Spare a thought for George Brown. A stalwart member of Kool And the Gang – he co-founded the funk and disco legends back in 1964. The drummer had spent twenty years working on a solo album. But sadly, he never got to see its release – he died last November of lung cancer before he could get the project over the line.
The record, Where I’m Coming From, is now being released posthumously. His widow Hanh Brown explained the record is her late husband's "message to the world" and it means a lot to her and their family.
She said in a statement: "George had this album going on for the last 20 years of his life. It stems from encouragement of the people that mean so much to him, who encouraged him to work on his own solo, because he was a very gifted artist, not just with the band or being the superstar that he is, he had so much inside of him that he wanted to get out.”
“You never know what the future holds and this is something he wanted to do on his own. It’s George’s creativity side, and it means a lot...It’s his message, to let the world know how he feels about all the things that’s going on in the world. It deeply affected him, all the turmoil that’s going on in the world and everything else. So it truly means a lot to him and all of us.”
Some albums just take a long time. Last year Peter Gabriel released i/o, his first album for two decades, though of course during that time he had also worked on other projects. It took Kevin Shields 22 years to get around to releasing My Bloody Valentine’s follow up to Loveless, but even that pales in comparison to Brian Wilson who finally got Smile out of his system in 2004, 37 years after it was first supposed to be released, in 1967.
At least those musicians had the satisfaction of seeing a finished copy of their magnum opera (it’s the plural of opus, y’see). Brown’s family now hope that the 16-track record will help fans learn more about their father.
His son Jorge Brown has written a foreword for the album, in which he says: “Dad always said, ‘Good songs tell a story.’ Heartache, pain, loss, joy, excitement, happiness - Dad experienced it all, which meant he had stories, many stories, to tell... His perspectives on the world were hard-won and well-earned, and he believed in fixing what’s been broken for so long.”
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