View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=JOKn33-q4Ao
The album opens with a spoken word monologue by Funkadelic bandleader
George Clinton, which refers to "the maggots in the mind of the universe".
[7] According to legend, the opening
title track was recorded in one take when Clinton, under the influence of
LSD, told lead guitarist
Eddie Hazel to play as if he had just learned his mother was dead; Clinton instructed him "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".
[7][8] Though several other musicians performed on the track, Clinton de-emphasized them in the final mix so that the focus would be on Hazel.
[3] Hazel utilized
fuzz and
wah effects, inspired by his idol
Jimi Hendrix, on the track; Clinton subsequently added
delay and other effects during the mixing process, saying: "I
Echoplexed it back on itself three or four times. That gave the whole thing an eerie feel, both in the playing and in the sound effects."
[7] Critics have described the solo as "lengthy, mind-melting" and "an emotional apocalypse of sound."
[9]