Happy 50th Anniversary to Funkadelic’s second studio album Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, originally released July 20, 1970.
The average LSD trip can last anywhere from six to fifteen hours. Most reputable medical sources say it typically takes anywhere from twenty to ninety minutes to kick in, with your body feeling the effects of the psychoactive drug usually for about a day; this includes the six hour or so “come down” period.
By comparison, Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow, Funkadelic’s second album, runs a little over thirty minutes in length. It takes about thirty seconds to two minutes before the music really kicks in. You can feel a little out of sorts after it ends, but there isn’t really a “come down” period, aside from vibes you can get from the grooves. I’ve personally never partaken in LSD, but I’d rather just listen to Free Your Mind.
Free Your Mind can make you feel like you’re tripping on hallucinogens. It’s chaotic and free-flowing in all the ways characterized by early Funkadelic albums, but there’s drug-infused mayhem dripping from every feedback-laden note. Released 50 years ago, it’s about as heavy of an aural acid trip that you’ll find on record.
When Westbound Records reissued Funkadelic’s Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow in the mid ’00s, one of the bonus tracks on the CD was a radio spot advertising its release. You can hear whatever marketing team the label hired struggling for a way to sell the album to casual listeners. “Unusual? Camp?” a strait-laced voice intones, “Funkadelic soul! It’s a new concept by the Funkadelic.” Throughout the spot, he proclaims, “You gotta dig it!” and “Discover a new kind of soul!” (punctuated by reverb), before finally settling on “It’s something else.” That later phrase is about as accurate a statement that you can use to describe Free Your Mind.
Free Your Mind is Funkadelic’s most rock-influenced album. Though much of the group’s early work has definite rock sensibilities, especially Funkadelic, released earlier that year, Free Your Mind could be considered one of the 10 best rock albums released in 1970. The project, helmed by the visionary George Clinton, is a messy mix of hard rock and hardcore funk. But even with all of its jagged edges, the album is an artistic triumph.
Clinton has long maintained the inspiration for this album came from LSD. Much like their eponymous debut LP Funkadelic and the group’s early performances, the mind-altering substance was intrinsic to his creative process, believing that it helped destroy traditional ways of thinking.
As Rick James said in the documentary One Nation Under a Groove, “[Clinton’s] early experiments with psychedelic drugs… influenced what he did, how he heard music, how he heard sounds, and how he felt inside spiritually about what he was going to do.”
Free Your Mind is considered by some to be one of the few “true” Funkadelic albums, as it’s one of only two releases that feature the core members of the band playing all of the instruments. During the recording process of Funkadelic, many, if not all of, the band members quit at some point, reportedly due to financial issues, and session musicians were filtered in and out.
Like most Funkadelic albums, there is scant information on who plays what in Free Your Mind’s liner notes, but it’s been acknowledged that along with Clinton, Funkadelic’s lineup on Free Your Mind included Eddie Hazel on lead guitar, Billy Nelson on bass, Lucius “Tawl” Ross, and Tiki Fulwood on drums. It was also the first Funkadelic album that featured Bernie Worrell on the 88-keys. The classically trained musical genius would help further define both Funkadelic and Parliament’s sound throughout their existence.
Of course, getting the core of the group to record a complete album together took certain, shall we say, extenuating circumstances. Free Your Mind was recorded in one day, while the group was tripping on acid. According to the liner notes in the album’s reissue, Clinton had the group record an entire album while under the influence of LSD to see if it could be done. As it turns out, it can be done, but man, the results translate into an inexplicable listening experience.
For example, the album’s lead-off and title track is a chaotic and disorienting 10-minute epic that takes up nearly all of the album’s first side and about one-third of its run time. It starts off sounding like an alien transmission, as a mix of static, beeps, and tones radiate through the speakers. The song’s “music” doesn’t start until nearly two minutes in, and quickly descends into a distorted, feedback-fueled din of clashing guitars and organ.
