FEATURE:
Can You Get to That
Funkadelic's Maggot Brain at Fifty
___________
WE recently celebrated…
Joni Mitchell’s seismic album, Blue, turning fifty. It was interesting hearing and seeing people’s experiences of the album and what it means to them (she was touched by the fact people love the album so much). It still has this enormous power and relevance after fifty years. Whereas Blue is an instant classic and album that has been lauded through the years, maybe the same cannot be said of another 1971 classic: Funkadelic’s third studio album, Maggot Brain. The album was produced by band leader George Clinton and recorded at United Sound Systems in Detroit. It was, sadly, the final album recorded by the original Funkadelic line-up (George Clinton, Raymond Davis, Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon, Grady Thomas, Garry Shider, Hot Buttered Soul (Pat Lewis, Diane Lewis and Rose Williams) – vocals, Eddie Hazel – guitar, vocals, Tawl Ross – guitar, vocals, Bernie Worrell – keyboards, vocals, Billy Nelson – bass guitar, vocals, Tiki Fulwood – drums). Consisting of nine different and wonderful tracks, I feel Maggot Brain has risen to the status of an all-time great in the years since its release. Maybe it took a while for people to fully appreciate the album. That said, there were some positive reviews upon its release. It is an album that has some long and quite affecting songs. Maybe not the most accessible or light-hearted Funkadelic release, we go in with the epic and hugely potent title track. With the late Edward Hazel laying down one of the greatest guitar performances ever, it is such a mesmeric start!
One is almost too overcome to listen to the rest of the album. It shows the confidence the group had to put that track at the start! One of my favourite Funkadelic tracks, Hit It and Quit It, is on Maggot Brain. We end the album with another epic in the form of Wars of Armageddon. There is also a double celebration, as George Clinton turns eighty on 22nd July. He produced so many incredible albums as part of Parliament and Funkadelic. Few are more important and seismic as Maggot Brain. Ahead of its fiftieth anniversary on 12th July, I wanted to highlight one of the greatest albums ever. To do so, I am going to quote a couple of reviews. Before then, Soundlab paid tribute to Maggot Brain in 2017:
“Pontificating about funk music is an exercise in futility. Funk is the music of The People and everyone is welcome, hang-ups, social barriers and prejudices be damned. All you need is a head to nod, a toe to tap or an ass to shake. Good funk is felt in the spine, behind the eyes and under the skin and there’s no need to speak because the music itself becomes a universal interlocutor. It’s the rare musical form for which listeners connect with the music by giving themselves over to it completely. Ask not what The Funk can do for your ass, ask instead what your ass can do for The Funk. This isn’t to say funk is mindless but rather it’s the work of all minds or of a universal mind. Funk is somehow primal and futuristic, simultaneously... and this is why it’s so silly to write about funk because one ends up sounding like Matthew Mcconaughey on a bad acid trip–decidedly shallow, ultimately meaningless and tragically square. With that said, what follows is an attempt to review Funkadelic’s glorious masterwork, Maggot Brain. All apologies to George Clinton and the ghosts of Eddie Hazel, and Bernie Worrell, whose hard work and dedication to humanity deserves better than whatever platitudinous nonsense follows:
Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain was released in July of 1971. For a bit of perspective, Carole King and James Taylor dominated the pop charts for most of the month. While the Isleys, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes all charted in July of 1971, they were nowhere near the top. The funkiest thing to be found on the high end of the charts that month was probably the Bee Gee’s “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.” Thus it’s probably forgivable for the general public to have ignored Maggot Brain upon release, it was just too much. Too much funk, too much rock, too much blues and too much soul. Maggot Brain was also unapologetically original–name another album that opens with an increasingly calescent guitar solo which, over the course of its ten minute runtime, grows into a cascading shower of sparks so white hot as to challenge even Hendrix’s guitar-god supremacy… And that’s just the title track.
