As 1971 progressed it became clear that Funkadelic - clearly not your average funk or rock group - were going for broke. Their stage act was a phenomenally loud affair, featuring up to a dozen people on stage, in robes, wigs and other outrageous pieces of the costumier's art. Tto those watching it was probably fairly clear that the band were flying in more than the musical sense. Off-stage the various drug habits of the core members of the band were starting to take their toll. Within weeks of the release of "Maggot Brain" drummer Tiki Fulwood, responsible for the irresistible groove that underpinned the group even on their wildest flights of fancy, had left and been replaced by Tyrone Lampkin. Give it another year and all but keyboardist Bernie Worrell would have gone, some temporarily, others never to return.



Yet the album they had just completed was monumental. Initially it failed to make the group's long awaited breakthrough, charting lower than either of their two previous efforts. It has now established itself as an all-time classic, selling many times more copies than on its original 1971 release. So where did this album, which Mojo Magazine's writers placed as the fourth greatest guitar album of all time (behind Jimi Hendrix, Howling Wolf and the Who), appear from?

Funkadelic had come into being in 1968. George Clinton, Calvin Simon, Fuzzy Haskins, Ray Davis and Grady Thomas had come together in the vocal group the Parliaments, put together in the late 50s in Plainfield, New Jersey. Since 1966 they had released records in Detroit, first for Golden World and then Revilot, with whom they scored the smash hit '(I Wanna) Testify' in the summer of 1967. A life on the road followed; something that normally required a sharp-dressed vocal group putting up with the house band of whichever venue they were due to play. George and the boys had different ideas and added guitarist Billy Nelson, who soon decided to move to bass and then they recruited Plainfield local Eddie Hazel as the new guitarist. Before long drummer Tiki Fulwood was added in Philadelphia and the core of Funkadelic was in place.

The new group were younger than the Parliaments, and loved to play it funky and to rock out. The older members were happy with this, and started to join in, wearing more "street" style clothes and partaking in the drugs of the era, especially acid. When a dispute with Revilot prevented the Parliaments from recording, George Clinton saw this as the perfect time to push forward his newly-named backing band to the fore.

After a tentative dip in the water, with a single on their own Funkedelics (sic) Records backing Rose Williams and George Clinton, they signed to Armen Boladian's Westbound Records and started recording the first album. A dispute over money saw the whole band leave, then slowly rejoin as George made it up to them. By the time the album was completed Tiki, Eddie and Billy had been joined by rhythm guitarist Tawl Ross and another Plainfield prot?©g?©, Bernie Worrell, on keyboards.

Their first album, "Funkadelic", would chart in the Top 10 in the R&B charts, and its follow-up "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" reached #11 in the same charts. In the meantime Funkadelic live became a very special prospect. A UK tour to promote the issue of the first two albums by Pye Records saw the band looking like creatures from another planet, but failed to win them an international audience.

By the time they reached the UK their next album was being prepared for release. Even in the age of concept albums and over-elaborate album sleeves, there was nothing like it when it was released in July. The gatefold sleeve housing the album showed on its front a joyous picture of an afroed woman with her head coming out of the ground, the back cover had a skull coming out of the same earth. It is rumoured that the title and the cover were in response to a death suffered by someone close to the band. This unfortunate soul had not been discovered for some time in the apartment where he had died and the maggots had got to work already.

The album's critical reputation rests on its opening, title track. An extended instrumental, Eddie Hazel lays down an astounding improvised guitar solo, that lasts more than ten minutes, over the simple rhythm guitar of Tawl Ross. It is said that the album was recorded when the band had taken some yellow sunshine acid, and George Clinton had asked Eddie to play first as if he had just heard that his mother had died, and then as if he had heard that she was in fact still alive. In a 1992 interview with Nick Cooper, George said "It really is a cosmic song. When we first did it, the whole band played on it, but I just didn't use nothing but him and the other guitars. All I had to do was tell him to think of something sad. He said, oh man motherfuck this, why don't you think of something sad. So I was just suggesting anything stupid thing that was totally horrible... Well, he was feelin' it, wow. His singing and his playing was so emotional."

George put the band low in the mix on the final master and so we have included as a bonus track the 1987 remix of 'Maggot Brain' taken from the original multi-tracks where the whole band's playing is audible. It is a fascinating comparison, showing a clarity of purpose in the mixdown that transcended whatever potions were being consumed in the studio.

However good the title track is, the rest of the album is also an impressive piece of record making. Funkadelic are joined as usual by the Parliaments, a few session singers and musicians, and the vocalist from a young Plainfield-based group, US: the soon to be Funkadelic member, Gary Shider. Shider's role comes immediately after the title track on 'Can You Get To That' which had been released as the album's first single in July. Shider is joined on vocals by Dianne and Pat Lewis and Rose Williams, long-term Detroit cohorts of George and the Parliaments who at that time were spending most of their time as Isaac Hayes' backing vocalists Hot Buttered and Soul. The B-side of the single 'Back In Our Minds' was also on the album. Written by Fuzzy Haskins, it features trombone by McKinley Jackson, whose own group the Politicians, who recorded for Hot Wax, had a definite Funkadelic influence.

'Hit It And Quit It' (a track that fellow Westbound act Bobby Franklin released as a 45 on the label's Eastbound subsidiary) is the point at which we see how important Bernie Worrell was becoming to the band; he both sings it and powers the whole groove with his keyboard playing. This is followed by the awesome 'You And Your Folks, Me And My Folks', with its delirious "yeah yeah yeah" chants. This song saw Judie Jones receiving a songwriting credit, which it has been claimed was mistakenly given for this song instead of 'Red Hot Mama', a song that would later become a single for Funkadelic, but which had recently appeared on Invictus as by the Parliaments.

Side Two opens up with the wild and crazy 'Super Stupid' which has been described as proto heavy metal, but no metal group would ever get this funky. The skill of Eddie Hazel's guitar playing is that although it rocks out, it comes from a man who had learned his trade in the world of soul and R&B. 'Back In Our Minds' comes next, before we reach the album's end cut - the aptly apocalyptic 'Wars Of Armagedon'. This track is in many ways the polar opposite of the title track of the album: whilst that is slow and draws out every ounce of its soul, 'Wars of Armageddon' is a fierce funk workout that features Worrell and Hazel at their most brash and brazen. It is a breathtaking exit from an incredible album.

"Maggot Brain" saw a drop off in chart positions for Funkadelic, with the album peaking at #14 on the R&B charts, though it spent longer than "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" on those charts. The second single 'Hit It And Quit It' joined the first in only just charting in the top 50 of the R&B charts. Its non album B-side 'A Whole Lot Of BS' is included here, and the full band version of 'Maggot Brain' as bonus tracks.

Our final bonus cut is the B-side of the 1972 single by Gary Shider's group US, 'I Miss My Baby'. The original single was credited as US Music with Funkadelic, but the single featured the group with Funkadelic playing much of the music. The A-side was an early take of 'Baby I Owe You Something Good' which was later reworked for Funkadelic's "Let's Take It To The Stage" LP. The group also provided Funkadelic with their bassist Cordell "Boogie" Mosson, before they split. US also recorded an album for Westbound which was never released.

Still, it is the core seven tracks by which this album will always be judged. This is an album which has consistently been placed very high up in critics polls in recent years with Mojo Magazine placing it as #4 in its list of great guitar albums. In that respect what Funkadelic gave in the final phase of its first incarnation was nothing short of breathtaking, considering how close to disintegration it was as a working unit. Their next album "America Eats Its Young" would appear nearly two years later, recorded in several places with over 30 different musicians.

Dean Rudland, 2005