UNCUT FUNK interviews Ronald "Stozo" Edwards

Mar 23, 1998
David Mills

A 1998 UNCUT FUNK interview with Stozo the Clown that was republished on the now defunct New Funk Times website on August 23, 2003.

One thing that makes P-Funk so doggone deep is that there have been, within its huge creative family, not one, not two, but *three* cartoonists/visual artists to emerge with their own distinctive styles and senses of humor. Pedro Bell and Overton Loyd got the most play during the glory days of the 1970s, but Ronald "Stozo" Edwards is hitting his stride in the '90s -- with wicked CD art for Fishbone and Weapon of Choice, some very hip T-shirts for Bernie Worrell and the Woo Warriors, and a continuing association with George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars. (Readers of this newsgroup also know him as an organizer and promoter of the "Funk-o-rama" concert series.)

In Part 1 of this interview (conducted by David Mills last summer over the phone), Stozo describes his funky adolescence and his early album-cover work for a P-Funk empire on the rise. In Part 2, he recalls what must have been his finest hour with the Mob: takin' it to the stage as a production designer for the "Gloryhollastoopid" tour. (Deeni *who*?).

DAVID MILLS: By the time you got into them, during your teenage years, Funkadelic had already been discovered by the black hippies, I guess. Is that who was going to their shows?

RONALD "STOZO" EDWARDS: Funkadelic definitely had that psychedelic rock-and-roll thing going on. There wasn't enough doo-wop Temptations-walking to make a mug feel comfortable without looking around to see who saw that they was there.

Actually, when I was in high school -- I went to Wilson High [in D.C.] -- I was considered part of the "freaks" crew. Then there was the crew that wore the three-piece suits and went to parties. We were wearing scarves and earrings, Jimi Hendrix colors and stuff like that, psychedelic stuff. And we didn't even care, we were getting most of the chicks anyway. (laughs) The pimps with the suits were pissed off because we were stealing their women from 'em.

MILLS: When came the point where you started hanging with the band, or when you first met George?

STOZO: Well, being an artist from second grade, the first thing I used to like to do was sit down and draw and listen to music. I was pretty much into music anyway at the time. I was a big Sly and the Family Stone fan, I was a big James Brown fan, Jimi Hendrix fan, rock music fan. I was already on both sides of the fence anyway, so P-Funk was a really happy medium. So I ended up just creating my own P-Funk characters and drawings.

When I was old enough to go to a concert -- because I wanted to go to Woodstock and I wasn't old enough, my parents wouldn't let me go. When I found out Sly and the Family Stone was gonna be at Woodstock, and Jimi Hendrix, they were like, "No, you ain't going." I was about to run away from home. My older brother [Gerald] -- who's also an artist, and who also did some P-Funk stuff with me -- once he turned 16 and could drive a car, my parents let him take me to concerts. They let him take me to see Sly and the Family Stone, as long as he could go with me, you know? And eventually it led to him taking me to see Funkadelic.

I guess your question was, how did I meet them? Well, that crew of people that I used to hang out with, we all went to a Funkadelic show. I think this was at the Warner Theater. At that point, I was just a big hit with all my friends because of my cartoons anyway, right? And they were like, "Why don't you show them pictures to George?" And one of my friends managed to bust his way backstage.

I think I had brought a Hefty. I used to carry my drawings around in Hefty trash bags. And I brought this Hefty trash bag with some selected pieces, some characters that I had done, and some pictures I had done of, like, Betty Davis and Jimi Hendrix and Sly. And it just totally flipped George out. When he saw it, he just flipped. And he was like, "We're gonna do something." George was really impressed. He was the first person who ever bought any of my artwork.

MILLS: You mean, just for himself to have?

STOZO: Yeah. He actually bought one of the pieces. It was this piece called "The U.S. Funk Mob," and that's actually where that concept first was seen. I did this picture of them -- I had seen a photograph somewhere of George that looked really African. You know how when those witch doctors put on their white paint? That was the other thing I used to dig about Funkadelic at the time, because they kinda had mixed in some tribal African look to their thing. People thought it was just nutty -- Halloween, psychedelic, maybe Kiss-looking thing. But I had done this one drawing with George looking like that, with everything else going around him, and he loved it. And I had drawn this little thing saying "U.S. Funk Mob."

