“I Don’t Think I Knew What The Word ‘Intimidating’ Was”: An Interview With Michael Hampton aka Kidd Funkadelic

The funk legend speaks to POW about an illustrious career on stage and behind the scenes.

Art by DJ Short

Michael Hampton lived the dream of many a teenage shredder: One night he was showing off his chops at a house party, nailing the solo to Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” and the next the 17-year-old guitar phenom was on tour with the band, playing that same solo to crowds of thousands each night with the funkiest traveling circus around. It’s close to a superhero origin story, and Hampton eventually earned the nickname Kidd Funkadelic from his bandmates.

Hampton proudly followed Hendrix into outer space, powered by screeching rocket fuel distortion, all while wearing elaborate outfits. Hampton’s guitar left burn marks on some of Parliament-Funkadelic’s finest tracks: “One Nation Under A Groove,” “Flash Light,” “Aqua Boogie,” “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” and many more.

The Kidd still performs with George Clinton’s current iteration of P-Funk, Hampton has recently revived his solo career in collaboration with producer Joe Nicolo and a cast of accomplished funk-fusion players. Last year’s Into the Public Domain was a collection of jams showcasing Hampton’s still formidable fingerwork. King Kong, released on July 31, is a funk opera retelling of the American myth that incorporates spoken word, surf guitar, and birdsong. Nicolo’s label Sound Mind Records promises more “mini-albums” and a full-length in the near future.

I spoke to Michael Hampton on the phone from his home in Morrisville, PA in April about prototype gear, one-string songs, and watching the Mothership take off.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Did you start playing guitar when you were growing up in the Cleveland area?

I was always interested. I played around with a lot of things, like trying to be into sports and all. I gained more of an interest when I was visiting my uncle in Silver Springs, Maryland. Then I was playing with this guy that lived a couple doors down, and his cheap guitar, and we’d always mess around when I was back in Cleveland, “Get Ready” on one string, you know, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” on one string. It would only be like three strings on the guitar, so you try to play a little representation of the tune on that string. And then later on, I got a little notebook, I had a little toy piano, and I just started messing around with mostly single string, little stuff I could pick up on my own. And I had a teacher, John DiFiore, he used to teach guitar at DiFiore’s music when it was there on the west side of Cleveland, and I had lessons with him for about three months.

I went to John Marshall High School, and they had a stage band, and nobody really was trying to be a stage band. And I was like, “they didn’t have a guitar, it’s okay.” So I used to study the chord charts in my free time in high school, and then played in the stage band. Yeah, I just kept, you know, knocking around on the guitar, and playing with my friends, and, you know, try to put together a group here. There wasn’t many people playing, so I’d wind up on saxophone or playing the drums, you know, messing around, you know, and it’d only be for a little bit, because there was no real place to practice.

A lot of people in the neighborhood did request, they asked me to play something, and I borrowed a record from them, or an album or something, and sit with it for a minute, and invite them over and play along with the track. After a while, I got a little better.

I kept playing, and ran into a guy at Sparks, he was older than us, and he knew the group [P-Funk] was coming to town. They used to throw little house parties when they came to town. He basically walked my cousin and I into the Public Hall in Cleveland. I think it was Bloodstone and Funkadelic, “Standing on the Verge” was Funkadelic’s hit at the time.

At the time I was studying “Maggot Brain” and “Standing on the Verge,” and just trying to play whatever I could. They came to the after party, they saw me play “Maggot Brain.” It wasn’t like an audition or anything like that, and I didn’t know they were there at the time.

So, you were just at a party, showing off a little bit.

Versatile, virtuoso, or whatever. It was dark, and our amps were in the living room. Everything’s sitting on the floor, little pieces of equipment that I had. All of that just for a 9-volt, but it worked.

Didn’t start any fires.

But, yeah, I didn’t know they were there. So, later on, Tiki Fullwood, one of the original drummers, gave me a call. They were doing a show at the Capitol Center in Landover, Maryland, and they flew me in. I used to just play the one song, “Maggot Brain,” and then step to the side. I started touring after that. I had just got my driving license not too long ago, just before I got out of high school so I was driving the van.

I heard there was another guy, I don’t know what his name was, that they were considering, but something happened, like he had a bad acid trip or something.

That’s pretty incredible. What other stuff were you playing? I heard you mention Satisfaction, I assume Hendrix was in rotation, but what other music were you playing along to in those early days?

Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway,” “Smoke on the Water,” “Frankenstein,” “Hocus Pocus,” those guys, that was obscene, still never really got it down to this day, a lot of different things. I went through I don’t know how many wa-wa pedals, playing along with Shaft. “Engine Engine No. 9,” “ Slippin’ in the Darkness,” Chairmen of the Board, Rare Earth, Pink Floyd, “Summer Breeze,” by the Isleys. Some Ohio Players songs, there was a lot of them with effects that I couldn’t really afford that I was hearing in records. “Chameleon.” If it was on the radio and it was popular, I was probably trying to play it.

You said the band called you for one gig, and then they asked you to join up on tour and everything. How soon after that were you actually hitting the studio to record with everyone?

I don’t know for sure the exact time it went in, but it was maybe a year or two. It might have been that same year, but I know “Stretch It Out,” I played on “I’d Rather Be With You” for Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and “Be My Beach” on the Funkadelic album. Those sessions I did the same day, but they went on different albums, and I didn’t know that’s how it was working. You just go in and start recording, and I didn’t know how quick they went to press from the time that I recorded it, but things were happening pretty fast.

Was that intimidating at all, being 17 years old when you first joined up with them and playing with this big group and getting on records?

I don’t think I knew what the word intimidating was. I was so happy to be out, and it’s a lot of freedom, and I probably was not as intimidated because, I mean, I was smoking herb. You just kind of plug up, and you keep playing and jamming around, and they may hear something or somebody gets an idea for something, and then you start recording on track. We would record ‘til we couldn’t record no more, go back to the hotel, then get back up, go back across the street.

I’d just practice my skills, and whatever I could pick up from other players. And if they tell me to play it like that, I’m looking at their hands. I didn’t know anything about intonating the guitar, or nothing like that. Just tune it up, and that’s all I could do. I go with a lot of flows, you know. I’m just bouncing off of stuff, man, like a pinball or some shit. And then when it’s time to go to work, that’s all I do. Just grind it out.

It seems like you’ve been very busy. You got the new album out, and there’s more music coming out later this year.

Yeah, that’s it. I’m going to intertwine. If I get some things going on with my personal endeavor and then the group, all these things start kind of coming at the same time. I’m definitely trying to prepare myself for bouncing from one to the other if I can, but at some point, I know my body’s going to be like, no, man.

You played on so many classics of the early P-Funk days: “Flash Light” and “One Nation Under A Groove” and “Knee Deep,” just to name a few. Do you have any favorite performances of yours from those days or favorite stories from touring?

There was one time that the Mothership was going back up, and the drummer had a thing that pulled back the lever for the spaceship and George would come out of the spaceship. So somehow it got tied around one of the cymbals, so when the ship started going up, the whole drum kit started going up too. That was kind of deep, it looked like it was actually being beamed up. The aliens are going to take the drum set away. There was a giant skull that used to be out there, and there was enough room to just kind of kick back in that thing.

As far as the songs, when we did the rehearsal at the airplane hangar, the live “Cosmic Slop,” live “Maggot Brain.” The “Knee Deep” solo was recorded at United Sound. It was interesting because they put the amp, I think it was a Fender Twin, in the vocal booth and sealed it off. They had this microphone that fit on the glass of the doors for the sound booth, and you cut the amp all the way up. The B.C. Richards guitar had two preamps and it had ten strings. After a while, I tuned the strings in something like a perfect fifth, and so that was interesting to hear how it came out, because I had no idea the solo was going to be that far out. I played through the whole song, but that’s what that edited down to.