As if to remind listeners of their “free your mind and your ass will follow” motto, Funkadelic follows the introspective, smoked-out grind of Eddie Hazel’s “Maggot Brain” with the massive, laid back groove of “Can You Get To That.” The uninitiated might recognize this as the glorious looped sample deployed on Sleigh Bells’ hit “Rill Rill.” A chorus of voices proclaim: “I once had a life/ Or rather, life had me/ I was one among many/ Or at least I seemed to be…” The song, focusing on a kind of emotional karma, is about balance – a key theme for bandleader George Clinton. It also harkens back to Clinton’s days in doo-wop as, during the chorus, a wall of female voices ask: “can you get to that?” in response to a deep baritone male voice harmonizing “I want to know.” It’s all so funky you could stir it with a wooden spoon.
Maggot Brain’s third track, “Hit It and Quit It” is a deceptively smooth soul track featuring a wall of gospel organ played by none other than funk legend Bernie Worrell. “Hit It and Quit It” immediately jumps-off with an infectious groove and repetitive chorus of “You’ve got to hit it/ Hit it and quit it!” The most glorious element of “Hit It and Quit It” though is the easy to miss but impossible to forget rhythm by Tiki Fulwood. Yet another perfect track on a near-perfect record.
If track four of Maggot Brain is memorable for anything it’s the wall of bass laid down by Billy Nelson. Heard on the right set of speakers, in the backseat of the right kind of car, “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks,” will cause the listener’s lungs to rattle in his or her chest. It’s as sticky a track as “Can You Get to That” but thicker, like trying to pour maple syrup on a cold winter morning. If you can wait, and have some patience the reward is so sweet”.
If you think that Maggot Brain might be a bit heavy-going for you and something that is best avoided, I would urge you to have a listen. It is a genius Psychedelic Funk album that is bursting with life and genius! It is a record that you will want to investigate. It is amazing to think how solid and cohesive Maggot Brain is, given how Funkadelic disbanded shortly after its release:
“After the album was released, the band effectively disbanded: drummer Tiki Fulwood was fired due to drug use; guitarist Tawl Ross reportedly got into an "acid eating contest, then snorting some raw speed, before completely flipping out" and has not performed since; bassist Billy Nelson quit over a money dispute with Clinton. Subsequently only Clinton, Hazel, and keyboardist Bernie Worrell remained from the original Funkadelic lineup”.
Regardless, Maggot Brain is a classic about to turn fifty. There are a lot of hugely positive reviews to choose from. I want to start by introducing AllMusic’s judgement of the mighty Maggot Brain:
“It starts with a crackle of feedback shooting from speaker to speaker and a voice intoning, "Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for y'all have knocked her up" and talking about rising "above it all or drown in my own sh*t." This could only have been utterly bizarre back in 1971 and it's no less so decades later; though the Mothership was well on its way already, Maggot Brain really helped it take off. The instrumental title track is the key reason to listen, specifically for Eddie Hazel's lengthy, mind-melting solo. George Clinton famously told Hazel to play "like your momma had just died," and the resulting evocation of melancholy and sorrow doesn't merely rival Jimi Hendrix's work, but arguably bests a lot of it. Accompanied by another softer guitar figure providing gentle rhythm for the piece, the end result is simply fantastic, an emotional apocalypse of sound. Maggot Brain is bookended by another long number, "Wars of Armageddon," a full-on jam from the band looping in freedom chants and airport-departure announcements to the freak-out. In between are a number of short pieces, finding the collective merrily cooking up some funky stew of the slow and smoky variety. There are folky blues and gospel testifying on "Can You Get to That" (one listen and a lot of Primal Scream's mid-'90s career is instantly explained) and wry but warm reflections on interracial love on "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks," its drum hits distorted to give a weird electronic edge to the results. "Super Stupid" is a particular killer, pounding drums and snarling guitar laying down the boogie hard and hot, while "Hit It and Quit It" has a great chorus and Bernie Worrell getting in a fun keyboard solo to boot”.
