Clinton working on memoir about his long, strange trip
The godfather of funk music, George Clinton, partied on acid with B.F. Skinner and shared loose acid groupies with Miles Davis.
Those are just some of the true stories Clinton is planning to tell in a memoir he's working on with an author, he tells me.
Clinton wants his book to feel in spirit like Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
Clinton -- playing the Hard Rock Hotel pool tonight ($32.50) -- never knew Thompson ("I would have been scared to party with him"), but Clinton's life also has been a long, strange trip. Just one story:
Before Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic crew became famous for songs such as "Atomic Dog," the band did a Boston engagement at a "gangster" club that didn't want him at first, but ended up booking him for six weeks straight.
During those weeks, Clinton and his band hit on girls who "were already into free love" and tripping on acid. He hung with B.F. Skinner and "the behavior modification crew there" in Boston academia.
"We took all the acid in the world. ... So we started taking the acid, and going with the kids around Harvard and Cambridge," Clinton, 68, tells me.
"By the time we got to the club, we had ... paint all over ourselves," he says. "I used to wear a sheet with Wile E. Coyote on it, and nothing on underneath."
There were, of course, acid orgies.
From Clinton's influence, the Boston club became known for "pimps, ho's and hippies," he says.
"It became like holiday for the ho's. Pimps would be running into these young hippies. We brought weird people together," he says. "Those particular days were sci-fi."
Eventually, though, that trippy crew of female groupies split to follow another musician -- Miles Davis, he says.
WEEKEND PLANNER
Check out today's Neon section for these shows:
Nice guy Drew Carey does improvisation at The Mirage tonight and Saturday; Steely Dan grooves tonight at the Palms; Tracy Lawrence headlines a radio "CountryFest" Saturday at The Orleans; Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa take over the Hard Rock Hotel tonight; and Petula Clark -- Petula Clark! -- sings Sunday at Rampart Casino at the Resort at Summerlin.
E-mail delfman@reviewjournal.com. The blog's at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
