George Clinton celebrates 80th birthday in Newark with P-Funk, Questlove

George Clinton had to jump through hoops to become the music icon he is today.

Literally.

Clinton made hula hoops in a factory on Badger Avenue in his hometown of Newark before he got into the music business.

“We were there when the company came to Newark looking for a place to open up,” said Clinton, who's leading Parliament Funkadelic in a big hometown 80th birthday party show Friday, March 18, at the city’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

“Me and my little friends in the hood, we just took over. We ran the place, helped them hire people, bring the machines in and kept them packing. I remember sending them (the hoops) off to Frankfurt, Germany. Oh, we had hula hoops of every size.”

Clinton has a knack for getting booties moving.

Before the move to music full time, Clinton, a North Carolina native, moved from hula hoops to the barber’s chair in Newark.

“Everything was toward singing, even when I was working in the barbershop. The whole group worked in the barbershops on Springfield Avenue, Jones Street and Belmont Avenue (in Newark), so the history of the group and the barbershop is one in itself.”

The lineup of the Parliaments included Clinton, Ray Davis, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon and Grady Thomas.

“Everybody had a group, a doo-wop group, in ’56 and ’57,” Clinton said.

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But first, an important stop in Plainfield. Clinton’s friend Eddie King told him that a barbershop in Queen City needed a hand.

“It was a good chance to break out in the 1960s, and when I got there it was an instant love affair,” Clinton said. “There was a public service bus out to Plainfield, or the Somerset bus, both of those took me out there. And then I would go from there to New York to audition for companies in the Brill Building as a songwriter and for the group.

“When we first got our band we got them out of Plainfield when they were kids,” Clinton said. “Billy Bass, I remember him being 9 years old before he picked up a bass guitar, and then Eddie Hazel was 15 when he first got with us. ... Bernie Worrell was 15 when I first met him. He was a child prodigy, then went off to college in Boston (at the New England Conservatory of Music) and came back to join the band.”

The operation touched down in Detroit for a visit to Motown before they became superstars.

“By the time we got out there the era was changing,” Clinton said. “Rock ’n’ roll was becoming the dominant thing, so we had to change our image from Parliament and we just added Funkadelic and continued the family type of situation that Motown had enticed us with ... We were out of Detroit by this time, so we traveled back in between Plainfield and Detroit. I’d work all week in a studio in Detroit and work in the barbershop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”

Clinton, who recently announced that he’s not retired after all, will be honored in both Newark and Plainfield on Thursday, March 17. The music room at Avon Elementary School in Newark will be named after him, as well the city's Passaic Street.

In Plainfield, the afternoon will include Mayor Adrian Mapp declaring a proclamation in Clinton's honor, and Arne Aakre, president of the Plainfield Arts Council, will present a rendering of a bronze plaque on a “funky barber’s poll” to be erected at the site of the former Silk Palace barbershop at 216 Plainfield Ave., where Clinton formed Parliament Funkadelic.

The Silk Palace no longer stands, but the creative energy the place generated has gone around the world.

“It’s wonderful,” Aakre said. “Everybody in our little group has some kind of connection to him. ... We’re all big fans.”

Clinton’s Parliaments evolved from a doo-wop group into Parliament Funkadelic, which merged funk, R&B, rock, gospel, classical, doo-wop and jazz. Hits include “Atomic Dog,” “Flashlight,” “One Nation Under a Groove” and “We Want the Funk (Tear the Roof Off).” The uplifting sounds were set off by outlandish stage costumes, fantastical narratives and stage props like the Mothership.

The music became a keystone of hip-hop. The Mothership now resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Musical Crossroads gallery. Clinton and P-Funk are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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Questlove, Vernon Reid and Nona Hendryx will help Clinton belatedly celebrate his birthday, which actually was on July 22. A dance party will take place in the NJPAC’s Grand Lobby after the show.

But what if the world never caught on? Could Clinton have remained the funkiest barber in New Jersey?

“That style (Clinton specialized in) was ending. 'I’m Black and I’m proud,' that became the motto so Afros became the thing, so the hairstyle we were doing went out for a while. They came back with new versions of it,” Clinton said. “I don’t know what I would have done. My mind was made up when I was 15, 16 years. I went to the Apollo Theater and I said I was going to be one of them. I don’t know anything that could have changed my mind from that.”

George Clinton 80th birthday party with Parliament Funkadelic, Questlove, Vernon Reid and Nona Hendryx, 8 p.m. Friday, March 18, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark. $39 to $89. www.njpac.org

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Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at @chrisfhjordan; cjordan@app.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: George Clinton: Birthday party with P-Funk, Questlove in Newark