Various ads for the Parliament Mothership Connection album. There’s a fourth one as well, but I didn’t crop it correctly.
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I wonder why they didn’t release Tear the Roof Off first. When P. Funk was released they didn’t play it on the radio in Detroit. I never heard the song until I bought the album
I get the impression that George and maybe some of the management had pretty eccentric taste when it came to choosing singles. They thought that Bop Gun was the hit on Funkentelechy when Flash Light was the obvious choice.They thought that Loopzilla was the hit on Computer Games when Atomic Dog was the obvious hit. They probably thought the same way about P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up) when Tear The Roof Off The Sucker was the obvious option. They definitely made the right choice for first single releases in the case of Aqua Boogie and One Nation Under A Groove.
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I think in those days the artist had no control over what single is released since they don’t own the masters. They can only suggest after they turn in the tapes. Neil must have had a lot of power over the artists because he told George to make songs more Disco friendly and that’s when that awful Party People was made. It was also the first single off the album ugh. I never understood why Neil thought that was a hit
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Are you trying to tell me it was a bad idea to push for a disco single to be made by Undisco Kidds? Who could have guessed…? 
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Just to be clear, in the conversations I’ve had with George and especially based on the interview I conducted with him in June of 2022, he definitely stated that, at least during the Casablanca era, that the label definitely released singles based on the recommendation of George and the management team. Neil’s objective was, somewhat consciously, for Casablanca to be as they say in the business, a full line label. A label that covered all of the major bases. Donna Summer and the Village People cover the Disco market, kiss and Angel cover the rock market, and Parliament and Cameo cover the R&B/Soul and emerging Funk market. There was never a push for Parliament to do disco until Party People, which was definitely a miscalculation across the board. And it was more about timing than an issue with the song itself. They released that track a couple of months after Disco’s demise by the end of summer 1979. Overall, because of George’s long time relationship with Neil, and Neil’s respect for P-Funk’s in-house operation, George was definitely the lead advocate for what singles released. This approach may have also spilled over into his dealings with Warner Bros. in some ways.
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