Until the Funk Speaks: Bootsy Collins in Conversation

Bootsy Collins got his first lesson in the One — the rhythmic bedrock of soul and funk — after the bass guitarist joined James Brown’s band in 1970. The singer “broke it down in terms that even a kid could understand,” recalls Collins, who was 18 at the time. He counts off a series of four-beat measures over the phone from his home in Cincinnati, punctuating the first beat in each with a perfect Brown-like huh! “That’s the One he was talking about. He told me I could do anything I wanted in between, but always come back to the One.”

In 1972, the bassist took that education in kinetic rigor to his next gig, Parliament-Funkadelic, becoming a featured attraction in George Clinton’s R&B party-army and launching a Gold-album offshoot, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, in 1976. But in the late autumn of America’s pandemic year, speaking three days after President-elect Joe Biden gave his victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware, the bassist, now 69, insists that The Power of the One, the title of his latest album, implies “more than just musicians playing music.”

Collins announced his retirement from the stage last year, citing health reasons. Still, he recorded half of the upbeat message and vintage P-Funk-style churn on The Power of the One the old-school way — the players “neck to neck with each other,” as he puts it — before lockdown last spring. Collins finished the album “through the phone and Internet” in his studio, the Boot-Cave, ultimately marshaling an all-star crew that includes rapper Snoop Dogg, ex-Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham, classic soul singer Ellis Hall and a heavy jazz contingent: bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and guitarist George Benson, who solos on the title track like he’s channeling his 1963 LPs with organist Jack McDuff.

“I was convinced that this record had to show that no matter what genre of music you play, it can all be funky,” Collins declares brightly. “That comes from all of the different people I’ve worked with and learned from. It was time to give it back — and have fun with it.”

You dedicate the new album to Jim Vitti, P-Funk’s engineer at United Sound Systems in Detroit, who died last April. Given the size of that band and the constantly moving parts in that music, how did he get it all on tape with such force and detail?

I have no idea how he actually did that. I don’t think Jim could explain it. It’s like saying, “How do you come up with funk music?” If you have to explain it, it’s not there [laughs]. But Jim was great at the particulars, standing there for three to four hours getting drum sounds and setting up my bass.

How did Clinton lead a session?

When George would come in, we would already be jamming, getting stuff down. The session would have started. So when George came in, it was party time. He would hear the tracks and get on the mic in the control room, telling us to do more of this thing that he likes or bring up that thing Bernie [Worrell] was doing on his keyboards.

It was so loud. George is hollering into the microphone and we’re trying to create changes, the arrangement of the song. At the same time, he’s hearing the vocals that he wants in there. That’s when George really ruled, once we got the track down. Because he and [singer-guitarist] Garry Shider knew the vocal things inside out. I don’t think Garry gets enough real credit for a lot of those background-vocal things.

The vocal parts in songs such as “Chocolate City” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” were vital to the drive and vibe. They were the message and finesse amid the chaos.

That was a whole other thing Jim Vitti had to figure out. George was doing so many vocals, stacks of voices. And he did that with horns, too, the string sections. It was nuts. But the result was the bomb. I’m just glad everybody was in place. Everybody did their job — more than their job — and had fun with it. It may not be as much fun when you’re scuffling through it, putting it together. But when you got finished, even halfway done, you could see it — “Oh, man, yeah!” Everybody starts grooving, hitting it hard, playing the right note.

Vitti also engineered your first run of solo albums, from Stretchin’ Out in Bootsy’s Rubber Band in 1976 to 1980’s Ultra Wave. What do you remember of those sessions?

On The Power of the One, you play guitars, drums and keyboards as well as bass, and you sing. Do you have an arrangement in mind when you start cutting a track? Prince, for instance, could jump between instruments because he had the completed song in his head.

