SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2020
VOLUME EIGHT NUMBER TWO
HERBIE HANCOCK
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
RICHARD DAVIS
(February 22-28)
JAKI BYARD
(February 29-March 6)
CHARLES LLOYD
(March 7-13)
CHICO HAMILTON
(March 14-20)
JOHNNY HODGES
(March 21-27)
LEADBELLY
(March 28-April 3)
SIDNEY BECHET
(April 4-April 10)
DON BYAS
(April 11-17)
FLETCHER HENDERSON
(April 18-24)
JIMMY LUNCEFORD
(April 25-May 1)
KING OLIVER
(May 2-8)
WAR
(May 9-15)
The roots of War lay in an R&B cover band called the Creators. Guitarist Howard Scott and drummer Harold Brown started the group in 1962 while attending high school in the Compton area, and three years later, the lineup also featured keyboardist Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan, bassist Morris "B.B." Dickerson, and saxophonist/flutist Charles Miller (all of them sang). The group had an appetite for different sounds right from the start, ranging from R&B to blues to the Latin music they'd absorbed while growing up in the racially mixed ghettos of Los Angeles. Despite a two-year hiatus following Scott's induction into the service, they released several singles locally on Dore Records (their first, "Burn Baby Burn," was with singer Johnny Hamilton), and backed jazz saxophonist Tjay Contrelli, formerly of the psychedelic band Love; they also went by the names the Romeos and Señor Soul during this period. In 1968, the band was reconfigured and dubbed Nightshift; Peter Rosen was the new bassist, and percussionist Thomas Sylvester "Papa Dee" Allen, who'd previously played with Dizzy Gillespie, came onboard, along with two more horn players. B.B. Dickerson later returned when Rosen died of a drug overdose. In 1969, Nightshift began backing football star Deacon Jones (a defensive end for the L.A. Rams) during his singing performances in a small club, where they were discovered by producer Jerry Goldstein. Goldstein suggested the band as possible collaborators to former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon, who along with Danish-born harmonica player Lee Oskar (born Oskar Levetin Hansen) had been searching L.A. clubs for a new act.
After witnessing Nightshift in concert, Burdon took charge of the group. He gave them a provocative new name, War, and replaced the two extra horn players with Oskar. To develop material, War began playing marathon concert jams over which Burdon would free-associate lyrics. In August 1969, Burdon and War entered the studio for the first time, and after some more touring, they recorded their first album, 1970's Eric Burdon Declares War.
The spaced-out daydream of "Spill the Wine" was a smash hit, climbing
to number three and establishing the group in the public eye. A second
album, The Black Man's Burdon,
was released before the year's end, and over the course of two records
it documented the group's increasingly long improvisations (as well as Burdon's growing tendency to ramble). It also featured War's first recorded vocal effort on "They Can't Take Away Our Music." Burdon's contract allowed War
to be signed separately, and they soon inked a deal with United
Artists, intending to record on their own as well as maintaining their
partnership with Burdon. However, Burdon
-- citing exhaustion -- suddenly quit during the middle of the group's
European tour in 1971, spelling the beginning of the end; he rejoined War for a final U.S. tour and then left for good.
War had already issued their self-titled, Burdon-less debut at the beginning of 1971, but it flopped. Before the year was out, they recorded another effort, All Day Music,
which spawned their first Top 40 hits in "All Day Music" and "Slippin'
Into Darkness"; the album itself was a million-selling Top 20 hit. War really hit their stride on the follow-up album, 1972's The World Is a Ghetto;
boosted by a sense of multi-cultural harmony, it topped the charts and
sold over three million copies, making it the best-selling album of
1973. It also produced two Top Ten smashes in "The Cisco Kid" (which
earned them a fervent following in the Latino community) and the title
ballad. 1973's Deliver the Word
was another million-selling hit, reaching the Top Ten and producing the
Top Ten single "Gypsy Man" and another hit in "Me and Baby Brother."
However, it had less of the urban grit that War prided themselves on; while taking some time to craft new material and rethink their direction, War consolidated their success with the double concert LP War Live, recorded over four nights in Chicago during 1974.
Released in 1975, Why Can't We Be Friends returned to the sound of The World Is a Ghetto
with considerable success. The bright, anthemic title track hit the Top
Ten, as did "Low Rider," an irresistible slice of Latin funk that
became the group's first (and only) R&B chart-topper, and still
stands as their best-known tune. 1976 brought the release of a
greatest-hits package featuring the new song "Summer," which actually
turned out to be War's final Top Ten pop hit; the same year, Oskar released his first solo album, backed by members of Santana. A double-LP compilation of jams and instrumentals appeared on the Blue Note jazz label in 1977, under the title Platinum Jazz;
it quickly became one of the best-selling albums in Blue Note history,
and produced an R&B-chart smash with an edited version of "L.A.
Sunshine."
Yet disco was beginning to threaten the gritty, socially aware funk War specialized in. Later in 1977, the band switched labels, moving to MCA for Galaxy;
though it sold respectably, and the disco-tinged title track was a hit
on the R&B charts, it fizzled on the pop side, and proved to be the
last time War would hit the Top 40. After completing the Youngblood soundtrack album in 1978, the original War lineup began to disintegrate. Dickerson left during the recording of 1979's The Music Band (which featured new female vocalist Alice Tweed Smith), and not long after, Charles Miller was murdered in a robbery attempt. After The Music Band
was released, the remaining members attempted to refashion their image
to fit the glitz of the era, and added some new personnel: bassist Luther Rabb, percussionist Ronnie Hammond, and saxophonist Pat Rizzo (ex-Sly & the Family Stone). The Music Band 2 flopped, and the group was thrown into disarray; Smith exited, and the follow-up took an uncharacteristic three years to prepare. Released in 1982, Outlaw
was a moderate success; the title track was a Top 20 R&B hit, and
"Cinco de Mayo" became a Latino holiday standard. Yet it didn't restore War's commercial standing. Rizzo left later in the year; Harold Brown followed in 1983, after Life Is So Strange flopped; and Rabb was replaced with Ricky Green in 1984. In the years that followed, War was essentially a touring outfit and nothing more. Papa Dee Allen collapsed and died on-stage of a brain aneurysm in 1988, leaving Jordan, Hammond, Oskar, and Scott as the core membership (Oskar would finally leave in 1992). Interest in War's classic material remained steady, however, thanks to frequent sampling of their grooves by hip-hop artists. 1992's Rap Declares War paired the band with a variety of rappers, paving the way for the 1994 comeback attempt Peace Sign; for that record, Brown returned on drums, and Jordan (now on bass), Scott, and Hammond were joined by saxophonists Kerry Campbell and Charles Green, percussionist Sal Rodriguez, harmonica player Tetsuya "Tex" Nakamura, and Brown's son, programmer Rae Valentine (plus guests Lee Oskar and José Feliciano). The album failed to chart, however, and the group returned to the touring circuit. Brown and Scott left the lineup in 1997.
Jordan continued to tour with a new version of the band in which he was the only original performing member. In 2008, War performed a one-off reunion date with Eric Burdon
at London's Royal Albert Hall as a precursor to the Rhino reissues of
his albums with the band, and a pair of compilations. Later that year, Jordan's War issued the audio/video live package entitled Greatest Hits Live,
covering material from the band's best-known era, 1969-1975. In 2009
the group was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but failed
to secure enough votes for induction.
From 2009 on, War
was a steady concert draw, either on the nostalgia group tour circuit
or playing at festivals internationally. In 2014, the band issued Evolutionary
on Universal, its first new album of studio material in a decade. The
set was combined with the additional disc of its classic Greatest Hits
album as an added incentive to consumers.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/war-mn0000191947/biography
WAR
(1969-Present)
Artist Biography by Steve Huey
One of the most popular funk groups of the '70s, War were also one of the most eclectic, freely melding soul, Latin, jazz, blues, reggae, and rock influences into an effortlessly funky whole. Although War's lyrics were sometimes political in nature (in keeping with their racially integrated lineup), their music almost always had a sunny, laid-back vibe emblematic of their Southern California roots. War kept the groove loose, and they were given over to extended jamming; in fact, many of their studio songs were edited together out of longer improvisations. Even if the jams sometimes got indulgent, they demonstrated War's truly group-minded approach: no one soloist or vocalist really stood above the others (even though all were clearly talented), and their grooving interplay placed War in the top echelon of funk ensembles.
The roots of War lay in an R&B cover band called the Creators. Guitarist Howard Scott and drummer Harold Brown started the group in 1962 while attending high school in the Compton area, and three years later, the lineup also featured keyboardist Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan, bassist Morris "B.B." Dickerson, and saxophonist/flutist Charles Miller (all of them sang). The group had an appetite for different sounds right from the start, ranging from R&B to blues to the Latin music they'd absorbed while growing up in the racially mixed ghettos of Los Angeles. Despite a two-year hiatus following Scott's induction into the service, they released several singles locally on Dore Records (their first, "Burn Baby Burn," was with singer Johnny Hamilton), and backed jazz saxophonist Tjay Contrelli, formerly of the psychedelic band Love; they also went by the names the Romeos and Señor Soul during this period. In 1968, the band was reconfigured and dubbed Nightshift; Peter Rosen was the new bassist, and percussionist Thomas Sylvester "Papa Dee" Allen, who'd previously played with Dizzy Gillespie, came onboard, along with two more horn players. B.B. Dickerson later returned when Rosen died of a drug overdose. In 1969, Nightshift began backing football star Deacon Jones (a defensive end for the L.A. Rams) during his singing performances in a small club, where they were discovered by producer Jerry Goldstein. Goldstein suggested the band as possible collaborators to former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon, who along with Danish-born harmonica player Lee Oskar (born Oskar Levetin Hansen) had been searching L.A. clubs for a new act.
War (Rhythm & Blues Group) (1969-Present)
War original lineup, 1976
War is an R&B multi-cultural group that was created in 1969 and rose up to fame during the 1970s. The band originated from a high school R&B group called The Creators founded by Harold Brown and Harold E. Scott in 1962 in Long Beach, California. Within a few years Charles Miller, Morris Dickerson, Lonnie Jordan, Lee Oskar, and Papa Allen became a part of The Creators. The group was racially mixed and shared a love of diverse styles of music as most of the members grew up in racially mixed neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The Creators recorded several singles with Doré Records. In 1968, The Creators became Nightshift due to Harold Brown working night shifts at a steel yard.
In 1969 record producer Jerry Goldstein and Eric Burdon, former lead singer of the Animals, saw the group perform as background singers for Deacon Jones at the Rag Doll in North Hollywood. Goldstein became attracted to the band’s sound and their message of promoting brotherhood and harmony and using instruments and vocals to speak against racism, hunger, gangs, crimes, and turf wars. Goldstein signed the group and soon afterwards Nightshift became War. Performing with Eric Burdon throughout Southern California helped build their audience. Their debut album was in fact titled Eric Burdon Declares War when it was released in March 1970. The album produced “Spill the Wine,” the hit song that launched the band’s career.
The success of the Eric Burdon Declares War album resulted in an extensive tour through the United States and Europe. This successful tour led Eric Burdon and War to collaborate on a second album, The Black-Man’s Burdon which was also released in 1970. After the album was released Burdon decided to leave the group during their European tour. Despite the setback, the group went on to finish the tour and re-record their first album as War.
In 1971, the band released their third album, All Day Music, which included two very successful tracks, “All Day Music” and “Slippin’ into Darkness.” Both singles sold over one million copies and were awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in in June 1972.
In 1972, War released The World is a Ghetto, which became their most successful album. One of its tracks, “The Cisco Kid,” became a gold single while the album itself rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in 1972 and became Billboard Magazine’s Album of the Year as the best-selling album of 1973.
War went on to release its “Greatest Hits” album in 1974 which included previously unreleased tracks that included Eric Burdon as lead singer. As musical tastes shifted to disco, War failed to duplicate its success of the early 1970s. In 1980, the group lost Charles Miller, who was murdered. The group finally disbanded in 1996 as its members pursued solo careers.
https://radiofacts.com/that-time-when-war-shouldered-the-weight-of-the-worldsmoggy-eyed/
That Time When WAR Shouldered the Weight of
the World…Smoggy-Eyed
WAR – a southern California septet – made music that was communal in the sense that while you could completely lose yourself in the mastery, you were more often compelled to add your voice. Their sound was tribal yet nondenominational, connectingto your spirit like a familial embrace. Their songs kicked insight into troubles of the world, empathy for our internal and external struggles, steeled optimism and a freeing funk to shake off the shackles of whatever was ailing ye.
The World is a Ghetto is roundly viewed as both the critical and commercial highpoint of WAR – the crystal distillation of their all-natural essences. Following the breakthrough success of their second album All Day Music which included the serene summer chill of the title track and the ferocious out of body experience of “Slippin’ Into Darkness” (the groove Bob Marley copped the inspiration to later write the revolutionary Reggae anthem “Get Up, Stand Up”), WAR hunkered down in Crystal Industries Studio in L.A. for a now-fabled 30-day lockout, jamming, composing, editing and assembling what would become a mind-altering master stroke of `70s Soul – 30 days to cut a 6-song diamond. Its contents moved seamlessly from outright silly to downright soul-stirring.
The album opens with what would be selected as its lead-off single for radio,
“The Cisco Kid,”largely composed and sung by guitarist HowardScott in tribute to his childhood TV western serial hero (played by Duncan Renaldo). Howard being Howard, he embellished the character with the superpower of being able to ride into town blasting away the bad guys with a pistol in one hand while swiggin’ whisky or port wine in the other! The song is deceptive in its perceived simplicity when, in fact, it is a funky 16-bar blues with Latin and Reggae crosscurrents. Lyrically, it regales the listener with multiple episodes in Cisco’s travels in six catchy, highly repetitive verses, filled in with the group’s infectious background vocal camaraderie,a Greek chorus of harmonica and clarinet, even snatches of Spanglish dialogue. Overflowing with fun, the song actually performed better at Top 40 radio, peaking at #2 on Billboard’s Top Pop Singles chart and #5 R&B.
Next up is “Where Was You At,” a serious admission of abandonment in hour of need made light by drummer Harold Brown’s bouncy New Orleans beat, and keyboardist Lonnie Jordan’s rollicking piano and organ – “real Baptist church stuff,” as Howard Scott describes it. This one was mostly penned and sung by sax man Charles Millerand is eerily prophetic when one listens now knowing the tragic fate Miller met when he was stabbed to death 8 years later in a harrowing ambush/robbery in a motel room. Throughout The World is a Ghettoand, indeed, all of WAR’s albums until his departure, Miller would bring nothing less than the composite, abstract AND absolute Truth to every contribution he made.
That Truth begins in the next selection that closed Side 1, “City, Country, City.”The sprawling 13-and-a-half-minute instrumental that began life as a wistful melody that Danish-born harmonica master Lee Oskar brought in inspired by Bobby Hebb’s `66 Soul-Pop hit, “Sunny.” After WAR met football-star-turned-actor Fred Williamson on Don Cornelius’ “Soul Train” TV show and the band was asked to write some music for his upcoming western “The Legend of Nigger Charley,” WAR used Lee’s melody as the foundation for an audio travelogue that would mirror Charley’s freedom ride through the old west in and out of rapidly developing urban environs. In stereotypical Hollywood fashion, when the film’s producers weren’t offering money nor credits that were right, the band made spiked lemonade outta the bitter citrus to become WAR’s first “Jazz” classic.
Without the confining subtext of the film’s storyline, the evocative instrumental became a movie for the mind. To this writer, the opening of Howard Scott’s tender acoustic guitar against keyboardist Lonnie Jordan’s reverent organ was like the birth of the mythical Seventh Son –a boy destined for a life of epic ups and downs. The harmonica melody becomes the recurring theme of purity and nobility constantly challenged by shape shifting demons and the slaying of dragons set to the soundtrack of Charles Miller’s wailing saxophone lines over a relentless bass-driven groove. Charles’ hot house horn dually conveys the hellish evils of mankind as well as the strength of our underdog’s perseverance to prevail! Then the horn dovetails into a boiling cauldron organ solo and the percussion breakdown that sounds like an underwater pursuit thru Far East Mississippi all the way back to The River Niger where our golden child emerges on the bank: a man…with a stone-cold story to tell in Howard Scott’s now electric guitar blues.
(Note: WAR was not alone in their Hollywood movie music debacle. Billy Preston snatched his theme song “The Legend of Nigger Charley” back, shortened the title to “Nigger Charlie,” slapped it on his Music is My Life LP(A&M-1972) and rode off into the sunset, telling err’body to kiss his happy Black ass! The movie made due with a genre score by John Bennings and songs by Soul man Lloyd Price.)
