Born 75 Years Ago Today In Ohio, He Was The Bass Behind Parliament-Funkadelic's Signature Sound

Who is that starry-sunglassed, sparkle-bedecked man plucking and slapping a star-shaped spacebass? Is it Casper the Funky Ghost? Bootzilla? An alien funkstar sent to rescue us from the pedestrian dullness of terrestrial existence? Why, it's the one and only Bootsy Collins, the legendary bassist behind George Clinton's equally legendary funk collective, Parliament-Funkadelic, the most blissfully trippiest and kookiest psychedelic funk outfit of the '70s. 

Long before he played bass in rhinestone-studded shades on tracks like "Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give up the Funk)," "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)," and "Flash Light," Bootsy was William Earl Collins, born 75 years ago today in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1951. As he said in an extended conversation with Red Bull Music Academy in 2018 on YouTube, his love of music started with his older brother and prime role model in a fatherless household. Bootsy went from filching his brother's guitar and jamming out while the older sibling was on his paper route to joining his brother on stage in their own group in 1968, the Pacesetters. 

Driven to prove himself as the Pacesetters' youngest member, Bootsy helped propel the group's rhythm section so well that James Brown hired them as his own backing band in 1970. This made Bootsy the bass behind Brown songs like "Super Bad" and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" before leaving over a pay dispute and other issues (one reason you wouldn't have wanted to meet Brown in real life). That's when he joined George Clinton's dual Parliament-Funkadelic group in 1972. From there everything was up, up, up for Bootsy, straight to the stars.  

Bootsy Collins' singular career and singularly odd persona developed over time along with the rest of George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic, aka P-Funk. Clinton was the mastermind behind both bands, which were technically one band under two names that played two types of music — Funkadelic was guitar-driven, while Parliament was funk-driven. Clinton tended to handpick musicians into P-Funk and had the foresight to spot true talent. Bootsy was one of an assemblage of bassists out of 50 total musicians that played with P-Funk across its '70s heyday, though for reasons that are obvious, he stood out more than the others.

Bootsy wasn't all flash and appearance, though. He and his signature finger-stylings contributed to P-Funk's songwriting, meaning that Bootsy had the technical chops to match his stage presence. So it was that he branched out on his own with his 1980 solo debut, "Ultra Wave," which retained his costumed pizzazz but shifted things into synth land, musically. Bootsy's solo career reached its arguably zaniest height with 1993's "Lord of the Harvest" from one of the best funk supergroups of all time, Zillatron. The album cover features Bootsy decked out in sci-fi garb as the space mutant Zillatron, i.e., the most logical terminus to all of his various personas.

The now 75-year-old Bootsy hasn't vanished into the historical woodwork. As recently as 2021, he showed up on "After Last Night" from Silk Sonic, a Bruno Mars-Anderson .Paak project that drove the throwback, classic-sounding track to No. 68 on the Billboard Hot 100. Rather than lend his bass skills to the song, Bootsy lent his voice for a spoken-word bit. But whether we hear from Bootsy's fingers or voice next, we're sure he's not done being funky.