Bootsy on why they never made excuses for themselves:
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The way I got it instilled in me is that you, each one of you, are responsible for your note, like it or not. When we were with James Brown, if somebody dropped out you could tell. It’s like driving a car with eight cylinders and two of them drop out. You’re gonna notice that. It wasn’t about dropping out, taking a smoke, having a drink. We had to be on it. The break was when we had a chance to go offstage for 10 minutes. Then if we had to go back, bam, we were on. But there was no break on stage. It was (clicks fingers) all night long. It was unheard of, “I’m turned, I’ve gotta go and do this.” I ain’t gotta go do nothing! This is what I do!

I listen to all of this stuff now and I don’t come down on it because I understand people didn’t come up that way. I happened to come up when you had to work that hard at it. We didn’t have anything to take the pressure off. You had to use your memory, you had to go in the studio and remember your part. There were no tape recorders. [When] we hit the studio it [was like], “OK, everybody hit this riff.” And we’re on it…and if we’re not on it, then we rehearse and we rehearse until we get it, and that’s just the way it was.

So when they try to squeeze me into a box about what’s better…today or then? It’s not really about that, it’s all just different times when we come up. I’m just used to a certain level of punishment, but it’s the kind of punishment I knew would help me grow. I embrace it.

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Don’t you wish more of today’s artists embraced Bootsy’s level of “punishment” to better hone their skills? There would be a much better quality of music on the radio. The reason I keep stressing “radio” and “mainstream” is because there are plenty of phenomenal new artists out there on the underground level, but the corporate mainstream media machine doesn’t embrace them. They obviously have a bigger agenda for urban music and pushing a lot of horrible music, by artists with minimum skill is what seems to help them achieve their goals. Moving on…