Side 2 of The World is a Ghetto aridly opens with “Four Cornered Room,”the seed of which was brought in by bassist B.B. Dickerson, conjured by the meditative state he fell into the first time he smoked hashish. Drummer Harold Brown handles the spoken word offering early in the piece, B.B. sings the verses while the background soul shouting came from keyboardist Lonnie Jordan. Engineer Chris Huston used a lot of phasing on the track, lending a hazy, somewhat spooky vibe to the music (especially Lee Oskar’s mournful harmonica ad libs) and WAR’s signature unison/harmony vocals (most terrifyingly the “zoom-Zoom-ZOOOOOM” line). The ringing gong was a recurring WAR effect dating back to their first album Eric Burdon Declares “WAR” which boasted the psychedelic effect of a gong being struck, allowing the sound to slowly dissipate in real time to silence. Then the tape was played backwards, growing louder until it exploded at the original striking point leading into the street corner ballad “You’re No Stranger.” “Four Cornered Room” is a headphone masterpiece about climbing inside one’s own mind for a clearer understanding of his/her “higher” inner self.
This leads into the centerpiece/title track “The World is a Ghetto,” a concept and lyric brought in by Percussionist Papa Dee Allen which was essentially that all people on the planet have the same basic desires and struggles regardless of race, culture or economic status. B.B. Dickerson sings this one with passion and connection unparalleled. Matching him emotion for emotion, again, is the peerless Charles Miller on tenor saxophone. Miller, a June 2 Gemini who practiced his woodwinds and other instruments faithfully 5 hours a day, never merely blew his tenor sax.He breathed through it…a circular, lyrical approach that made his sound another “voice” within the group. Also happening on this recording are two things: Charles overdubbing subtle answers to his own solo in the track, plus engineer Chris Huston panning between one take of a solo with another, sculpting one of the greatest saxophone statements ever recorded – as singular and brilliant in its genius as a Charlie Parker or John Coltrane solo. SO much emotion and blues flow from the horn as Charles animates every word of the lyric into musical form – soft, long-winding lines like the wonder of looking at the sky starry-eyed to crying in the night (more howling at the moon) teary-eyed. Stopping time to build and subside, the solo is a story within the story…Charles Miller had been wailing such profound musical statements since his “Mr. Charlie” solo within the “Blues For Memphis Slim / Mother Earth” suite on their debut,Eric Burdon Declares “WAR.”
Fittingly, “The World is a Ghetto” was covered by jazz legends James Moody (hauntingly on flute) and pianist Ahmad Jamal (who, in tandem with arranger Richard Evans, integrated elements from his own classic “Poinciana”). Guitarist George Benson bumped up the tempo on his to make it a more driving yet no less blues-based rumination. When WAR morphed into it’s The Music Band incarnation in the `80s, they picked up on G.B.’s tip and rocked it faster, too. In 2017, Lowrider Band (the name Howard Scott, Harold Brown and Lee Oskar now tour and record under due to ongoing litigation) perform “The World is a Ghetto” with current saxophonist Lance Ellis taking a fiery solo that builds to a shattering climax only to be handed off to Lee Oskar on harmonica who takes it to Pluto – a beautiful new arrangement that extends the legacy with poignance and glory.
Additionally, vocalists Phil Perry and Will Downing cut club covers. And hardcore Houston rap trio Geto Boys covered it with a funk reggae flip. Unlike “The Cisco Kid” which did better on the Pop chart, a severe radio edit of WAR’s “The World is a Ghetto” hit Black listeners in a deep-deep place, peaking #3 R&B, #7 Pop.
The riveting album cover art work for The World is a Ghetto was created by Howard Miller (no relation to Charles) from a sketch by Lee Oskar (who doubled as Art Designer for most of WAR’s album packages) brilliantly encapsulated the statement being made within the lyrics. The smoggy L.A. street scene depicts everyday people on the avenue and behind windowsills rapping, eating, fussin’, lovin’ and otherwise getting through the day the best they can…including the wary,well-to-do Black man whose Rolls Royce has the misfortune of catching a flat tire in the hood. That brother, his ride and his chauffeur are the only elements in color on this otherwise blue-tinted black & white painting, yet his blues are the same blues as everybody else’s. This gets to the essence not only what this song and album are about but WAR as a manifestation of it. We are One and The Same.
Still, in all its too often underappreciated conceptual depth, WAR was always good for a WTF moment on its LPs. On The World is a Ghetto, that ditty is “Beetles in the Bog” which closes an otherwise mind-blowing album on a confounding and quizzical note. This oddity was brought in by Lee with lyrics penned by his then-wife Keri and feels like a folk song – from what “folk” only they could tell you!The music takes this listener to a crackling campfire in a clearing surrounded by thick forest as darkness falls upon the land and spirits are awakened to get buck wild and free to the soundtrack of a fevered gypsy round rumpus. Adding tropical color is the rare novel WAR inclusion of Caribbean steel pans gayly ringing in the backdrop. Moral: All WAR parties come to a carnivalesque conclusion! WAR would take you to deepest darkest truths but always leave you with light and hope.
WAR’s The World is a Ghetto reached #1 and was on the chart for 68 weeks in industry Bible Billboard Magazine which also named it Album of the Year. It sold over 3 million copies. This month – November 2017 – marks the 45th anniversary of its milestone release.
I leave the last word to one of my greatest musical heroes, Charles Miller, quoted from an interview within the new book “Slippin’ Out of Darkness: The Story of WAR”:
“…what he had in mind when we chose (WAR) as a name for our group was the fact that ‘war’ has deeper, more universally pertinent meanings – the personal and exterior forms of violence we have all felt…the internal, emotional war raging within us…personal, spiritual war…wars of mental and spiritual nature(s) which are personal and idealistic.”
(The writer dedicates this essay to the 27th wedding anniversary of Howard & Jennifer Scott, the memories of Sylvester “Papa Dee” Allen and Charles Miller, and in homage to the 2017 transitions of L.A.-based percussionists Darrell Harris and Bobby Matos. Respect and Love.)
WAR – The World is a Ghetto (United Artists – 1972)
by A. Scott Galloway
“To us, the whole concept of the musical idol and the fan has become passé’. We are street people…our music often comes from the street level. It’s an extension of The People and those people identify most heavily with us.The Music is Us and We are The Music. We are simply doing what every musician really wants to do…drawing our music from everything about us.” --Sylvester “Papa Dee” AllenIf Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” in 1971 was the eternal QUESTION about the state of the planet and human relations – scored to a lush celestial soundtrack of rhythm, strings and chorus – WAR’s “The World is a Ghetto” from the following year, 1972,was the eternal ANSWER – a stark statement of universal truth set to music that felt like a hazy shade of sundown. The song was an equalizer – a musical lighthouse of earth blues wisdom that struck a mystic nerve for a pan cultural constituency. And in its full uncut 10:10 glory as the centerpiece and title track of the band’s third album (fifth if you include the two they recorded in collaboration with English rocker Eric Burdon), it was a unifying, moody blues masterpiece brewed from a gumbo of gospel organ, psychedelic guitars, urban horror tenor jazz, Amen corner harmonica and a “smmfh” bottom of have mercy bass, drums and percussion – a sound and a vibration only WAR – known in an earlier incarnation as The Creators – could make.
(Conguero y Percussionist of WAR)
WAR – a southern California septet – made music that was communal in the sense that while you could completely lose yourself in the mastery, you were more often compelled to add your voice. Their sound was tribal yet nondenominational, connectingto your spirit like a familial embrace. Their songs kicked insight into troubles of the world, empathy for our internal and external struggles, steeled optimism and a freeing funk to shake off the shackles of whatever was ailing ye.
The World is a Ghetto is roundly viewed as both the critical and commercial highpoint of WAR – the crystal distillation of their all-natural essences. Following the breakthrough success of their second album All Day Music which included the serene summer chill of the title track and the ferocious out of body experience of “Slippin’ Into Darkness” (the groove Bob Marley copped the inspiration to later write the revolutionary Reggae anthem “Get Up, Stand Up”), WAR hunkered down in Crystal Industries Studio in L.A. for a now-fabled 30-day lockout, jamming, composing, editing and assembling what would become a mind-altering master stroke of `70s Soul – 30 days to cut a 6-song diamond. Its contents moved seamlessly from outright silly to downright soul-stirring.
The album opens with what would be selected as its lead-off single for radio,
“The Cisco Kid,”largely composed and sung by guitarist HowardScott in tribute to his childhood TV western serial hero (played by Duncan Renaldo). Howard being Howard, he embellished the character with the superpower of being able to ride into town blasting away the bad guys with a pistol in one hand while swiggin’ whisky or port wine in the other! The song is deceptive in its perceived simplicity when, in fact, it is a funky 16-bar blues with Latin and Reggae crosscurrents. Lyrically, it regales the listener with multiple episodes in Cisco’s travels in six catchy, highly repetitive verses, filled in with the group’s infectious background vocal camaraderie,a Greek chorus of harmonica and clarinet, even snatches of Spanglish dialogue. Overflowing with fun, the song actually performed better at Top 40 radio, peaking at #2 on Billboard’s Top Pop Singles chart and #5 R&B.
Next up is “Where Was You At,” a serious admission of abandonment in hour of need made light by drummer Harold Brown’s bouncy New Orleans beat, and keyboardist Lonnie Jordan’s rollicking piano and organ – “real Baptist church stuff,” as Howard Scott describes it. This one was mostly penned and sung by sax man Charles Millerand is eerily prophetic when one listens now knowing the tragic fate Miller met when he was stabbed to death 8 years later in a harrowing ambush/robbery in a motel room. Throughout The World is a Ghettoand, indeed, all of WAR’s albums until his departure, Miller would bring nothing less than the composite, abstract AND absolute Truth to every contribution he made.
That Truth begins in the next selection that closed Side 1, “City, Country, City.”The sprawling 13-and-a-half-minute instrumental that began life as a wistful melody that Danish-born harmonica master Lee Oskar brought in inspired by Bobby Hebb’s `66 Soul-Pop hit, “Sunny.” After WAR met football-star-turned-actor Fred Williamson on Don Cornelius’ “Soul Train” TV show and the band was asked to write some music for his upcoming western “The Legend of Nigger Charley,” WAR used Lee’s melody as the foundation for an audio travelogue that would mirror Charley’s freedom ride through the old west in and out of rapidly developing urban environs. In stereotypical Hollywood fashion, when the film’s producers weren’t offering money nor credits that were right, the band made spiked lemonade outta the bitter citrus to become WAR’s first “Jazz” classic.
Without the confining subtext of the film’s storyline, the evocative instrumental became a movie for the mind. To this writer, the opening of Howard Scott’s tender acoustic guitar against keyboardist Lonnie Jordan’s reverent organ was like the birth of the mythical Seventh Son –a boy destined for a life of epic ups and downs. The harmonica melody becomes the recurring theme of purity and nobility constantly challenged by shape shifting demons and the slaying of dragons set to the soundtrack of Charles Miller’s wailing saxophone lines over a relentless bass-driven groove. Charles’ hot house horn dually conveys the hellish evils of mankind as well as the strength of our underdog’s perseverance to prevail! Then the horn dovetails into a boiling cauldron organ solo and the percussion breakdown that sounds like an underwater pursuit thru Far East Mississippi all the way back to The River Niger where our golden child emerges on the bank: a man…with a stone-cold story to tell in Howard Scott’s now electric guitar blues.
(Note: WAR was not alone in their Hollywood movie music debacle. Billy Preston snatched his theme song “The Legend of Nigger Charley” back, shortened the title to “Nigger Charlie,” slapped it on his Music is My Life LP(A&M-1972) and rode off into the sunset, telling err’body to kiss his happy Black ass! The movie made due with a genre score by John Bennings and songs by Soul man Lloyd Price.)
Side 2 of The World is a Ghetto aridly opens with “Four Cornered Room,”the seed of which was brought in by bassist B.B. Dickerson, conjured by the meditative state he fell into the first time he smoked hashish. Drummer Harold Brown handles the spoken word offering early in the piece, B.B. sings the verses while the background soul shouting came from keyboardist Lonnie Jordan. Engineer Chris Huston used a lot of phasing on the track, lending a hazy, somewhat spooky vibe to the music (especially Lee Oskar’s mournful harmonica ad libs) and WAR’s signature unison/harmony vocals (most terrifyingly the “zoom-Zoom-ZOOOOOM” line). The ringing gong was a recurring WAR effect dating back to their first album Eric Burdon Declares “WAR” which boasted the psychedelic effect of a gong being struck, allowing the sound to slowly dissipate in real time to silence. Then the tape was played backwards, growing louder until it exploded at the original striking point leading into the street corner ballad “You’re No Stranger.” “Four Cornered Room” is a headphone masterpiece about climbing inside one’s own mind for a clearer understanding of his/her “higher” inner self.
This leads into the centerpiece/title track “The World is a Ghetto,” a concept and lyric brought in by Percussionist Papa Dee Allen which was essentially that all people on the planet have the same basic desires and struggles regardless of race, culture or economic status. B.B. Dickerson sings this one with passion and connection unparalleled. Matching him emotion for emotion, again, is the peerless Charles Miller on tenor saxophone. Miller, a June 2 Gemini who practiced his woodwinds and other instruments faithfully 5 hours a day, never merely blew his tenor sax.He breathed through it…a circular, lyrical approach that made his sound another “voice” within the group. Also happening on this recording are two things: Charles overdubbing subtle answers to his own solo in the track, plus engineer Chris Huston panning between one take of a solo with another, sculpting one of the greatest saxophone statements ever recorded – as singular and brilliant in its genius as a Charlie Parker or John Coltrane solo. SO much emotion and blues flow from the horn as Charles animates every word of the lyric into musical form – soft, long-winding lines like the wonder of looking at the sky starry-eyed to crying in the night (more howling at the moon) teary-eyed. Stopping time to build and subside, the solo is a story within the story…Charles Miller had been wailing such profound musical statements since his “Mr. Charlie” solo within the “Blues For Memphis Slim / Mother Earth” suite on their debut,Eric Burdon Declares “WAR.”
Fittingly, “The World is a Ghetto” was covered by jazz legends James Moody (hauntingly on flute) and pianist Ahmad Jamal (who, in tandem with arranger Richard Evans, integrated elements from his own classic “Poinciana”). Guitarist George Benson bumped up the tempo on his to make it a more driving yet no less blues-based rumination. When WAR morphed into it’s The Music Band incarnation in the `80s, they picked up on G.B.’s tip and rocked it faster, too. In 2017, Lowrider Band (the name Howard Scott, Harold Brown and Lee Oskar now tour and record under due to ongoing litigation) perform “The World is a Ghetto” with current saxophonist Lance Ellis taking a fiery solo that builds to a shattering climax only to be handed off to Lee Oskar on harmonica who takes it to Pluto – a beautiful new arrangement that extends the legacy with poignance and glory.
Additionally, vocalists Phil Perry and Will Downing cut club covers. And hardcore Houston rap trio Geto Boys covered it with a funk reggae flip. Unlike “The Cisco Kid” which did better on the Pop chart, a severe radio edit of WAR’s “The World is a Ghetto” hit Black listeners in a deep-deep place, peaking #3 R&B, #7 Pop.
The riveting album cover art work for The World is a Ghetto was created by Howard Miller (no relation to Charles) from a sketch by Lee Oskar (who doubled as Art Designer for most of WAR’s album packages) brilliantly encapsulated the statement being made within the lyrics. The smoggy L.A. street scene depicts everyday people on the avenue and behind windowsills rapping, eating, fussin’, lovin’ and otherwise getting through the day the best they can…including the wary,well-to-do Black man whose Rolls Royce has the misfortune of catching a flat tire in the hood. That brother, his ride and his chauffeur are the only elements in color on this otherwise blue-tinted black & white painting, yet his blues are the same blues as everybody else’s. This gets to the essence not only what this song and album are about but WAR as a manifestation of it. We are One and The Same.
Still, in all its too often underappreciated conceptual depth, WAR was always good for a WTF moment on its LPs. On The World is a Ghetto, that ditty is “Beetles in the Bog” which closes an otherwise mind-blowing album on a confounding and quizzical note. This oddity was brought in by Lee with lyrics penned by his then-wife Keri and feels like a folk song – from what “folk” only they could tell you!The music takes this listener to a crackling campfire in a clearing surrounded by thick forest as darkness falls upon the land and spirits are awakened to get buck wild and free to the soundtrack of a fevered gypsy round rumpus. Adding tropical color is the rare novel WAR inclusion of Caribbean steel pans gayly ringing in the backdrop. Moral: All WAR parties come to a carnivalesque conclusion! WAR would take you to deepest darkest truths but always leave you with light and hope.
WAR’s The World is a Ghetto reached #1 and was on the chart for 68 weeks in industry Bible Billboard Magazine which also named it Album of the Year. It sold over 3 million copies. This month – November 2017 – marks the 45th anniversary of its milestone release.
I leave the last word to one of my greatest musical heroes, Charles Miller, quoted from an interview within the new book “Slippin’ Out of Darkness: The Story of WAR”:
“…what he had in mind when we chose (WAR) as a name for our group was the fact that ‘war’ has deeper, more universally pertinent meanings – the personal and exterior forms of violence we have all felt…the internal, emotional war raging within us…personal, spiritual war…wars of mental and spiritual nature(s) which are personal and idealistic.”
(The writer dedicates this essay to the 27th wedding anniversary of Howard & Jennifer Scott, the memories of Sylvester “Papa Dee” Allen and Charles Miller, and in homage to the 2017 transitions of L.A.-based percussionists Darrell Harris and Bobby Matos. Respect and Love.)
Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan Talks About Nearly 50 Years of WAR’s Great Music
Bubbling up from the streets of Long
Beach in 1969, a group of musicians coalesced into the band WAR. Joined
initially, somewhat improbably but successfully by British belter Eric
Burdon, WAR leapt out of the radio with their hit “Spill The Wine.” A
string of radio-friendly hits followed, tracks that have gently eased
into heavy rotation and timelessness: “The World Is a Ghetto,” “The
Cisco Kid,” “Low Rider,” “East L.A.,” “Summer” and “Why Can’t We Be
Friends?”
I spoke with Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan, the singer and keyboardist of the band. He called me, and there was the Long Beach area code right on my mobile phone screen.
As the sole remaining original member, Jordan keeps the flame alive. I had a wide ranging chat with him.
Auerbach: How does touring compare to back in the day?
Jordan: Touring today is better because I can see more clearly what is going around me, not due to lighting but due to the perspective of age. It’s not just about fun, I now take my message more serious.
Auerbach: And the recording process has certainly changed since when you first started.
Jordan: It certainly has. Today the recording process has all gone digital, it’s about pushing a button. Every style has its own method of madness.
Auerbach: Do you consider WAR a funk band?
Jordan: It is hard to put a label on us, it is hard to put a library card on us. Tower Records had us in a lot of departments, jazz, reggae, RnB. Universal Street Music, that is what I call us. We covered many categories, which is probably why we didn’t win many awards, because they did not know where to put us. But our sound did not isolate us from the rest of the world.
Auerbach: How did the song “Lowrider” come about?
Jordan: No one else wrote about that style of car. There was a car club song “The In Crowd” by Dobie Gray, before he did “Drift Away.” So we wrote about it, and we had the cars – metal flaked, dropped, with record players installed. We knew the two rival car clubs, The Imperials and The Dukes, we brought them together. We gave the song to the clubs, they blasted the song out of their cars and bam the song took off. We used the car club film as backdrops, no one beyond Albuquerque knew about low riders until our song came out!
Auerbach: And how about “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” I love the vibe of that track, where did that song come from?
Jordan: Like most of the songs, it came out of long, multi hour jams. We’d then sit back and listen to the jams. The song has the attitude of gospel, it’s about a mother telling us to go in the right direction, don’t go into the dark path. You know what? I heard it on a gospel program in the 70s. “Trippin’ into Darkness” is how some people rephrased it.
Auerbach: And how about “Summer,” how did that somg come about? Growing up in Buffalo with those winters, I have always loved that track.
Jordan: “Summer” was actually inspired by New York City, and a heatwave. We never put a city name in the song, we wanted to keep it universal.
Auerbach: So let me ask you about the idea of a digital tip jar, which my brother came up with. What if folks streaming your music could leave a few dollars that go directly to the artist?
Jordan: A digital tip jar is a very interesting idea. You’d have a lot of red tape to get through, a lot of middlemen want to get a piece of the action. I’d love it. But capital gains and the tax man might get there as well.
Auerbach: Do you still get along with Eric [Burdon, who left the band fairly early]?
Jordan: Definitely, we still get along with Eric, and we are trying to get a reunion again, like we did a few years ago at Royal Albert Hall [in London]. We are looking at maybe a tour. You know, in recording “Spill the Wine” he improvised the song. The chorus [‘spill the wine, take that pearl’], people think it is ‘girl.’ But it is ‘pearl,’ that’s the lady’s nether regions.
Auerbach: You have had decades of gigs, do you have one or two that stand out?
WAR plays the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles this summer with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic on Saturday, May 26 at 7:00 PM. They will be joined by special guest Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich + Fussible. Tickets available via AXS.com.
https://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/harold-brown-of-war
I spoke with Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan, the singer and keyboardist of the band. He called me, and there was the Long Beach area code right on my mobile phone screen.
As the sole remaining original member, Jordan keeps the flame alive. I had a wide ranging chat with him.
Auerbach: How does touring compare to back in the day?
Jordan: Touring today is better because I can see more clearly what is going around me, not due to lighting but due to the perspective of age. It’s not just about fun, I now take my message more serious.
Auerbach: And the recording process has certainly changed since when you first started.
Jordan: It certainly has. Today the recording process has all gone digital, it’s about pushing a button. Every style has its own method of madness.
Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan
Jordan: It is hard to put a label on us, it is hard to put a library card on us. Tower Records had us in a lot of departments, jazz, reggae, RnB. Universal Street Music, that is what I call us. We covered many categories, which is probably why we didn’t win many awards, because they did not know where to put us. But our sound did not isolate us from the rest of the world.
Auerbach: How did the song “Lowrider” come about?
Jordan: No one else wrote about that style of car. There was a car club song “The In Crowd” by Dobie Gray, before he did “Drift Away.” So we wrote about it, and we had the cars – metal flaked, dropped, with record players installed. We knew the two rival car clubs, The Imperials and The Dukes, we brought them together. We gave the song to the clubs, they blasted the song out of their cars and bam the song took off. We used the car club film as backdrops, no one beyond Albuquerque knew about low riders until our song came out!
Auerbach: And how about “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” I love the vibe of that track, where did that song come from?
Jordan: Like most of the songs, it came out of long, multi hour jams. We’d then sit back and listen to the jams. The song has the attitude of gospel, it’s about a mother telling us to go in the right direction, don’t go into the dark path. You know what? I heard it on a gospel program in the 70s. “Trippin’ into Darkness” is how some people rephrased it.
Auerbach: And how about “Summer,” how did that somg come about? Growing up in Buffalo with those winters, I have always loved that track.
Jordan: “Summer” was actually inspired by New York City, and a heatwave. We never put a city name in the song, we wanted to keep it universal.
Auerbach: So let me ask you about the idea of a digital tip jar, which my brother came up with. What if folks streaming your music could leave a few dollars that go directly to the artist?
Jordan: A digital tip jar is a very interesting idea. You’d have a lot of red tape to get through, a lot of middlemen want to get a piece of the action. I’d love it. But capital gains and the tax man might get there as well.
Auerbach: Do you still get along with Eric [Burdon, who left the band fairly early]?
Jordan: Definitely, we still get along with Eric, and we are trying to get a reunion again, like we did a few years ago at Royal Albert Hall [in London]. We are looking at maybe a tour. You know, in recording “Spill the Wine” he improvised the song. The chorus [‘spill the wine, take that pearl’], people think it is ‘girl.’ But it is ‘pearl,’ that’s the lady’s nether regions.
Auerbach: You have had decades of gigs, do you have one or two that stand out?
A real special gig was with Eric Burdon in our early days. We played Ronnie Scott’s [in London] for five days, Hendrix sat in with us for what became his last gig. Jimi took us back to where we started, at hole in the wall gigs backing up Little Richard and all the others. We had met Jimi back in the day. When we jammed with him that night, he played with no special effects, it was all simple blues. We jammed on “Mother Earth” by Memphis Slim for one hour. Jimi went back to his flat and passed away, back to Mother Earth. That is something I will never forget.
WAR plays the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles this summer with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic on Saturday, May 26 at 7:00 PM. They will be joined by special guest Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich + Fussible. Tickets available via AXS.com.
https://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/harold-brown-of-war
Songwriter Interviews
Harold Brown of War
by Carl Wiser
As
drummer for the band War, Harold Brown was part of the vibrant music
scene of the late-'60s and early-'70s that included Jim Morrison, Jimi
Hendrix, and Bob Marley. With War, Harold came up with a distinct and
influential drumming style, and was a key contributor in a band that
leaves a lasting legacy of fellowship and funk, with songs like "Low
Rider," "Spill The Wine" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?"
In the mid-'90s, the band's manager Jerry Goldstein won control of the name, and with his authorization, original keyboardist Lonnie Jordan began touring as War with other musicians. The four other living original members of the band, including Harold, cannot use the name and perform as The Lowrider Band.
In the mid-'90s, the band's manager Jerry Goldstein won control of the name, and with his authorization, original keyboardist Lonnie Jordan began touring as War with other musicians. The four other living original members of the band, including Harold, cannot use the name and perform as The Lowrider Band.
The business side of the story is
complicated and a little shady; especially sad considering the spirit of
unity that drove the band. In this interview, Harold tells the inside
story, covering the Eric Burdon years, playing with Hendrix the night before he
died, the stories behind their famous songs, and where it all went
wrong in the end.
Carl Wiser (Songfacts): You've done other stuff besides just play music in your life, haven't you?
Harold Brown: The band, we actually started together when we were in high school – Howard Scott and I. I can remember just as vividly, Howard's father, BB's (Dickerson) father, and my daddy used to take us to gigs because we were too young to drive. We were doing our first gig in Compton, and we were taking our equipment on some wagon to do the show. It was just wild. So we started back in about 1961, and we made ourselves The Creators. And that was because at that time, all the little clubs that we'd play in South Los Angeles, and then Long Beach and the South Bay area in California, they always said, "You've got to play what's on the juke box." So we would get the records and we would learn how to play those records, but after we played the main motif of the music, we would go right to the middle, we would go into a big old jam session, we'd just start playing anything we wanted to play. We had one rule: whoever's leading the song came back, go to the head, go to the top, then comes back to that main motif. So if we were doing a James Brown "I Feel Good" or something, we'd play the whole thing all the way through, then we'd go into our jam, then we'd come out. We were playing Bobby Blue Bland, Booker T and the MGs... there were so many different people that we'd emulate. I remember Old Man Jeffty, South Los Angeles - we thought we were just as hot as James Brown, because our band was tight, we were just kids - and he looked at us and he said, 'Let me ask you this question: if you were playing here and James Brown was down the street, who would they go see?' Well of course, James Brown. So that's when we started consciously trying to come up with our own sound, not trying to imitate somebody else.
Harold Brown: The band, we actually started together when we were in high school – Howard Scott and I. I can remember just as vividly, Howard's father, BB's (Dickerson) father, and my daddy used to take us to gigs because we were too young to drive. We were doing our first gig in Compton, and we were taking our equipment on some wagon to do the show. It was just wild. So we started back in about 1961, and we made ourselves The Creators. And that was because at that time, all the little clubs that we'd play in South Los Angeles, and then Long Beach and the South Bay area in California, they always said, "You've got to play what's on the juke box." So we would get the records and we would learn how to play those records, but after we played the main motif of the music, we would go right to the middle, we would go into a big old jam session, we'd just start playing anything we wanted to play. We had one rule: whoever's leading the song came back, go to the head, go to the top, then comes back to that main motif. So if we were doing a James Brown "I Feel Good" or something, we'd play the whole thing all the way through, then we'd go into our jam, then we'd come out. We were playing Bobby Blue Bland, Booker T and the MGs... there were so many different people that we'd emulate. I remember Old Man Jeffty, South Los Angeles - we thought we were just as hot as James Brown, because our band was tight, we were just kids - and he looked at us and he said, 'Let me ask you this question: if you were playing here and James Brown was down the street, who would they go see?' Well of course, James Brown. So that's when we started consciously trying to come up with our own sound, not trying to imitate somebody else.
It's probably still Jeffty's Lounge. We
were seeing all kinds of musicians. T Bone Walker would come through
there, Don and Dewey - I mean, we were just right in the middle of all
the blues. We had a chance to go up to the Five Four Ballroom, which was
up in Los Angeles, and that's when we could see, like, Rufus Thomas,
James Brown, Bobby Blue Bland, all kinds of people. But right at that
time, Carl, in those early years, like in the late '50s and early '60s
when we were coming up, they didn't have what they call a race station.
You'd listen to Texas Tiny, and he would be playing Johnny Cash as well
as Fats Domino. A little Willy Junior, Johnny Ace, or Johnny Otis. It
was all integrated at that time, so we were being bombarded with all
types of music. We'd hear Country and Western, we'd hear Latin music,
we'd hear Blues, we'd hear the early funk, the R&B, which was James
Brown and those guys.
So, anyway, right there about '62, '63, when we were able to start driving around, we just started playing in a lot of car clubs in the Bay area. They would have hotrods and stuff they were into, and they would like for us to play. So right about '64, we came out of high school. I had a full scholarship to Valparaiso University, but I turned it down in order to be a professional musician.
Our band was the first black band to be booked up on the Sunset Strip. They had just the Knickerbockers, which was the answer to The Beatles at the time. We're talking like roughly about '63-'64. Well, when we came out of school, I had gotten everybody, we went down to join the Musician's Union, Local 47, but the thing was they were working with Desilu Productions, you know, Lucille Ball. The next thing I knew he were booked at the Palladium and Whiskey A Go-Go. Then we hooked up with Bob Eubanks, and he had a bunch of clubs called the Cinnamon Cinders - there was a song out called (sings) 'See see, Cinnamon Cinders, I see see a Cinnamon Cinder.' We were opening for the O'Jays. We were kids of the National Guard Armories and stuff. I mean, it was like destined that we were gonna be who we are. Then, the Vietnam War was coming, it was about '66 or so. I had my own business, because I didn't want anybody telling me when I had to come to work and when I left, so I went into the body and fender auto detail business. So I always had transportation, and had money – cash flow. So then that way the band, we could go for auditions and stuff. But right about '66 we had an opportunity to go to play the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas, and all of a sudden the guys started getting drafted. But just before that happened we were in El Paso, and that's when Johnny Cash was coming across the border and he got busted with amphetamines. We used to try to buy liquor and bring it back, and the border patrols would stop us and dump it in the Rio Grande. So there was Old Man Fulbright. I used to think he was a figment of our imagination, but since then I've read about him in various books, especially anything involving Clifton Cheniere. He came through there, and he heard us playing. He said, 'I've got a young man that you guys would be a great band for, and he's upstate in Memphis.' It was Otis Redding. We didn't take the gig because our keyboard player was too young at the time.
Songfacts: Too young to do what?
Harold:
To go out on the road. He was only 15. He hadn't even finished high
school. We were about 18, 19 years old. We had a few guys older than us.
But who knows? If we'd been with Otis Redding, maybe that plane
wouldn't have crashed. That's amazing, isn't it? So anyway, all of the
sudden, the guys started getting drafted. Oh boy, Bobby Nicholson, our
trumpet player, got drafted. The next thing I know Howard, him and I are
still playing music together, Howard got drafted into the army. Our
band started getting fragmented, so we kind of like bumped around,
myself, BB Dickerson, along with our keyboard player at that time.
Songfacts: How come you didn't get drafted?
Harold: Well, because I was in business for myself. So they wouldn't take me. Because nobody would run my business.
Songfacts: So if you owned your own business you didn't get drafted?
Harold: Right. That was one of the exemptions. So then when things started falling apart, my business started going down, I wound up in a class in machining. I'm the one that helped show Lee (Oskar) how to design his harmonica, got him started, because I was a Class A machinist. I was doing projects for, you know, like when they're shooting the monkeys into outer space, then they had me making bomb parts for the effort over in Vietnam.
Songfacts: That's kind of ironic. So you actually made bombs?
Harold: They would send you around different parts, different machine shops.
Songfacts: Who's "they"? Is this your training?
Harold: The government contract. Government contracts the different machine shops would get. So you would wind up making one piece of this part, another guy over in some other place is making a piece of this part, then we'd all come together, they'd put it together. Like, we were doing parts for oil drilling. I would be doing the cones, where somebody else would be doing the pipes. Just like module building.
When Kennedy came back they escalated it to even guys that were married, which, I hate to say it, I think we're repeating history. That's another story. But they wouldn't bother me because I was a machinist, I was doing government work.
So we were doing all this playing, trying to keep things together. About 1967 or so, Howard came back out of the military, he was getting ready to take a job down at the Harbor General Hospital in the South Bay area outside of Los Angeles towards San Pedro. At that time they were offering him something like $6.45 an hour. See, as a machinist I was making $400-500 a week in the '60s, and I said, 'Howard, let's try it one more time, and if we don't succeed, we'll go about our own business.' Oh boy, we did it, we went at it. It looked like we were about to not make it - I was going behind on my house note, they were getting ready to kick me out, I had three kids, and stuff - and I went looking for a job. This is how fate works. So then, I go up to North Hollywood, Thousand Oaks, and I've seen this ad for a job at some major chain company. When I got up there, they looked at me and said, 'You're in the wrong place. You go down to Los Angeles.' That's where Affirmative Action can work both ways. In my case, Affirmative Action did me a favor: They just looked at me and said, 'You're chocolate, you need to go down there.' So I'm on my way down, Carl – this is the truth. I'm driving, all of the sudden I had to take a wee-wee, and I said, 'I'm just coming to Sunset.' Well, all through those years when I had my body and fender shop, I had a good friend at that time Marshall Lieb. Marshall Lieb was a producer. He produced 'What the world needs now is love, sweet love.' Jackie Deshannon. And also 'Last Night.' He was producing those songs. Well, when I had my body and fender shop and detail, he had Ferraris, and he only trusted me to take care of his Ferrari, because they were show cars out at Disneyland. So I'm coming down – this was about 1967, and I said, 'Let me see where Marshall's at.' Because he was working at United Artists Records, which was Liberty Records at the time, right across the street from Hollywood High on Sunset Boulevard. So I go in there, and I'm looking for Marshall. Remember, I only had about seven dollars on me. They were getting ready to kick me out of the house, I had to buy gas, got my kids at home, don't know my next move. So I go in and I asked the secretary, 'Is Marshall Lieb here?' She says, 'No, he's not here.' My heart dropped. She said, 'But I can tell you where he's at.' So I started driving on down to Jim Head Productions, which was in the 9000 building, which is on Sunset, and it's on the left-hand side just before you go into Beverly Hills, over across from the Rainbow, up in the Whiskey A Go-Go area. I get up there and there's a lady sitting behind the desk. I said to her, 'I'm trying to locate Marshall Lieb.' And she says, 'He's not here.' And my heart dropped again. But she stood and she said, 'You see out the window, over there across the street? The little white house? He's in there.' So I go across the street, I see all these gold records and stuff and everything. I walked in, there's Marshall Lieb on one side of the desk, and he looks at me, and he says, 'Harold, this is Sonny Bono. Sonny, this is Harold Brown.' He said, 'Hello, what are you doing?' I said, 'I'm not doing anything.' He said, 'Wait for me,' so I go outside and I sat down. Finally the meeting was over, and Marshall says, 'Come on and go with me to the studio.' He started asking questions... all of the sudden the phone rings: 'Yeah, Timi. Oh, Timi, you need a drummer? Oh, you got a big gig? Oh, I got one of the best drummers in the city. I'll send him to you.' I was probably eating a dollar burrito, probably at that time gas was 25 cents, so I had put about a full gallon, so I drive back towards Beverly Hills and she was right on King's Road. It was Timi Yuro, the famous Jazz singer. There's this band, and these guys are telling her, "We need cars, we need amplifiers, we need this and everything." Well, I was varsity captain of our track and cross country team 4 years straight, I was one of the top distance runners in the state of California, I was in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, everything, I was a quartermaster, I was gonna be prepared. So I'm sitting there and I'm listening to these guys giving all these problems. So I say to myself, "I'm not gonna say anything, I'm gonna go back, tell Marshall Lieb to call Timi Yuro, fire all those guys, I got a band, we got cars, we got instruments, ain't no problem." Well, I go back and I get there and there's a guy sitting there on the stoop, and he says, "They always take my band." It was Sonny Charles, R&B great. He was just a little guy. I looked at him and said, 'Man, you mean you got gigs? I got a band." Oh, my heart started jumping, he had a gig coming right up. I ran back out of that studio door – we're right there on Sunset, there was a gas station, there was a telephone booth next to the hotdog stand. I called up Howard, I said, "Howard, our luck is about to change. You call everybody else and tell them to get ready for rehearsal tomorrow, and we're gonna roll." The next day I get with Sonny Charles. We had like a 13-14 piece group. I got the guys, we named the group the Night Shift because I was working in the steel yard at night. The singers with us, they wound up singing with Dr. John on that Night Tripper. That's when I got Deacon Jones, the football player, for part of the revue, and Roman Gabriel... that was the skinny, wiry guy that was an athlete. I would sit there, and they would like to be in front of their girlfriends, they'd take off their shirts. I remember old Deacon Jones looking at me saying he'd like for me to punch him in his chest, and he just started laughing. And then I looked at him and I said, 'If I ever have to whoop your ass, I know how to do it. I'm just gonna pick up a mike stand and hit you with it.' And then we can get a chuckle out of it, you know.
So, anyway, right there about '62, '63, when we were able to start driving around, we just started playing in a lot of car clubs in the Bay area. They would have hotrods and stuff they were into, and they would like for us to play. So right about '64, we came out of high school. I had a full scholarship to Valparaiso University, but I turned it down in order to be a professional musician.
Our band was the first black band to be booked up on the Sunset Strip. They had just the Knickerbockers, which was the answer to The Beatles at the time. We're talking like roughly about '63-'64. Well, when we came out of school, I had gotten everybody, we went down to join the Musician's Union, Local 47, but the thing was they were working with Desilu Productions, you know, Lucille Ball. The next thing I knew he were booked at the Palladium and Whiskey A Go-Go. Then we hooked up with Bob Eubanks, and he had a bunch of clubs called the Cinnamon Cinders - there was a song out called (sings) 'See see, Cinnamon Cinders, I see see a Cinnamon Cinder.' We were opening for the O'Jays. We were kids of the National Guard Armories and stuff. I mean, it was like destined that we were gonna be who we are. Then, the Vietnam War was coming, it was about '66 or so. I had my own business, because I didn't want anybody telling me when I had to come to work and when I left, so I went into the body and fender auto detail business. So I always had transportation, and had money – cash flow. So then that way the band, we could go for auditions and stuff. But right about '66 we had an opportunity to go to play the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas, and all of a sudden the guys started getting drafted. But just before that happened we were in El Paso, and that's when Johnny Cash was coming across the border and he got busted with amphetamines. We used to try to buy liquor and bring it back, and the border patrols would stop us and dump it in the Rio Grande. So there was Old Man Fulbright. I used to think he was a figment of our imagination, but since then I've read about him in various books, especially anything involving Clifton Cheniere. He came through there, and he heard us playing. He said, 'I've got a young man that you guys would be a great band for, and he's upstate in Memphis.' It was Otis Redding. We didn't take the gig because our keyboard player was too young at the time.
Songfacts: Too young to do what?
Songfacts: How come you didn't get drafted?
Harold: Well, because I was in business for myself. So they wouldn't take me. Because nobody would run my business.
Songfacts: So if you owned your own business you didn't get drafted?
Harold: Right. That was one of the exemptions. So then when things started falling apart, my business started going down, I wound up in a class in machining. I'm the one that helped show Lee (Oskar) how to design his harmonica, got him started, because I was a Class A machinist. I was doing projects for, you know, like when they're shooting the monkeys into outer space, then they had me making bomb parts for the effort over in Vietnam.
Songfacts: That's kind of ironic. So you actually made bombs?
Harold: They would send you around different parts, different machine shops.
Songfacts: Who's "they"? Is this your training?
Harold: The government contract. Government contracts the different machine shops would get. So you would wind up making one piece of this part, another guy over in some other place is making a piece of this part, then we'd all come together, they'd put it together. Like, we were doing parts for oil drilling. I would be doing the cones, where somebody else would be doing the pipes. Just like module building.
When Kennedy came back they escalated it to even guys that were married, which, I hate to say it, I think we're repeating history. That's another story. But they wouldn't bother me because I was a machinist, I was doing government work.
So we were doing all this playing, trying to keep things together. About 1967 or so, Howard came back out of the military, he was getting ready to take a job down at the Harbor General Hospital in the South Bay area outside of Los Angeles towards San Pedro. At that time they were offering him something like $6.45 an hour. See, as a machinist I was making $400-500 a week in the '60s, and I said, 'Howard, let's try it one more time, and if we don't succeed, we'll go about our own business.' Oh boy, we did it, we went at it. It looked like we were about to not make it - I was going behind on my house note, they were getting ready to kick me out, I had three kids, and stuff - and I went looking for a job. This is how fate works. So then, I go up to North Hollywood, Thousand Oaks, and I've seen this ad for a job at some major chain company. When I got up there, they looked at me and said, 'You're in the wrong place. You go down to Los Angeles.' That's where Affirmative Action can work both ways. In my case, Affirmative Action did me a favor: They just looked at me and said, 'You're chocolate, you need to go down there.' So I'm on my way down, Carl – this is the truth. I'm driving, all of the sudden I had to take a wee-wee, and I said, 'I'm just coming to Sunset.' Well, all through those years when I had my body and fender shop, I had a good friend at that time Marshall Lieb. Marshall Lieb was a producer. He produced 'What the world needs now is love, sweet love.' Jackie Deshannon. And also 'Last Night.' He was producing those songs. Well, when I had my body and fender shop and detail, he had Ferraris, and he only trusted me to take care of his Ferrari, because they were show cars out at Disneyland. So I'm coming down – this was about 1967, and I said, 'Let me see where Marshall's at.' Because he was working at United Artists Records, which was Liberty Records at the time, right across the street from Hollywood High on Sunset Boulevard. So I go in there, and I'm looking for Marshall. Remember, I only had about seven dollars on me. They were getting ready to kick me out of the house, I had to buy gas, got my kids at home, don't know my next move. So I go in and I asked the secretary, 'Is Marshall Lieb here?' She says, 'No, he's not here.' My heart dropped. She said, 'But I can tell you where he's at.' So I started driving on down to Jim Head Productions, which was in the 9000 building, which is on Sunset, and it's on the left-hand side just before you go into Beverly Hills, over across from the Rainbow, up in the Whiskey A Go-Go area. I get up there and there's a lady sitting behind the desk. I said to her, 'I'm trying to locate Marshall Lieb.' And she says, 'He's not here.' And my heart dropped again. But she stood and she said, 'You see out the window, over there across the street? The little white house? He's in there.' So I go across the street, I see all these gold records and stuff and everything. I walked in, there's Marshall Lieb on one side of the desk, and he looks at me, and he says, 'Harold, this is Sonny Bono. Sonny, this is Harold Brown.' He said, 'Hello, what are you doing?' I said, 'I'm not doing anything.' He said, 'Wait for me,' so I go outside and I sat down. Finally the meeting was over, and Marshall says, 'Come on and go with me to the studio.' He started asking questions... all of the sudden the phone rings: 'Yeah, Timi. Oh, Timi, you need a drummer? Oh, you got a big gig? Oh, I got one of the best drummers in the city. I'll send him to you.' I was probably eating a dollar burrito, probably at that time gas was 25 cents, so I had put about a full gallon, so I drive back towards Beverly Hills and she was right on King's Road. It was Timi Yuro, the famous Jazz singer. There's this band, and these guys are telling her, "We need cars, we need amplifiers, we need this and everything." Well, I was varsity captain of our track and cross country team 4 years straight, I was one of the top distance runners in the state of California, I was in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, everything, I was a quartermaster, I was gonna be prepared. So I'm sitting there and I'm listening to these guys giving all these problems. So I say to myself, "I'm not gonna say anything, I'm gonna go back, tell Marshall Lieb to call Timi Yuro, fire all those guys, I got a band, we got cars, we got instruments, ain't no problem." Well, I go back and I get there and there's a guy sitting there on the stoop, and he says, "They always take my band." It was Sonny Charles, R&B great. He was just a little guy. I looked at him and said, 'Man, you mean you got gigs? I got a band." Oh, my heart started jumping, he had a gig coming right up. I ran back out of that studio door – we're right there on Sunset, there was a gas station, there was a telephone booth next to the hotdog stand. I called up Howard, I said, "Howard, our luck is about to change. You call everybody else and tell them to get ready for rehearsal tomorrow, and we're gonna roll." The next day I get with Sonny Charles. We had like a 13-14 piece group. I got the guys, we named the group the Night Shift because I was working in the steel yard at night. The singers with us, they wound up singing with Dr. John on that Night Tripper. That's when I got Deacon Jones, the football player, for part of the revue, and Roman Gabriel... that was the skinny, wiry guy that was an athlete. I would sit there, and they would like to be in front of their girlfriends, they'd take off their shirts. I remember old Deacon Jones looking at me saying he'd like for me to punch him in his chest, and he just started laughing. And then I looked at him and I said, 'If I ever have to whoop your ass, I know how to do it. I'm just gonna pick up a mike stand and hit you with it.' And then we can get a chuckle out of it, you know.
I
like exemplary people around me, I don't judge you by your name, your
color, or your money. I judge you by whether or not you're an exemplary
person. Because if I know you're an exemplary person, and I want you to
move this equipment from here to there, or you're building a house or
you're shining shoes or stuff, then I know you're gonna do it the best
you know how. That's the bottom line. See, that's where people keep
falling off of America here, because we get inferior people in positions
they have no business being in. I don't want a guy working on my heart,
and he's a mechanic. Well, we were at the Rag Doll in North Hollywood,
and Jerry Goldstein, who later on wound up being our producer - he
always liked to put up he found us in a topless bar, and flat out,
that's a lie. We were not in no topless bars, they'd be watching the
women more than they would us - but The Rag Doll was North Hollywood,
and the owner of the club – I'll never forget – he took me to the back
and he showed me all these gold records, gold albums and stuff. The
Spiral Staircase, they played there. Deep Purple played there. And he
looked at me, he says, 'Harold, everybody that's ever played in this
place winds up being famous.' I think that this was the night Deacon
Jones didn't come back. Hindsight, Deacon didn't show up that night
because he didn't have the heart to tell us that was our last night
there. But ironically, my bass player that I had was Peter Rosen at the
time. He was out of New York City, he's since then died. But Peter Rosen
kept telling me, 'I got a good friend, his name is Eric Burdon, and
he's gonna come and watch us one night.' And then I had another guy,
Jaye Contrelli, he used to play with the group Love. It just so happened
this was our last night, and he says to me, 'Eric is coming.' So the
word started going around the house, 'Eric is here. Eric Burdon is
here.' I'm sitting up there behind the drums, and I see this wiry guy...
now, all the time when I working in machine shops and stuff and
drilling all them – making all them parts, I was hearing this song, Sky
Pilot. I'd just hear it over and over and over. I didn't really know
what Eric looked like, but I seen this wiry, thin guy coming up with
this huge afro, and I said, 'Oh, that must be Eric.' Well, he had a
harmonica - key of C or something of that nature, and he wanted to jam
with us. Well, we're still jamming to this day. So he comes up and I'm
thinking that was him, but then we started going into this Blues. The
next thing I knew we went from a blues, and what was interesting –
because we were the Creators we knew how to jam, we would go into all
types of modes. We would start off with a shuffle, then we'd got to a
6/8, all kinds of different rhythms. It went on for about 30 minutes. We
just played straight through. When we finished, everybody was standing
on top of the tables, clapping and cheering, they were going crazy. So I
go in the back, and you know how brothers are, we got in the back, we
start giving five – 'Hey, man, we kick.' Some guy walked in, and one of
the waiters or somebody, says, 'There's a gentleman here would like to
meet you.' That's the first time we got a chance to meet Steve Gold. He
says, 'You guys are great. Maybe we can get together. Let's meet.' Well,
that was on a Saturday, probably February of 1969. The next day we went
up to Benedict Canyon, which was out up above Beverly Hills, Hollywood.
Songfacts: Just so I'm clear on this – Eric Burdon was not in the club that night?
Harold: He was there. We didn't get a chance to meet him.
Songfacts: Okay, but Lee went up… when did you realize it was Lee and not Eric Burdon?
Harold: I think I kind of realized it after he didn't sing. All he did was play.
Songfacts: All right. So Eric Burdon's in the club that night, but you don't meet him that night.
Harold: Yeah, we don't meet him. So that next day, we go to Benedict Canyon. Well, it was up in the hills, you know, Bohemian type thing. A wooded area. And we got up and we opened up the door, and the first thing I see is the secretary, I think her name was Lois or something, came up and she had one of them Hollywood black bikinis. Whoa. So we go in, and the first time I met Eric, I went out to the swimming pool, and there he was laying reclined on the swimming pool with this black swimsuit on and Ray-Bans. It was all pictured out, you know, you be over here when they come and you be over there. So I go out and the first thing he started with me, he said something about how he got beat out of a million dollars. I said, 'How could somebody do that?' Well, guess what, in the music business that can happen. Duh. But we didn't know, so he started talking to me and we got to knowing each other. The guys that were there were Eric Burdon, Lee Oskar, Howard Scott, Charles Miller, Papa Dee Allen, Steve Gold, Jerry Goldstein, Lonnie Jordan, and then there might have been some peripheral people. That was on a Sunday. The next day, we had the meeting. That's when things started happening. We sat there, Steve Gold, which wound up being a very good friend to the band later, was really instrumental in a lot of things happening for us.
I gotta say something about Steve Gold. He's been demonized, he's been Stalinized, it's hard to write him away out of history. But Steve Gold was a real record man. You don't find record men. They're sort of like that thing that they did years ago, that movie with Neil Diamond, how they built and made him a star? He was that way. He was rounded. He knew when the music sounded right, he knew when the magic was there. Like he always told me, there's a whole lot of talent out there, but there's very few people that know what to do with it. He could come up with things like the 99 cent concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The Creedence Clearwater, and I mean, so many different people. That's when Richard Pryor was there. He was so brilliant that he would go and buy billboard ads, and he would buy the back cover upside down and make it look like it was the front cover and put an ad on there for us. That kind of stuff.
