I saw George quite a lot at the studio where I went to school and interned. His projects were BY FAR the most ambitious I'd ever seen. He'd have recording sessions marathons of 24 hours straight with different musicians and singers coming in at different times to lay down their tracks. We had a massive old API mixing board with 6 recording busses on it. You would route the inputs to the busses in such a way that no matter how many tracks you had, you would never need more than 6 busses. Very few people used more than 2 or 3. Using 4 was unusual. The only person I ever saw that needed to use all 6 was George Clinton. George loved that board.
Once some guys were in the studio using Funkadelic tracks for hip-hop tunes they were doing when George suddenly walked in. The guys stood there in shock not knowing how George would take it that they were swiping his tracks. George just sat down and helped them lift the tracks they wanted with no talk of payment or copyrights. And even though I detest hip-hop and rap I thought that was very cool of him. That's the way he is.
I never got to know him well as I never worked directly with him but only for his musicians. But occasionally he'd walk in and he'd be coming down the hallway just as I was going the other way. This great legend I'd been listening to ever since I was a little kid with my transistor radio. He'd just nod and smile and say, "Howzit goin' man?" I never saw him with a posse or anything. A great genius. He just has a presence. I never met anyone else like him. He has a commanding presence. He's sort of like a divine being in that you know you're in the presence of someone who is not like anyone you'll ever meet.
And I think he knows he's got that presence but doesn't use it to intimidate or snub you. He's just a regular guy in spite of it.
I still have this old 45:
The Parliaments I Wanna Testify - YouTube