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Try to imagine, I’m playing at a jazz club one night, five days later I’m at Madison Square Garden, all I can see is people and I can’t even hear myself count off because all you hear is. “I joined them when I was 18 in ’78 or maybe the beginning of ’79. Back at that time, George had the Horny Horns, Bootsy Collins, the Brides Of Funkenstein, the Parlet band, the Sweat Band and he had Sly Stone too. “When they brought me in I was playing with a group called The Brides Of Funkenstein, an offshoot of Parliament-Funkadelic. Me being a young guy, I didn’t do any drugs, still don’t: I had the stamina, the energy to play three-and-a-half/four-hour gigs because that’s how long the shows were back then. “They were like Spinal Tap, drummers would just disappear or they just weren’t cutting it because of the abuse they were going through with drugs. What was it like joining Parliament-Funkadelic as a teenager? In 2014 it appeared Chambers’ drumming days might be over when he fell gravely ill on tour, but after a year’s hiatus he picked up right where he left off. In the 1970s, Chambers joined George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic before becoming one of the most in-demand fusion drummers in the world, working with everyone from John McLaughlin and John Scofield to Greg Howe and Mike Stern. “Somebody called me Dennis the Menace and the name stuck.” “They used to rehearse in my mother’s apartment or my grandmother’s backyard and that was the only thing that would keep me still, sitting there watching the drummer play,” says Chambers whose real name is Milton. The drummer credits his musicality to his mother, who was a Motown backing singer before moving back to Baltimore where she formed a band. “Thank god I didn’t play with him when I was 13 because he would probably have ruined my life and what I mean by that is that James had a lot of demons,” he says. When Dennis Chambers was just 13-years-old and gigging around his hometown of Baltimore, he was already so precociously talented that he was asked to join James Brown’s group.Ĭhambers’ mother turned down the offer on her son’s behalf as Brown wouldn’t pay for a tutor for Dennis while on the road Chambers has no regrets.
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(Image credit: Joby Sessions/Louise Broom)