Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
Funkadelic
Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow is the second studio album by Funkadelic, released on July 20, 1970, through Westbound Records. As George Clinton famously described it, the record was conceived as an experiment to "see if we can cut a whole album while we're all tripping on acid," and the result is exactly what you might expect: a dense, feedback-saturated, psychedelic funk odyssey that sits somewhere between the Temptations, MC5, and Jimi Hendrix. According to Clinton's 2014 memoir, the album dealt with "issues of social control, self-awareness, and the failure of intellectuals to connect their utopian philosophies to what was actually happening on the street," and it was recorded almost entirely on LSD — something you can hear in every distorted, reverb-soaked, chaotically panned note. It was also the first Funkadelic album to feature keyboardist Bernie Worrell, whose screeching organ work would become central to the P-Funk sound.
The album runs just over thirty minutes across six tracks, anchored by the sprawling, ten-minute title track that consumes nearly the entire first side. That opener is a slow-burning freak-out of chanted slogans ("Free your mind! The kingdom of heaven is within!"), fuzz-drenched guitar from Eddie Hazel, and droning organ, subverting Christian imagery into a quasi-mystical call for psychic liberation. The remaining tracks — including the raucous rock-soul rave-up "Friday Night, August 14th," the blues-soaked funk stomp "Funky Dollar Bill," and the eerie backwards-tape closer "Eulogy and Light" — range from the good to the astoundingly great, with critics like Robert Christgau noting that "not only is the shit weird, the weirdness signifies." It peaked at No. 92 on the pop albums chart and No. 11 on the Black Albums chart, remaining Funkadelic's highest-charting album until One Nation Under a Groove in 1978, and its title phrase became one of the most enduring slogans in the entire Parliament-Funkadelic canon.
Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
Funkadelic
Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow is the second studio album by Funkadelic, released on July 20, 1970, through Westbound Records. As George Clinton famously described it, the record was conceived as an experiment to "see if we can cut a whole album while we're all tripping on acid," and the result is exactly what you might expect: a dense, feedback-saturated, psychedelic funk odyssey that sits somewhere between the Temptations, MC5, and Jimi Hendrix. According to Clinton's 2014 memoir, the album dealt with "issues of social control, self-awareness, and the failure of intellectuals to connect their utopian philosophies to what was actually happening on the street," and it was recorded almost entirely on LSD — something you can hear in every distorted, reverb-soaked, chaotically panned note. It was also the first Funkadelic album to feature keyboardist Bernie Worrell, whose screeching organ work would become central to the P-Funk sound.
The album runs just over thirty minutes across six tracks, anchored by the sprawling, ten-minute title track that consumes nearly the entire first side. That opener is a slow-burning freak-out of chanted slogans ("Free your mind! The kingdom of heaven is within!"), fuzz-drenched guitar from Eddie Hazel, and droning organ, subverting Christian imagery into a quasi-mystical call for psychic liberation. The remaining tracks — including the raucous rock-soul rave-up "Friday Night, August 14th," the blues-soaked funk stomp "Funky Dollar Bill," and the eerie backwards-tape closer "Eulogy and Light" — range from the good to the astoundingly great, with critics like Robert Christgau noting that "not only is the shit weird, the weirdness signifies." It peaked at No. 92 on the pop albums chart and No. 11 on the Black Albums chart, remaining Funkadelic's highest-charting album until One Nation Under a Groove in 1978, and its title phrase became one of the most enduring slogans in the entire Parliament-Funkadelic canon.