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Further Explorations of Funk, part 2: What Makes a Song and James Brown’s Love of Bridges
Further Explorations of Funk, part 2: What Makes a Song and James Brown’s Love of Bridges
Further Explorations of Funk, part 2: What Makes a Song and James Brown’s Love of Bridges
James Brown repeatedly asking Bobby Byrd if he can “take ‘em to the bridge” on ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine’ was the start of Brown’s fascination with bridges. He’d go on to mention bridges so many times when performing live that he’d soon become synonymous with bridges, even having a bridge named after him.
In 1990, when Brown was in jail and Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Bootsy Collins performed on Late Night with David Letterman, Parker rapped to the judge working on Brown’s case. Among Parker’s series of pleas was: “Who’s going to tell us to take it to the bridge?”
Brown used the term ‘bridge’ differently to pretty much everyone else in music. Why not? If you can invent a genre of music and change where just about everyone working in popular music places their emphasis, you can change what a little word like ‘bridge’ means.
Brown spoke about the phrase “Take me to the bridge” to SPIN magazine in ’88. “I heard someone use that expression maybe 45 years ago, referring to the middle part of a song, and I changed it to mean a release.”
In most popular Western songs, a bridge is a section that links a verse and chorus, or another two sections of a song. It often precedes or is itself the emotional climax. There may be a completely different chord progression, occasionally even a key change. There may be a variation on the groove but that’s likely to be an afterthought. It’s really about the melodic and lyrical content.
Soon after Brown ushered in funk, such trivial things as verses and choruses were largely forgotten. Sure, ‘Sex Machine’ contains the refrain “Get on up!”, but when’s that line going to arrive? It’s not after an 8-bar verse and it’s not at the end of each line of a chorus. It’s when Brown feels like it.
Rick Rubin is a big fan of Brown’s music. On Flea’s A Little Light podcast, Rubin said: “James Brown just seemed like pure essence. It was so essential, what he was doing. I don’t even know if you can call it songs. It’s something else. It was just whatever it was that he was doing, it was like a new form of music, and I loved it.”
That mention of a “song” hints at a popularly preconceived idea of what a song should or could be, and that idea usually resembles something The Beatles may have written. It lasts around three minutes; there’s an introduction, often instrumental, then verses, choruses, maybe a bridge and an outro. The chorus will be clearly distinguishable from the verses, likely featuring a different chord progression and the most catchy lyrics and vocals.
But a song is a combination of words and music. ‘Yellow Submarine’ is not more of a song than Brown’s ‘Bodyheat’ just because the former has choruses you can easily point to, or because the latter lasts six minutes longer than you may expect. Brown’s music was about groove. Rubin, this time talking on Broken Record to another captain of funk, George Clinton, said: “The music that came before it relied on the melody, relied on the words,” but Brown “got to the groove being the dominant element of the music.”
So for Brown, whose music was more about groove than melody and lyrics, the bridge functioned as a variation on the main groove. On ‘Sex Machine’, the bridge is most evident in the guitar playing. The bridge arrives around the 2:10 mark in the version above. The main guitar pattern of just two chords and four strums, with only the third of those ringing for any length of time, is briefly forgotten for a faster and more urgent, high-pitched progression with two chord changes – each strum short and sharp with no hint of sustain.
When performing live, Brown would take the groove-over-melody theme even further. With tightly rehearsed transitions between songs, his bands could make multiple songs seem like one long, breathless piece of music.
A live version of ‘Bodyheat’, performed in 1979 (at 5:40 minutes above), placed extra emphasis on rhythm over melody. Brown’s band have just played a restless version of ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’, and a single snare hit separates that song and the launch of ‘Bodyheat.’ Clinton, speaking to Rubin, said, “James could switch from one groove to the other one so precise that you forgot about the first groove instantly.”
This version of 'Bodyheat' is a relentless exercise in Brown’s ‘every instrument is a drum’ philosophy. The choice of guitar chords seems almost incidental: the playing is about the rhythm, the filling of space and the very brief pauses.
Brown’s snappy “What’s that?” call-and-response counterbalances the preceding lines, which are comparatively crooned. “And you don’t do it ‘cause you know you’re through” – extending the word “through” for more than one beat? Superfluous. This isn’t Bing Crosby. Let’s get back to drum hits.
William Ruhlmann noted of the 1991 video release of this gig that the song titles were “only nominal in what is really an extended jam.”
