Villagers with torches and pitchforks cannot stop Dr. Funkenstein.

Even if George Clinton didn’t invent funk, he would still be a national treasure. The man is 68 years old and he still has multi-hued hair. That right there is the very definition of awesome. He’s like America’s super-cool granddad.

But he did invent funk, and he is therefore even more awesome. And he’s coming to do a free show tomorrow night for the SpyOnVegas Friday Night Live concert series at the Hard Rock Hotel pool with Parliament Funkadelic. If there’s anything better than awesome, it’s free awesome.

Things that you need to know about George Clinton: He still hates the record companies. He goes fishing. He’s working with Sly Stone on new music. He was responsible for fatigues becoming expensive. He’s extremely supportive of the Internet. He loves what parents hate. And Will.i.am is working on a P-funk stage show.

How have things going for you this year?

It’s really looking pretty good. I’ve been to Europe and over near South Africa, the Union Islands. We’re going to go to Japan. They’re giving me a Legend award at VMAs. Motown is giving me a nice award.

At this point is there anything left about the road that surprises you?

There’s always something surprising on the road. I never knew anything about the Reunion Island off the coast of Madagascar and South Aftrica. It’s a beautiful place and we went fishing, caught some big fish. There were thousands of people there, and I’d never heard of the place before. It was beautiful. I’m forever running into something I didn’t know was around. New sounds and new groups and different things. I’m always open for something new. As soon as I hear parents say ‘I hate that music’ I run to that music and find something new, that’s the new thing.

P-Funk shows are pretty notorious for being real long sets, but Vegas shows are always condensed. How hard is it for you to tailor a 90-minute set or a two hour set?

We adjust pretty quick. Going back to the Apollo Theater type of mode and you’ve got 12 or 15 minutes on each song, now you’ve got about 5 minutes on each song. But the fans that come through when we play Vegas, tourists, and not hard-core fans who know the history of the group, they’re brand-new fans. We can adjust it and no one’s upset that it’s a shorter show than regular.

Do you enjoy playing for new fans more or do you like the people who have seen the show a bunch of times?

It’s pretty much the same to me. I can pretty much judge it. I change the set list as soon as I see who’s there. We’ve played so many colleges that we get new fans all the time. They’ve heard about us so much on the Internet. They tweeter each other what you’re going to play, what to look out for. It’s a pretty powerful thing to me.

Certain older fans like to hear older songs. We get a lot of Greatful Dead-type fans who don’t care what you play as long as you play music. Then you get the old-school fans, the R&B fans, they want to hear all the old hits. But if we get a mixed crowd, we play an hour and a half for them, and then we play the rest of the night for us. People usually like that better because we jam and make up shows. We made that rule for ourselves a long time ago, not to expect what we were going to do, because we don’t know.

You mentioned Twitter, are you on there?

Oh yeah, I mess around there, clown on there. Definitely get a lot of new lyrics, a lot of new ideas. We’ve got a lot of fans and we clown around. We talk to people we haven’t talked to in years.

Looking back over the years, what’s the best time you’ve had doing this thing? Is there one gig that stands out or one tour or anything?

No, no one tour. Are you kidding? The overall Mothership tours were great. Then when we took down the props, the Mothership off the show, and we went on our own – no roadies, no limos, which was good – the One Nation tour. It was called the anti-tour. That was some of the most fun we had. After four years of touring with the Mothership, props and everything, all of a sudden we were right back to where we started in the doo-wop days. We were carrying our own amps. We stayed in little small hotels. They didn’t believe we were going to be playing there because we were so big at the time. Those type of shows we had so much fun. That’s when we started wearing the fatigues, the army stuff. I mean, that was the cheapest tour we ever had. The very next week or two after that, the fatigues and shit were up to $100. All the stores had to start charging more, because they were like 35 cents for a shirt, $2 for the pants. And all of a sudden that shit was a hit. But those kinds of shows were the best.

But we can see it’s time for the Mothership to come back out. We’ve got the old Mothership in my studio. I’m getting ready to do another, some kind of big show. I’m talking to the Black Eyed Peas. Will.i.am is putting together like a Broadway play of all the old songs and things we did, along with different groups. We tried to get it together ourselves, but I think it’s going to take a lot of young minds to do it.

The Internet has come along real good and we’ll be able to get our own stuff up there in a minute and get all these bootleggers out of the way.

You’ve had a lot of run-ins with the labels and everything. When you look at the state of the industry right now, what do you think about that?

I wish they’d go under. They stole so much from us. Right now, with all that sampling that we’ve got – I don’t mind the sampling because of the artists, because we still get paid because they’re taking the money from the artists who are sampling. They’re telling them that they’re paying us, and they’re not. I don’t mind the download, but we should be the one getting it.

We’re so big, and with our survival instinct, we’re going to outlast them anyway. Because we’ve got brand-new funk from all the same people. Sly Stone is working with me, and the Chili Peppers. Everybody that’s been around. We can finish it together and play music, and the companies won’t be able to get it.

Did you say you’re working with Sly? I thought he was kind of retired?

Man, he was, but ain’t nobody going to be retired around me.

How’s that been going?

Good. Sly has a lot of music in him. He usually wouldn’t let nobody even hear his music, but nah. No, no, no, no. That’s bullshit. Then we did some new stuff, and this last album I did called Gangsters of Love, him and El DeBarge and myself did a bunch. We had Santana on there. RZA from Wu Tang. The Chili Peppers. Kim Burrell the gospel singer. I have so many different people on this album, if you get a chance pick it up. It’s called George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love.

You’ve done so many innovative things in your career, when you look at the musical landscape in terms of what’s dominating the airwaves, is it kind of dispiriting to hear a lot of music that all sounds pretty similar?

Yeah, I don’t think I ever listen to the radio. It’s worse than it’s ever been. Top 40 used to have another, say, R&B list or Alternative list or whatever. They don’t even have that anymore. You can go on the Internet and find all the new shit you want to find anyway.

What would you say to someone who’s never seen a P-Funk show before?

Bring two booties with you, first of all. Just have an open mind and the ass will follow.

By Jason Scavone

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