Over fifty years ago, a teenager from Cleveland got talked into playing “Maggot Brain” at an after party, and soon after he was on stage with Parliament-Funkadelic. Michael Hampton, known as Kidd Funkadelic, joins Jason Barnard to tell that story properly, and to go through everything that’s followed it: five decades inside one of the wildest bands in American music, a run of guitar solos that hip-hop built entire records on, and his new solo project, the King Kong mini album.
We start with King Kong itself: how a nearly hundred year old story about a giant ape ended up as an instrumental record moving between rock, jazz and spoken narration, and how loosely the whole thing came together. From there we go right back to the beginning: the guitarists who shaped him growing up in Cleveland, the after party where he first played for the band, and the call from drummer Tiki Fulwood that got him on a plane to Landover, Maryland, a fortnight later.
Michael talks me through what recording with Parliament-Funkadelic was like, how songs like “Adolescent Funk” and “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” earned him a writing credit, what he thinks George Clinton’s real gift was, and how he feels about hip-hop having sampled his solos for the past forty years. We also get into his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, going back out on the road with the group after a decade away, and why he prefers making music on his own terms these days.
