George Clinton is one of the pioneers of funk and hip-hop who evolved from being part of a New Jersey-based doo wop group called The Parliaments to founding Parliament-Funkadelic to ride the rising psychedelic tide of the Sixties as well as double-dip on record deals to a solo artist whose biggest hit, "Atomic Dog", has been sampled plenty of times along with much of P-Funk's grooves.
Director/editor/narrator Bobby P. Brown's 2015 documentary Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic is a brief (57 mins) no-budget attempt at an oral history of what it was like working with and eventually surviving the maelstrom that Clinton orchestrated. With interviews with many of the many more musicians who made up the various projects and side projects, the picture of Clinton being a hustler trying to maximize revenues by loading bills with his sub-acts is drawn.
But eventually his greed and escalating drug use tore everything apart as members accused him of not paying them, forging signatures to steal their publishing rights on hit songs, disbanding projects or thwarting promotion so no one outshined him. He'd pay band members in drugs then bill them for the drugs. After everyone quit and/or was fired, the recording of "Atomic Dog" is a trip as he showed up to the studio so messed up he had to be held up in front of the microphone and from that the song was built by others.
While it's an interesting subject, the cheap production and amateurish camera work (most interviews are shot in extreme close-up with poor lighting, but mercifully adequate sound) as well as no rebuttals from Clinton leave an incomplete picture of both his legacy and whether he was a total dirtbag on top of being a mad genius. Also, the "where are they now" coda isn't much use as this movie was made in 2015, so even more of gap in knowledge occurs. In fact, when looking up his age on Wikipedia, I discovered he had worked as a staff songwriter for Motown, a fact totally omitted by the documentary.
While incomplete and one-sided, there is some merit in perusing Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament Funkadelic. However, the subject deserves a fuller appraisal by someone like Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom).
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Amazon Prime Video. Also on YouTube, see below)
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