So Steve Gold was sitting there, and he started saying, 'We're going to take Eric, and we're going to build on top of him.' He used the analogy of the Sputnik, how Eric was going to be the missile to take us out, and then we were going to be released from there and launched like the Sputnik. Now, this is where Lee and everybody come up with different things. I was straight, I was not into drugs, so I know my mind is real clear. I don't know what everybody else is doing, I can't speak for them. Steve got all red in the face, snot started coming out of his nose, he says, "You guys are really a motley crew. I've got a great idea, let's just call you War." And then Lee says that before that him and Eric was riding along, they see a billboard with Yoko Ono and they were talking peace - the direct opposite with the War, but the way I remember it, Steve Gold sat there and said, 'We're gonna name you War.' That's when we started going in the studio. It was unique then, because they didn't ask us to sign any kind of agreements or any contracts. Steve wanted first to see what we could do, so for about a year we just kept going in and out of studios. And then one day we were up in San Francisco, just playing and stuff. Lonnie came in acting all drunk and stuff and out. They had a bottle of wine, and some of that wine got spilled over in the console. Lee says he felt that the song didn't have anything to do with the wine going into the console, but all I know is after that they moved out of the A studio, they moved us into the B studio, and then we were playing a Latin thing, and even if Eric had been writing 'Spill The Wine' all along, and writing the concepts, that's when it all came together. That's when we went into the studio, we started playing it, Eric was putting stuff together, and all of the sudden there came our first hit, 'Spill The Wine.' It was different. It was '69 or so, that's when Jimi Hendrix would hang out with us a lot, right during that time period. It was the Chateau Marmont, located above Sunset. The hotel is still there, and in that day, they had a series of bungalows back there. At that time, Steve Gold and the company they were putting together, they had gotten a bungalow, and that was where everybody would kind of meet.
Songfacts: So are you guys playing at the same time you're recording?
Harold: Yeah, we were playing. The first gig that we played was June 6th and 7th, 1969, at Mother Liz's in San Bernardino, California. At the Chateau Marmont, after we played and stuff, it wasn't uncommon for Jimi Hendrix to be up there just sitting there with us. Him and a couple of ladies. We weren't doing drugs and stuff. They were eating a lot of pizza and drinking cokes. He used to like to sit around us because we would just start jams. Somebody would get on the piano and started playing, we'd get some pots or something out of the kitchen, be playing on it, and we'd be playing music. They would be sitting up there digging on it. I remember some of the most fun things about Jimi, we'd go to Europe, and in London, we were walking through an alley, and Jimi was in front of me, and he looked... I said, 'Jimi, where are you taking me?' And he looked back over his left shoulder at me with his floppy hat and his crushed velvet jacket, and says, 'Brown, I'm gonna show you how to eat when you come to Europe.' His favorite food was chicken tandori, and chutney and rice. The last memory I have of him is when we were all sitting up with Eric. It was in Munich, Germany. We were sitting up there and we were all eating together, sitting around a table and stuff. They had a game, he liked to pass the tequila around, and whoever would get the worm, they were the winner. Well, I would chicken out after about maybe 2 or 3 hits, but everybody else... I'd see people dropping under the table and stuff. So I think Eric is the one that got the worm, if I remember, that night. So then, Eva Maria, she comes in. Eva Maria is the woman that Jim Brown tossed over the side of the balcony years back. She heard there was a Brown, she came up there, I looked at her, 'Oh, that wasn't him.' She left. I found that was the same woman. Then after that we got on a cruise. We took a train, and we were gonna catch a ferry and go over to London. Coming down that Rhine River, we were all sitting there, Jimi started calling, naming to me all the different castles along the Rhine River. We went and we got on this ferry, we came across, then the last time I actually remember him, and hearing him talking to me, was when we were there at Ronnie Scott's, they were doing a jam that night. If I remember, I think Paul McCartney was there, and Morrison was there. We got off the stage, and then he wanted to jam a little bit. He was standing right behind me, and I remember looking to my right, seeing his fingers moving, and then him talking in my left ear. Because he liked that... one of them loping-type shuffles. And he said, "Yeah, Brown, right there, right there. Right there."
Songfacts: And this is Jimi saying this to you.
Harold: This is Jimi saying this to me. So that night we finished playing, and I had some friends there and they invited me to stay with them at some penthouse somewhere in London. The next day, that's when I got the call from Eric that Jimi had made his transition.
Songfacts: Oh, my God.
Harold: We were all tripped out, sad. Steve Gold was down, because Steve is the one that really introduced us to Jimi, because he was traveling around Europe filming Jimi. They'd been really good friends, and they'd hang out together a lot. So we come on back and we went through that transition of that part of history. And it taught some of us some valuable lessons at that time, too. You've just got to be careful. Gotta know when to hold, when to fold. We'd have parties with Morrison from the Doors. Sly Stone. We were all hanging together during that time period.
So anyway, so we got back in the studio, we started recording with Eric. We came up with a couple of more songs, couple of albums. 'Love Is All Around,' 'Black Man's Burdon,' which was on MGM. Now, 'Black Man's Burdon,' Mike Curb was the president at the time, and he wanted to be a lieutenant governor for California at one point. But he had it in for Eric and Steve Gold and different companies, because he thought he was getting us, too. And some kind of hook or crook, that 'Black Man's Burdon' never really got distributed in the United States. It was put up on the shelf to get back at some of the guys against the business deal. We go forward, and finally we were in Europe touring with Eric. Now see, Eric and I know exactly what happened, why he left the group. Because he came to my room, because him and I had an unusual kind of relationship. Years before that we were out somewhere, and I'm walking around and I come back in and Eric is all mad at the band, I guess because of a bad show or something. He started poking me in my chest and I pushed him back and I said, 'No. I don't work for you, I work with you.' After that he started giving me Porsches and stuff. He'd come by New Orleans and see me. So he came to the room, he was burned out. He'd been traveling all that time, he'd just gotten married... he was just burned out. I looked at him and I said, 'Eric, you know what? We can handle the show. If you want to go back, I say go back.' So that's when he left us there in Northern England. That's when we became our own. We started playing songs that we had on our first album War that went vinyl. That's our joke - it never made platinum or gold, it went vinyl. We had enough of our own new material, and old songs that we'd been playing before we met Eric, so we just started playing them. Our first big hit that we got for our group, we were touring in Europe. We all help write, but Howard Scott was a primary writer. Papa Dee would be in there. Charles Miller, my partner, he was like my big brother, him and I grew up together, he was two doors down from me, he's actually the one that sang "Low Rider." But he had an early… some… well, he got murdered. I don't know… it was pretty sad. But at that time we had all those writers.
Harold: He can play. He puts on a certain act. His mama's a concert pianist.
Songfacts: Jim Morrison, so he actually had musical skills?
Harold: Oh yeah, Jim Morrison was a musician. He wasn't just a rock star. He was really a musician. And then he'd get drunk, I'd look over, he'd be curled up asleep knocked out in his Superman outfit or something. He just didn't know when to back off. Janis Joplin, same thing.
Songfacts: Because you had mentioned you were never too into the whole drinking and drugs kind of thing.
Harold: No, you know, we had our different time periods where, you know, you did certain things, and there's certain things I knew were just taboo. And you know, one point where they got into the cocaine. I got liberated, and I didn't have to go to a funny farm, go and get dried out. I just knew: one day I woke up, I said, 'Wait a minute.' First of all, I don't like the way it made me feel. Because I'm an extrovert, and I go out and I talk to people. When I do that drug it makes me an introvert, and I feel like I'm canned up inside, I don't like that feeling. And then the friends and stuff that were coming around, they would want to be working with me on a project and do a lot of blow and stuff, and then they still want you to pay them. So I don't like the people around it.
Songfacts: So this whole scene, is it like at night you're at somebody's house, you're at a club…
Harold: Oh yeah, we used to have house parties. The one that I remember the most was having a birthday party for Eric, and it was at Boris Karloff's old house. And I remember, boy, it was crazy, guys would come over, be throwing kegs and stuff in the swimming pools. They'd come flying through there. Shoot a .357 up in the air.
Songfacts: And there really were drugs just flying all over the place?
Harold: During that time period, it would be around, it was acceptable. It was just the thing.
I left the group when I was about 37. I was just burned out, I think I hit that same point that Eric did when he left. And there were business things going on with the different record company, I could see certain writing on the wall. So I just kind of backed off, and for a long time, Carl, I thought I'd made a mistake. But later on when I got to be 50, the spirit came to me and said, 'No, there was no mistake.' Because 1) I would have never taken the opportunity to go to college. I would never have been who I am now. I wouldn't have grown, I've grown spiritually, I've grow as far as academic structure, computers, music – I went back and I learned how to play. I didn't start playing piano 'til I was 40. I wouldn't hire me as a piano player, but I can tell you everything on the paper, and I can write. In these past 3 years I went back and I studied architecture, geology, history. People get on this euphoria of drugs. Because, let's say you go and play to 10,000 people, 5,000, 50,000, or even 10 people. Well, you get up there, and the adrenaline, when you reach a certain point playing and communicating musically, and everybody's synched in, that's a helluva high. That's something you can't manufacture or buy. So what happens is being a musician or being an artist, that adulation, you want to try to obtain that, and then you start finding synthetic things to get you there, to that high. That was happening with Jimi and those guys: 'Oh you're the greatest, you're the greatest.' But then, I got lucky. I started achieving certain things, like get a whole new War. Get two of them. Or take in a great golf game. Or creative writing a nice piece of music, going through and achieving computer science or mastering or learning this. And then I can go back, like I'm getting a buzz when I talk to you about these things. So I replaced it. What happens to a lot of people that wind up strung out on drugs is they don't have something else they've got to replace it with. You can't just say, 'Just say no,' you've got to give them something else in place of that.
Songfacts: All right. Now, when you're talking about how Jimi… could he be stone sober throughout the day and on stage, and then it was after hours that he would get into the drugs?
Harold: I would say that would be a thing like that. You know, some people were doing cocaine and stuff, they'd be buzzed up, so then they would try to take another pill to bring them down. And so you never know where they're at.
Songfacts: So these musicians who were on drugs, they could be under the influence at just about any time, including when they're on stage?
Harold: You can, yeah. And see, I've been so far away that sometimes people tell me people are on stuff, I can't even recognize them.
Songfacts: All right. I just wanted to go back a little. Could we talk a little about "Spill The Wine"?
Harold: Sure.
Songfacts: Is Eric responsible for the lyrics?
Harold: Yes, Eric was responsible for the lyrics, but there was a glitch. If he had written the lyrics, MGM, they would have been entitled to a deal that he had made. They would have been able to administrate it, and it would have just gotten nasty for him. So we did the music and then he just gave us all the lyrics. Which, one day, you know, like Lee was saying, we just like to give it back to him. Because we've got enough of our own songs now.
Songfacts: On that song, there's the lady speaking Spanish in the background. What's all that about?
Harold: It was Eric's girlfriend. We went back there and we put up a little tent-like, candlelight, and some wine back there, and they were behind there, and Eric was doing things to her and making her talk. So we recorded the song.
Songfacts: So the whole "Spill The Wine" concept, is there a deeper meaning? Is there anything besides just, hey, somebody spilled some wine on the console, sounds like a good lyric?
Harold: I think that Eric was already working on an idea about leaking gnomes, waking up in a grassy field, and then when the wine inadvertently got knocked over, whether it was part of the song or not, it all just came together right at that moment.
Songfacts: And is he saying, "Dig that girl?"
Harold: "Spill the wine, take that girl. Spill the wind, take that pearl."
Songfacts: Okay, so it's "girl" and then it's "pearl."
Harold: Yeah. And then you know what the pearl is, you know, all the little maidens are trying to save their pearl anyway for their future loves.
Songfacts: Oh, you're going to need to explain that to me. What's the pearl?
Harold: The pearl, you know, the jewel, the jewel. The pearl is their…
Songfacts: Oh.
Harold: Their nut.
Songfacts: So that's a sexual reference, that pearl.
Harold: Yeah, right.
Songfacts: What else is in there that we don't know?
Harold: Oooo… all ladies are beautiful. You've got to look at them... it's just like, when you put someone in a field of grass and tall ones, short ones. God, I believe, put all of us here and made us all different so we could be like the flowers, you know. Like women. I look at them as beautiful flowers. Even when they get older, the flowers and so on, and that's what it really boils down to, they can be skinny, big, fat, I've seen some fine voluptuous women. And then I've seen some that are skinny, and if you look at them, they could be beautiful, depending on personality and stuff.
Songfacts: Just so I'm clear on this – Eric Burdon was not in the club that night?
Harold: He was there. We didn't get a chance to meet him.
Songfacts: Okay, but Lee went up… when did you realize it was Lee and not Eric Burdon?
Harold: I think I kind of realized it after he didn't sing. All he did was play.
Songfacts: All right. So Eric Burdon's in the club that night, but you don't meet him that night.
Harold: Yeah, we don't meet him. So that next day, we go to Benedict Canyon. Well, it was up in the hills, you know, Bohemian type thing. A wooded area. And we got up and we opened up the door, and the first thing I see is the secretary, I think her name was Lois or something, came up and she had one of them Hollywood black bikinis. Whoa. So we go in, and the first time I met Eric, I went out to the swimming pool, and there he was laying reclined on the swimming pool with this black swimsuit on and Ray-Bans. It was all pictured out, you know, you be over here when they come and you be over there. So I go out and the first thing he started with me, he said something about how he got beat out of a million dollars. I said, 'How could somebody do that?' Well, guess what, in the music business that can happen. Duh. But we didn't know, so he started talking to me and we got to knowing each other. The guys that were there were Eric Burdon, Lee Oskar, Howard Scott, Charles Miller, Papa Dee Allen, Steve Gold, Jerry Goldstein, Lonnie Jordan, and then there might have been some peripheral people. That was on a Sunday. The next day, we had the meeting. That's when things started happening. We sat there, Steve Gold, which wound up being a very good friend to the band later, was really instrumental in a lot of things happening for us.
I gotta say something about Steve Gold. He's been demonized, he's been Stalinized, it's hard to write him away out of history. But Steve Gold was a real record man. You don't find record men. They're sort of like that thing that they did years ago, that movie with Neil Diamond, how they built and made him a star? He was that way. He was rounded. He knew when the music sounded right, he knew when the magic was there. Like he always told me, there's a whole lot of talent out there, but there's very few people that know what to do with it. He could come up with things like the 99 cent concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The Creedence Clearwater, and I mean, so many different people. That's when Richard Pryor was there. He was so brilliant that he would go and buy billboard ads, and he would buy the back cover upside down and make it look like it was the front cover and put an ad on there for us. That kind of stuff.
So Steve Gold was sitting there, and he started saying, 'We're going to take Eric, and we're going to build on top of him.' He used the analogy of the Sputnik, how Eric was going to be the missile to take us out, and then we were going to be released from there and launched like the Sputnik. Now, this is where Lee and everybody come up with different things. I was straight, I was not into drugs, so I know my mind is real clear. I don't know what everybody else is doing, I can't speak for them. Steve got all red in the face, snot started coming out of his nose, he says, "You guys are really a motley crew. I've got a great idea, let's just call you War." And then Lee says that before that him and Eric was riding along, they see a billboard with Yoko Ono and they were talking peace - the direct opposite with the War, but the way I remember it, Steve Gold sat there and said, 'We're gonna name you War.' That's when we started going in the studio. It was unique then, because they didn't ask us to sign any kind of agreements or any contracts. Steve wanted first to see what we could do, so for about a year we just kept going in and out of studios. And then one day we were up in San Francisco, just playing and stuff. Lonnie came in acting all drunk and stuff and out. They had a bottle of wine, and some of that wine got spilled over in the console. Lee says he felt that the song didn't have anything to do with the wine going into the console, but all I know is after that they moved out of the A studio, they moved us into the B studio, and then we were playing a Latin thing, and even if Eric had been writing 'Spill The Wine' all along, and writing the concepts, that's when it all came together. That's when we went into the studio, we started playing it, Eric was putting stuff together, and all of the sudden there came our first hit, 'Spill The Wine.' It was different. It was '69 or so, that's when Jimi Hendrix would hang out with us a lot, right during that time period. It was the Chateau Marmont, located above Sunset. The hotel is still there, and in that day, they had a series of bungalows back there. At that time, Steve Gold and the company they were putting together, they had gotten a bungalow, and that was where everybody would kind of meet.
Songfacts: So are you guys playing at the same time you're recording?
Harold: Yeah, we were playing. The first gig that we played was June 6th and 7th, 1969, at Mother Liz's in San Bernardino, California. At the Chateau Marmont, after we played and stuff, it wasn't uncommon for Jimi Hendrix to be up there just sitting there with us. Him and a couple of ladies. We weren't doing drugs and stuff. They were eating a lot of pizza and drinking cokes. He used to like to sit around us because we would just start jams. Somebody would get on the piano and started playing, we'd get some pots or something out of the kitchen, be playing on it, and we'd be playing music. They would be sitting up there digging on it. I remember some of the most fun things about Jimi, we'd go to Europe, and in London, we were walking through an alley, and Jimi was in front of me, and he looked... I said, 'Jimi, where are you taking me?' And he looked back over his left shoulder at me with his floppy hat and his crushed velvet jacket, and says, 'Brown, I'm gonna show you how to eat when you come to Europe.' His favorite food was chicken tandori, and chutney and rice. The last memory I have of him is when we were all sitting up with Eric. It was in Munich, Germany. We were sitting up there and we were all eating together, sitting around a table and stuff. They had a game, he liked to pass the tequila around, and whoever would get the worm, they were the winner. Well, I would chicken out after about maybe 2 or 3 hits, but everybody else... I'd see people dropping under the table and stuff. So I think Eric is the one that got the worm, if I remember, that night. So then, Eva Maria, she comes in. Eva Maria is the woman that Jim Brown tossed over the side of the balcony years back. She heard there was a Brown, she came up there, I looked at her, 'Oh, that wasn't him.' She left. I found that was the same woman. Then after that we got on a cruise. We took a train, and we were gonna catch a ferry and go over to London. Coming down that Rhine River, we were all sitting there, Jimi started calling, naming to me all the different castles along the Rhine River. We went and we got on this ferry, we came across, then the last time I actually remember him, and hearing him talking to me, was when we were there at Ronnie Scott's, they were doing a jam that night. If I remember, I think Paul McCartney was there, and Morrison was there. We got off the stage, and then he wanted to jam a little bit. He was standing right behind me, and I remember looking to my right, seeing his fingers moving, and then him talking in my left ear. Because he liked that... one of them loping-type shuffles. And he said, "Yeah, Brown, right there, right there. Right there."
