GEORGE CLINTON - BROTHAS BE, YO LIKE GEORGE, AIN'T THAT FUNKIN' KIND OF HARD ON YOU?

Detail from the album cover of Cosmic Slop, painted by the late Pedro Bell

Confession time: philistine that I am, I sometimes skipped the title track on Maggot Brain because I thought it was too slow/a weird way to start an album. And because the stubborn streak in me refuses to go away, I will probably continue to skip it sometimes, but less so now, because I know that the solo that occupies much of the song’s length was played by Eddie Hazel after George Clinton told him to play as though his mother had just died. Which is a hell of a way to play. 

I learned this, and came to Brothas, from an excellent review of Maggot Brain that quotes extensively from the book. I’m feeling grateful to have spent some time in Mr. Clinton’s world. His anecdotal voice and his joy for music of all kinds strike me as uncommonly genuine. And I’m as impressed by what’s included here (stories about drugs, stories about how music gets made) as by what’s omitted (the sort of self-aggrandizement and score-settling that for whatever reason I expect from the autobiographies of musicians). It is very difficult to read this book and not have the impulse to augment one’s reading with dispatches from the P-Funk universe. Here’s Maggot Brain: