Bernie Worrell RIP

Bernie Worrell, Toronto, April 1987

BERNIE WORRELL DIED THIS WEEKEND. I knew he was sick when I posted my first photos of him two months ago, but as ever we hope against the odds. The world is down one more interesting, utterly unique musician, and one who helped inform my musical worldview. It's been a bad year for that.

I only shot four frames of Bernie with my Mamiya C330 back in the spring of 1987, when he was passing through town with Anton Fier's Golden Palominos. I wish I'd taken more. I posted two in April; here are the last two, sitting at his keyboards after soundcheck at the El Mocambo. Rest in peace, Mr. Worrell.

Bernie Worrell, Toronto, April 1987

George Clinton

George Clinton, Toronto, June 1991

I DON'T THINK I PREPARED FOR A SHOOT IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF MY CAREER the way I did for the one I did with George Clinton in the early summer of 1991. I'd photographed him with the P-Funk All-Stars two years earlier when they'd come through town, and alongside the Fela Kuti gig I saw in the same venue at around the same time, it was one of the best shows I've ever seen in my life.

George Clinton, P-Funk All-Stars, Concert Hall, Toronto, Nov. 29, 1989

I'd taken my camera along and shot a single roll of black and white. This is the best frame. Perhaps I should have shot more but, to be honest, I was too busy dancing. Thanks to my friend and P-Funk mentor Tim Powis I'd become a huge fan of everything Parliament-Funkadelic, which was a sort of natural progression from my interest in the Philly soul records that were hits on the radio when I was a kid and the punk rock and metal I'd come to love later.

Two years later Tim was an editor at HMV magazine, George had been signed by Prince to his Paisley Park label and we had a perfect excuse to do a feature interview with him when he passed through town with the P-Funk All-Stars - the circus-like rotating cast of musicians that he'd been touring with ever since legal troubles had claimed the Parliament and Funkadelic names.

George Clinton, Toronto, June 1991

The shoot was in a room off the lobby at the hotel where the band was staying - a strange residential hostel on Church Street that I'd passed for years and had assumed was a slightly run-down apartment building. I brought along my studio camera, the Bronica SQ-a, and a black cloth backdrop that I gaffer-taped to a wall behind George.

I wanted to get the light to drop off sharply around George so I used the two smallest soft boxes I had and placed them on either side of his face. It produced exactly the effect I wanted but I didn't count on his big Cazal shades reflecting the lights in almost every shot - a classic rookie mistake. I shot four rolls of cross-processed colour film, then put a close-up filter on the lens of the Bronica to get some really tight shots, like the one at the top of this post.

George Clinton, Toronto, June 1991

I'm pretty sure HMV used the more madcap shots from this shoot, but looking at them again twenty-five years later, I'm fonder of the less antic, more uneasy expressions in the shots above. I'm not sure what sort of direction I gave George to get them - based on the contacts it was more a matter of snapping as fast as he could mug or throw a new shape.

I'm not sure if I did the shoot before or after Tim did his interview, but I do remember Tim bringing up conspiracy theories and George launching into a long, enthusiastic dialogue with him. I didn't dare interrupt - Tim was talking with George Clinton about Freemasons and the Illuminati and I knew that he was having the time of his life.

P-Funk All Stars live, Concert Hall, Toronto, June 22, 1991

The show later that night was typical P-Funk anarchy. It wasn't as loose as the show two years earlier, which filled the stage with band, crew and family, with an onstage cartoonist doing drawings to illustrate the songs and encouraging the band's kids - loitering around between the amps and the risers and wandering at will - to do the same. (UPDATE: I've since learned that opening act Alix Anthony and his band were pressed into filling in for several All-Stars who were delayed at the border.)

Guitarist/singer Garry Shider - aka "Diaper Man" - had been George's onstage foil for over a decade by this point, and the two of them shared front man duties. It was a typically huge band, with half a dozen guitarists onstage at any time, including Shider, Dewayne "Blackbyrd" McKnight and the return of Eddie Hazel to the All-Stars, which made the whole evening a very big deal.

P-Funk All Stars live, Concert Hall, Toronto, June 22, 1991

It was a fantastic show, and I shot the hell out of it with my Nikon - nine rolls of 35mm film; I felt greedy for the moment and wanted to have a document of the whole gig instead of the single roll I'd shot two years earlier. I don't think anyone has seen these shots since I took them.

At one point during my shoot earlier that day, George noticed Eddie Hazel walking through the nearby lobby of the hotel. "Hey Eddie!" he shouted. "You've got to wear your shoes, man! That was how you got sick the last time!" George motioned for Eddie to come over and I took four frames of them together. This is my favorite:

George Clinton & Eddie Hazel, Toronto, June 1991

At this point I didn't know how my shoot with George Clinton could have gotten better. Eddie Hazel's playing on songs like "Maggot Brain" and "Super Stupid" made them some of my favorite Funkadelic tracks, and while knowing he was on the tour was a bonus, getting a shot of him with George just gilded the whole occasion. I knew Eddie hadn't been well, but no one knew that this would end up being a kind of farewell tour.

Eddie Hazel died of liver failure in Plainfield, NJ on Dec. 23, 1992.

Garry Shider died of cancer in Greater Upper Marlboro, MD on June 16, 2010.

 

 

Bernie Worrell

Bernie Worrell, Toronto, April 1987

I DON'T REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HEARD P-FUNK. Like most people, I knew about them in the '70s when the Mothership tour made its way around the world and George Clinton's band of freaks were - quite against the odds - a commercial success. I do know that I really learned about them at Nerve, under the tutelage of my friend Tim Powis, who had pretty near everything they recorded.

The closest I'd get to P-Funk during those years, though, was when Bernie Worrell, the band's keyboardist, showed up in Toronto as part of Anton Fier's Golden Palominos. He'd already been a key player in the Talking Heads at the peak of their success, appearing on several of their albums and in the concert movie Stop Making Sense. He was a star as far as I was concerned, which is why I felt so timid approaching him after the Golden Palominos' soundcheck at the El Mocambo in the spring of 1987.

Bernie Worrell, Toronto, April 1987

I shot Worrell sitting at his Hammond B3, holding a flash with one hand and tripping the shutter of my Mamiya C330 with the other. I only took four frames out of a roll of twelve, which was itself one of the first dozen I shot with my first medium format camera. These are two of those frames. They're primitive but at least they're sharp, and look a little like something you'd put on the cover of a Blue Note record. Nobody has seen these since I shot them almost three decades ago.

Bernie Worrell has had an interesting career in and outside of the P-Funk organization, and had a documentary film made about him about a decade ago. He's apparently quite sick with cancer right now, and a benefit concert was held for him in New York City just a few days ago.

Here's my favorite video of early Funkadelic, with George and Eddie Hazel and Bootsy and Bernie at centre stage at his Hammond. It was taped for some midwestern teen TV show, where Funkadelic apparently preceded Bobby Sherman. I can only imagine the effect they'd have had on the audience tuned in that day. The world used to be a lot more interesting.