The Outlaw Eugene McDaniels
On 'Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse'
Welcome music lovers!
Today’s essay looks at one of the most uncompromising albums of the early seventies: Eugene McDaniels’ Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. He had started his career in the early sixties, back when he was known as Gene McDaniels, as a smooth pop-soul singer in the style of Nat Cole and Roy Hamilton but dramatically changed his approach by the end of the decade. His ‘Compared to What?’ was a hit for Les McCann in 1969 and documented the precision and fearlessness with which McDaniels diagnosed the ills besetting society and which he would elaborate upon on Outlaw and then Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. I hope you enjoy the essay and will share your thoughts on McDaniels.
Until next time, may good listening be with you all!
In 1961, Gene McDaniels sang of the Lord: “He rolled his big sleeves up / and a brand new world began / He created a woman and lots of lovin’ for a man.”
In 1971, McDaniels (now Eugene) sang of the Lord: “The Lord is mad, his disposition’s mean / He’s travelling the road to mass destruction.”
There are many ways to illustrate the path from the idealism of President Kennedy and Camelot to the dissolutionment of President Nixon and Watergate. McDaniels may be one of the most dramatic ways to do so. His biggest hit, ‘A Hundred Pounds of Clay’ was the kind of pop record that was made a lot in the early sixties. A little stilted, studiously inoffensive and polished with enough filigree to please mom and dad but with enough pep to still get the kids dancing. McDaniels’ voice was appealing, a cross between Nat Cole and Roy Hamilton.
‘The Lord is Back’ is confrontational, relishing the moment when the Messiah shall return, ready to comfort the afflicted and eviscerate the comfortable off the face of the earth. Its’ dramatization of the Book of Revelations is in-your-face and ultimately more terrifying than Curtis Mayfield’s deeply unsettling ‘(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go.’ It led off Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, an album with such potent grooves that it became a fount for sampling in hip hop and of such potent politics that Vice President Agnew reportedly asked the powers-at-be at Atlantic, McDaniels’ label at the time, to squelch it. Agnew soon headed for the exits as would Nixon while Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse has gained a kind of exalted notoriety. It’s a bold, brash and in-your-face recording.
Five years prior to the album's release, McDaniels wrote ‘Compared to What?’ and it was recorded by Les McCann (it was he who gave McDaniels his start). He sings the song’s five verses in a brisk two-and-a-half minutes over a dancing beat. It comes and then it goes. It’s a curious performances not only in terms of how the music and the lyrics are at odds with each other but also that it’s not the version of ‘Compared to What?’ by McCann that comes to mind when thinking of how strongly the pianist is associated with it. That, of course, is because of how McCann transformed it at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969.
Here, everything is in magnificent accord. Each verse is separated by a solo either by McCann or tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris or trumpeter Benny Bailey, providing the necessary space for McDaniels’ words to register. His targets include consumerism, hypocrisy, Vietnam, blind allegiance to leaders, fire and brimstone from the pulpit and a general sense of society breaking down.
A lot happened between 1966 and 1969—1968 for one thing—and where once “possession is the motivation / that is hanging up the whole damn nation,” it’s now “hanging up the goddamn nation.”
McDaniels’ turns of phrases are unique, at one point damning everyone as being “chicken feathers / all without one nut.” He is unafraid to offend, telling of “poor dumb rednecks rollin’ logs” and “tried old ladies kissin’ dogs.” Something is tapped here beyond frustration or anger or even rage. The refrain, “try to make it real / compared to what” seems to suggest a complete displacement from what’s going on, an impression of (and I’m putting it mildly) “what the heck is going on and what the heck am I doing here?”
The existential bewilderment that McDaniels honed in on does not necessarily need an expression as forceful as McCann’s at Montreux. The day before he performed it live Roberta Flack’s debut album, First Take, was released (like McDaniels, Flack caught the ears of McCann). It begins with a stripped-down ‘Compared to What?’ with Flack on piano joined by Ron Carter and Ray Lucas, and sweetened later on with horns.
Over a groove anchored by Carter and his trademark glides up and down the bass, Flack keeps it cool, laying out McDaniels’ polemic with steely efficiency, allowing herself only the slightest of inflections. When she sings how she “hates that love for that stinkin’ mutt,” there’s a slight rise in her voice, reinforcing a quiet yet steadfast derision that makes her recording addictive listening.
‘Compared to What?’ marked the transition of the McDaniels of ‘A Hundred Pounds of Clay’ to the McDaniels of ‘The Lord is Back.’ Outlaw, released in 1970, also charted this radical change in his music.
It’s an album that is audacious in how it takes convention—the smoothness to McDaniels’ voice is still there and the core of the band accompanying the singer is Carter and Lucas—and constantly upsets it—there is an ardent dedication to resolving a phrase outside of where it may be expected and to song forms that refuse the easy hook or earworm melody. Outlaw is music as provocation, challenging the listener to see if he or she is willing to go as far as McDaniels is willing to go.
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On the back cover, he writes the following: “Under conditions of national emergency like now, there are only two kids of people—those who work for freedom and these who do not … the good guys vs. the bad guys.” On the front, McDaniels is dressed like a rogue preacher clutching the Bible, flanked on the left by a skull and on the right by two women: a white woman with a gun and a Black woman with the ammunition.
On Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, McDaniels is photographed in a kind of sepia tone against samurai imagery, yelling. The short note he penned here tells that the “national emergency” has become dire. “We have killed the very earth beneath our feet … yet we still kill each other and speak of the future,” he writes.
