Paint Misbehavin’

George Clinton gets some colorful new hardcore jollies

in memoRy:
ode TTA
Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump
remembers the blues and
folk giant and human-rights
activist, who died at 77 on
December 2, 2008.

IN 1993, P-FUNK OVERLORD George Clinton sang that he wanted to “paint the White House black.” Turns out he was interested in other canvases, as well: For the past decade, he’s been creating vivid, psychedelic works— fetching as much as $15,000 for a single piece. Not bad for a color-blind former hairdresser from Kannapolis, North Carolina. Clinton, whose latest album is George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love, spoke to Tony Green at the artist’s Tallahassee, Florida gallery.

“Painting is kind of like cutting hair. You just cut shit out until you have something. I started painting about ten years ago. [Parliament/Funkadelic cover artist] Overton Lloyd kept shoving brushes in front of me. One day I did a show and sold almost $20,000 worth of artwork, so I figured it was time to get into

Portrait of the artist as a strange man

some mass production. We decided to convert this space in the back of my studio into a gallery a few months ago. It turned out to be a hell of an idea—the Mothership [the 20-foot flying saucer from P-Funk’s late-’70s heyday] is in the next room.

“I think people appreciate my paintings more once they hear what I do record-wise— Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow, for example, has all kinds of shit up in it. My paintings are like that. I’m a big fan of Salvador Dalí. I try to make my paintings kind of like his. People try to take my stuff apart and decipher it. They say it’s abstract, minimalist, surrealist—they are thinking too much. Besides, talking about the surreal is pointless, because it ceases to be surreal once you find a way to talk about it. Ain’t that some shit?”

“Her voice seems almost to have been born in the back of my mind. she had a power in her delivery and a restraint in interpreta­ tion that i’ll always aspire to. listening to her now, one is confronted by her simplicity. she wasn’t a wailer. she crooned from deep within her soul. she held her melodies rigid and firm, as if to signify the need for immobility on the issue of civil rights. it feels as if no artist could have more conviction in their melodies

than odetta had.”

The Album
Recipe
The Living Things’
Lillian Berlin reveals
how they cooked up
Habeas Corpus

10 months
writing and
recording in
Berlin

Lots of absinthe

11 songs fea­ turing donkey skull drum

500+
servings of
brisket and
sauerkraut

4 fights that led to some­ one falling down stairs

1 song
recorded at
Berlin’s Jewish
memorial

Habeas Corpus

“When you’re making music, it’s like you have your pants down—you have to be honest or it sounds like bullshit. We wanted to make a record that sounded like a celebration of the uncertain times ahead. normally we play stuff that’s kind of punky; this record is more upbeat.”

From leFt: Colby KatZ; miCHael oCHs arCHi Ves/Getty imaGes

28 February 2009 / tHe liVinG tHinGs oFFer insiGHt into HABEAS CORPUS. spin.Com/liVinG-tHinGs-Video

album reCipe illustration by HENNIE HA WOR TH