On that note, let’s dance out of part 2 with James Brown repeatedly shouting “Jam!” Going on 50 years of age, James Brown treated The Netherlands to an upbeat jam that transitioned into a hyperspeed version of ‘Sex Machine’.
James Brown repeatedly asking Bobby Byrd if he can “take ‘em to the bridge” on ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine’ was the start of Brown’s fascination with bridges. He’d go on to mention bridges so many times when performing live that he’d soon become synonymous with bridges, even having a bridge named after him.
In 1990, when Brown was in jail and Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Bootsy Collins performed on Late Night with David Letterman, Parker rapped to the judge working on Brown’s case. Among Parker’s series of pleas was: “Who’s going to tell us to take it to the bridge?”
Brown used the term ‘bridge’ differently to pretty much everyone else in music. Why not? If you can invent a genre of music and change where just about everyone working in popular music places their emphasis, you can change what a little word like ‘bridge’ means.
Brown spoke about the phrase “Take me to the bridge” to SPIN magazine in ’88. “I heard someone use that expression maybe 45 years ago, referring to the middle part of a song, and I changed it to mean a release.”
In most popular Western songs, a bridge is a section that links a verse and chorus, or another two sections of a song. It often precedes or is itself the emotional climax. There may be a completely different chord progression, occasionally even a key change. There may be a variation on the groove but that’s likely to be an afterthought. It’s really about the melodic and lyrical content.
Soon after Brown ushered in funk, such trivial things as verses and choruses were largely forgotten. Sure, ‘Sex Machine’ contains the refrain “Get on up!”, but when’s that line going to arrive? It’s not after an 8-bar verse and it’s not at the end of each line of a chorus. It’s when Brown feels like it.
Rick Rubin is a big fan of Brown’s music. On Flea’s A Little Light podcast, Rubin said: “James Brown just seemed like pure essence. It was so essential, what he was doing. I don’t even know if you can call it songs. It’s something else. It was just whatever it was that he was doing, it was like a new form of music, and I loved it.”
That mention of a “song” hints at a popularly preconceived idea of what a song should or could be, and that idea usually resembles something The Beatles may have written. It lasts around three minutes; there’s an introduction, often instrumental, then verses, choruses, maybe a bridge and an outro. The chorus will be clearly distinguishable from the verses, likely featuring a different chord progression and the most catchy lyrics and vocals.
But a song is a combination of words and music. ‘Yellow Submarine’ is not more of a song than Brown’s ‘Bodyheat’ just because the former has choruses you can easily point to, or because the latter lasts six minutes longer than you may expect. Brown’s music was about groove. Rubin, this time talking on Broken Record to another captain of funk, George Clinton, said: “The music that came before it relied on the melody, relied on the words,” but Brown “got to the groove being the dominant element of the music.”
So for Brown, whose music was more about groove than melody and lyrics, the bridge functioned as a variation on the main groove. On ‘Sex Machine’, the bridge is most evident in the guitar playing. The bridge arrives around the 2:10 mark in the version above. The main guitar pattern of just two chords and four strums, with only the third of those ringing for any length of time, is briefly forgotten for a faster and more urgent, high-pitched progression with two chord changes – each strum short and sharp with no hint of sustain.
When performing live, Brown would take the groove-over-melody theme even further. With tightly rehearsed transitions between songs, his bands could make multiple songs seem like one long, breathless piece of music.
A live version of ‘Bodyheat’, performed in 1979 (at 5:40 minutes above), placed extra emphasis on rhythm over melody. Brown’s band have just played a restless version of ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’, and a single snare hit separates that song and the launch of ‘Bodyheat.’ Clinton, speaking to Rubin, said, “James could switch from one groove to the other one so precise that you forgot about the first groove instantly.”
This version of 'Bodyheat' is a relentless exercise in Brown’s ‘every instrument is a drum’ philosophy. The choice of guitar chords seems almost incidental: the playing is about the rhythm, the filling of space and the very brief pauses.
Brown’s snappy “What’s that?” call-and-response counterbalances the preceding lines, which are comparatively crooned. “And you don’t do it ‘cause you know you’re through” – extending the word “through” for more than one beat? Superfluous. This isn’t Bing Crosby. Let’s get back to drum hits.
William Ruhlmann noted of the 1991 video release of this gig that the song titles were “only nominal in what is really an extended jam.”
On that note, let’s dance out of part 2 with James Brown repeatedly shouting “Jam!” Going on 50 years of age, James Brown treated The Netherlands to an upbeat jam that transitioned into a hyperspeed version of ‘Sex Machine’.
