Funk legend George Clinton has called off plans to retire from performing live, announcing his change of heart in an interview released on the Parliament-Funkadelic’s bandleader’s 80th birthday this week.
“I’m pulling back from that,” Mr. Clinton recently told Rolling Stone magazine about his previously announced retirement plans. “It’s hello again, I mean really. You’re going to have to drag me off now.”
Mr. Clinton, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, announced in April 2018 that he would retire from touring the following year after decades on the road.
Along with Parliament-Funkadelic, or P-Funk, the collective of artists he leads, Mr. Clinton launched a farewell tour in 2019 that took him around the U.S. and abroad before the coronavirus pandemic began.
P-Funk recently performed a few shows last month, their first in more than a year, and Mr. Clinton said he feels healthy enough to keep touring after resting up throughout the pandemic over the last year.
“I feel good as hell right now,” Mr. Clinton said during a lengthy video interview, which Rolling Stone conducted roughly two months prior to releasing it Thursday when the P-Funk bandleader turned 80.
Mr. Clinton and P-Funk are currently scheduled to perform concerts in September in Atlanta, Georgia, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Evanston, Illinois, according to their website.
And the octogenarian singer, bandleader and producer said during the interview that he is fine with the possibility of taking his last breath during one of his concerts.
“So if I go out on stage, yeah, cool. ‘You went out funking,’” Mr. Clinton said.
“I’m telling you, you can definitely do worse than going out funking. That’s easy,” Mr. Clinton added.
Mr. Clinton and more than a dozen of his P-Funk bandmates were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames in 1997. The Record Academy honored him with the Grammy lifetime achievement award in 2019.
