“Even today, there’s little nuances that Eddie did, and I can get close, but it’s about trying to capture the feeling”: Why George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars never shined so bright as when ‘Kidd Funkadelic’ and Eddie Hazel joined forces on Maggot Brain

The Legendary Eddie Hazel of Parliament-Funkadelic poses in a black-and-white archive pic; while his successor, Michael Hampton, aka Kidd Funkadelic, wears a cape and plays a solo onstage with George Clinton's band.

Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain remains one of electric guitar's ultimate trips. It has got a lysergic energy all of its own. This is funk-rock as mysticism, the sound of Eddie Hazel seeing through the third eye, being guided by George Clinton who – by all accounts – was at the time transcending physical form under the influence of LSD.

The record was tracked at Detroit's United Sound Systems, in late 1970, early 1971. But Clinton was existing outside of time; he was tripping balls. His mind was elsewhere and everywhere else, all at once – at one with the firmament. This hallucinogenic context to the track’s inception brings a whole new meaning to the sentence, “Who’s got the tab for Maggot Brain?”