[Today: Funkadelic shake it to the East and shake it to the West...]
“Play like your mama just died” was George Clinton’s instruction to guitarist Eddie Hazel on how the first half of the song ‘Maggot Brain’ should be played. Hazel did just that, reeling off an intense, searching solo that was so good Clinton faded the rest of the band out of the recording. Amazingly, this epic, 10-minute title track was recorded in a single take. Speculation abounds that it’s based on Clinton’s experience of finding the decomposed, overdosed body of his older brother, but no matter the orgin, it’s heavy, heavy stuff.
Released in July of 1971, Maggot Brain finds young funk pioneers Funkadelic firing on all cylinders. ‘Can You Get To That’ ‘Super Stupid’ ‘Hit It And Quit It’ are all bold, blacker-than-black anthems that have one foot in outer space and the other in the middle of the ghetto. Call-and-response lines are littered throughout, giving the record a nearly gospel feel, but it is clearly concerned with serious secular matters. “How do you survive in a world that’s fundamentally against you?” is the un-asked question that that lies at the heart of this album. There are no easy answers to be found here – indeed, Hazel’s own life would be shadowed by drug problems, and he would die of liver failure in 1992. But even though Maggot Brain is freaked out and jittery, it’s totally and undeniably funky.
Listen: Maggot Brain
Tags: Eddie Hazel, funk, Funkadelic, George Clinton, Maggot Brain
22 August 2007 at 2:15 pm |
Classic @#$%ing guitar track… powerful motivation…
14 November 2007 at 10:27 pm |
Unbelievably good solo, listening to it now. Wish I was tripping.
26 March 2008 at 4:27 pm |
Maggot brain is a masterpiece. Eddie Hazel is squeezing out the soul of his guitar, just like Jimmy did. Damn, I love this ecstatic and powerful tunes.
70th music is powerful, unique and worth to be listen to, start with this list:
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/soulmakossa/classic_political_hard_funk_albums/
27 June 2008 at 11:44 pm |
Maggot brain is one song I always end up listening to when I am either high or stoned….There is never a high that is complete without listening to Maggot Brain…
3 April 2011 at 7:42 am |
[...] reflected in the music of Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and George Clinton’s band Funkadelic. Like Funkadelic, Black Nasty was a Detroit-based funk group that featured rock-styled guitar and [...]