With little structure here, Hazel, Ross, and Worrell operate in barely controlled anarchy. Throughout the song, Clinton and crew shout phrases and improvised chants, repeating them in overlapping cacophony. The most prominent refrain is, of course, “Free your mind and your ass will follow… The kingdom of heaven is within.”
“Free your mind and your ass will follow” has become of the most enduring slogans of Parliament-Funkadelic’s lengthy history. More than twenty years later, En Vogue would use it as inspiration for “Free Your Mind” from Funky Divas (1992). While it’s probably their most rock-oriented song, compared to the Funkadelic original, it’s pretty tame.
Though most of the rest of the album is comprised of rock-influenced funk (or funk-influenced rock), Clinton and crew still employ heavy studio effects, making feedback, reverb, and Echoplex delay an integral part of the compositions. “Friday Night, August the 14” is a blistering, guitar-driven track, sung from the perspective of a man who just received his tax-refund and looks forward to having the chance to “buy all the good times meant for me,” including but not limited to “a little pussycat to come and see.” The song touches on a common theme that runs through much of the album: people who feel that they have nothing to lose seeking release from an oppressive society.
The group explores a related theme on “Funky Dollar Bill,” a funk-drenched ode to the pursuit of money, exploring the effects that capitalism can have on an individual and societal level. Tawl Ross sings lead on the track, imbuing raw emotion to straight-forward lyrics, concluding that money will “buy you life, but not true life / The kind of life where the soul is harsh.” Along with astounding guitar work by both Ross and Hazel, a virtuoso madcap piano solo by Worrell makes up the song’s centerpiece.
“I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You,” the only song released as a single in support of Free Your Mind, is essentially split into equal halves, as Clinton and crew solder both a vocal and instrumental version of the gloomily funky track. Nelson takes the lead of the song’s first half, putting forth a traditional love song, as he wails, “I don't know what you been doing, but it's got my whole world grooving / Since we met everything keeps moving because of you.” The second half features delay and reverb slathered solos by Hazel and Worrell (this time working his magic on the organ), creating an eerie and haunting six-minute endeavor.
“Some More” is a reinterpretation from Clinton’s earlier songwriting efforts, as he enjoyed doing throughout his time in both Funkadelic and Parliament. In this case, he reframes the Debonairs’ “Headache in My Heart,” transforming a Motown-esque girl group dedication to love lost into an electric blues track, albeit one where Clinton’s voice is doused in heavy effects. The funk architect’s vocals sound as if they were recorded in the deepest trenches of the ocean, or the human consciousness. Clinton notably makes one slight adjustment to the lyrics, going from repeating “I’ve got a headache in my heart” twice to “I’ve got a headache in my heart, heartache in my head.” It’s the kind of simple juxtaposition of two oddly but vividly descriptive elements of loneliness that is quintessentially Funkadelic.
The album ends with the fittingly bizarre “Eulogy and Light,” where Clinton delivers the proverbial sermon of the damned, his vocals sounding practically demonic under mountains of effects. He thunders over a backwards-masked recording of their version of gospel standard “Open Our Eyes,” a B-side of the group’s earlier single, “I Bet You.” In his memoir, Clinton said he viewed this song as the cousin to “Funky Dollar Bill,” as it reflects the rampant materialism he saw growing in culture throughout the United States. He adapts the Lord’s Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, and “America The Beautiful” into the guiding principles for street hustlers and drug dealers, doing what they need to get by in the ghettos throughout the nation. It’s the perfect demented exclamation point to this jarring experience.
It wouldn’t be correct to say that Funkadelic never got this weird again, but they certainly never got this weird in this particular way again. Funkadelic would find new and interesting ways to be strange over the next decade or so, but Free Your Mind… And Your Ass Will Follow is still a unique achievement. It’s one of the best examples of capturing unbridled anarchy and channeling it into something musically transcendent.
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