Eddie Hazel

About

Known best as the lead guitarist for influential funk outfit Parliament-Funkadelic, Eddie Hazel was a legendary guitarist known for a style that fused elements of rock, metal, funk and psychedelia. In 1967, his talents were recruited by George Clinton for one of his first musical projects, a New Jersey-based doo wop group called The Parliaments. With the addition of extra members and a series of stylistic shifts, the band eventually morphed into Parliament, where Hazel would first begin to showcase the extent of his acid rock talents on guitar. During "Maggot Brain," one of the band's most adventurous and popular cuts, he takes a 10-minute solo that delves into a variety of psychedelic styles. Hazel's command over his instrument and ability to seamlessly blend genres caused many critics at the time to proclaim him as a 1970s successor to the framework Jimi Hendrix had started in the 1960s. Unfortunately, his career path was cut short due to drug and alcohol addictions, leading to his death from liver failure in 1992 at the age of 42.