Songfacts: And this is Jimi saying this to you.
Harold: This is Jimi saying this to me. So that night we finished playing, and I had some friends there and they invited me to stay with them at some penthouse somewhere in London. The next day, that's when I got the call from Eric that Jimi had made his transition.
Songfacts: Oh, my God.
Harold: We were all tripped out, sad. Steve Gold was down, because Steve is the one that really introduced us to Jimi, because he was traveling around Europe filming Jimi. They'd been really good friends, and they'd hang out together a lot. So we come on back and we went through that transition of that part of history. And it taught some of us some valuable lessons at that time, too. You've just got to be careful. Gotta know when to hold, when to fold. We'd have parties with Morrison from the Doors. Sly Stone. We were all hanging together during that time period.
So anyway, so we got back in the studio, we started recording with Eric. We came up with a couple of more songs, couple of albums. 'Love Is All Around,' 'Black Man's Burdon,' which was on MGM. Now, 'Black Man's Burdon,' Mike Curb was the president at the time, and he wanted to be a lieutenant governor for California at one point. But he had it in for Eric and Steve Gold and different companies, because he thought he was getting us, too. And some kind of hook or crook, that 'Black Man's Burdon' never really got distributed in the United States. It was put up on the shelf to get back at some of the guys against the business deal. We go forward, and finally we were in Europe touring with Eric. Now see, Eric and I know exactly what happened, why he left the group. Because he came to my room, because him and I had an unusual kind of relationship. Years before that we were out somewhere, and I'm walking around and I come back in and Eric is all mad at the band, I guess because of a bad show or something. He started poking me in my chest and I pushed him back and I said, 'No. I don't work for you, I work with you.' After that he started giving me Porsches and stuff. He'd come by New Orleans and see me. So he came to the room, he was burned out. He'd been traveling all that time, he'd just gotten married... he was just burned out. I looked at him and I said, 'Eric, you know what? We can handle the show. If you want to go back, I say go back.' So that's when he left us there in Northern England. That's when we became our own. We started playing songs that we had on our first album War that went vinyl. That's our joke - it never made platinum or gold, it went vinyl. We had enough of our own new material, and old songs that we'd been playing before we met Eric, so we just started playing them. Our first big hit that we got for our group, we were touring in Europe. We all help write, but Howard Scott was a primary writer. Papa Dee would be in there. Charles Miller, my partner, he was like my big brother, him and I grew up together, he was two doors down from me, he's actually the one that sang "Low Rider." But he had an early… some… well, he got murdered. I don't know… it was pretty sad. But at that time we had all those writers.
At
this point, our tape ends, and while I flip it over, we talk about
Flavor Flav from Public Enemy as part of a discussion on how some
singers who are known for their image actually have a great deal of
musical talent.
Songfacts: He can actually play music, huh?Harold: He can play. He puts on a certain act. His mama's a concert pianist.
Songfacts: Jim Morrison, so he actually had musical skills?
Harold: Oh yeah, Jim Morrison was a musician. He wasn't just a rock star. He was really a musician. And then he'd get drunk, I'd look over, he'd be curled up asleep knocked out in his Superman outfit or something. He just didn't know when to back off. Janis Joplin, same thing.
Songfacts: Because you had mentioned you were never too into the whole drinking and drugs kind of thing.
Harold: No, you know, we had our different time periods where, you know, you did certain things, and there's certain things I knew were just taboo. And you know, one point where they got into the cocaine. I got liberated, and I didn't have to go to a funny farm, go and get dried out. I just knew: one day I woke up, I said, 'Wait a minute.' First of all, I don't like the way it made me feel. Because I'm an extrovert, and I go out and I talk to people. When I do that drug it makes me an introvert, and I feel like I'm canned up inside, I don't like that feeling. And then the friends and stuff that were coming around, they would want to be working with me on a project and do a lot of blow and stuff, and then they still want you to pay them. So I don't like the people around it.
Songfacts: So this whole scene, is it like at night you're at somebody's house, you're at a club…
Harold: Oh yeah, we used to have house parties. The one that I remember the most was having a birthday party for Eric, and it was at Boris Karloff's old house. And I remember, boy, it was crazy, guys would come over, be throwing kegs and stuff in the swimming pools. They'd come flying through there. Shoot a .357 up in the air.
Songfacts: And there really were drugs just flying all over the place?
Harold: During that time period, it would be around, it was acceptable. It was just the thing.
I left the group when I was about 37. I was just burned out, I think I hit that same point that Eric did when he left. And there were business things going on with the different record company, I could see certain writing on the wall. So I just kind of backed off, and for a long time, Carl, I thought I'd made a mistake. But later on when I got to be 50, the spirit came to me and said, 'No, there was no mistake.' Because 1) I would have never taken the opportunity to go to college. I would never have been who I am now. I wouldn't have grown, I've grown spiritually, I've grow as far as academic structure, computers, music – I went back and I learned how to play. I didn't start playing piano 'til I was 40. I wouldn't hire me as a piano player, but I can tell you everything on the paper, and I can write. In these past 3 years I went back and I studied architecture, geology, history. People get on this euphoria of drugs. Because, let's say you go and play to 10,000 people, 5,000, 50,000, or even 10 people. Well, you get up there, and the adrenaline, when you reach a certain point playing and communicating musically, and everybody's synched in, that's a helluva high. That's something you can't manufacture or buy. So what happens is being a musician or being an artist, that adulation, you want to try to obtain that, and then you start finding synthetic things to get you there, to that high. That was happening with Jimi and those guys: 'Oh you're the greatest, you're the greatest.' But then, I got lucky. I started achieving certain things, like get a whole new War. Get two of them. Or take in a great golf game. Or creative writing a nice piece of music, going through and achieving computer science or mastering or learning this. And then I can go back, like I'm getting a buzz when I talk to you about these things. So I replaced it. What happens to a lot of people that wind up strung out on drugs is they don't have something else they've got to replace it with. You can't just say, 'Just say no,' you've got to give them something else in place of that.
Songfacts: All right. Now, when you're talking about how Jimi… could he be stone sober throughout the day and on stage, and then it was after hours that he would get into the drugs?
Harold: I would say that would be a thing like that. You know, some people were doing cocaine and stuff, they'd be buzzed up, so then they would try to take another pill to bring them down. And so you never know where they're at.
Songfacts: So these musicians who were on drugs, they could be under the influence at just about any time, including when they're on stage?
Harold: You can, yeah. And see, I've been so far away that sometimes people tell me people are on stuff, I can't even recognize them.
Songfacts: All right. I just wanted to go back a little. Could we talk a little about "Spill The Wine"?
Harold: Sure.
Songfacts: Is Eric responsible for the lyrics?
Harold: Yes, Eric was responsible for the lyrics, but there was a glitch. If he had written the lyrics, MGM, they would have been entitled to a deal that he had made. They would have been able to administrate it, and it would have just gotten nasty for him. So we did the music and then he just gave us all the lyrics. Which, one day, you know, like Lee was saying, we just like to give it back to him. Because we've got enough of our own songs now.
Songfacts: On that song, there's the lady speaking Spanish in the background. What's all that about?
Harold: It was Eric's girlfriend. We went back there and we put up a little tent-like, candlelight, and some wine back there, and they were behind there, and Eric was doing things to her and making her talk. So we recorded the song.
Songfacts: So the whole "Spill The Wine" concept, is there a deeper meaning? Is there anything besides just, hey, somebody spilled some wine on the console, sounds like a good lyric?
Harold: I think that Eric was already working on an idea about leaking gnomes, waking up in a grassy field, and then when the wine inadvertently got knocked over, whether it was part of the song or not, it all just came together right at that moment.
Songfacts: And is he saying, "Dig that girl?"
Harold: "Spill the wine, take that girl. Spill the wind, take that pearl."
Songfacts: Okay, so it's "girl" and then it's "pearl."
Harold: Yeah. And then you know what the pearl is, you know, all the little maidens are trying to save their pearl anyway for their future loves.
Songfacts: Oh, you're going to need to explain that to me. What's the pearl?
Harold: The pearl, you know, the jewel, the jewel. The pearl is their…
Songfacts: Oh.
Harold: Their nut.
Songfacts: So that's a sexual reference, that pearl.
Harold: Yeah, right.
Songfacts: What else is in there that we don't know?
Harold: Oooo… all ladies are beautiful. You've got to look at them... it's just like, when you put someone in a field of grass and tall ones, short ones. God, I believe, put all of us here and made us all different so we could be like the flowers, you know. Like women. I look at them as beautiful flowers. Even when they get older, the flowers and so on, and that's what it really boils down to, they can be skinny, big, fat, I've seen some fine voluptuous women. And then I've seen some that are skinny, and if you look at them, they could be beautiful, depending on personality and stuff.
Songfacts: So now we were talking about "Slippin' Into Darkness."
Harold:
Okay, 'slippin' In The Darkness,' Howard was working on some lyrics and
he had this concept, thinking of how one could slip into darkness, and
your mind could just go on, and you just go off to the left - you have
to be careful, you have to say, "Don't go there." It's like that wall
between sane and insane. We all figure we're sane, and we all once in a
while we look past that wall, that wall opens up and our head pops over
and we look and we say, "Here's Johnny." I always like that. You look
over there and you see certain things, and some of us have been known to
go over there and stay, and there's some that pop their heads right
back. Because that's just right on that borderline of sane, insane, and
really close to being a genius. Because you get in that moment of
creation and you start thinking, and you start seeing things different
than the way a lot of other people are seeing it. Most of the stuff
we're seeing, they're here, and it's all accessible to all of us, but
then when we go and take these different words or materials, and it's
how you rearrange it that makes it different and it presents itself.
Like a tree. I look at a tree, and I say, Okay I could do a couple of
things with that tree. We can let it stay there, it's beautiful, I can
cut it down, make firewood, or I can make furniture with it but
rearrange it. So… but we're in our creative mode in that sane and
insanity. You have to watch that balance, because if you step over
there, the next thing you know, you could be out there like I said,
that's when guys start getting all blown out on drugs and stuff, and
become crazy. Get on speed and stuff and they think they're seeing bugs
and stuff, and you say, "Man, what's wrong with you? I don't see any
bugs." And you find out the people that have the highest amount of
creativity, there's a fine line between them being sane and insane.
They're the ones I find, guys that are really out there, you got to have
a certain way you gotta talk to them, you gotta know their moods, you
got to know those events, those episodes, when you're dealing with them.
I can think of a few, like our bass player. He's a brilliant person,
the one that sang "World Is A Ghetto." Because he's so in touch, I think
he came back from BB, he went to Tibet and those places when he was
very young, and he started seeing different things and experiencing
different cultures and different glimpses of various wisdom. So a lot of
time BB is very sensitive. I know there's a certain time I can go and
give him a hug, and a certain time I know don't touch. Or there's a
certain time I know when he's in his certain mood or certain zone, I let
him there, because I can go into his world and all of a sudden startle
him. That's just amazing. I read a book called Creators On Creating, and
they wanted to find out the state of mind of people when they're
creating, like the guy that came up with DNA or Einstein - they've got
that fine line. You'll find generally that they're sensitive people.
Different things can affect them different ways, so it's a balance
you've got to find.
"Slippin' In The Darkness," that's what we were talking about not slippin' off that other side, the deep end. That's what that was all about.
Now, "slippin' In The Darkness," there was a rhythm... I had perfected that rhythm out of a combination of rhythms. So when Howard came together with certain ideas and time sets of lyrics, I said, "The next song that we play, I'm making sure that rhythm fits in it." And I was the only one written up in Downbeat for that particular rhythm that took and changed the course of drumming into the '70s.
That was War's first hit. Steve Gold, a brother of ours, he was our manager at the time, he went into New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and all of a sudden it started breaking, because it was so different. And even to this day when I go places and guys see me, or tell their drummers, they want to see how I play that.
Songfacts: So did that style become more popular on certain songs?
"Slippin' In The Darkness," that's what we were talking about not slippin' off that other side, the deep end. That's what that was all about.
Now, "slippin' In The Darkness," there was a rhythm... I had perfected that rhythm out of a combination of rhythms. So when Howard came together with certain ideas and time sets of lyrics, I said, "The next song that we play, I'm making sure that rhythm fits in it." And I was the only one written up in Downbeat for that particular rhythm that took and changed the course of drumming into the '70s.
That was War's first hit. Steve Gold, a brother of ours, he was our manager at the time, he went into New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and all of a sudden it started breaking, because it was so different. And even to this day when I go places and guys see me, or tell their drummers, they want to see how I play that.
Songfacts: So did that style become more popular on certain songs?
Harold: Yeah, and I found particularly in New Orleans it fits like second line and stuff.
Songfacts: So what are some of the other songs that came after that that you listen to and say, "Hey, that's…"
Harold: Okay, "Low Rider."
Songfacts: Well, not even your songs, necessarily.
Harold: Oh, other songs? My auditioning orchestra was out and then Miles Davis did "Bitch's Brew." Billy Cobham, he played like he played, and I heard – woooo – "Bitch's Brew," that finally liberated me. We used to think the guy said, "Oh, you made a mistake with that." No, it's not a mistake if you constantly repeat it. It becomes deliberate. So I've seen different drummers that all of a sudden they just create a whole 'nother thing or just make it work. I think, too, Carl, with the advent of computers, downloading, it puts an eye on labels like that, the world of music, it brought us all together. It's sort of like when Bob Marley and I was walking along together. Me and Bob Marley and BB Dickerson was in Atlanta, that was the last time we were together, been in a show, him and I was hanging out. We were walking to the radio station, and Bob Marley looks at me and he punches me on the arm, and he looked at me and he said, "Boo. I do song for you guys. I do song for you guys." Song was "Stand up, stand up, stand up for your right." He took that lyric from "slippin' In The Darkness." That motif. "Stand up, stand up, stand up for your right." He told me, "Your band, you're like us, you're street musicians." That's when I knew we connected. He kept bugging me, he said, "Come down to Jamaica, spend time with me." But they wouldn't let me go. Management said it was bad because there were problems going on in Jamaica at the time, and then because of the name of the group – War – and I had a big afro, radical look, you know.
Songfacts: So you mentioned that drumming style, you used that on "Low Rider" as well.
Harold: What happened on "Low Rider" was in the studio, we were jamming, and I was supposed to have been on the downbeat. But all of the sudden I was on the upbeat. And I said, "Oh, boy. I got the beat turned around." Well, Carl, I didn't panic. I said, "Wait a minute. Stay there. Don't change it. Stay." Because as long as you keep doing it over and over and over, it won't be a mistake. We were just messing around, you know, Charles was over there, we were doing the dozen - that old song that Howling Wolf and another one had: The old lady looked in, I seen the lady's hair in the street, she looked at water, she'd scare water. Then the next thing I know, Charles started just singing, "Low ri-der drives a little slower. The low…" he was just pumping it. And then the next thing I know Lee's over there putting that harmonica on, because Lee is a melody man all the time. And then – boom. If you'd hear the original version of it, all with that jam, that would be worth a million right there. I think that… one day maybe Jerry Goldstein will wake up and call me, and then they'll realize they're behind times. That's the stuff I'd be putting on downloads. The actual jams with the songs. People would eat that up. So anyhow, when we finished it, all of us looked at it, "That's a hit." We didn't know that it was gonna be an icon, Americana, because you've got to say it's Americana. I don't care if you're driving a Cadillac or a Rolls Royce or if you have a hooptie – hearing it thumping, it just works because it predicts historically a time period in America. That's true about all music, pretty much. If you go back and look at a lot of music from 1800 to the turn of the century, all through the 1900s, how they used to write songs, "You're my little tulip." And then when you go into the 1940s all of the sudden you're talking about going squash corn, and you're relating your love to that. Then you went into the '50s, you started getting Fats Domino and all them Hollywood singing - that time period relating to it. Or even Chuck Berry. And then you got into our music, and then you started having all the other artists doing it, like we're not the only ones. But there were certain things during that time period, especially when we went into the Vietnam War, stuff was happening. Then we came on past the Vietnam War, and then all of the sudden the Disco stuff started happening. And then right up to now. You'll be able to look at it, you can tell what was going on, just like food or anything. What was happening. Clothes and everything. So our music, like "Low Rider," started setting a trend right there.
Then all of the sudden we were in Japan, and that's when we came up with "Why Can't We Be Friends." We were over there traveling, and we started going to Japan in the early '70s. I remember I was over there, and the Japanese weren't as tall as we were. Nowadays it's not uncommon to see them tall. You'd look over and we could see each other.
