AS THE EIGHTIES started winding down, Bootsy Collins was in his ingredient throughout nights in town in Washington, D.C. Flashing his signature star-shaped shades, in keeping with one report, he was chilling with fellow musicians — together with some who’d performed with Miles Davis — and sharing tales about his former boss and colleague George Clinton from their Parliament-Funkadelic days. On occasion he’d slip into one of many giddy, over-the-top voices heard on Bootsy stompers like “Bootzilla.” And he was residing as massive as one would anticipate: “We’re gonna have enjoyable with this plastic right here!” he advised a crowd in a restaurant, waving round a bank card.
However because the hours and days went on, the musicians he was spending time with started to assume one thing was amiss. For starters, Bootsy didn’t reside in D.C. Regardless of being one in all pop’s monster bass gamers, he by no means picked up the instrument both, and stored complaining that Clinton and others within the P-Funk world had ripped him off. “He began stepping into on how George did this to him and so-and-so did that to him, and that he was beginning to have exhausting instances,” remembers Davis’ bass participant Foley, a.ok.a Joseph Lee McCreary Jr. When Collins started asking him for cash, Foley actually started rising suspicious. “I stated, ‘What did you do along with your royalties?’” Foley says. “He couldn’t actually reply that. You’re Bootsy — you need to be loaded. He would go into the Bootsy voice and attempt to change the topic.”
Because it seems, it wasn’t Bootsy Collins in any respect, however as an alternative one of the brazen impostors in music historical past. What’s extra, this pretend Bootsy wasn’t the one one strutting round.
Virtually so long as there have been rock stars, there have been impostors: not tribute-band impersonators, however con artists claiming to really be that individual and hustling folks out of money or cadging free items alongside the way in which. In 1964, a bunch of faux Beatles obtained away with enjoying reveals in South America; across the similar time, an unscrupulous promoter employed a bunch of ex-bank robbers, bus drivers, and lingerie salespeople to fake to be the Ronettes and Temptations for a tour within the U.Okay. In 1977, a David Bowie impostor made his approach across the U.S., persuading a lady to go away her husband and run off to Hawaii with the Skinny Faux Duke. Fake variations of Steve Miller and the Eagles’ Randy Meisner had been additionally scamming in varied cities, as was, notoriously, a pretend of Kiss drummer Peter Criss. The Criss impostor advised a tabloid that he was a homeless drunk scuffling for change, main the true Criss to confront the fraud on The Phil Donahue Present.
However few have needed to swat away fakers for so long as Collins has. Practically 50 years after William Earl Collins reworked into the larger-than-life character referred to as Bootsy, he stays a singular icon in pop — the person who rocketed R&B to new universes, with a fancy dress to match (star glasses and high hat to today, with star-spangled flared pants and open-chested jumpsuits throughout his Seventies pinnacle). Even Collins’ smile was dynamic, able to successful over invading armies. “He is stuffed with the enjoyment of language, pleasure of sound, pleasure of life,” says Dr. Cornel West, who noticed Parliament-Funkadelic reside throughout their heyday and later befriended and labored with Collins. “He’s the best stage of what it’s to be a soulful human being. That’s probably the most brave and liberating factor anyone will be.”
For those self same causes, however particularly for his signature, defining regalia, Collins has grow to be the icon of selection for celeb impostors. “It wasn’t like impersonating Prince, the place you needed to fear about top,” says Archie Ivy, who managed Clinton but additionally dealt with a few of Collins’ early enterprise issues. “With Bootsy, you make your self tall with platform boots, placed on a high hat and star glasses and quite a lot of shiny stuff. Bootsy’s voice is principally a cartoon character, so in case you had the fitting phrase and perspective, I can see it being pulled off.”
And it has been — rather a lot. For many years, Collins impostors, together with the one who tried to con members of Davis’ band, have appeared, then disappeared, then materialized once more. Clinton himself admits that he gave the Bootsy disguise a strive, a minimum of as soon as, for a feminine backstage customer. “Someone got here to see Bootsy they usually had by no means seen him up shut, and I placed on the star glasses and stated, ‘Yeah, bubba!’” he says with fun, recalling one of many catchphrases in “Bootzilla.” “I used to be with the lady for 2 or three days earlier than Bootsy confirmed up. I advised Bootsy I used to be him!”
