THROWBACK: Funkadelic -- Maggot Brain: Review

Funkadelic -- Maggot Brain

[Westbound]

Picture this. You’re filing through a record store, picking up some vinyls, having a good time etc. You’re flipping through the white dad music looking for a Queen record when--boom--out of the corner of your eye you see this. “Maggot Brain?”, you ask yourself, “What’s a ‘funkadelic’?” Odd record, you think, but the picture of the shrieking, disembodied head and its foreboding name pique your interest enough for you to buy it. But little do you know, this haunting record is a pandora’s box of emotions: love, sex, death, war, and anguish, all entombed in this chilling mess of an album.

Maggot Brain is the third record from legendary funk/soul/psych rock fusion Funkadelic whose legendary legacy and presentation influences more of your favorite artists than you think. Released in 1971, the record was a godsend, featuring heartfelt funk rock performances, singing transformative and political lyrics, and, unfortunately, was way beyond its own time. Despite its initial reception, Maggot Brain is remembered as one of the all-time funk ‘greats’ and its humble tracklist of seven songs were packing more firepower in each of them that nearly no one understood or could comprehend.

As the creeping ambience of Maggot Brain begins, you can hear distant gunshots and clacking echoing in the distance just as producer and band leader George Clinton utters the haunting lyrics: “Mother Earth is pregnant for the 3rd time, for y’all have knocked her up. I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe; I was not offended. ‘Fore I knew I had to rise above it all, or drown in my own shit...” Suddenly, all goes dark and all that can be heard is a distant, sorrowful guitar arpeggio opening into one of the most chilling guitar solos ever laid to track. According to legend, there was only one take of this song, and Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel just before the take to imagine he had just been told his mother had died. The result is the 10 minute opus title track held up entirely by Hazel’s interdimensional guitar skills. He switches from Floydian guitar wails, to banjo twanging, to incessant psychedelic shredding all while displaying the emotion of utter and complete pain. The harrowing shriek of this whole solo feels like sorrow incarnate, so gripping it brings tears to my eyes almost every time I listen to it. Hazel plays with delay pedals and wah wah effects, reaching question and answer sequences where his guitar has a conversation with itself. The range of expression and dynamics in this make it feel like some kind of seance with someone from beyond the living. Originally, the backing instruments were meant to be included but Clinton was so confident in the beauty of the solo, he felt it best to let it take center stage all ten minutes.

“Can You Get To That” is an absolute out-of-body experience. The song swaggers with a multitude of groovy performances, especially the disembodied vocals that range from Motown doo-wop melodies to hard rock screeches. The chorus of this song alone features four separate voices all chanting separate sections of the lyrics, colliding into a beautiful, cataclysmic masterpiece. Just this song is a testament to how genius of a producer George Clinton was, masterfully mixing a multitude of unique tracks and instruments into an electric and gripping three-minute song. Also, being the first song with lyrics on the record, it introduces the lyrical themes of the record and their place in the P-Funk canon. The conversational lyrics question the strength of love in turmoil, using metaphors of money and karma to convey that story.

“Hit It and Quit It” teases in with its bluesy organ riff just before Clinton and company smash into the mix like a truck. The crispy drum beat chugs under the song, holding together the funky syncopation of the guitars and organs that give the song its unique sway. Clinton’s glorious vocal line of “I want you to HIT IT!” shakes the ground with its presence leading over the main riff played by the organ and echoed by the haunting background vocals. The jerking false restart of the riff will surely get your keister rocking, your shoulders rocking, or at least your head nodding. The organ on this song is quirky and funky, dancing up and down in a badass solo. The meaning of the song is still pretty mysterious but one thing’s for sure: whether the lyrics are about dancing or hard drugs, it hits hard.

On “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks”, bassist Billy Bass Nelson digs into social commentary, discussing familial disconnect. The theme of fear and social disconnect is heavily present on this record but is nowhere more clear than in this track. Supposedly, the lyrics of the chorus are about interracial love and the everlasting headache of family reunions that follow. In the verses, Nelson gets class-conscious, confronting the divides in American society for differences in capital and how it will be our demise. The signature P-Funk vocals shine here where the rapid fire chorus feels unending and almost entrancing. Not to mention, the jangly piano keys over the almost progressively mixed distorted drumbeat make its instrumental memorable.

The unrelenting “Super Stupid” is Clinton and company’s funky take on Zeppelin-esque hard blues rock. The star of this song is Eddie Hazel’s guitar which is constantly playing improv licks between phrases or blasting riffs that sound like they could be ripped from “Good Times Bad Times”. The heavy influences don’t distract however, as the colorful percussion and bombastic funk drums still ground it as a Funkadelic classic. The succinct verse quickly approaches and makes way for a wild coked up Eddie Hazel, quickly firing flurries of guitar notes to end the second half of the song with a solo. Hazel also does the vocals on this song which are said actually be autobiographical. According to colleague Harvey McGee, Hazel went out looking for cocaine one night, bought a cheap bag, and took it. Unfortunately, it was actually heroin and Hazel had a bad time coming back to reality: “Super stupid took a one and one, then his eyes began to bug and his nose began to run”. So, the subsequent two minute solo can be interpreted as Hazel’s long journey coming down. McGee goes on to end that thought and explain the album’s title: “And we called him [Hazel] ‘Maggot brain’ because he did stuff like that”.

The most distinct instrument on “Back In Our Minds” is this freaky chime that wiggles as it rings, setting the unsettling backbone for this track. An energetic call for peace lines the mood of this track, as the vocals chant for nonviolence for camaraderie. The pleasant blues piano glides over the shuffling drumbeat that remains sturdy and rides out the whole track. The ever-improvising background instruments never leave time for a dull moment and the trombone outro from Eddie “Bongo” Brown is a nice touch.

If every song before was the tumultuous smell of smoke and the sight of lava bubbling over, then “Wars of Armageddon” is the eruption. This song is a nonlinear, psychedelic, and frankly terrifying funk jam interlaced with transcendental samples and deafening sound effects. The jam starts small with a kinetic, indecisive drum beat that shifts back and forth as an incessant bassline and guitar ‘wah-wahs’ come in. A repeating atonal organ line starts to feel like an alarm, screaming in odd-shaped chords as the nine minutes continue. Soon, sound collages of men yelling, babies shrieking, and crowds chanting approach, shifting from left channel to right channel, making the listener feel like they’re travelling down a never-ending spiral. Dog whistles, car sounds, train crossings, and alarms ring off in a cue, almost mocking the listener. The disorienting nature of this track reminds me more of a Miles Davis drug-induced jazz funk abstraction than anything else that would be considered ‘funk’. The cutting edge use of dark samples and field recordings make the song feel like more an exercise in Clinton’s production abilities than anything. The sound collage is multi-dimensional, featuring gibberish to full arguments: “More power to the people! More pussy to the power! More pussy to the people! More power to the pussy!” The drums, the guitars, the yelling, the sirens, the effects: all of them swelling in size, shuddering until--boom. The song erupts in a mushroom cloud-sized explosion that decompresses and leaves without a trace.

George Clinton and Funkadelic did a couple of things with Maggot Brain. On first impression, they made a monster of a record that features catchy funk breakdowns colliding with genre-bending experimentation. On second impression, they made a statement on fear--fear of destruction, civil war, and humanity--that captured the anxieties of black Americans in a post MLK America. For me, Funkadelic did both of these things on Maggot Brain, simultaneously making a terrifying record that took those anxieties and owned them by packaging them in humor and guitar solos. In a world that seems more upside down every waking day we live in it, Maggot Brain feels no less relevant, capturing the realest fears of our reality and making something truly special out of it.

RIYL: Parliament, Sly & The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder

Listen To: “Can You Get To That”, “Super Stupid”