MILLS: George is kind of famous for taking concepts that are around him, and it winds up in a tune, or he embellishes the concept.

STOZO: How I actually came up with the U.S. Funk Mob was, he had one song, I think it was "Let's Take It to the Stage" -- "They call us the funk mob." And when I wrote it out, I looked at the word "us" and I was like, "Wow, that's a trip. That's like the United States."

You know, with the funk, we can build a whole paragraph from one person saying something, and somebody fills in the next word. It's just a natural thing, we have our own language, and people get the concepts just like that. One person could start the joke, somebody else can finish the joke, now somebody else will laugh at it, and then everybody's laughing at it. George is completely surrounded by people who can fill in the blanks.

Of course, I was proud of [George's picking up on "U.S. Funk Mob"], 'cause at the time, my friends were all scared that I was being ripped off. They were always trying to get me to copyright shit. I was just having fun, man. And fun is three-quarters of the word funk anyway.

MILLS: So how much time were you spending with them? Did you become pretty much a full-time funkateer?

STOZO: Well, check it out, you know there's a distinction between "funkateer" and "maggot brain." I'm like a maggot brain. Funkateers are people that actually tuned into the funk once they got pretty commercial. There's nothing wrong with funkateers, but there's something a little deeper with a maggot brain. Funkateers might go back as far as, uh, "We Want the Funk" (laughs), and you might mention "Hit It and Quit It" to them and they'll look at you like you're crazy.

First thing I did with them was the Horny Horns ["A Blow for Me, A Toot to You," released in 1977], and that came out of a promise. George promised he was gonna get me a record cover. It was funny because I was still in high school. I'm, like, this kid and shit, all excited. I wasn't even at home, I think I was at school, and when I got home my father was like, "Somebody named George Clinton called here," and I flipped out. He said, "From L.A., too."

I met [George's manager] Archie Ivy. He said, "Do whatever you want. Just draw something, send it to us. The concept is 'Blow from me, toot to you.'"

MILLS: That was even before the "Best of the Early Years" cover you did for Westbound?

STOZO: It was really strange about that. Funkadelic had gone to Warner Bros., and Westbound was trying to capitalize off of the funk while they could, 'cause they had already put out a "Greatest Hits." So they're like, "You wanna do another album cover? But you gotta do it *now.*"

I took a drawing that I had already done -- 'cause I had already started doing my own concepts for Funkadelic and showing them to George. It was just something I had sitting around, and I sent 'em that one, and they used it. It's actually edited, the original piece has more drawings on it, but because of label disputes -- there were some Parliament images on the drawing, and they deleted 'em out. I still have that one. A lot of these original covers you don't get back. Like I never got back the two Parlet covers I did. I never saw 'em again.

Then Fuzzy Haskins came up to me, and he was like, "I want you to do a cover for me." I felt kind of strange, because it was a time when Fuzzy was doing a project that George wasn't related to. But I did it, because I was a really big Fuzzy Haskins fan anyway. And that came out on Westbound too, that was "Radioactive."

MILLS: What was it about Fuzzy that made you a fan?

STOZO: Fuzzy was like a superhero. He was like the Hulk. Fuzzy used to wear these longjohns with holes in it, and he was all buffed out, and he used to wear these glasses that would make his eyes look like this monster. And he would do these gymnastic-type things onstage.

I was always into monsters, man, and P-Funk is the ultimate monster group. Like you got G'War now, and you had Alice Cooper, but George and them really had that fuckin' monster shit down. There were some shows I went to in the early days when George came out of a coffin. At Radio City Music Hall. It was a show that had P-Funk, Ohio Players and Graham Central Station. And George came out of a coffin, man.

He would come into the audience, and people would riot. People were *scared* of this dude, man. In the early days, George was so scary with his look that people just took him as a real crazy monster wildman. He'd come out of the coffin and he'd slither across the stage.