James Brown repeatedly asking Bobby Byrd if he can “take ‘em to the bridge” on ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine’ was the start of Brown’s fascination with bridges. He’d go on to mention bridges so many times when performing live that he’d soon become synonymous with bridges, even having a bridge named after him.
In 1990, when Brown was in jail and Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Bootsy Collins performed on Late Night with David Letterman, Parker rapped to the judge working on Brown’s case. Among Parker’s series of pleas was: “Who’s going to tell us to take it to the bridge?”
Brown used the term ‘bridge’ differently to pretty much everyone else in music. Why not? If you can invent a genre of music and change where just about everyone working in popular music places their emphasis, you can change what a little word like ‘bridge’ means.
Brown spoke about the phrase “Take me to the bridge” to SPIN magazine in ’88. “I heard someone use that expression maybe 45 years ago, referring to the middle part of a song, and I changed it to mean a release.”
In most popular Western songs, a bridge is a section that links a verse and chorus, or another two sections of a song. It often precedes or is itself the emotional climax. There may be a completely different chord progression, occasionally even a key change. There may be a variation on the groove but that’s likely to be an afterthought. It’s really about the melodic and lyrical content.
Soon after Brown ushered in funk, such trivial things as verses and choruses were largely forgotten. Sure, ‘Sex Machine’ contains the refrain “Get on up!”, but when’s that line going to arrive? It’s not after an 8-bar verse and it’s not at the end of each line of a chorus. It’s when Brown feels like it.
Rick Rubin is a big fan of Brown’s music. On Flea’s A Little Light podcast, Rubin said: “James Brown just seemed like pure essence. It was so essential, what he was doing. I don’t even know if you can call it songs. It’s something else. It was just whatever it was that he was doing, it was like a new form of music, and I loved it.”
That mention of a “song” hints at a popularly preconceived idea of what a song should or could be, and that idea usually resembles something The Beatles may have written. It lasts around three minutes; there’s an introduction, often instrumental, then verses, choruses, maybe a bridge and an outro. The chorus will be clearly distinguishable from the verses, likely featuring a different chord progression and the most catchy lyrics and vocals.
But a song is a combination of words and music. ‘Yellow Submarine’ is not more of a song than Brown’s ‘Bodyheat’ just because the former has choruses you can easily point to, or because the latter lasts six minutes longer than you may expect. Brown’s music was about groove. Rubin, this time talking on Broken Record to another captain of funk, George Clinton, said: “The music that came before it relied on the melody, relied on the words,” but Brown “got to the groove being the dominant element of the music.”
So for Brown, whose music was more about groove than melody and lyrics, the bridge functioned as a variation on the main groove. On ‘Sex Machine’, the bridge is most evident in the guitar playing. The bridge arrives around the 2:10 mark in the version above. The main guitar pattern of just two chords and four strums, with only the third of those ringing for any length of time, is briefly forgotten for a faster and more urgent, high-pitched progression with two chord changes – each strum short and sharp with no hint of sustain.
When performing live, Brown would take the groove-over-melody theme even further. With tightly rehearsed transitions between songs, his bands could make multiple songs seem like one long, breathless piece of music.
A live version of ‘Bodyheat’, performed in 1979 (at 5:40 minutes above), placed extra emphasis on rhythm over melody. Brown’s band have just played a restless version of ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’, and a single snare hit separates that song and the launch of ‘Bodyheat.’ Clinton, speaking to Rubin, said, “James could switch from one groove to the other one so precise that you forgot about the first groove instantly.”
This version of 'Bodyheat' is a relentless exercise in Brown’s ‘every instrument is a drum’ philosophy. The choice of guitar chords seems almost incidental: the playing is about the rhythm, the filling of space and the very brief pauses.
Brown’s snappy “What’s that?” call-and-response counterbalances the preceding lines, which are comparatively crooned. “And you don’t do it ‘cause you know you’re through” – extending the word “through” for more than one beat? Superfluous. This isn’t Bing Crosby. Let’s get back to drum hits.
William Ruhlmann noted of the 1991 video release of this gig that the song titles were “only nominal in what is really an extended jam.”
On that note, let’s dance out of part 2 with James Brown repeatedly shouting “Jam!” Going on 50 years of age, James Brown treated The Netherlands to an upbeat jam that transitioned into a hyperspeed version of ‘Sex Machine’.