Funkadelic | "Maggot Brain"

[Deleted]

"Maggot Brain" remains one of the greatest extended guitar solos of all time. It's a testament to the ability to convey intense emotion and soul with just the use of a guitar. It is the centerpiece of the legendary 1971 Funkadelic album of the same name. While Funkadelic had their greatest success with funk hits like "One Nation Under A Groove" and "(Not Just) Knee Deep," "Maggot Brain" is more representative of their rock oriented work.

Here is some background on the song courtesy of Wikipedia.

The original recording of the song, over ten minutes long, features little more than a spoken introduction and a much-praised extended guitar solo by Eddie Hazel. Music critic Greg Tate described the song as Funkadelic's A Love Supreme; the song is no. 60 on the Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Guitar Songs. Reportedly, "Maggot Brain" was Hazel's nickname. Other sources say the title is a reference to band leader George Clinton finding his brother's "decomposed dead body, skull cracked, in a Chicago apartment." Michael Hampton (Hazel's replacement as lead guitarist) recorded his own interpretation of the song in 1978, which was included in a bonus vinyl EP that was distributed with the album One Nation Under a Groove; the cut is also included in most CD editions of that album.

...

According to legend, George Clinton, under the influence of LSD, told Eddie Hazel during the recording session to imagine he had been told his mother was dead, but then learned that it was not true. The result was the 10-minute guitar solo for which Hazel is most fondly remembered by many music critics and fans. Though several other musicians began the track playing, Clinton soon realized the power of Hazel's solo and faded them out so that the focus would be on Hazel's guitar. Critics have described the solo as "lengthy, mind-melting" and the ending as "an emotional apocalypse of sound."

The entire track was recorded in one take. The solo is mostly played in a pentatonic minor scale in the key of E over another guitar track of a simple arpeggio. Hazel's solo was played through a fuzzbox and a Crybaby Wah wah pedal; some sections of the song utilize a delay effect. This style would be revisited later in Standing on the Verge of Getting It On on the track "Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts". A live version with full band accompaniment was released in 1997 on the album "Funkadelic Finest".

...

From 1976 to 1995, disc jockey Bill "B.L.F. Bash" Freeman started a tradition of playing the original full version of the song on 100.7 WMMS/Cleveland every Sunday morning at 1:30 (around "last call"). The tradition picked up in 1987 is still carried on to this day, by Mr.Classic host of "The Saturday Night Live House Party" featured on 98.5 WNCX/Cleveland at 11:50pm. The song appeared in "The Down Low", an episode of the television series House and was featured in the film Towelhead. In March 2005, Father Nature Magazine placed Eddie Hazel's performance on "Maggot Brain" at number 1 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos; the solo came in at number 71 in "100 Greatest Guitar Solos" by Guitar World. The solo has had great influence on some guitar players, Vernon Reid among them.

[Sir Benji]

I know this song. I always thought this was a Hendrix song , I never knew it was by Funkadelic or it's name. This song makes me cry. I can't even listen to the whole thing or describe the feeling. I'll just say that I've never heard anything like it.

[Deleted]

This song is a work of art. I don't listen to it frequently because not only is it so long, but it demands your full attention and takes a lot out of you. But it's completely amazing.

[Deleted]

#63 on Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1970's

Many reissues of Funkadelic’s third album, Maggot Brain, come with an alternate full-band mix of the title track, and it’s a decent enough cut—an acid-drenched, jazz-blues instrumental that’s as self-indulgent and self-consciously trippy as other rock efforts of the era. But on the original version, George Clinton pulled down the faders in a fit of lysergically-induced studio brilliance, leaving Eddie Hazel’s guitar solo to make its nearly 10-minute cosmic voyage almost entirely alone.

Stripped of all the superfluous instrumentation surrounding it, Hazel’s virtuosity shines through, unobstructed in his fit of furious improvisation that wannabe shredders have since studied with Talmudic intensity. So does the intense anguish that he poured into every string-bending, wah-wahed lick, which makes the song the perfect elegy for the utopian psychedelic revolution of the ’60s that was currently crumbling to pieces around him. Clinton allegedly instructed Hazel to play like his mother had just died, but the lonely heartbreak that drives “Maggot Brain” feels much more vast than that, like the last transmission from a man drifting through space, mourning the fucked-up world he left behind. –Miles Raymer

[Live Your Life]

Brilliant.

[Deleted]