Eddie’s Blues
Memories of a Brief Friendship with Eddie Hazel of Parliament-Funkadelic
It was early summer in 1985 or ‘86, and I was headed from my dad’s house on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to band practice, guitar in hand. As I weaved through the usual crew of semi-tipsy neighborhood comedians gathered outside the liquor store near the Metro, it began. “Yo, Slim Jim!” “Michael Jackson!” “Pee-Weeee Heeerman!” It was a mild and generally good-humored hazing, and certainly less menacing than the barks of, “Faggot!!” that often greeted me at the other end of the line when encountering the more affluent comedians of Bethesda, where my band rehearsed in the garage of my mother’s house.
As a scruffy punk rock kid just a year or so out of high school, I had already long accepted this ribbing on my appearance in both its playful and not-so-playful forms as part of the deal. In fact, I had gotten so good at tuning it out that I could barely distinguish the notes from the noise. But this day was different.
One of the men outside the liquor store started walking alongside me, peppering me with questions.
“What kind of axe you play? You’re punk rock? That’s wild, man, yeah! I love music, ALL music! I play guitar, too. You jam?”
And then he dropped the bomb.
“You’ve heard of George Clinton? P-Funk? Yeah? I play with those guys!”
I’ll be honest. There was no way in my mind that this guy wasn’t bullshitting me, and I was humoring him the best I could with polite answers to his many questions. But he was friendly, and the more we chatted, the more it did seem like he actually knew about the music and gear he was rattling on about, and I began to enjoy the banter. After chatting for a few minutes, we agreed to exchange numbers. He was new in town and looking to play music.
“Punk rock, man, I could jam on some punk rock!”
He slipped me a piece of paper with his number.
“I’m Eddie, call me up. We’ll jam.”
When I arrived at band practice, I briefly described my introduction to Eddie, and Tom, our bassist, looked at me in disbelief, “Eddie Hazel!!??”
“Um, I dunno” I replied, “he just said, ‘Eddie’.”
Though I was a casual Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) fan, I was nowhere near the aficionado that many of my friends were, and so that name was as of yet unremarkable to me. But after fully recounting the circumstances of my encounter, Tom and I both agreed this was not likely THE Eddie. It just didn’t make sense that Eddie Hazel would be recruiting skinny white teenage guitar players from a corner liquor store in DC.
Yet, I kept thinking about how he described his gear, and I began to wonder if he was a session player who may have actually played with P-Funk somewhere along the way.
After practice, I joined up with my pal Eugene and headed to the apartment of our friends Danny and Monica. Danny worked at a record store and was one of the aforementioned P-Funk aficionados. He owned every album, including all of the extremely rare out-of-print editions. As I again recounted my meeting from earlier in the day, Danny immediately whipped out the Maggot Brain album, flipped open the gate-fold, and pointed incredulously to the man in the middle of the page, “Do you mean THIS guy?! EDDIE HAZEL!? MAGGOT BRAIN!?”
Staring back at me from the gate-fold was a younger, less war-torn, but just as stoned version of the man I had met earlier that day. Eddie Hazel. Maggot Brain.
What I learned that evening was that, to purists, Eddie Hazel was perhaps second only to Jimi Hendrix in terms of guitar genius (and maybe not second), and that his signature achievement, the 10-minute plus guitar solo on the “Maggot Brain” track, from the album with the same name, was considered the most tortured and expressive guitar solo ever laid to wax. And what I was to learn as the summer progressed, was that in addition to it being his nickname, “Maggot Brain” might also be Eddie Hazel’s autobiography.
So I called Eddie, and we hung out. It turns out he was living around the corner from me and my dad in a small, neatly appointed townhouse. He was engaged to a young woman, a professional, and had moved to DC to dry out, get away from the crowd he was hanging out with in New Jersey, and try to do right by this fiancée. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict and had indeed played guitar with the mighty Parliament-Funkadelic on some of their most important albums. But apparently, his addictions had become as legendary as his guitar playing, and he had long since been demoted from the P-Funk collective as a regular player.
True to his word, Eddie loved music, all music. He was completely open to new musical experiences and expressions. He wanted to hear about my band and my scene, the underground DC punk scene. I played him the groundbreaking Bad Brains and Beefeater (a wild fusion of punk-funk that likely would not have existed without P-Funk paving the way), and he was thrilled.
I brought my guitar over but was too embarrassed to “jam” as requested. Instead, I listened as he plugged in and played along to some basic tracks he had laid down for a Warner Brothers project that would never see the light of day. His fingers were an extension of the fretboard, and he worked it more like a piano than a guitar, holding down bass-like rhythm patterns while simultaneously floating solos on top.
“It’s just the blues,” he would say quietly, but to me, it was a revelation.
The first couple of times we hung out he was animated and interested. But we only really talked about Funkadelic once. He told me an amazing gem about the recording of “Super Stupid”, a riff-a-licious beast of a song on the Maggot Brain album that was equal parts Jimi, James, and Black Sabbath.
Listen to the main guitar solo on that track. Apparently, Eddie was suffering from the flu with a dangerously high fever and could barely concentrate on the beat, much less on what he was going to play. So, when it came time to record the solo, he just wailed and thrashed in and out of the riff to get a feel for where he would take it when he felt more able. But when the track ended, instead of calling for another take with more polish, the band sent him home.
“You nailed it,” said bandleader George Clinton.
As the summer wore on, Eddie became more distant and lethargic, and it was clear he was descending into his routine. One night we had agreed to meet up and go to a Beefeater show but when I arrived to pick him up he was passed out on the couch — unmovable, unwakeable, stoned. That was the last time I saw Eddie in our neighborhood.
Several years later, George Clinton and the P-Funk Allstars booked two consecutive nights at the 9:30 Club (9th Street location). I quickly grabbed tickets to both nights. I had heard that “Maggot Brain” was a regular feature of their set-list, but also heard that Eddie was not a regular player on the tour.
Seeing P-Funk at that time in Washington, DC was just about the most positive vibe you could experience in live music. DC in the 1980s was a majority-black city, dubbed “Chocolate City” by George Clinton, with an emergent homegrown music scene. DC concert-goers LOVED the P-Funk, and the P-Funk loved DC right back. The 9:30 Club had an official capacity of 199 but routinely packed in 500 plus, as they did on this night. Every soul in the club knew every lyric better than the bandleader and showed their pride by overwhelming the PA with a massive sing-a-long from practically the first beat to the last note.
The celebration only waned during the somber “Maggot Brain”. The tune began with its simple blues progression and Michael Hampton working up the initial guitar solo. And there, sitting with his back against the wall at the back of the stage, with his eyes closed, was my temporary friend, Eddie Hazel. Hampton built the solo to the next level and then looked back at Hazel, who remained motionless, eyes closed. Hampton shrugged and then stomped on the wah-wah and took the solo to its crescendo. Eddie was too stoned to play.
The next evening had another result altogether. “Maggot Brain” started with its familiar progression, and Hampton again took control of the solo. But it just felt different, as if he was toying with the audience. The solo was filled with tension. He would build up the melody only to pull it back down to the basic progression. Build and fall. Again, Eddie was sitting at the back of the stage, and again Hampton turned to him to hand off the solo. This time, Hazel snapped to attention, stepped to the front of the stage, and blew the tune wide open.
His guitar scorched and wailed, sang, and screamed. The audience was transfixed, and I stood in utter disbelief. Build a melody, make it sing, make it cry, and then burn it all to the ground. It was pure destruction.
So many P-Funk songs are about liberation and redemption, as their album and mantra Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow attest. But it became very apparent at that moment that this message was much darker and far more personal. “Maggot Brain” is not a reflection on The Struggle, but on the inner struggle, and on being chained to your demons. For Maggot Brain, redemption doesn’t come in this life, but maybe the next.
After the song, the party cranked back up, and the crew escorted Eddie from the stage and through the crowd towards the dressing room. As he came my way I reached out, grabbed his hand, and pulled him to a half-embrace, his eyes met mine, but without recognition. He smiled weakly and was then hustled off to the dressing room. Two years later he was dead from a failed liver.
“Maggot Brain” was played at his funeral. Peace to you, Eddie Hazel.
This is a true story, or at least as true as my recollection. I didn’t get to know Eddie well and have no deep insight into his health, band interactions, or creative interpretations. I can only bear witness to my experience and how our worlds briefly collided at a deeply meaningful time in my life. This essay clearly speaks more about my personal experience and interpretations than it does about his, and I would love nothing more than for someone with more insight and love for the man to shed more light on his life and his life’s work. I believe this too, would be a revelation.