Any way you see it, we're all connected by language, and by our food, and by our culture. And most racists don't know why they're racist. But you pick them up and take them over and drop them in a country, like India or Pakistan, guess what? "Why can't we be friends?" Because all of a sudden you find out we're more alike inside than we are on the outside. That's why we started writing "Why Can't We Be Friends." Because we started realizing that that's really important. You travel all over the world, you can't speak a lot of their language. But one thing they do know, they know your body language, how you may react.
So "Why Can't We Be Friends," we did it at Crystal Studios. That was down on Vine in Hollywood. You'd see Stevie Wonder was recording in there while we'd be in there. You would see the Fabulous Thunderbirds would be recording in there, all kinds of people. It would be incredible, and bam, we had that next hit.
Songfacts: I want to ask you a little bit more about the specifics of that song. That was interesting, because you were talking about somebody who may be a racist or whatever their views are, you stick them in some other environment and everything changes for them. I've never heard it put that way before.
Harold: Okay, "Low Rider."
Songfacts: Well, not even your songs, necessarily.
Harold: Oh, other songs? My auditioning orchestra was out and then Miles Davis did "Bitch's Brew." Billy Cobham, he played like he played, and I heard – woooo – "Bitch's Brew," that finally liberated me. We used to think the guy said, "Oh, you made a mistake with that." No, it's not a mistake if you constantly repeat it. It becomes deliberate. So I've seen different drummers that all of a sudden they just create a whole 'nother thing or just make it work. I think, too, Carl, with the advent of computers, downloading, it puts an eye on labels like that, the world of music, it brought us all together. It's sort of like when Bob Marley and I was walking along together. Me and Bob Marley and BB Dickerson was in Atlanta, that was the last time we were together, been in a show, him and I was hanging out. We were walking to the radio station, and Bob Marley looks at me and he punches me on the arm, and he looked at me and he said, "Boo. I do song for you guys. I do song for you guys." Song was "Stand up, stand up, stand up for your right." He took that lyric from "slippin' In The Darkness." That motif. "Stand up, stand up, stand up for your right." He told me, "Your band, you're like us, you're street musicians." That's when I knew we connected. He kept bugging me, he said, "Come down to Jamaica, spend time with me." But they wouldn't let me go. Management said it was bad because there were problems going on in Jamaica at the time, and then because of the name of the group – War – and I had a big afro, radical look, you know.
Songfacts: So you mentioned that drumming style, you used that on "Low Rider" as well.
Harold: What happened on "Low Rider" was in the studio, we were jamming, and I was supposed to have been on the downbeat. But all of the sudden I was on the upbeat. And I said, "Oh, boy. I got the beat turned around." Well, Carl, I didn't panic. I said, "Wait a minute. Stay there. Don't change it. Stay." Because as long as you keep doing it over and over and over, it won't be a mistake. We were just messing around, you know, Charles was over there, we were doing the dozen - that old song that Howling Wolf and another one had: The old lady looked in, I seen the lady's hair in the street, she looked at water, she'd scare water. Then the next thing I know, Charles started just singing, "Low ri-der drives a little slower. The low…" he was just pumping it. And then the next thing I know Lee's over there putting that harmonica on, because Lee is a melody man all the time. And then – boom. If you'd hear the original version of it, all with that jam, that would be worth a million right there. I think that… one day maybe Jerry Goldstein will wake up and call me, and then they'll realize they're behind times. That's the stuff I'd be putting on downloads. The actual jams with the songs. People would eat that up. So anyhow, when we finished it, all of us looked at it, "That's a hit." We didn't know that it was gonna be an icon, Americana, because you've got to say it's Americana. I don't care if you're driving a Cadillac or a Rolls Royce or if you have a hooptie – hearing it thumping, it just works because it predicts historically a time period in America. That's true about all music, pretty much. If you go back and look at a lot of music from 1800 to the turn of the century, all through the 1900s, how they used to write songs, "You're my little tulip." And then when you go into the 1940s all of the sudden you're talking about going squash corn, and you're relating your love to that. Then you went into the '50s, you started getting Fats Domino and all them Hollywood singing - that time period relating to it. Or even Chuck Berry. And then you got into our music, and then you started having all the other artists doing it, like we're not the only ones. But there were certain things during that time period, especially when we went into the Vietnam War, stuff was happening. Then we came on past the Vietnam War, and then all of the sudden the Disco stuff started happening. And then right up to now. You'll be able to look at it, you can tell what was going on, just like food or anything. What was happening. Clothes and everything. So our music, like "Low Rider," started setting a trend right there.
Then all of the sudden we were in Japan, and that's when we came up with "Why Can't We Be Friends." We were over there traveling, and we started going to Japan in the early '70s. I remember I was over there, and the Japanese weren't as tall as we were. Nowadays it's not uncommon to see them tall. You'd look over and we could see each other.
Any way you see it, we're all connected by language, and by our food, and by our culture. And most racists don't know why they're racist. But you pick them up and take them over and drop them in a country, like India or Pakistan, guess what? "Why can't we be friends?" Because all of a sudden you find out we're more alike inside than we are on the outside. That's why we started writing "Why Can't We Be Friends." Because we started realizing that that's really important. You travel all over the world, you can't speak a lot of their language. But one thing they do know, they know your body language, how you may react.
So "Why Can't We Be Friends," we did it at Crystal Studios. That was down on Vine in Hollywood. You'd see Stevie Wonder was recording in there while we'd be in there. You would see the Fabulous Thunderbirds would be recording in there, all kinds of people. It would be incredible, and bam, we had that next hit.
Songfacts: I want to ask you a little bit more about the specifics of that song. That was interesting, because you were talking about somebody who may be a racist or whatever their views are, you stick them in some other environment and everything changes for them. I've never heard it put that way before.
Harold:
We're creatures like that. Because, by me being historian, and you too,
most people during the Civil War, all those Southerners down there, they
were mostly little farmers from Europe. And they were peasants. They
came down there, and they'd be saying, "That's not right." Because, see,
what people don't know, Benjamin Franklin, he was the head of the first
Abolitionist Society. Colonel Forest and those guys that come running
through there, they'd say, "Well, Bergstein, we heard that you were a
bad mouth." "Oh, no, no, I have no problem, I just want to be left alone
and raise my family," and this and that. And then it was those big
banks up in the North financing the plantations in the South. They were
helping finance the ships, and the shackles and stuff. And a couple of
those big bankers that were abolitionists up there in the North were
walking down the street, a banker would come up to them and say, "You've
got to be quiet, gotta shut up, don't you know how much money we'd lose
if we outlaw slavery?" That's what the Alamo was all about – slavery.
They were getting money, they were going to finance them to go over
there. The Mexicans didn't mind nobody squattin', but when they came up
there to the Alamo, it was to toss out slavery because they didn't allow
slavery. They were going to take the Alamo, take it over, secede it,
bring it into the United States, they were gonna put slavery there.
That's what that was about.
Songfacts: Now, on that song, is each member taking a different verse?
Harold: Each one. I'm singing the very first one you hear.
Songfacts: All right. And how did you guys write those? Did you just come up with your own, or did you just kind of put them together?
Harold: We each kind of came up with our own. Because when you get there, "I may not speak right, but I know what I'm talking about," that's Lee. Because you remember, he's just learning how to speak English.
Songfacts: Oh, all right.
Harold: Because we'd get a lot of calls from Europe or something, and here's a little something, brother called me up, and they'll think that I'm Lee at times. And I say, "Hey, you know why I sound like…? Because that's all they know how to speak there (Denmark). Like a brother."
Songfacts: So what happens next?
"World Is A Ghetto." That one there was inspired by Papa D. We were living all out around Pomona and different parts, you know, San Pedro, Compton, and so on. And we spent a lot of time out around Malibu, and in Hollywood. Well, one day we started realizing that their toilets backed up... funny, you looked at the drains and see it backing up, and say, "Oh, what's up with this?" And then we started realizing that rich people, people living in some of those big suburbs and stuff, hey, they got their problems, they got broke down cars and stuff. So we started realizing the world is a ghetto. And it's really up to each one of us how we take and work with our environment. We truly believe that everybody can succeed. We believe that it doesn't really matter who you are, where you come from, or your class situation. But we don't look at it upon the way people say it, "Well, if I don't accumulate a lot of wealth I'm not successful." Or, "If I'm not wearing a certain kind of clothes or driving a certain car," or "I gotta have a certain kind of house," that doesn't mean I'm not successful. Well, through that song, what we're really trying to say, you can be successful, as long as you do unto each other as you're supposed to do, be a good neighbor. Get out and do the best you can. Work with each other. Work as a team. That's what we need in America. We don't need all these different factions: I'm a democrat, I'm a republican, I'm independent. We are righteous, that's what War stood for. It was trying to bring everybody together through our music. Lonnie tried to say guns and bullets, but it was through music. That's why I think our music crossed all the different barriers, why it went into all the different nationalities. Why people accepted it, because it was a hydrogenous type music.
Songfacts: Then, we got up to "Cisco Kid."
Harold: The "Cisco Kid," once again, Howard has always been a major contributor. He was in Compton, he had this apartment. I came up there and when I got up there he was sitting on his amp, and I walked up to him. He said, "Harold, I got this idea. Cisco kid was a friend of mine." And that idea came about because there were no ethnic heroes at that time. Mainly, we were seeing people like Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers. There wasn't really anybody to relate to except Cisco Kid. He was like the total different kind of person. Here's this Latino/Spanish blood... I guess more like Spanish.
Incidentally, we did get to meet Duncan Renaldo. We went up to his house, and his wife made sure to let everybody know, "He don't drink. He don't drink no wine." I remember that to this day, she told me. They were beautiful, warm people. We sat there with him. He lived up in Camarillo, up outside of Santa Barbara, California.
Our fictitious character, Cisco Kid, we wanted to give kids, people, another alternative besides the ones that were right in our face, obvious heroes. And it worked out really good, because it had the right kind of hook, it was a fun song, people at that time didn't want to be hearing about no more wars or anything, they just wanted fun music. And the tonality was brilliant. There was a song that I heard, Sam and Dave did, that was (singing), "But I thank you." You hear that "tickytackytickytack." I said, "Wow, that's such a great song. I like the technique, where he's just playing on the rim. The next time I do a song, I'm going to do the same thing." So that's why it's "Cisco Kid." You hear that "tickytackytickytacky." And then, with Lee Oskar and Charles Miller, the brilliance that they had; I remember we'd lay down a track, and it used to be customary. Once we got the rough track, we would stay out of the way and we would just get Lee Oskar and Charles Miller, along with our producer, they'd be the only ones there. Of course Howard Scott produced along with all the albums, he wound up being a co-producer along with Lonnie Jordan and Jerry Goldstein. But a lot of times it would just be Jerry Goldstein, maybe Lonnie, but most, I know Charles and Lee was always there, because that's when they would do their horn parts on all of our songs. They would go in, and it would just be horn day. And they'd get that blend between Charles and Lee – Lee is a phenomenal harmonica player. You know, he doesn't think like the majority of harmonica players. He thinks in terms of melodies, parts, that's why when you come to a show and you see us playing, it always seems like Lee is lead, and he's directing. That's what he's doing. That's my buddy. He comes up with some interesting things. He's very European in his thinking music-wise and stuff. I'll never forget when I realized how close we're alike in the early time when we started going out and Lee had never really eaten with us, and we said we were looking for soul food, and we found the soul food. Lee was on the outside and he finally looked in the window and he ran in there and he said, "What's that?" And I said, "Liver and onions, and gravy, mashed potatoes and peas." He said, "That's what we eat." So I found out he has a certain thing, and he's got a certain soul. It's different. I don't know if you've every been to Copenhagen, have you?
Songfacts: No.
Harold: The first time I went there I heard this girl back there using slang like a sister would. Well, my brother shot around the corner and I looked back, and I said, "Dang, if I hadn't looked at you, I would have thought you black." And she looked at me and said, "What you talking about? My brother's just like you." And that was like 1972 or '71. So that's why I always remind Lee, he thinks different than the average European/American. A lot of people think he's complicated, but I can understand him. I don't know if that means that I'm complicated, but it seems pretty easy. And it's like with Howard, and then BB, when we all come together it's such an incredible thing, we can just take the experiences of the day, or individual lives, and we can take and put it together, and then we're just having a conversation. I mean, it's phenomenal. When I looked at it, we've been playing together for like 45 years, 46 years. That's amazing.
Songfacts: Yeah, it's a long time.
Harold: It is. So it's like when we get together we don't see each other for, let's say, 6 months or a year. We get together, we talk to each other every single day. It's like, I've just seen you. That carries on into our music. So we got in the studio and we started laying that track down, I'll tell you years ago, something, Carl. I was working in New Orleans at the Superdome, we had Earth, Wind, and Fire – and who was that that was touring with them?
Songfacts: Chicago?
Harold: Chicago. The lead guitar player, he came up to me, and he stopped in the hallway. There was a bunch of people around. And he looked at me and he says, "I want to let you know that 'Cisco Kid' is the most perfect track I've ever heard." That's what he told me. To have one of Chicago, one of the main guys – the guitar player – come and tell me that was incredible. I always go back to it and I listen to it. When we recorded it we had some excellent engineers with us, and then the articulation, when we would play it, it was like we already knew how each other were thinking, so when we played and laid it down it was just like right there. We knew it was a hit, and it wasn't something intentional. We didn't try to go and manufacture a hit, because I don't think you can manufacture, not a real, lasting hit. So "Cisco Kid" wasn't just a jam, like a lot of our songs. Like "All Day Musical."
Songfacts: Yeah, so for that one, are you guys all in the studio playing together, or are you laying your parts down separately?
Harold: Oh, "Cisco Kid"? We all did it together, and then you might have somebody go back in, like the horns, if they want to re-pronounce the horns or alter them slightly, or make them fat or do extra parts. Sometimes in the percussion, to keep it from spilling over into the drums, and later on we got more sophisticated, we used to come in and overdub our timablis, those licks. The fun thing I used to like was like when we went in and we were doing hand claps, we'd all stand in a circle, and we'd all have to clap. We'd try to get them, that was fun. Or somebody might have a shaker, a maraca, another one a cowbell, another one a wood block or something, we would put percussion on like that.
Songfacts: But for the most part, when you guys are starting these tracks, everybody's playing at once and everything's being recorded?
Harold: Everything is being played at once and everything is being recorded.
Songfacts: All right, gotcha. Hey, the Cisco Kid, was that a TV show?
Harold: That was a television show. Matter of fact, doing our shows, we used to use some of the footage to open up. We'd show a Cisco Kid movie, and he'd say, like, "See you later, amigo," and then we'd take off and then we'd go right into "Cisco Kid."
Songfacts: Okay. So what came next for the band?
Harold: Then things started going kind of down hill. The group started fragmenting for various reasons. BB went into sabbatical, and all of the sudden Charles Miller, our sax player, didn't think that it would still work if BB wasn't there. We brought in some other guys to play, and he didn't want to be in the group at that time. This was approximately 1980, '81, right in there. And then that's when Charles Miller had his untimely death came and when Far Out Productions went and trademarked the name behind our backs. That's when we lost our name. We didn't know it until later. But in '79 is when War was trademarked, and it wasn't in our names, and that was part of the reason why we're now the Low Rider Band. Then after that, the group started kind of like taking a dive, because Disco started coming in. We'd put out an album on MCA Records, Galaxy.
And Galaxy – people love that song to this day. We were over in the ABC Studios, we just laid that track down, I had just gotten those custom-made Ludwig drums that Mr. Ludwig built for me. We were standing listening to the playback, and I said, "Take me to your place in space." That was the beginning of the song. Then we started writing it: "Take me to your place in space, I'm sick and tired of the rat race." That's how that song evolved. That's when we tried it with our new group, that was the Music Band Tour. Matter of fact, one of the best songs I think we ever did, one of my best drumming I ever did, was "Seven Tin Soldiers." And "Music Band" was what Charles Miller said was his ultimate sax solo. That was the last sax solo he recorded before he died his untimely death. So then at that point that's about the time I left the group, the group fragmented, that's when Lee Oskar, Howard Scott, and Lonnie Jordan, along with Ron Hammond, they were touring as War. Just 4 pieces. Then when we got closer to about the '90s, '93 or so, right in there, that's when they called me back up and wanted me to come back in the group because we were going to record the Peace Sign album. So we went in and did the Peace Sign album, and that's when we did the song called "Peace Sign." Now, we did that one up there at that big ranch, Luke Skywalker Ranch. That's where we went.
Songfacts: Now, on that song, is each member taking a different verse?
Harold: Each one. I'm singing the very first one you hear.
Songfacts: All right. And how did you guys write those? Did you just come up with your own, or did you just kind of put them together?
Harold: We each kind of came up with our own. Because when you get there, "I may not speak right, but I know what I'm talking about," that's Lee. Because you remember, he's just learning how to speak English.
Songfacts: Oh, all right.
Harold: Because we'd get a lot of calls from Europe or something, and here's a little something, brother called me up, and they'll think that I'm Lee at times. And I say, "Hey, you know why I sound like…? Because that's all they know how to speak there (Denmark). Like a brother."
Songfacts: So what happens next?
