Cover Uncovered: How Charles Manson infiltrated Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’
Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain may well be the greatest funk album of all time, and it has a cover to match that lofty esteem. Dark, dystopian and comically absurd, this striking image is the perfect accompaniment to an album that furthered the identity of the 1970s. A few years earlier, the field of the front cover would’ve been covered with wildflowers, now a head lies disembodied bringing forth a slew of questions: Is it severed or buried beneath the neck? Is she laughing or screaming? The ambiguity is part of the beauty, but we can at least shed some light on the inspiration.
We might think that times are dark now, but in 1971 when Maggot Brain was released, in the three years prior, Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, the Vietnam War waged on, The Beatles broke up, and Charles Manson orchestrated the atrocity in the Hollywood hills. The latter wormed his way into the thinking behind the famed funk head in the ground.
It is an album that begins with the opening lines: “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.” Now there’s a colourful intro if you’ve ever heard one.
Despite the absurdity of that opening stanza, there is an underlining satire to it all that the last sentiment delineates. With the world descending into dystopia, you had to seek exultation beyond the faeces-throwing carnage of racism, inequity, the Vietnam War, assassinations and every other element of the atrocity alumni that had circled around the brutalist concrete sprawl of the post-Woodstock prelapsarian death of the 1960s and its pipedream of peace.
Following that intro, bandleader George Clinton instructed the legendary guitarist Eddie Hazel to play as though he had just been told that his mother had died. The resultant solo – arguably the greatest ever recorded – was hypnotic enough that it could even squeeze a Sumo wrestler down the tightest of rabbit holes. It feels like a worming journey through time, space and the ringer of human emotions.
There are those that say Hazel was nicknamed ‘Maggot Brain’ and that the record was named after him. However, countering stories stake a darker claim; stating that the title actually references Clinton discovering his brother’s decomposing dead body in a New Jersey apartment. His skull had cracked open, and the maggot-like folds of the brain were exposed. Whatever the reason, that was the title that photographer Joel Brodsky had to match when he was paired with the model Barbara Cheeseborough.
The liner notes for the album read: “Fear is at the root of man’s destruction of himself. Without Fear there is no blame. Without blame there is no conflict. Without blame there is no destruction. But there IS Fear; deep within the core of every human being it lurks like a monster; dark and intangible. Its outward effects are unmistakable. Its source is hidden.”
Those philosophical words might sound acceptable, but the Batman meets Jordan Peterson polemic comes with one important footnote: “Taken from Process Number Five on Fear The Process – Church of the Final Judgement.” This was, of course, a British Satanist cult. Its founders, Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston, met at the Church of Scientology in the early 1960s. They formed a splinter group and when they married they set up a commune in Mayfair, which later relocated to Xtul in Mexico.
It then spread into the United States and it was here where things got grisly. They set up a coffee shop called Satan’s Cavern and from there, rumours ran riot. There was talk of ritual murders. They had a pack of Alsatians as pets and wherever they ventured it was believed that Alsatian numbers plummeted as they snatched dogs off the street and slayed them. Ultimately, they became linked to Charles Manson by investigators in the Hollywood hills murders and with that, the Church was woven into the lore of Satanism and the dystopian death of the 1960s forevermore.
While these are mere rumours, writer Adam Parfrey argues, “that due to its extreme views and insular arrogance, The Process Church had itself to blame for the smears and resulting hysteria. But the fallout of this failed suit loomed large in the cult’s toning down of its public face, and clamming up in public dialogue about its history.” So, given that this discrediting had already begun when Maggot Brain went into work in early 1971, it is no accident that they feature as a credited source on the cover.
They were a depiction of darkness. Clinton was not unaware of this. He might have been the “party commander” but he was cognizant of why cutting loose was so important. Thus, while the head may be rolling around in the dirt, at least it’s having a fear-defying disco without any of the troubling caveats of cult, unless you count the outer-space tribe of pioneering funk, of course.
