In 1975, George Clinton and Parliament boldly went where no band had gone before with the release of Mothership Connection, a pioneering Afrofuturist vision of a flamboyant and funky Black life beyond the stars. One year later, that far-off future invaded on the Earth Tour as fans across the globe witnessed the landing of the Mothership, an iconic prop that drifted down to centerstage and opened, through dazzling lights and pyrotechnics, to let loose Dr. Funkenstein, come to blow the cobwebs out your mind. Now, five decades later, the Mothership will fly again.

In a new interview with Billboard, Clinton disclosed that plans are underway to bring a new and improved version of Parliament-Funkadelic’s spacecraft back to the stage on a tour next year. While tour dates have not yet been announced, Clinton and longtime collaborator Vivian Scott Chew expressed awe at the new prop being in the works at Lititz, Pa.’s Rock Lititz production campus. “We know it’s going to be crazy,” Scott Chew said. “It’s something people are going to be in awe of. Dr. Funkenstein will be coming out of the Mothership again in a very new way. George is going to take this thing around the world.”

“I’m loving the fact that it’s still that valid of a concept, and I’m still around to actually be part of this next journey,” Clinton reflected. “It’s a good thing; the first Mothership is in the Smithsonian, and here we are backing it up with a new version.”

The original Mothership, a 1200-pound aluminum UFO designed by Jules Fisher, currently resides in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which acquired it in 2011. The groundbreaking design graced stages until the early ‘80s, when it was sold off as the band wrestled with mounting debt. In 1996, following the release of Clinton’s P-Funk reunion album, The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership, the prop returned for a performance at New York’s Central Park and several other stops on the Mothership Reconnection Tour and later runs, including Woodstock 1999.

Clinton’s Billboard interview also alluded to new music that would herald the Mothership’s resurrection. “I’ve definitely got some fresh funk coming in and out of that, very soon,” he said, “very interesting stuff. I can’t talk about it now. It’s going to be interesting.”

Read Clinton’s 2023 Relix feature here.