Parliament-Funkadelic legend Michael Hampton on the secrets of funk guitar, and playing a 10-string BC Rich
As a veteran of American funk rock outfit Parliament-Funkadelic (widely known as P-Funk) guitarist Michael Hampton has been bringing the six-string funk to the group’s feel-good cocktail of rock, blues and jazz in spades for over five decades.
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Hampton first joined the group as a seventeen-year-old after impressing band leader George Clinton with a face melting solo take on Funkadelic’s 1971 ten-minute instrumental opus Maggot Brain. Hampton went on to become a crucial part of the group’s musical oeuvre.
Appearing on the group’s 1978 album One Nation Under a Groove, which many consider to be the greatest funk album ever made, Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock? is one track Hampton contributed in co-writing and which showcases his guitar prowess, and why his musicianship is held in high regard by many.
“I basically played off the changes that Walter ‘Junie; Morrison [keyboardist] wrote,” reveals Hampton today. “When I went in to do the overdub, there were also some vocals on it before I started playing and so I played off of them too and I pretty much doubled the lines that the bass was doing. And because a lot of the people in the band felt I did such a great job on the solo; they gave me a co-writer’s credit.”
Hampton believes P-Funk’s unique sound was developed through a combination of blending various musical styles together.
“George [Clinton] envisioned it having many different styles and then then putting them all together,” he says. “So, you will hear some country and western, some slide stuff, some funk, some jazz and even some classical. I mean it is all over the place. He came up with the concept for P-Funk from having written so much different music, and so, he just threw that all in there together.”
Loud and Proud
Hampton’s guitar style and tone is fiery and loud, and plays an integral role within P-Funk’s musical format. At the core of his sound is a ten-string BC Rich Bich.
“It has a neck-through that has four of its strings on top, the E, B, G and D which are doubled,” he explains. “And the tuning pegs are at the other end of the guitar where you would pick the strings. It has a really cool shape, kind of a gothic thing. And being a one-piece neck, I love it and it is great to play, because it resonates a lot.
“And when it comes to the electronics, it has two preamps, with different switches for putting the pickups in and out of phase. I tune it kind of like in fourths and fifths which gives me an interesting sound. It is sort of like having a harmonized effect but without a whammy pedal or some effect like that. It’s basically just all down to having that different tuning.”
When it came to amps to pair his BC Rich with, Hampton says it’s always dependent on whatever is lying around on stage. “It was Marshalls at one point,” he explains. “Then later on, they got a wall of amps, like the old Aerosmith speaker wall, that was comprised of double-stacked Music Man amps.
“It was wall to wall amps with speaker cabs. And then they got Crown power amplifiers too, which are run in a way to have us placed in stereo, so I will have a cabinet running to the other side as well. And the Crown amplifiers are also used to boost the Music Mans.”
Follow The Muse
Rather than having songs already written by the time the group went into the studio to record, much of the music P-Funk has created over the decades has evolved through spontaneous jam sessions.
“We used to go and do shifts at United Sound Systems in Detroit,” he says. “It seemed like it was always a big jam session. And then from that, they would decide what they would use. Either it’d be based off of somebody that did some vocal thing, or had some lyrics or melody written. And it was a studio that was right across the street from our hotel. We would just get a room, and be there, practicing and practicing and then go into the studio and do the graveyard shifts. And sometimes it could be during the day too. All of us were basically on call.”
Playing funk guitar is an art form in itself, and the ingredients required to play funk guitar boils down to one very important element. “If there was any secret to it, it would be syncopation,” reveals Hampton. “It has a lot to do with it when playing all the different rhythms. With funk guitar, you’re trying to play something off of a drummer or off another player, and so the purpose of that is for you as a guitarist, to gel together.
“A lot of that was influenced by a Pentecostal church I would go to. There would be a lot of hand clapping and it’d be those multi-rhythms that kind of made it funky for me. You start with one simple rhythm and then someone comes in with another rhythm that’s playing off of that.”
P-Funk’s influence has been wide spread throughout music and many artists have cited the influence of the group upon their own music. The list of names runs the gamut from Prince to Red Hot Chili Peppers. And funk music in general continues to have a hold on similar sounding groups today.
“It’s definitely very flattering to hear that,” says Hampton proudly. “If I were to listen long enough to most of the tracks that a lot of other artists have done, musicians, guitarists, after a while I’d be like, ‘Yep, that is funky right there’. Or ‘That right there is a funky lick’. I might not know where it comes from, but whatever influence, the influence is just really a feeling.
“It’s just kind of like when people dance, they hear something and it makes you do something else or you make up a funky move. Some of the most-funkiest stuff I’ve ever heard, is the James Brown song Super Bad [1970]. It’s just a one note on one string lick, yet it’s super funky!”
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