Before wrapping up this feature, there is another positive review that goes into depth. Pitchfork provided their impressions in a review from last year:
“Contemporaries working in similar modes such as Sly & the Family Stone, the Chambers Brothers, and War—all of whom were multiracial groups—had found the key to crossover success. But as an all-Black rock unit, Funkadelic struggled to achieve more than cult status in their heyday, even if some of their releases scraped the lower reaches of the charts. Upon its release, Maggot Brain was too strange for most music consumers to grasp. Even in their Detroit homebase, Funkadelic couldn’t catch a break with the city’s AOR radio outlets. Over the decades, however, the album’s guitar heroics, relentless grooves, and cavalier hooks have infiltrated their way into more receptive minds.
Listening to the staccato “Hit It and Quit It,” you can understand why those early-’70s listeners would be perplexed. Keyboard prodigy Worrell unfurls Keith Emersonian burbles and proggy flourishes alien to the funk genre at the time. Revealing Funkadelic’s democratic nature with regard to singers (a ploy that may have hindered their ability to break through commercially, as there was no dedicated frontman), Clinton allowed Worrell to sing his skinny ass off amid a libidinous landslide of guitar riffs and basslines. “Hit It” ranks as one of the filthiest lust songs ever to stoke a libido.
Another example of Funkadelic’s egalitarian microphone policy, “You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks” is sung by Billy Nelson; the track exudes the air of a communal Sly & the Family Stone anthem, but imbued with the menace of the Manson Family, with the bass/drums groove ranking as one of the most lethal in the Funkadelic canon. Despite the sinister aura, the song is a plea for equality and understanding among all people. For what it’s worth, “You and Your Folks” is the most-sampled track on Maggot Brain (11 times), and Alabama Shakes singer-songwriter Brittany Howard covered it on 2020’s Spotify Singles.
In a 1985 issue of Spin, P-Funk professor emeritus Greg Tate dubbed “Super Stupid” a “heavy-metal hydrogen bomb test”; it’s no wonder heavies such as Audioslave and Big Chief took stabs at it. This is mercilessly vicious rock that attracted the attention and respect of British rock royalty when Funkadelic first toured England. Clinton claims David Bowie, Rod Stewart, and members of Cream, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin checked them out on that jaunt. “Super Stupid”’s metallic guitar avalanche is tempered by Worrell’s circus-y keyboard effusions, but the real star is Hazel, who is on fire in extremis, both on ax and vox. “Super Stupid” warns of the foolishness of drug abuse (Worrell claimed in Wax Poetics that band members were snorting heroin) while, incidentally, making you want to take drugs.
Following the release of Maggot Brain, Hazel and Nelson split to work for the vastly more popular Motown act the Temptations, reportedly due to dissatisfaction with Clinton’s handling of the band’s financial situation. Fulwood also was disgruntled about pay and left Funkadelic. Although Clinton doesn’t mention this issue in Brothas, the Wax Poetics interviews feature complaints about George’s stinginess. Ross, too, departed, after alleged misadventures with either LSD or speed. These painful losses were ameliorated by the additions of Bootsy and Catfish Collins, Garry Shider, and Boogie Mosson—all world-class funkateers. Nevertheless, Funkadelic never again released an album as laden with genius as Maggot Brain. It was the culmination of their first phase’s most outrageous and ingenious sonic ideas, establishing a new precedent for how Black musicians would exist in a rock context, juxtaposing metal, gospel, prog, funk, blues, and jazz fusion with nonchalant virtuosity. It’s the epitome of their extravagant virtues and vices.
Summarizing the LP in Brothas, Clinton wrote, “Maggot Brain was going places that Black groups hadn’t gone, into questions about whether America was still on the right path or whether the promise of the late ’60s had completely evaporated.” In these seven songs, you can hear Funkadelic attempting to make sense of the turmoil of the times, as they express the euphoria and anguish of being born and dying in the most extraordinary ways”.
Fifty years after its release, Maggot Brain is an album so many people are talking about. I am going to keep listening to the album for a couple of days, as it is so powerful and nuanced. I come back and a new song impacts me in a different way. Today, spend some time with Maggot Brain. Turn it on and…
LOSE yourself in it.