WATERTOWN — Armenian-American musician Daniel “Danny” Peter Bedrosian has just published a second book on George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) collective, a group which is one of the standard bearers of funk music and the longest running popular music band of all time. Bedrosian is a longstanding member of this group as well as the author of an Armenian-themed comic book series, Sons of the Sun, or Arevorti.
His new book is titled Make My Funk the P-Funk: Parliament-Funkadelic’s Meteoric Rise in 1975 from Chocolate City to Mothership Connection (Bloomsbury Publishing, 288 pp.). New England native Bedrosian said, “It wasn’t my plan from the get-go to do this. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if the first book was going to be published or made into a book.” However, that book, The Authorized P-Funk Song Reference: Official Canon of Parliament-Funkadelic, 1956-2023, published at the end of September 2023 by Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, became the latter’s best seller that year, according to Bedrosian, despite only having 2 ½ months of sales. In fact, it went on to become the company’s best seller, or at least one of its two best sellers, in its whole publishing history, he added. This recent success also caught the eye of Bloomsbury Press, which bought out Rowan and Littlefield.
Before the sale, Roman and Littlefield encouraged Bedrosian to write a second book, and the latter suggested writing it about the band’s successes and related developments in 1975. Why? Bedrosian said: “I make the argument that it is almost the most important year in the 70-year history of this band.” That year, the band put out three albums, “Chocolate City” and “Let’s Take It to the Stage,” while its third, “Mothership Connection,” achieved platinum status. “So in the course of a year,” Bedrosian said, “they go from still riding around in a station wagon to landing this massive $275,000 prop [the Mothership, a space vehicle prop] at sold-out stadiums and arenas all around the world.”
An additional reason for choosing 1975 for his study is that 2025 is the fiftieth anniversary of the three albums which were issued that year.
In his new book, Bedrosian details not only the history of the band up to that point but all the historical happenings in the year 1975, and how they influenced band leader George Clinton and the group to write the type of music they did. This is the first proper monograph about P-Funk, Bedrosian said, with endnotes and footnotes. However, unlike his first book, which was an encyclopedic reference book, this book also is a good read, he said, even for people with only a casual understanding of this band, as it is in a more narrative style.
