Hazel's Lament

Expressing grief through sound

Art, for me, is about expression and visual & emotional communication. It helps us to gain a better understanding of ourselves and the human condition.

Music that has made the most profound impact on me is songs that are thought-provoking, full of emotion, expressive energy, or a sense of wonder and mystery. This connection is what I look for in all art forms. Art stimulates my soul and provides meaning to emotions that I feel but may struggle to express. It makes me feel less alone when the world is dark. Art makes me feel alive, present, and connected with myself and the world. 

I respond best to works of art having a level of raw honesty coming from deep within the heart and soul of the artist. Art can be technically brilliant, but art lacking soul will never register as deep. The question and challenge for any artist are how best to convey honest emotion in a painting, dance, film, literature, or music. 

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Grief is one of the most painful and complex emotions we feel. The struggle and pain that one experiences when grieving are hard to process. It’s an emotion that can consume you into a dark abyss. I experienced real grief for the first time in 2010 when my sister passed away. I found myself in a state of numbness and disbelief. Fourteen years later, only now can I recognize that grief is layered and multifaceted. Over the years, I have attempted to peel back the layers to help come to terms with her passing and to try and find inner peace with her loss. Music has always been a go-to for me, and in my darkest days of grief, I found solace through songs. While the pain may ease with time, finding comfort through art helps make the grieving process more tolerable. 

Throughout the History of Art - death, grief, and mourning are familiar themes with artists. But how does one express the heartache and suffering of losing somebody using only sound? 

"I told him to play like his mother had died, to picture that day, what he would feel, how he would make sense of his life, how he would take a measure of everything that was inside him and let it out through his guitar." ¹

So goes the story behind the recording of Funkadelic’s legendary title track off their 1971 album, Maggot Brain.  While heavily under the influence of LSD, George Clinton asking guitarist Eddie Hazel to create an elegy for his dead mother is now the stuff of legend. Depending on what you read, the details may vary, but they all circle back to Hazel high on acid, lamenting hearing that his mother had died.

Fifty-three years later, Maggot Brain is now considered a classic and has inspired countless musicians and songs. So much ink has already been spilled on this song that I won’t rehash what one can find online. Art and grief are also so personal that we all have differing thoughts and feelings as we experience them. 

For me, Maggot Brain is the most preeminent and life-affirming guitar solo committed to tape. It’s a sprawling 10-minute instrumental that never wears out its welcome, nor is it in danger of becoming self-indulgent. Instead, listeners embark on a sonic voyage through a landscape that appears as sparse and eerie as a Yves Tanguy painting. It’s empty, unsettling and lonely. As you listen, it’s clear it’s just us in this barren landscape. It feels uncanny and nightmarish, yet at the same time, it exudes a sense of warm peacefulness. Eddie Hazel is our guide and navigator, taking us on his contemplative ten-minute trip through emotional turmoil with stunningly poetic beauty.

Jours de Lenteur by Yves Tanguy (1937)

Incredibly captured in one take, Hazel masterfully sculpts sound with his guitar using his wah and fuzz with extraordinary effect. Clinton would later fade the rest of the band out in the final mix to highlight Hazel’s guitar and drenched it several times through an Echoplex tape delay to achieve its haunting effect. 

I first heard Maggot Brain as a rite of teenage passage. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, our local FM radio station, WMMS 100.7, would play the song every Sunday at 1:30 am before going off the air. Despite not knowing what I was about to experience, I was hooked immediately upon hearing Clinton’s strange opening spoken words that set the scene.

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.

My friends and I soon made it a weekly late-night pilgrimage to be by the radio to listen to the song’s 10+ minutes in its entirety. In those days, before the many distractions we have now, we would sit in stunned silence and let the music wash over us. We absorbed every note while eagerly awaiting the song's minimal and freaky lyrics to enter at the 9-minute mark.

Come on, Maggot Brain, 

Go on, Maggot Brain

At the time, I didn’t know the backstory of its recording. I had also yet to experience the sinking, hollow, and numbing feelings of grief. In both body and mind, the song took me to places I had yet to visit. The otherworldly and transcendent sounds created by Hazel provoked significantly more visceral emotions than any music I was listening to at the time. To this day, the cathartic experience of listening to Eddie Hazel reach spiritual and emotional nirvana and expressing it through his guitar can flow through me and make everything else disappear. 

That is the true power of Art.

1.  Taylor, Tom. “George Clinton’s LSD-laden instructions to Eddie Hazel for Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’. Far Out Magazine, November 20, 2022. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/george-clinton-instructions-eddie-hazel-funkadelic-maggot-brain/