The story left its mark on the true Collins, who finds it so dispiriting to recall these instances that he agreed to reply just a few questions on it, by e-mail, for Rolling Stone. “At first I assumed it was humorous, till some shut buddies began to inform me about how the Virtually Bootsy began to tear folks off,” Collins wrote in one in all his responses. On this subject, his spouse and longtime supervisor, Patti, does a lot of the speaking for her usually genial husband. “All I can say, it was very disheartening,” she says. “Bootsy doesn’t even speak about it to today.”
However the saga of “Virtually Bootsy” — and what number of there could have been over the many years — remains to be price recalling. It’s a reminder of a pre-viral time when anybody may get away with nearly something (on this case, for years) earlier than being caught. “Why you’ll have any individual attempting to mimic Bootsy was completely comprehensible,” West says. “I’ve all the time wished to be like Bootsy myself. However I’m not gonna do what the brother did!”
Collins has been a part of the American musical tapestry for therefore lengthy that it’s straightforward to take him as a right, or overlook all of the funk and charisma he has injected into pop. Rising up in Cincinnati and nicknamed Bootsy by his mom, Collins joined his brother Phelps’ band, the Pacemakers, earlier than beginning a yearlong tenure with James Brown’s unique J.B.’s, the place he performed on volcanic tracks like “Get Up (I Really feel Like Being a) Intercourse Machine” and “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing.” Two years later, he and his brother joined George Clinton’s Funkadelic, finally changing into a part of the bigger P-Funk universe. If Clinton was the overlord, Collins was his key lieutenant, enjoying on each Parliament and Funkadelic document till the early Eighties and co-writing classics like “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” and “Flashlight.” And his Soul Prepare-goes-to-Mars look made him one of the recognizable of Clinton’s band of merry funk pranksters.
In 1976, Clinton made Collins the star of his personal facet undertaking, Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The music he made with them — playfully freakalicious jams like “Stretchin’ Out (In a Rubber Band)” and funk ballads like “I’d Quite Be With You” — launched Collins to a different stage of recognition and success. “It’s exhausting to place your head round how a lot impression this man had, particularly in Black tradition,” says Tom Vickers, a former Rolling Stone author who turned Parliament-Funkadelic’s “Minister of Data” within the Seventies. “He by no means actually had a crossover hit, however he was a pressure of nature, lightning in a bottle, all of the clichés you hear. As large as P-Funk was, Bootsy was larger.” Collins and the band went from enjoying midsize theaters to twenty,000-seat arenas, making $25,000 to $35,000 an evening (simply $125,000 to $150,000 now). Throughout Collins’ heyday, Jet reported that he was providing to play proper in followers’ houses for $40,000, pioneering the private-party, one-percenter gigs at the moment in vogue.
Throughout this preliminary section of Bootsy Mania, Ivy began listening to about somebody claiming to be Collins getting paid to signal autographs and shake arms in small golf equipment in distant cities. At first, the concept was flattering. “There have been Bootsy sightings far and wide the place Bootsy wasn’t,” Ivy remembers and laughs. “We simply shrugged it off and stated, ‘Bootsy’s an actual star now!’ We didn’t take it as something significantly.” Neither Clinton nor Ivy remembers particularly how Collins responded, however usually assume he was amused: As Clinton says, “He thought it was humorous, that somebody obtained away with it that far.”
Collins himself could have even egged on impostors together with his 1978 album, Bootsy? Participant of the 12 months, which got here with pretend cardboard “sun shades” on the within cowl for followers to chop out and put on. “It appears that previously 12 months there’s been quite a lot of Faux-a-Teers working round, ‘Virtually Bootsys,’ who’ve been attempting to be me,” he stated on the time. On “She Jam (Virtually Bootsy Present),” from his 1979 album, This Boot Is Made for Fonk-N, he alluded to those that dressed up as him, for enjoyable or possibly revenue: “Mentioned everybody they had been nearly Bootsy/Decked out of their star-shaped shades/Little girls and boys they had been nearly Bootsy/Shining far and wide.”
However then got here a name to Ivy from the Burbank headquarters of Warner Bros., Collins’ label. The worker stated that Collins was within the workplace, asking for an advance on his subsequent royalty test. Ivy thought it was odd, since Collins’ funds went by way of Clinton’s firm, not the label; additionally, Ivy had spoken with Collins two days earlier than, from his residence in Ohio, and Collins had a widely known aversion to flying. The label govt stalled and left the room, and by the point he returned to the workplace, the apparition we’ll name Virtually Bootsy No. 1 was gone, by no means to be seen once more on the workplace.
In the meantime, Vickers was listening to studies about somebody in Cleveland claiming to be Collins and attempting to purchase musical gear on a retailer cost account; Vickers knew Collins was elsewhere within the nation at that time. “Going round amassing cash because the individual, that’s fairly bizarre,” says Clinton. “When it results in getting a deal or some cash, that’s when it’s a must to get fearful about it. To go to the document firm itself!”
As rapidly as he appeared to reach — it was just some months, everybody remembers — Virtually Bootsy No. 1 vanished, luckily with out inflicting any grievous hurt. “Fortunately, the man didn’t exit and assault any individual or rob a financial institution,” says Ivy. “That might have been problematic.”
Trying again, Clinton feels the sightings didn’t even jibe with Collins’ offstage persona. “Bootsy was shy,” Clinton says. “He couldn’t have been to all these events. However folks wished to see Bootsy and be with him. I went to a couple locations and folks would say, ‘I simply noticed Bootsy!’ There may need been a few them.” Little did Clinton know the way prescient he can be.
Simply because the preliminary Virtually Bootsy appeared to pack up his imitation glasses and go residence, the precise Collins beat a retreat as nicely. Based on David Libert, Collins’ reserving agent on the time, Collins was all the time on, particularly in his garb. “I by no means noticed him working round in Bermuda shorts and a tank high,” Libert says. “He was all the time Bootsy.” However by the early Eighties, the stress of being a bandleader in addition to a strolling, speaking, bass-slapping caricature started to put on on Collins. “I obtained so uninterested in residing as much as that Bootsy character,” he advised Rolling Stone in 2000. “I’d grow to be a so-called star, and I simply didn’t know deal with it.”
The stress led to a debilitating case of shingles, compounded by drug abuse (LSD was his go-to) and a bike accident the place he wound up with an injured arm. “He created this persona that finally led him to a nervous breakdown,” says Vickers. “He didn’t disavow the character, however he didn’t wish to be Bootsy anymore. Bootsy was so visible, and he was Bootsy on a regular basis, which was a blessing and a curse. That’s what drove him loopy.” By 1982, Collins decamped to his 23-acre ranch, the place his mom advised him to take off his costume and be himself once more.
In 1984, Collins took a number of tentative steps again into the enterprise. “I throwed all my medicine away and I ended taking them,” he advised Rolling Stone in 2017. “That’s when it began to grow to be clear what I wanted to get again to, which was the music.” By then, he had a hard-charging new supervisor, Invoice Waller, who additionally labored with boxers; Collins nicknamed him “Greenback Invoice” after Waller landed him a profitable document deal. By the use of Waller, Collins was launched to Michael Lane, a neighborhood R&B singer and songwriter. The 2 started working up songs for Lane, who reworked right into a Prince-inspired act named Mico Wave. At residence, Lane noticed Collins dressing in common garments and speaking in a traditional, non-Bootsy voice — all of the exaggerations had been gone. “He simply wished to be the man within the band,” Lane says. “He’s all the time been actual shy about issues. He didn’t like being within the entrance.”
As Lane discovered, Collins was nonetheless protecting of his outdated picture. Collins provided to place Lane up in his household residence, and Lane was put in in a spare room. In the future, to his shock, he opened up a closet to search out what amounted to a Bootsy museum: hats, star glasses, and all the things else related to Collins’ former persona. Heading out to see reside music one night time, Lane grabbed a rhinestone-crusted hat from the gathering — and, subsequent day, discovered a padlock on the door. “Bootsy didn’t say, ‘Don’t put on that hat,’” Lane says. “He didn’t get into quite a lot of conversations about issues. The lock on the door stated all of it.”
