3. Bootsys Rubber Band
This was the best experience I ever had because nobody knew what they were doing! I had no idea! ‘Stretchin’ Out…’ was the last song to put on the album. We were in New York and George and I getting ready to turn it in and we started talkin’ and talkin’ because stuff was just kept flowing; tracks, lyrics, everything was just flowing. Every day you wanted to change something. George was asking, “Are you sure we’ve got every thing on this record that we really wanna turn in?” I remember we didn’t even have the title for it, and I said, “No. Maybe we need to stretch it out a little further” and George then said, “Yeah! Like in a rubber band!” and that’s where the name came from.
And that was also us leaving New York and going to Detroit to record Stretchin’ Out…. So we knocked out two birds with one stone because you got the name of the album and the song that introduces the album. It was like a storybook. It couldn’t have happened more perfecter. Hey, I don’t know if that’s even a word but it couldn’t have been no perfecter!
It was crazy with the engineer because every time he saw me coming, he’d put his hands up going, “Oh no! Not Bootsy and all his shit!” It was drama, man!
It was fun but it was drama at first because nobody understood. And I couldn’t explain it! George didn’t know what it was but he was just going with it and he had sense enough to leave it alone and us to do what we were doing. He didn’t know what I was feeling but what he knew that whatever it was, it was was good and that it was funky. He was like, “Whatever you just did and whatever you’re talking about, just do it!”
George allowed me to do my thing, and then his thing, and it was a perfect scenario. I’d been with James but he wouldn’t have allowed me to do what I wanted to do, but it was good because it helped discipline me. It gave me that other side that I never got home because I never had a father in the house. James Brown was a like my father to me and I got everything I needed from the father side from him. When I got with George, he was like a big brother and I didn’t feel as if I had to explain myself.
