Space Bass Star
William "Bootsy" Collins
‘I first met George Clinton in Detroit after my crew had split from James Brown and the original Funkadelic group was done with George. My band, the House Guests, was playing at the Love Club, where I met a girl who told me I had to connect with George because we dressed and sounded similar. She took me to George’s house where he was sitting in the Buddha pose wearing a sheet and looking crazy and all spaced out on acid. I was like, ‘Wow! This is the cat I want to be with,’ because that was the kind of freedom I wanted.
“He was attracted to my persona, and I think he knew he could do something great with me as a separate act, but neither of us really had it figured out. We made an arrangement that the House Guests would be assimilated into his new Funkadelic road show, but we were supposed to retain our own name—like Funkadelic & the House Guests—and George was supposed to get us our own record deal. We didn’t really want to be Funkadelic, which was more about funk rock, whereas we brought a James Brown-style funk groove, where everything was on the one. We started working on America Eats Its Young—that’s us on ‘Philmore’—but we wound up quitting. George brought in Cordell Mosson and Garry Shider, who were much more in the vein of Billy Nelson and Eddie Hazel and sounded more like Funkadelic.
“I went home to Cincinnati for a while, but I kept thinking about how well George and I clicked as writers, so I went back to Detroit by myself to see if we could create something new. Cordell and Billy Bass hipped me to a new slap-and-pop technique that Larry Graham was using, but none of us really knew it was going to be the next big thing in bass. I started working it into my approach, using my thumb for the thump, pulling with my 1st finger for the snap, and slapping with my whole hand the way you might slap a baby’s bottom—or a chick’s bottom [laughs]. I think the fact that I didn’t really know the proper technique made me come up with a unique version, but I was still searching for a way to make the sound different. Once I discovered the Mu-Tron it was happening, because the envelope effect made it so I could almost talk through my instrument, instead sounding like a regular bass being popped and pulled. We wrote ‘Up for the Down Stroke’ and ‘Chocolate City,’ and I think that’s when the idea clicked in George’s head to start a new version of Parliament based on that style, while placing the other stuff with Funkadelic.
“I’d moved from playing a Fender Jazz with James Brown, to a Fender Precision Bass through a Kustom with the House Guests, Funkadelic, and early Parliament. Then I had the first Space Bass built and got an Alembic preamp. That happened sometime during the recording of Chocolate City, and by the Mothership Connection record, it was on!
“From the beginning, George and I had an understanding that I would help him do his thing, and that he would help me do my thing. We started doing Bootsy’s Rubber Band once the Parliament thing was really kickin’, but I’ve kept in touch and been involved in whatever George and the guys were doing ever since. I sat in with them just a couple of weeks ago when they came through town. I played ‘Cosmic Slop,’ which is actually based on a riff we would open our House Guest shows with; George lifted it from us. It’s funny how things come back around.”
Personal File
Tenure 1972, 1974–82, ongoing guest appearances
Style Flamboyant, often with envelope-filter effects
Can be heard on Parliament’s Up for the Down Stroke, Chocolate City, Mothership Connection, Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, Motor Booty Affair, Gloryhallastoopid, and Trombipulation [all on Casablanca]; Funkadelic’s Lets Take It to the Stage [Westbound], Hard-core Jollies [Priority], Tales of Kidd Funkadelic [Westbound], Once Nation Under a Groove, [Priority], Uncle Jam Wants You [Priority]; All albums by Bootsy’s Rubber Band
Classic Mothership Connection Tour gear Custom Space Bass (built by Larry Pless), Alembic F2-B preamp, Crown 300 power amp, Mu-Tron III envelope filter, Morley Wah/Fuzz, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
Current gear Space Bass, custom F Bass, Alembic F2-B preamp, Alembic Super Filter, Roland Space Echo, MXR Digital Delay, Pro Co Rat II, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
Status Working on a Christmas album; co-writing, producing, and doing music for a Jackass-style T.V. show for Comedy Central that co-stars Bootsy’s son, rapper Ooh-Wee
George Clinton says
“Bootsy was particularly good playing at slower tempos. I built Parliament’s dance sound off Bootsy’s bass lines—or sometimes Bernie Worrell’s synth bass, like on ‘Flashlight’ and ‘Aqua Boogie’—and then added the horns. Sometimes I’d use a Bootsy track for Funkadelic, like ‘Be My Beach,’ but I mainly used his recordings for Parliament because they were less rock and more funk.”