If and when the primary impostor got here up, Lane remembers that Collins thought it was amusing. “He didn’t take something like that severe,” he says. “He’d say, ‘Yeah, these moms tried to impersonate me, however they didn’t get too far with it!’ He would snicker about issues like that.” Recalling the Bootsy? Participant of the 12 months packaging, Lane says, “He was telling everybody to be Bootsy. So when any individual did it, it didn’t hassle him an excessive amount of.”
Sadly, Collins wouldn’t be chuckling about it for much longer. He signed with Columbia, and in 1988 launched What’s Bootsy Doin’?, his first new document in six years. That includes collaborations with Lane, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and guitarist Stevie Salas, it built-in electro and hip-hop parts into his trademark funk playground. That very same 12 months, Collins met his future spouse, Patti, at a neighborhood fitness center; the 2 turned a pair nearly instantly (and married in 1996).
It ought to have been a time of joyful renewal for Bootsy, however that second must wait. Lane remembers listening to that somebody claiming to be Collins had dropped off some dry cleansing in his title. One night time at their Cincinnati residence, their fax machine jolted to life, and out got here a message asking if it had been true that Bootsy had been in Los Angeles the day earlier than. Patti referred to as again, saying no, not true. Then she was advised he’d supposedly checked into an upscale lodge and requested for a free room and room service. “I used to be like, ‘No, he’s right here — he’s at residence,’” she says. “It was very annoying.” One other such name got here from Vegas. “We needed to say, ‘Nicely, that’s not Bootsy, it’s the impersonator,’” she remembers. “However he’d already gotten his items and achieved his harm.”
Patti by no means met the person we’ll name Virtually Bootsy No. 2, however she would have been capable of inform the distinction instantly: The true Bootsy, in contrast to the individual pretending to be him, has a star on his eyetooth. Others had been fooled extra simply, particularly through the spring of 1988. As Rolling Stone reported on the time, Virtually Bootsy No. 2 appeared on the New York Music Awards, the place he hobnobbed and presumably tricked the likes of Lou Reed, Paul Simon, and LL Cool J. (Neither organizer Robbie Woliver, Reed’s ex-wife Sylvia, or LL keep in mind him, though, Woliver says, “Quite a few us have that ‘sounds acquainted’ feeling.”)
That very same spring, Foley, Davis’ bass participant, first encountered the con artist on the Manhattan lodge the place Davis was staying. He’d heard Collins was within the foyer, went to test it out for himself, and noticed, briefly, somebody who seemed to be his musical hero. “I knew what Bootsy appeared like,” he says. “I had seen all of the interviews and had the posters on my wall as a child. He’s staying in the identical lodge as Miles. I used to be like, ‘Goddamn, it’s him. It’s obtained to be him.’”
The person who can be Bootsy slinked away earlier than Foley had a lot time to speak with him, however Davis’ band interacted extra with Virtually Bootsy No. 2 when he hitched a trip with them from New York to D.C. At first, the musicians had been flattered to assume Bootsy would wish to spend a lot time with them. However he by no means went off to his lodge room and even advised having any plans of his personal. “I’m considering, ‘Right here’s this established, well-known musician — what’s he doing hanging with us?’” remembers keyboardist Adam Holzman. “‘Why aren’t we going out to a correct dinner after which saying goodbye, like regular?’ When you bumped into one in all your heroes, you’d hang around, however it wouldn’t flip right into a 24/7 factor.” After Virtually Bootsy No. 2 started his complaints about cash and — the telltale — asking Foley for a handout, he vanished as soon as once more.
In the meantime, Salas confirmed up on the annual conference of NAMM (Nationwide Affiliation of Music Retailers, the commerce group of musical-instrument shops and producers) in Anaheim, California. As he made his approach across the distributors’ cubicles, he stored listening to folks comment how he’d simply missed Collins. “Everybody’s saying, ‘Bootsy’s right here!’” he says. “I’d say, ‘What are you speaking about? He’s in Cincinnati. He was right here 5 minutes in the past?’” However Salas by no means noticed the impostor. Waller discovered himself with payments from limo corporations, and Ibanez Guitars despatched $10,000 price of substances to a post-office field in Louisiana. “He obtained away with rather a lot, from what I’m advised — 1000’s and 1000’s of {dollars},” Patti says, talking for her husband. “Unfavourable vitality. It was very disheartening.”
