75
often comments: “Funk is whatever it needs to be, at the time that it is”
(Clinton, interview 4). In 1976, funk needed to be science fiction. Why?
Here’s an origin story: in 1975, Clinton and super-funky bassist
Bootsy Collins were driving home from Toronto to Detroit after a gig
when things got strange, or, you know, stranger. As Clinton told
interviewer Abe Peck:
We saw this light bouncing from one side of the street to
the other. It happened a few times and I made a
comment that “the Mothership was angry with us for
giving up the funk without permission.” Just then the
light hit the car. All the street lights went out, and there
weren’t any cars around . . . I said, “Bootsy, you think
you can step on it?” (Vincent 240)
This close encounter draws on 1970s-style alien abduction narratives.
(Just in 1975, one of the first popular “docu-dramas” on alien abduction
appeared: the popular made for TV movie. The UFO Incident, starring
James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons, based on the “real” 1961, Betty
and Barney Hill abductions.) But Clinton makes a crucial transformation
of his position in the narrative from being a near abductee in the original
event to the presentation of himself as a powerful alien for his tour.
The change from the apprehension of the origin story —
“Bootsy, you think you can step on it” — to the foot-stomping, booty
shaking party of the concert is so radical that the connection between
these moments may seem to be nothing more than the word
“Mothership” slipping out for the first time in the origin-event. But the
anger Clinton wonders about in that car with Bootsy is, though muted,
part of the mythology fostered not only in the songs, but also in the
show, on the album covers, liner notes, and in supplementary materials
like comic books. The basic story remains that we have given “up the
funk without permission” (Vincent, 240). Like the original Dr.
Frankenstein, Dr. Funkenstein, the good doctor, has come to operate
because of what we have lost, to raise our corpses up and make them
move again, to bring us back to life, to return something to us. But we
are also going to pay a price, for Funkenstein, like Frankenstein, is a
body-snatcher, taking us, seizing up the dead matter that is left of us to
fiise something new, to shock us into a new understanding, to steal us
beyond the bounds of the merely human.
“Well, all right,” Clinton begins “Mothership Connection (Star
Child)” the title song of the album. He introduces himself as “Star
Child,” and the band as “Citizens of the Universe,” that is, as space
aliens, and also claims them all to be “Recording Angels” (Parliament).