Day After Day #236: Maggot Brain

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Hit It and Quit It (1971)

I've already written about the wild and wooly career of George Clinton and his bands Parliament and Funkadelic, but that time I focused on a Parliament classic. This time around, I'm looking at Funkadelic, which played cosmic heavy funk rock (as opposed to the horn-drenched R&B of Parliament). 

Amazingly, Clinton was releasing both Parliament and Funkadelic albums just about every year in the '70s with a rotating cast of musicians, and then touring as Parliament-Funkadelic. For the first three albums, the core group included Clinton, keyboard wizard Bernie Worrell and guitarist Eddie Hazel. 

The band leaned into psychedelic funk on its third album, 1971's Maggot Brain, which features a wide range of styles, from Sly Stone-esque funk ("Can You Get to That") to Hendrix-inspired hard rock ("Super Stupid") to psycho freak outs ("Wars of Armageddon"). On "Hit It and Quit It," Worrell takes the lead vocals, aided by some supremely funky backup singers. The album captures the turmoil of the Vietnam-era early '70s.

Maggot Brain kicks off with the epic title track, a trippy 10-minute guitar instrumental featuring Hazel's mournful wailing. It starts with Clinton intoning solemnly.

"Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time/For y'all have knocked her up/I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe/I was not offended/For I knew I had to rise above it all/Or drown in my own shit."

The remaining 10 minutes features a guitar tour de force from Hazel, recorded in one take. Tripping on acid, Clinton asked Hazel to play as though he had just learned his mother died, and man, Hazel really wrings the emotion out of every note. Clinton faded out the other musicians on the track to highlight Hazel's playing, adding some delay effects. The result is one of the greatest guitar songs of all time, a true face-melting classic.

The song, and Hazel, have influenced countless guitarists, including Prince, Dean Ween, John Frusciante, Vernon Reid and Mike McCready of Pearl Jam. On Mike Watt's terrific Ball-Hog or Tugboat album, J Mascis plays an impressive cover of "Maggot Brain."

Hazel quit Funkadelic later in 1971 over financial disagreements, but he contributed to several Clinton-led projects over the next decade. He died in 1992 at age 52 from internal bleeding and liver failure.

Now in his 80s, Clinton has kept the P-Funk train rolling after all these years with an assortment of younger players. He moved away from the guitar-heavy sound of Funkadelic and leaned into R&B and hip hop in recent decades, but Maggot Brain remains a testament to a supreme melding of funk and rock.