Frankenstein

They named it “Frankenstein” because they built it out of dead pieces. Edgar Winter and his band recorded a long jam session, then took the tape into the editing room, cut it apart, and spliced it back together. A monster assembled from spare parts.

It was never meant to be a single. Nearly five minutes long, no vocals — it broke every rule radio had in 1973. The groove was relentless, the synthesizer howled, and the whole thing was audacious enough that people couldn’t stop listening. It went to number one. An instrumental, in the age of disco and soft rock. Explain that.

Edgar Winter plays multiple keyboards, saxophone, and drums on this track, sometimes switching instruments mid-take. In the live footage he straps an ARP synthesizer across his body like a guitar, hunched over it, pulling out sounds that shouldn’t be possible from it. He was possessed.

The structure is the part that stays with me. It doesn’t develop. It lurches from section to section, each part unrelated to the last. The funk breakdown gives way to a hard rock riff gives way to a synthesizer freakout. There’s no narrative logic to any of it. Just energy.

That’s what makes it Frankenstein. It shouldn’t be alive. The pieces don’t fit. They came from a jam that was cut apart and stitched back together, and there’s no reason the seams should hold.

And yet when the electricity hits, it gets up and walks.