If Virtually Bootsy No. 2 did stroll away with devices or recording gear, his scheme could have been to pawn them off. Invoice Laswell, who started collaborating with Collins within the Eighties and continued into the following decade, remembers conversations about these fears. “We used to speak about that continually, and every single day somebody would say, ‘We heard he was on this place, or he was right here,’” he says. “Bootsy was all the time smiling about it. Then when everybody came upon the man was pulling quite a lot of endorsements, that means he was getting quite a lot of gear, everybody was considering, ‘Nicely, possibly that’s not cool.’ As a result of he may promote that stuff.”
Or unload it? In New York, musician Freddie Perez was launched to Virtually Bootsy No. 2, who was dressed precisely as Perez anticipated he’d be and provided to purchase a studio’s price of kit for the musician. “You couldn’t inform the distinction, in his look and the way in which he spoke,” Perez says. “He used the identical phrases Bootsy used. Even the sound of his voice, all the things — it was wonderful.” However, as with the Davis band members, Perez by no means noticed Virtually Bootsy No. 2 even try to indicate off his musical capability; when he requested him to play just some riffs on a bass, Virtually Bootsy No. 2 would demur or change the subject. “I stated, ‘I wish to hear the funk!’” says Perez, a bassist himself. “He declined. Very unusual.” Virtually Bootsy No. 2 did reportedly sit in with a home band at a membership in Washington, D.C. — singing, however once more not enjoying bass — however that was one of many few, if solely, instances he was seen truly making something near music.
The outrageous look of Collins, in London in 1978, was straightforward to imitate. FIN COSTELLO/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
At that time, Workforce Bootsy, led by Waller (who died in 2017) and Collins’ longtime lawyer, Bob Donnelly, started taking motion to close down Virtually Bootsy No. 2. “It was very troubling as a result of Bootsy is perhaps the only nicest individual,” says Donnelly, who stays a key member of Collins’ authorized crew greater than 30 years later. “He’s the final individual on the planet who would ever reap the benefits of anybody. The notion that somebody was doing that stung exhausting.”
Precisely what occurred to Virtually Bootsy No. 2 stays a matter of conjecture, misplaced or buried authorized paperwork, and blurred recollections after a number of many years. Nobody, together with these within the Collins camp, remembers the pretend’s actual title. As Patti was advised, a DJ at a New York scorching spot heard that Collins — or the impostor, it turned out — was within the membership one night time. The gang roared its approval, and Bootsy was handled to free champagne. A number of days later, a dance-music govt at Columbia referred to as the DJ to see how Collins’ present single, “Occasion on Plastic (What’s Bootsy Doin’?),” was going over with the group, and the DJ talked about Collins’ look. Based on what Patti was advised, the manager stated it wasn’t potential; she had simply spoken with Bootsy and he was bodily in one other state. Fortunately, the DJ was capable of get a cellphone quantity for Virtually Bootsy No. 2 and handed it alongside to the label, who in flip shared it with authorities.
One other story is that, in a kind of sting operation, Virtually Bootsy No. 2 was lured into a gathering, making it particularly clear, presumably with Waller’s assist, that he needed to cease. “Invoice was from an old-fashioned, and I’ll simply say [he used] old-school guidelines,” Ivy says. “Invoice positively wasn’t [former Death Row Records CEO] Suge Knight. However he wasn’t anyone you wished to take evenly.” Donnelly thinks a neighborhood district legal professional, presumably within the Midwest, helped shut the faker down. The Collinses each recall a level of FBI involvement. (Rolling Stone filed a Freedom of Data Act request in regards to the case; in a written response, the Bureau stated it may “neither affirm nor deny the existence of such information.”)
Rolling Stone could have even been concerned. In November 1988, the journal printed a narrative in regards to the Eighties’ Virtually Bootsy’s exploits. Quickly after, author David Thigpen obtained a name from a feminine school pupil within the Boston space, asking if he was the identical one who wrote the story — and stunning him with information that Virtually Bootsy No. 2 was in her house at that very second. Thigpen advised that she name the police, which she allegedly did, though what half that performed in Virtually Bootsy’s vanishing act stays unclear.
