THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE...
Seventy years old in 2021 and almost six decades into his career, William Collins—as nobody calls him—is in a unique position. The coolest cat in pretty much all of bass history, Bootsy is showing no signs of slowing down, resting up, or diminishing his message that music will unite us all, if we’ll only let it. His new album, The Power Of The One—on which he namechecks his endorsing companies Warwick, DR Strings, Pigtronix, EHX, Eden Audio, Mesa Boogie, Boss, and others—features a whole list of world-class musicians, including Larry Graham, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, George Benson, Bernard Purdie, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, Béla Fleck, Victor Wooten, MonoNeon and many more. That’s quite a band.
Still, The Power Of The One is no mere gathering of famous names. It’s a call to arms, although that’s a slightly incongruous analogy given its message of peace and tolerance: In the songs, Bootsy suggests that adherence to the one—whether the first beat of the bar, or some ineffable uniting presence—is nothing less than a way of life. There’s food for thought there, as you’d expect from a musician who honed his act under the merciless James Brown before expanding the contours of the musical universe with George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic and his extensive solo career. It’s a privilege to meet the master. Enjoy his thoughtful interview, which he punctuates with constant laughter, as if to illustrate the absurdity of it all. Go with the cosmic flow, friends...
How are you managing through the pandemic, Bootsy?
Thankfully, we have music to hold on to, and to help us. I think it got people back to thinking about their next moves and