It’s not one of the hits or whatever, but “Copy Cat,” I played on that. “Never Buy Texas From A Cowboy,” that was crazy, because it was a little Korg keyboard type thing they had rigged it where you can just plug your guitar into it, and that’s what I did. That’s how it came up, before they had all these guitar synthesizers.

I’m glad you brought up the Brides. You had a relationship with Dawn Silva for some time during that era?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, man, yep, it was a relationship. Yeah, I was young and dumb, or whatever I was. I found out, being on the road, I guess it’s kind of a rule of sorts, as far as some people’s rules, that you know, being on tour and then having a relationship is not… It was a relationship, trying to navigate being, basically, you should be, what do you call that? Where you can’t be possessive, whatever, you know, it’s just that type of thing. It’s got to be unconditional.

For the most part, it was pretty sweet, you know? I don’t think too many people could blame me for being in a relationship with Dawn, she was fantastic.

I think at one point, I just smashed one of my guitars. I think that’s the first time I’ve had that happen. It’s that smash that it don’t come back from, bro. Yeah. You can’t take that to the luthier. But we’re still cool, man.

She’s said in interviews that you guys definitely had a volatile relationship at times, but you’ve made up and are on good terms. I was wondering if you’d kept in touch with her or really anybody else from the group from the ‘70s and ‘80s.

No, it’s hard to... I’m still trying to just dive into Facebook and all that. And as much as I’d like to, I just haven’t had the time. I keep in touch. If somebody reaches out, I’m all open. But if I reach out to one person, it’s just so many people. I feel like I’ve got to reach out to everybody at the same time, so I haven’t quite put that list together yet.

What is your pedalboard like nowadays? What kind of gear are you playing with?

When I’m out with Funkadelic, they have the Mesa Boogie Rectifiers. We’ve got some Texas Instruments, they’ve got an Octave Divider pedal that they make, and there’s another... Man, I’m just bad at gear, you know, the names and stuff.

But I’m going to tell you, I do like to have the whammy for the force, and just to be able to change the octaves and stuff like that. If I had just the basics, it would be a wah, a nice echo, and a nice distortion, maybe a chorus of some kind, and a harmonizer, would be the way I go. But the guitars, I’ve been kicking around.

I got an SG-ish, you know the shape, and that’s got a nice hot double, triple, pickup in it. It’s pretty hot. But I really love a lot of different guitars. I wish I could switch them out. Like the B.C. Rich, I still have that, but I’d like to get another, like a newer version of it. I don’t even think that the company is making guitars anymore. But as far as a one-of-a-kind type of axe, I think that would be it. Somebody told me something, they thought I was one of the first people with a left-handed strap neck on a right-handed body, or something. I just was trying to mimic what Hendrix’s guitar looked like when he flipped it upside down. But yeah, I really like that look, the Randy Rhoads V.

Yeah, I’m a collector, if I can afford it. As far as the gear, it’s like whatever I can get my hands on. And then this guy, Phillip, he came up with something, I got the prototype with me, and it’s pretty amazing.

A prototype pedal?

It’s a little 3-in-1, it’s gated, it’s really nasty. I don’t know what does what, it hasn’t been marked or nothing. You play too, right?

Yeah, I just bought a nice new Telecaster, so I’m waiting to get it back from the shop with its strap locks on, so I can really get into it this weekend.

I remember dropping the guitar, as a matter of fact, it was a B.C. Rich, and it hit flat, and that’s before I put the strap locks on. I picked it up so, so fast, like it didn’t hit.

I love Teles too, definitely one of those that should be in the collection. The pickups be tripping me out, like, one of the old ones, the Deluxe had those huge pickups in them, and I think it was semi-hollow.

I got one with a chambered body, so it’s nice and light.

Oh, cool, there you go. Chambered body’s the way to go, I can feel my back feeling better right now.