When it lastly ended, the Collinses breathed a sigh of aid and located solace in followers who had heard about what was taking place to their hero. “You’d get letters,” Patti remembers, “like, ‘I do know these items are occurring in your life with this detrimental vitality of this impostor, however I went to the present final night time, and I left a brand new individual. I used to be healed.’ Faxes and fan letters would are available, encouraging him, and he would learn each single one. We had been each capable of simply take a deep breath and let all of it out.”
With that, Virtually Bootsy No. 2 was gone. Or was he? In 1990, he — or possibly even one other Bootsy clone — was stated to have been noticed at a Reggae Sunsplash competition in Jamaica. In Los Angeles the next 12 months, somebody dressed as Collins popped aboard the tour bus of the Alarm, the Eighties British guitar band, claiming he wished to enlist them for a Stay Assist-style occasion to learn veterans of the Gulf Conflict. However when he tried to get them to pay for his lodge room and bills, the band members, like so many others earlier than, sensed one thing wasn’t including up. Solely then did they study that the true Collins was on tour in Europe with Deee-Lite, who had reignited curiosity in Collins due to his cameo on their psychedelic 1990 membership anthem “Groove Is within the Coronary heart.” Based on a publish on the band’s web site, Virtually Bootsy No. 3 or 4’s baggage was kicked off the bus, together with a big pet canine that somebody thinks could have been a pet wolf. “You’ll be listening to from my attorneys. You’ll remorse this!” had been the final phrases anybody heard him — or any of the wanna-be Bootsies — mutter.
Collins himself has moved on, a number of instances over. At 71, he’s remained strikingly productive. His cameos on final 12 months’s Silk Sonic album reminded everybody of his cultural footprint (he named Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s throwback duo and introduces the album), and he served because the MC for the music section of final summer time’s World Video games in Birmingham, Alabama. He’s set to launch new albums and singles, like the brand new “Funk Not Struggle,” which addresses violence and options up-and-coming hip-hop artists. He’s additionally making ready to enter the metaverse world with “Funktropolis,” full with NFTs, pay-per-view reveals, and Bootsy bitcoin. Recalling his impostor in one in all his emails to Rolling Stone, he writes, “He even ripped MC Hammer and tried it on Eazy-E, however they wasn’t having it. When Hammer and I met again within the Eighties and he realized he had been had, we each cracked up about it.”
However greater than 30 years later, the legacy of the Virtually Bootsies endures. Lately, scamming celeb impostors are all too widespread, particularly on-line; you might get a direct message on social media from “Blake Shelton” or “Keanu Reeves” asking for a charity donation or a date. For Collins, the annoyances of the previous have additionally made the transition to on-line: A slew of fake Bootsies have popped up on Instagram and Twitter, and unauthorized Bootsy merchandise continues to canine Workforce Bootsy as nicely, a lot to the Collinses’ consternation. “They take his picture and simply promote it with out permission,” Patti says. “They need to come to us and get an OK and get it accredited. However when it’s his face or his glasses or hats together with his picture, generally they only do it. Now we have the combat to close them down. It’s taking place every single day.”
“You may take a look at it two methods,” she provides. “You may take a look at it as a optimistic, as a result of meaning Bootsy remains to be widespread. Folks wish to be him, they wish to have that iconic look. Or you may take a look at it as a detrimental: ‘How dare you do this?’ Bootsy chooses to take a look at it in a optimistic approach. It’s stored his model alive. We’re grateful for all of that.”
In the meantime, from his residence in Cincinnati, Collins continues to maintain a watchful eye on his on-line fakes. He diligently screens social media for Virtually Bootsies, and even flagged a fake Bootsy Beer to his followers. Typically he studies them to ALG, the New York-based branding firm he employs, which shuts down the accounts. However different instances, his spouse says, he lets it slide, feeling sorry for the low-rent scammers and their lot in life. In spite of everything these years, he understands, a minimum of to a level. “The lesson I took was, there’ll all the time be Faux-a-Teers,” he says. “They simply can’t assist themselves. I don’t prefer it, however I perceive eager to be any individual else. If I had not made good on being myself, that impostor could have been me. I completely get it.”