McDaniels is an earnest messenger of annihilating catastrophe. On Outlaw, he expresses it forcefully even when he turns to a crooning line on ‘Unspoken Dreams of Light’ that ends far outside of traditional pop singing. Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse perfects this contradiction. In a way, what McDaniels was doing here was a fusion of the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron with early Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. It is a dizzyingly brazen brew.
The album is its most interesting when McDaniels uses humour, especially on the pointed satire of ‘Supermarket Blues.’ The song’s protagonist is stymied from marking a simple purchase of groceries (the implication being that if he can’t buy a can of pineapples, the rest of society's rituals is off-limits to him). The scene goes from him trying to return a can of peas that he thought was a can of pineapples to him being attacked by the store manager and then an old lady and finally, the cops.
Through this comic situation, what stands out is how McDaniels’ lyrics eschew cleverness for directness. Here’s how he sings about that unwanted can of peas: “If I’d wanted these, I’d a’picked my nose / and thrown ‘em in the back of the vegetable freezer.” Or how he sings about the lady who gives him a once-over as she “called me a communist jerk / and just generally got all uptight y’all.” These aren’t artful examples of prose and they aren’t artfully sung but it doesn’t feel off-putting; it is more like off-centre and most importantly, real.
Against this is a stone-cold groove. It starts with McDaniels singing a riff with Carla Cargill against a descending line played by guitar Richard Resnicoff, and bassists Gary King and Miroslav Vitous. It then settles into a pensive tempo with a repeating two-note motif by Harry Whittaker on electric piano and puncutated by Alphonse Mouzon on drums. Vitous and Mouzon—two-fifths of the first edition of Weather Report!
That’s another facet of the album that should turn heads. McDaniels was part of a loose affiliation with McCann, Flack, Donny Hathaway and King Curtis who made albums that borrowed from soul, pop, jazz and gospel where jazz musicians like Whittaker, Vitous and Mouzon were regularly used. Resnicoff was the kind of reliable and adaptable session player that flourished in the seventies, amassing album credit after album credit as did King.
I suppose one reason why Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse was so oriented around the groove is that it gave license to McDaniels to push and pull against its constraints. It adds tension on the release of ‘The Lord is Back,’ for one example, and brings him back to equilibrium at the beginning of another verse. It also acts as a centreing device on the chorus of ‘Jagger the Dagger’ where McDaniels and Cargil languidly weave their voices around each other. It also, and this is crucial, leavens the incendiary and urgent message of the album.
Ultimately, though, it’s the messages that takes primacy since, as McDaniels observes on ‘Freedom Death Dance,’ “no amount of dancin’ is gonna make us free.” Much of soul in 1971 and beyond married social commentary to something you could dance to—the invitation strong to consider what the O’Jays, just one of many artists exploring this kind of soul, were conveying on ‘Love Train’ or ‘Backstabbers.’ Again, what distinguishes McDaniels from his peers was the sheer force of what he was trying to say and his fearlessness to get it across. On ‘Freedom Death Dance,’ he envisions the dancing taking place upon a grave. He portrays Mick Jagger “sucking the source of life” on ‘Jagger the Dagger’ and on ‘Headless Heroes,’ he sees us all as “cannon fodder” who “pull the casket” for the one “who controls the board.”
McDaniels also renders the ‘Lovin’ Man,’ a Jesus-like figure, in idiosyncratic ways. He’s a man who is clearly a threat to the establishment, so much so that there are rumours spread about how he preys on his female followers. But, while McDaniels says “he really has himself in control,” he is also someone who “brings peace to virgins and spinsters” and is a “sensuality seeker.”
McDaniels’ lack of concern at being a provocateur reaches its climax on the album closer, ‘The Parasite (For Buffy).’ It is a searing cataloguing of the wiping out of Native Americans starting with the landing of the Pilgrims. He opts here to begin with the chorus rather than the verse, mirroring the growing horror by becoming progressively more ironic when he sings the beginning of the chorus, “they landed at Plymouth with a smile on their face,” and intensifying the atrocity with each verse.
After cycling through five choruses and verses, McDaniels begins the sixth chorus calmly, even prettily. He notes, for the sixth time, of the Pilgrims, “the Indians greeted them with open arms.” McDaniels stretches out the word “arms” and all hell suddenly breaks loose. Mouzon starts a barrage of drum fills and cymbal crashes. King, Vitous and Resnicoff go off on flights of freedom. McDaniels acts out the horrors he has sung about with moans and screams.
Nothing can replace the experience of hearing this section for the first time. The preceding eight minutes of groove lull the listener into expecting that it will continue for the remaining minute and a half. Here is McDaniels’ final thumbing his nose at convention, the final attempt to get the listener to turn away, the moment that elevates Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse into a totemic and uncompromising artistic statement.
This album is fifty-four years ago but it has something to say about these days. Eugene McDaniels knew what was actually going on. The challenge he issued remains. What are we going to do about it?
I had always wondered if Gene McDaniels the singer and Eugene McDaniels the songwriter were the same person- turns out they are!
Gene hit the top 10 several times during his hit run as a singer, but his only number 1 hit was as a songwriter. In 1974, Roberta Flack took his song "Feel Like Makin' Love" to the top; on her classic '70s albums, he wrote the most pieces.
I came to this backwards. I thought Headless Heroes was kind of a polemic debut. I didn't know it was 10 years into his career or that he was a prolific, successful songwriter. The lyrics seemed to me to be facile in their directness - I see now this is a deliberate tactic. I'll have to spin Headless Heroes again this Easter morning and give it a re-listen.