The cramped nightclubs and theaters that play host to funk star George Clinton these days can't accommodate the gigantic silver spaceship that was his signature stage prop in his heyday.
But the 59-year-old singer-composer keeps touring, typically on the road 200 nights a year. He says he needs the money to pay his lawyers.
With a court judgment against him, Clinton is on the verge of losing his claim to a fortune he hadn't foreseen--the millions of dollars generated by licensing his early contribution to pop music.
Along with James Brown, Clinton is considered one of the creators of a musical style that has inspired pop artists as varied as Prince and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Infusing classic soul with synthesizers and exuberant bass lines, Clinton and his Parliament/Funkadelic ensemble produced music in the 1970s that integrated dance floors and offered messages of support to the era's antiwar and civil rights movements.
Funk, as Clinton says, became "the DNA of hip-hop," as rap artists began lifting snippets of his songs to form the musical background behind their rhymes. Rap has made Clinton perhaps the most-sampled artist on the planet--a lucrative distinction at a time black music is so popular that it's becoming a Wall Street commodity. The Isley Brothers, who have had more than 410 requests for permission to sample their catalog, last year closed an estimated $15-million deal to issue bonds backed by their future royalties.
Sampling also has generated new fortunes for such acts as the late Curtis Mayfield and writer-producers Nile Rodgers and the late Bernard Edwards. And it has provided a new source of cash for the publishing divisions of the major record conglomerates.
Record executives speculate that Clinton's songs should have generated the record industry's biggest sampling fortune. Use of his work in hundreds of rap and R&B songs since the late '80s easily could have meant $10 million for him, they say, if every performer who lifted a piece of his songs had paid and if the catalog had generated money at the same rate as those of other heavily-sampled artists. Lawyers dueling over the songs say the true figure could hit $20 million or more.
But Bridgeport Music, the Detroit company that administers licensing of the songs, says it doesn't owe Clinton a nickel. And the company said there isn't that much money to fight over--Bridgeport said it has collected only about $4 million for Clinton songs, including recent court settlements, because record labels have copied snippets without paying. Label executives, in turn, say their artists often don't inform them when they've borrowed from other works.