Fuzzy was equally as scary. And then you had Grady, he looked like this wizard, this Egyptian wizard type dude. Bernie was like this "Phantom of the Opera" type of dude, you know? He was kinda scary, playing that organ, all these weird sounds and shit. And of course Bootsy was like a giraffe or something, just this larger-than-life type dude.

I always was into that kind of stuff. The whole "Stozo the Clown" thing was born out of Halloween. For some reason, I was like, "Let me do the evil clown thing." I just took the z-o from Bozo, and thought of "stone Bozo." I became a stone Bozo, so I had Stozo the Clown. I've always been attracted to that monster-horror thing.

MILLS: Tell me about Pedro Bell's artwork from your standpoint, first, as a fan.

STOZO: Let me tell you about Pedro. I was so nervous when George called me up, and I had gotten Pedro Bell's number from Archie Ivy or someone, 'cause I just wanted to know some of the technical things about how to do an album cover. I had never done any professional work like that. And I had called Pedro to ask him, "Hey, how much do you charge for these things? How big are they?" He was like the Godfather of the funk cartoon, and it was so amazing to even talk to him. We just hit it off right at the beginning. He was cool as shit. And I was a huge fan of his.

I was a fan of all these other people like R. Crumb and Peter Max and Roger Dean and all the other big ones. Of course, I liked the Filmation stuff with the Bill Cosby kids and the Jackson Five cartoons. Then when I saw "Cosmic Slop," I was just totally blown away by that shit. I knew that it was possible to do.

This is where Overton Loyd comes in too. It was Pedro Bell, then I came in, and then Overton Loyd comes in. They had met Overton up in Detroit. The first thing I saw from him, when I opened up that album ["Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome"] and that comic book jumped out there, man, I was flipping again.

MILLS: At what point did you become involved with designing stage props?

STOZO: I got a little more involved with the production aspect of it because I just liked doing that. I always liked making puppets. Just from the horror, the science fiction, all of that stuff where George was going, it was inevitable that it would go right into some 3-D type stuff. They actually tried to make a movie out of the "Mothership Connection." They did a little bit of filming in New York, in front of the United Nations building.

Of course, the stories just kept coming with Parliament, 'cause after they landed the Mothership, George promised [the fans] that they were gonna go underwater without getting wet. He had had people so blown away by the Mothership that the anticipation for the underwater boogie was one of the biggest things -- I'll never forget, everybody just could not wait to see what was gonna happen with that. If you see Diem Jones's "Bimini Road" book, you'll see some of the most excellent photographs from that period.

Following "Aquaboogie," then there was "Gloryhollastoopid." And that's where Overton and I were just like Sam and Dave, Tom and Jerry, any duo that you could think of. The dynamic duo of cartoons and silliness.

MILLS: Not so much for the "Aquaboogie" tour?

STOZO: "Aquaboogie" tour, they really had gotten a designer to work on some concepts for pulling off that album onstage. Dawn and Lynn, the Brides, would wear Giggles and Squirm costumes, where they'd be little worms --

MILLS: So that stuff wasn't you and Overton?

STOZO: No. It wasn't until "Gloryhollastoopid" where we were, like, "We gotta make these props just like the [album- cover] cartoon." They hired a midget to play Deeni-Hoo and Dr. Kaboo, some of the little dwarves in the cartoon. We went out and got Muppet-type characters which I designed and made to fit the Unfunkable characters from the storyline. Clipadelic [Michael Payne] actually played himself.

They hired some group, I think it was the something-and- Magic -- what are they called? They do a lot of effects out there in Hollywood.

MILLS: Industrial Light and Magic?

STOZO: I think they actually created the effect where Garry -- Starchild -- turns into the donkey. It was the greatest visual effect, because he disappears, and the next thing you know there's an explosion and he's this guy walking around with a donkey head. I was actually making the donkey tails. That was a great tour. I think we had started freaking out the audience again. Niggas were starting to get a little freaked out again. (laughs)

MILLS: Was George very much involved in the production design for all of that?

