-space concepts. Some examples are found in the cover art, which shows Clinton jumping out of a spaceship. Describing the concept, George Clinton said "We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang." The album's concept would form the backbone of P-Funk's concert performances during the 1970s.
The album received acclaim from critics and fans alike, and it has since been viewed to be one of the best P-Funk albums ever made. It became the first P-Funk album to be certified Gold and later Platinum. On June 5th 1976, almost half a year after its release, it peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart, and, in total, spent 37 weeks there. Exactly a week afterwards, it peaked at No. 4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, chart and, in total, spent 33 weeks there. Among those accolades, VH1 once named it the 55th greatest album of all time.
BBC Music described the album as a pioneering work of afrofuturism "set in a future universe where black astronauts interact with alien worlds." Journalist Frasier McAlpine stated that "As a reaction to an increasingly fraught 1970s urban environment in which African-American communities faced the end of the optimism of the civil rights era, this flamboyant imagination (and let's be frank, exceptional funkiness) was both righteous and joyful."