“We were too black for white radio, too white for black radio,” is how George Clinton himself sums up Funkadelic’s commercial positioning today. I’d known him from the fifties back in New Jersey, when I knew Neil as Neil Scott, the singer. Black radio boomed and major record label executives, acknowledging this new spending power, started taking this new black music – music they might not listen to themselves - much more seriously. (Clockwise from left) Bernie Worrell, George Clinton, Fuzzy Haskins, Eddie Hazel, Grady Thomas, Calvin Simon, Tiki Fulwood, Tawl Ross, Ray Davis , Billy "Bass" Nelson, 1971. With a new label and a new name for, essentially, the same bunch of players, George Clinton needed a new sound.