That’s what you call polished funk. We’re talking about dirty, grinding-in-the-trenches, mud-all-over-your-face funk — it’s a whole different ballgame. It can come any way it wants. If I’ve got a riff hammering in my head, I’ll put that down. And if that riff says, “Pick up a guitar,” I’ll pick up the guitar. It’s not like I already got it set up. The funk don’t work like that. You don’t really know what funk’s gonna tell you until it speaks.

When did you realize that younger jazz musicians like Marsalis and McBride grew up listening to you on P-Funk and Rubber Band records?

When they started coming to the gigs. At first, it was strange: “Man, what do they see in this?” Then I got a chance to talk and meet with some of them; I started to understand how it all connects. But I had [legendary jazz bassist] Ron Carter on “The Jazz Greats” [on 2011’s Tha Funk Capitol of the World]. My mind has always been set on combining funk and jazz, because they are a lot closer than people realize.

You were doing that to an extreme degree on the records you made in the ’90s with producer Bill Laswell. He put you in bands with heavy-metal shredders, hardcore punks and free improvisers. Did you ever feel like a fish out of water?

You gotta understand — that was fun! When I got with Laswell, I was relieved of all the chaos that I had in those sessions with George. I got a chance to do something totally different without thinking of how difficult or complicated it could be. I was in the band; it wasn’t about being “Bootsy.” And I’m doing it with somebody who is not tore up [on drugs]. That’s no knock on George, because we were all tore up then. But it was a relief to get with Laswell because the situation was clean. All of these new musicians, the new order of things — you’re talking about a kid in a candy store; that was me.

Clinton gave you and so many other young musicians a priceless opportunity in P-Funk. But the craziness and indulgence encouraged bad habits. What were Clinton’s talents as a leader and, with all due respect, his flaws?

I would speak on his leadership. I don’t know anybody that could have done what George did with all of that around him — every kind of musician, every kind of attitude. George is the only one I know who could have dealt with that. I wished at one time that I could go through life like that, without things fazing me. But when you’re a musician, you can’t help feeling these things. George had the opportunity of not having to feel like a musician.

Instead of playing an instrument, he basically played the band, directing forces and personalities to create the music.

On the new album, you cover “If You Want Me to Stay,” from Sly and the Family Stone’s 1973 album Fresh — a record Stone made as he was falling off the edge of his gifts.

That’s a thing that has been rooted in rock and roll — I don’t see it going away anytime soon. But it’s a thing we can grow from. That’s the lesson. You asked about those P-Funk sessions. I don’t know how I’m sitting here, talking to you about it now, because it was so crazy. But if I could go back and change anything, I wouldn’t touch it. Because no matter how bad it got, I met and vibed with so many different people — and we had a chemistry that was out of this world.

How did you get Larry Graham to play on that song with you? He wasn’t on the original. By then he’d quit the escalating madness around Stone.

It came up because of this thing I did with Bill Laswell [in 1985]. We recorded a Sly song, “Family Affair,” with Iggy Pop. It took years for him to put it out. [Pop released it as a single last April.] But it started me thinking about “If You Want Me to Stay.” Once I had the arrangement down, I thought it would be great to get Larry. We’ve been friends since I got with Funkadelic. I’d go to this house in Oakland where Larry stayed with his grandmother. We’ve had this friendship but had never recorded together.

I knew the background of his relationship with Sly; I knew it wasn’t great. So I didn’t know if he would do this track. He said, “Let me hear it,” and he loved it. Then once he played on it, I thought, “I wonder if he would sing on it.” I went too far there [laughs]. But I had to ask.

You’ve retired from the road. And even if you changed your mind, the pandemic has put touring on the shelf. How hard was it to make a record about the power of funk — the community in the music — knowing you couldn’t take it to the people in performance?

I just do what the music says. I never think about the consequence: “If you aren’t dancin’, if you’re not funkin’ with the people, what is it going to sound like?” I never go there — just do your best funkin’. It’s a privilege to be in touch with this universe of musicians that have the healing touch and to be able to funk with them.