Fifty Years Ago, Eugene McDaniels Predicted the Apocalypse

Banned shortly after its release, his 1971 album, "Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse," is now considered a soul and funk classic.

There wasn’t a lot to smile about between the late 1960s and early ‘70s: A war raged in Vietnam and, later, a political scandal unraveled the White House. It seemed every day brought new despair to wade through, some controversy that divided the United States along political and ideological lines. In turn, the pastel-colored love songs of the early ‘60s gave way to bleaker tracks about the war and social unrest. In 1971, for instance, the R&B superstar Marvin Gaye released what some consider the greatest album of all-time, What’s Going On, on which the singer pondered societal decay over stampeding funk, emotive soul and majestic strings. It was the sound of a man, once wide-eyed, adorned in finely-cut suits and unfettered by time, dismayed by what the world had become.

Sly Stone took a similar thematic approach, though his album looked deeper within: An answer to the question posed by Gaye’s LP, on There’s a Riot Goin’ On, the funk musician sang of the haze that America had fallen into, using dark chords and electronic beats to impart Sly’s self-imposed isolation. His album was more about texture and mood; on the song “Time,” the music and vocal cadence exemplified the LP’s claustrophobic feel. The beat just sort of sauntered along; lyrically, Sly slurred his way through self-assessments of time as meandering yet limited. On their respective albums, Marvin and Sly surveyed humanity with the utmost diligence and reported what they saw.

Eugene McDaniels was the most radical of them all. His album, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, brimmed with searing real talk, told atop a superb blend of guitar-driven soul, folk, funk and rock. It was a lot, but it was supposed to be; McDaniels, a singer-songwriter who had been a jazz vocalist before turning his attention to ideas of Black Consciousness, didn’t mince words. Shit was fucked up and he planned to awaken everyone. “We have killed the very earth beneath our feet,” he wrote on the album’s back cover. “Yet we still kill each other and speak of the future.” A year prior, in 1970, McDaniels released the album Outlaw, a sharp turn in his discography and a precursor to the political slant his music would take.

On previous albums like The Facts of Life and The Wonderful World of Gene McDaniels, he was respected enough as a singer, but his music didn’t have the needed depth to hold weight alongside vocalists like Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke, both of whom captivated audiences with outsized talent and one-of-a-kind hitmaking ability. In a crowded field of noted R&B vocalists, McDaniels sat somewhere in the middle of the pack, lauded enough for songs like “A Hundred Pounds of Clay” to reach No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, though he couldn’t awaken the spirit with the same gospel-like flair as Franklin or the velvety rasp of Cooke. McDaniels had to take a different road.

After returning to the States from Europe in the early ‘70s, McDaniels had also been frustrated with what he saw as the commodification of Black culture by the hippie movement, and the broader power structure that pillaged esoteric Black talent without giving proper credit. He also took issue with music critics who ignored the art until it was validated by white media. “I’ve heard so much about the great new rock musicians & how they compare with great innovators like Ornette Coleman, Tony Williams, Archie Shepp, Herbie Hancock, etc.,” he wrote in a 1968 journal entry repurposed as liner notes for the Headless Heroes reissue. “I know that when the white boys can play the truly contemporary music -they will! & then the new jazz will be the new discovery of, by & for white consumption.”

He even dissed the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger on “Jagger the Dagger,” an album standout that later found new life in sampled form on rap group A Tribe Called Quest’s debut LP, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. On it, he accused Jagger of appropriating Black music to line his own pockets; meanwhile, Black musicians — ignored and underpaid — are pumped for ideas without reaping financial benefits. McDaniels was fed up with the status quo and wanted to shake the infrastructure. And he did just that.

From the cover art, which caught McDaniels mid-primal scream, to the protagonist’s dissection of colonization and collective apathy, there was much to unpack within the album’s lean 38-minute runtime. On “Lovin’ Man,” he seems to dissect what he considered the hypocrisy of Christians — that they follow Jesus Christ yet allow the mistreatment of minorities by police. My ear always goes to “Freedom Death Dance,” a B-side ballad where McDaniels chides listeners for disregarding widespread societal challenges to protect their own peace. He wants us to sit with the anguish, not look away as if they’re not there. “Gather ‘round the riots,” he implores, “gather ‘round the murders.” The message still resonates some 50 years later: Though a ceasefire is in place, we mourn the senseless loss of life in Gaza over the past year.

The track is one long quotable that’s only heightened by the band’s surging arrangement:

Everybody says we should ignore

The graves we dance upon

But I've really got news for you

There's no amount of dancing we can do

That will ban the bomb

Feed the starving children

Bring justice and equality to you and me

No amount of dancing

ls gonna make us free

I also can’t help but think of the pandemic and all the lives lost to Covid-19. In our rush to get back to normal, I consider those who didn’t make it, and I mourn just a little. As I contemplate the thousands of people who won’t even see this day, I also think of those abroad and those in Los Angeles, whose homes were reduced to rubble following recent wildfires, and those who have to find some semblance of peace while maintaining the ebb and flow of life.

The album concluded with “The Parasite (For Buffy),” a 10-minute epic where McDaniels sang of the mass murdering of Native Americans by white settlers. “They landed at Plymouth with a smile on the face,” he coos at the beginning. “They said, ‘We’re your brothers from a faraway place.’” From there, McDaniels tells the full story in exhausting detail, giving no grace to the colonizers. “In came the religions, the liquor, and the guns,” he continued, the music behind him growing more aggressive. “They claimed to be good guys/Yeah, but they acted like huns.” The song ends with a vigorous free jazz breakdown; McDaniels screams wildly as the composition spirals out of control. As the music fades, we hear spine-chilling yelps, frenetic bass and cascading drum cymbals.

Following the album’s release, then-Vice President Spiro Agnew reportedly called Atlantic Records to complain about the content, thus ending the LP’s promotion. Undeterred, McDaniels kept working with singer Roberta Flack, writing or co-writing a handful of songs on her 1975 album Feel Like Makin’ Love. Time has been kind to Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. It’s now considered a holy grail record, coveted by the likes of De La Soul, Beastie Boys and Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson. Yet back then, McDaniels simply wanted to say something honest and forthright, no matter how the establishment felt. Where others were slightly nonthreatening, McDaniels forcefully grabbed your shoulders and shouted in your face. He didn’t sugarcoat the truth, and we’re better for it.