STOZO: George would give us the freedom to go ahead and create the look. Like I said, there's such a one-brain thing going on with all of us, we all share the same brain, you can't go wrong. He would give us the concept, we'd create the characters and run it past him. "Gloryholla- stoopid" was around that time where George actually retired [from live performing]. He only came in for a couple of the shows. He didn't stay away too long, because I guess he couldn't.

I actually played one of the characters. I played the Sno- Mon. He was one of the Sir Nose villains, which we called the Unfunkables. I had to dress up in three snowballs, and he had to carry these CO2 tanks on his back, and he shot snow out of his carrot nose. One night I actually blew one of the guys off the stage with it, it was so powerful. So I went on tour.

We did that show at the Apollo. Started out at the Apollo, it was called "Popsicle Sticks." We were going for an off- Broadway-production version of it. (laughs) It was an off- Broadway production, and the joke was that it was in Harlem, that's what made it off-Broadway. We were doing matinees and we would do an evening show, and it opened up with the Brides of Funkenstein. And it was billed as "Popsicle Sticks" at the time. It was actually the "Glory- hollastoopid" story.

We hired a guy named Louie, who had done some films. He was a midget, and he played all the little dwarfs. He got more pussy than anybody else on the road. (laughs) I ended up seeing him in a porno film later on down the road. He was in some porno version of "Sleeping Beauty." He was professional, though. He knew what he was doing, he had been in circuses before, so he was really down for playing the parts.

MILLS: This is not something that's on the tips of a lot of people's memory. How many shows did y'all do of this?

STOZO: Well, the big show that kicked it off was at the Santa Monica Civic Center in California. That was the first day that we got the costumes. We picked 'em up in a Rolls Royce and brought 'em to the show. And then they did a big promotion thing, they did a train ride. The Unfunkables, they rode the train from D.C. to New York City, to the Big Apple. And Rolling Stone actually covered it. There's a photograph in Rolling Stone magazine of some of the characters getting off the train.

MILLS: George was not a part of this show?

STOZO: He did certain dates. He'd come to the Apollo every now and then. He was just taking some time off. Garry Shider was pretty much the front man. And Jessica Cleaves was out there at that time, too. It was a great tour, actually.

MILLS: This was the one where they played the Apollo for a month straight?

STOZO: Yeah. Definitely. Maceo Parker was the emcee, Phillippe Wynne was in it. And then there was a point in the show where they were to make an ass out of Starchild. That was the whole thing. It was Sir Nose's thing to make an ass out of him in public. It was awesome, I'm telling you. The costumes were killer, man.

At the conclusion of that tour was when Overton and I got shipped to Detroit to do the Zapp album cover. George was in the studio doing a lot of work at that time, getting Uncle Jam Records happening, doing stuff with Jessica and Phillippe, getting Roger [Troutman]'s thing started.

I was sort of the art director for Uncle Jam Records. I designed the label -- a George figure on roller skates.

MILLS: What insight do you have on what went wrong with Uncle Jam? This must have seemed, at the time, like the culmination of everything George and the band was working towards. A real corporate groundwork. Were there a lot of high hopes associated with that?

STOZO: Well, here's the thing -- and this is *still* the thing about P-Funk. P-Funk still manages to keep an underground thing about it. It's never really totally gone mainstream. You're not gonna hear about the funk like you hear about Lionel Richie or Celine Dion or Guns 'n Roses. Of course, they'd love to make the big huge money like that, but being more of a cult underground thing kept them fresh.

When they went for Uncle Jam Records, originally it *wasn't* Uncle Jam Records. The big hope label that you're talking about was called Hump Records. They were gonna do this label called Hump, and the only thing that got released was that Sly Stone [collaboration] "Hydraulic Pump." I think a deal was made with CBS, then they bought out the whole Hump Records thing and they decided to go "Uncle Jam" with it. So once CBS took it on, and they started to go for a more "This could be a little Motown," it just seemed like something ... something was trying to keep the funk from being big. It might have been itself, you know?

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