"World Is A Ghetto." That one there was inspired by Papa D. We were living all out around Pomona and different parts, you know, San Pedro, Compton, and so on. And we spent a lot of time out around Malibu, and in Hollywood. Well, one day we started realizing that their toilets backed up... funny, you looked at the drains and see it backing up, and say, "Oh, what's up with this?" And then we started realizing that rich people, people living in some of those big suburbs and stuff, hey, they got their problems, they got broke down cars and stuff. So we started realizing the world is a ghetto. And it's really up to each one of us how we take and work with our environment. We truly believe that everybody can succeed. We believe that it doesn't really matter who you are, where you come from, or your class situation. But we don't look at it upon the way people say it, "Well, if I don't accumulate a lot of wealth I'm not successful." Or, "If I'm not wearing a certain kind of clothes or driving a certain car," or "I gotta have a certain kind of house," that doesn't mean I'm not successful. Well, through that song, what we're really trying to say, you can be successful, as long as you do unto each other as you're supposed to do, be a good neighbor. Get out and do the best you can. Work with each other. Work as a team. That's what we need in America. We don't need all these different factions: I'm a democrat, I'm a republican, I'm independent. We are righteous, that's what War stood for. It was trying to bring everybody together through our music. Lonnie tried to say guns and bullets, but it was through music. That's why I think our music crossed all the different barriers, why it went into all the different nationalities. Why people accepted it, because it was a hydrogenous type music.
Songfacts: Then, we got up to "Cisco Kid."
Harold: The "Cisco Kid," once again, Howard has always been a major contributor. He was in Compton, he had this apartment. I came up there and when I got up there he was sitting on his amp, and I walked up to him. He said, "Harold, I got this idea. Cisco kid was a friend of mine." And that idea came about because there were no ethnic heroes at that time. Mainly, we were seeing people like Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers. There wasn't really anybody to relate to except Cisco Kid. He was like the total different kind of person. Here's this Latino/Spanish blood... I guess more like Spanish.
Incidentally, we did get to meet Duncan Renaldo. We went up to his house, and his wife made sure to let everybody know, "He don't drink. He don't drink no wine." I remember that to this day, she told me. They were beautiful, warm people. We sat there with him. He lived up in Camarillo, up outside of Santa Barbara, California.
Our fictitious character, Cisco Kid, we wanted to give kids, people, another alternative besides the ones that were right in our face, obvious heroes. And it worked out really good, because it had the right kind of hook, it was a fun song, people at that time didn't want to be hearing about no more wars or anything, they just wanted fun music. And the tonality was brilliant. There was a song that I heard, Sam and Dave did, that was (singing), "But I thank you." You hear that "tickytackytickytack." I said, "Wow, that's such a great song. I like the technique, where he's just playing on the rim. The next time I do a song, I'm going to do the same thing." So that's why it's "Cisco Kid." You hear that "tickytackytickytacky." And then, with Lee Oskar and Charles Miller, the brilliance that they had; I remember we'd lay down a track, and it used to be customary. Once we got the rough track, we would stay out of the way and we would just get Lee Oskar and Charles Miller, along with our producer, they'd be the only ones there. Of course Howard Scott produced along with all the albums, he wound up being a co-producer along with Lonnie Jordan and Jerry Goldstein. But a lot of times it would just be Jerry Goldstein, maybe Lonnie, but most, I know Charles and Lee was always there, because that's when they would do their horn parts on all of our songs. They would go in, and it would just be horn day. And they'd get that blend between Charles and Lee – Lee is a phenomenal harmonica player. You know, he doesn't think like the majority of harmonica players. He thinks in terms of melodies, parts, that's why when you come to a show and you see us playing, it always seems like Lee is lead, and he's directing. That's what he's doing. That's my buddy. He comes up with some interesting things. He's very European in his thinking music-wise and stuff. I'll never forget when I realized how close we're alike in the early time when we started going out and Lee had never really eaten with us, and we said we were looking for soul food, and we found the soul food. Lee was on the outside and he finally looked in the window and he ran in there and he said, "What's that?" And I said, "Liver and onions, and gravy, mashed potatoes and peas." He said, "That's what we eat." So I found out he has a certain thing, and he's got a certain soul. It's different. I don't know if you've every been to Copenhagen, have you?
Songfacts: No.
Harold: The first time I went there I heard this girl back there using slang like a sister would. Well, my brother shot around the corner and I looked back, and I said, "Dang, if I hadn't looked at you, I would have thought you black." And she looked at me and said, "What you talking about? My brother's just like you." And that was like 1972 or '71. So that's why I always remind Lee, he thinks different than the average European/American. A lot of people think he's complicated, but I can understand him. I don't know if that means that I'm complicated, but it seems pretty easy. And it's like with Howard, and then BB, when we all come together it's such an incredible thing, we can just take the experiences of the day, or individual lives, and we can take and put it together, and then we're just having a conversation. I mean, it's phenomenal. When I looked at it, we've been playing together for like 45 years, 46 years. That's amazing.
Songfacts: Yeah, it's a long time.
Harold: It is. So it's like when we get together we don't see each other for, let's say, 6 months or a year. We get together, we talk to each other every single day. It's like, I've just seen you. That carries on into our music. So we got in the studio and we started laying that track down, I'll tell you years ago, something, Carl. I was working in New Orleans at the Superdome, we had Earth, Wind, and Fire – and who was that that was touring with them?
Songfacts: Chicago?
Harold: Chicago. The lead guitar player, he came up to me, and he stopped in the hallway. There was a bunch of people around. And he looked at me and he says, "I want to let you know that 'Cisco Kid' is the most perfect track I've ever heard." That's what he told me. To have one of Chicago, one of the main guys – the guitar player – come and tell me that was incredible. I always go back to it and I listen to it. When we recorded it we had some excellent engineers with us, and then the articulation, when we would play it, it was like we already knew how each other were thinking, so when we played and laid it down it was just like right there. We knew it was a hit, and it wasn't something intentional. We didn't try to go and manufacture a hit, because I don't think you can manufacture, not a real, lasting hit. So "Cisco Kid" wasn't just a jam, like a lot of our songs. Like "All Day Musical."
Songfacts: Yeah, so for that one, are you guys all in the studio playing together, or are you laying your parts down separately?
Harold: Oh, "Cisco Kid"? We all did it together, and then you might have somebody go back in, like the horns, if they want to re-pronounce the horns or alter them slightly, or make them fat or do extra parts. Sometimes in the percussion, to keep it from spilling over into the drums, and later on we got more sophisticated, we used to come in and overdub our timablis, those licks. The fun thing I used to like was like when we went in and we were doing hand claps, we'd all stand in a circle, and we'd all have to clap. We'd try to get them, that was fun. Or somebody might have a shaker, a maraca, another one a cowbell, another one a wood block or something, we would put percussion on like that.
Songfacts: But for the most part, when you guys are starting these tracks, everybody's playing at once and everything's being recorded?
Harold: Everything is being played at once and everything is being recorded.
Songfacts: All right, gotcha. Hey, the Cisco Kid, was that a TV show?
Harold: That was a television show. Matter of fact, doing our shows, we used to use some of the footage to open up. We'd show a Cisco Kid movie, and he'd say, like, "See you later, amigo," and then we'd take off and then we'd go right into "Cisco Kid."
Songfacts: Okay. So what came next for the band?
Harold: Then things started going kind of down hill. The group started fragmenting for various reasons. BB went into sabbatical, and all of the sudden Charles Miller, our sax player, didn't think that it would still work if BB wasn't there. We brought in some other guys to play, and he didn't want to be in the group at that time. This was approximately 1980, '81, right in there. And then that's when Charles Miller had his untimely death came and when Far Out Productions went and trademarked the name behind our backs. That's when we lost our name. We didn't know it until later. But in '79 is when War was trademarked, and it wasn't in our names, and that was part of the reason why we're now the Low Rider Band. Then after that, the group started kind of like taking a dive, because Disco started coming in. We'd put out an album on MCA Records, Galaxy.
And Galaxy – people love that song to this day. We were over in the ABC Studios, we just laid that track down, I had just gotten those custom-made Ludwig drums that Mr. Ludwig built for me. We were standing listening to the playback, and I said, "Take me to your place in space." That was the beginning of the song. Then we started writing it: "Take me to your place in space, I'm sick and tired of the rat race." That's how that song evolved. That's when we tried it with our new group, that was the Music Band Tour. Matter of fact, one of the best songs I think we ever did, one of my best drumming I ever did, was "Seven Tin Soldiers." And "Music Band" was what Charles Miller said was his ultimate sax solo. That was the last sax solo he recorded before he died his untimely death. So then at that point that's about the time I left the group, the group fragmented, that's when Lee Oskar, Howard Scott, and Lonnie Jordan, along with Ron Hammond, they were touring as War. Just 4 pieces. Then when we got closer to about the '90s, '93 or so, right in there, that's when they called me back up and wanted me to come back in the group because we were going to record the Peace Sign album. So we went in and did the Peace Sign album, and that's when we did the song called "Peace Sign." Now, we did that one up there at that big ranch, Luke Skywalker Ranch. That's where we went.
Songfacts: George Lucas, right?
Harold:
George Lucas. So we were at his studio, and I've seen him a couple of
times. Gorgeous place. Beautiful little city. Now, in that recording,
pretty much that was Lonnie Jordan, Howard Scott, and myself. We were
trying to get back to our basics. Because all the other people were
peripheral people, they weren't from the original group. Lee had left
the group because he'd gotten disenchanted. When I came back to the
group, 1993, I was disappointed because Lee was gone. So I'm there, and
then after a bit Howard left the group. And then I'm there, just with
Lonnie, and then Lonnie wanted to run the whole show. We had brought him
in the group when we were kids. And nothing bitter, love him and stuff,
but 1) in order to run a car, or maintain a project, or whatever you
build, you gotta know how it was built, first of all. If you don't
understand the workings you can't keep it running, you can just emulate.
So he and I just decided to say, "Well, I'm outta here." Howard wasn't
there, Lee wasn't there, BB... the other guys were really nice. Like Tex
Nakamura, he was an incredible person, I really liked him a lot, and I
still like him. But then there were 5 musicians. I felt, too, that if
they would just pursue it themselves, instead of trying to emulate us,
they might get further. So now here we are, 2007, we've got our Low
Rider Band, and 4 out of 7 in the band. We've got 4 of the original
members in Low Rider Band, and there's only 5 of us that are still
living.
We spoke with Harold on March 20, 2007. Learn more at lowriderband.com
We spoke with Harold on March 20, 2007. Learn more at lowriderband.com
Photo Courtesy of Getty Images
War's best-known songs were terse, catchy and fun, as all great singles should be. But their albums went another way, achieving something elaborate, challenging and deep. Where War's hits had an accessibility that allowed them to reflect the life of anyone who listened, their albums spoke of specific lives that came from a particular sensibility and place.
The broad catalogue War created during their '70s prime captured the essence of Los Angeles areas like Compton and Long Beach, places where many of the band's members either grew up or moved to. The members also reflected the ethnicities in those areas, bringing together Latin, African-American and Caucasian players. In a parallel way, War's sound combined Latin-jazz, funk, pop and rock. The amalgam arrived just as Afro-Cuban influences were enjoying a fresh surge in music, in acts from Santana and Malo to Mandrill and the Fania All-Stars. While all those groups had distinct sounds, War's was, perhaps, the most finely-attuned to the groove.
Their deep tracks favored riffs that moved laterally, as an array of soloists took flight above. No fewer than four of their members improvised with distinction, including the Danish-born harmonica player Lee Oskar, sax and flute man Charles Miller, guitarist Howard Scott and keyboardist Lonnie Jordan. Providing their defining foundation was the three-way rhythm section, comprised of bassist B.B. Dickerson, drummer Harold Ray Brown and percussionist "Papa Dee" Allen. Though instrumental sections ate up huge chunks of War's music, their approach to vocals also played a key role. All seven members sang, often in unison, giving their voices a purpose while simultaneously covering for a flaw. Though all the members had solid voices, none had the pre-eminence of the greatest front men. Singing together gave them extra power. More, their blend of voices gave the music the feel of a neighborhood in conversation. It was crowded and clamorous, but also convivial, lending the music a sense of community.
That vibe had great symbolic
resonance in a place, and at a time, when gang-activity drove many
locals apart. The music of War demonstrated the power of unity over
division. Heard in that context, hits like "Why Can't We Be Friends," "Summer"
and "Low Rider" became peace pipes, connecting the inner city, rather
than mere party anthems for the suburbs. On the East Coast, the
Latin-rock group The Ghetto Brothers served a similar purpose, but with a
heightened sense of authority. The Brothers included in their ranks
actual gang members who used their music to broker deals between rivals
in a then burning Bronx.
Of course, the Ghetto Brothers never achieved anywhere near the exposure of War. But, in the '70s, few groups did. During their prime, between 1970 and '77, this West Coast colossus amassed no fewer than eight gold albums, as well as two platinum sets (both hits collections). They also enjoyed seven Top Ten Billboard singles; Twelve of their songs made the Top 40.
War scored its first chart smash—the Top Five "Spill the Wine"—before
they even solidified as the group they would become. On their first two
album, they backed a singer who was already a star, Eric Burdon
of The Animals. The British-born vocalist, along with veteran producer
Jerry Goldstein, discovered the musicians during a club show in L.A.
and, afterwards, proposed a collaboration. The resulting collection, 'Eric Burdon Declares War',
released in April of 1970, had the feel of a band finding its footing.
But the looseness created its own distinction. The album consisted
mainly of long, evolving jams. The seven-minute "Vision of Rassan" tipped a hat to avant-garde jazz player Rassan Roland Kirk, while the title of another piece, "Blues for Memphis Slim,"
made its inspiration just as plain. Not that either song sounded like
the music of the artists they name-dropped. Both stressed hard funk,
created by the rhythm section, while the soloists riffed and Burdon
offered his own mix of rapping and singing. It was a summery, loopy, and
sexy sound, indulgent to be sure but with a real feel for the beat.
Their follow-up, released under the tongue-in-cheek title 'The Black-Man's Burdon', offered unrecognizable improvisations on the Stones' "Paint It Black" and the Moody Blues "Nights in White Satin."
A double set, 'Burdon' was even more undisciplined than its
predecessor, but it had more speed and variety on its side. Though both
albums made the Top Thirty, Burdon wound up ditching the group during a
European tour, inadvertently freeing them to find their own voice.
The slimmed down group began clearing their throat on "War," which appeared in the Spring of '71. It offered a promising sampler of the array of styles they could command on their own. "Sun Oh Sun"
with lead vocals from bassist Dickerson, contrasted two sections, a
relaxed piece of pop, goosed by the fluttering flute of Miller, and a
harder funk-rock rhythm, fired by a tough guitar and surging organ. "Lonely Feeling,"
built on Jordan's funky piano and sly vocal, had the kind of brisk New
Orleans shuffle you'd expect from Allen Toussaint, while the thoughtful
ballad "Back Home," voiced by Miller, centered on his soulful sax. War's deep influence from Latin-jazz showed in "War Drums," highlighted by Allen's barreling congas, but the group fell back into its indulgent side in the final, 11- minute piece, "Fidel's Fantasy
Of course, the Ghetto Brothers never achieved anywhere near the exposure of War. But, in the '70s, few groups did. During their prime, between 1970 and '77, this West Coast colossus amassed no fewer than eight gold albums, as well as two platinum sets (both hits collections). They also enjoyed seven Top Ten Billboard singles; Twelve of their songs made the Top 40.
."
It centered on a taunting monologue from Allen that imagined a
nightmarish fever dream of the Cuban dictator. While tedious as a whole,
it did include striking, Afro-Cuban solos from Miller's flute and
Oskar's harmonica.
Understandably, the album didn't connect commercially, but War corrected that before the year was out with their follow-up, 'All Day Music'.
A more tuneful and focused work than their debut, War's second,
post-Burdon album proved they could channel deep grooves and
instrumental stretches into songs that passed for pop. The title track,
with its easy groove, warm harmonica and rich organ, sounded like an
ideal song of summer, while the largely instrumental "Nappy Head" crossed the Latin beat of Steely Dan's "Do It Again"
with the loosey-goosey organ of "Spill the Wine." For good measure, it
featured a lovely jazz guitar line from Scott and a charging horn
section. "Get Down"
underscored War's flair for New Orleans' funk, while Scott's hard
guitar played hide and seek with Oskar's sharp harmonica. Likewise, "That's What Love Will Do"
tapped sweet soul, laced by flute breaks from Miller. For even more
variety, the album closed with a live track fired by the kind of boogie
guitar you'd expect from ZZ Top. Even so, the break-out number turned
out to be "Slippin' Into Darkness," a funky rewrite of Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand Up,"
that became War's first post-Burdon hit. Its irresistible funk beat
paved the way for the later pop crossovers of bands like Kool and the
Gang and the Ohio Players. Memorable as the single version of "Slippin'" may have been, the full album recording is the one to hear. At twice
the length, it demonstrated how War could hone a hit for radio, while
preserving their freedom on album.
If "Slippin" got the band on the radio, their next album, 'The World Is a Ghetto', had a virtual stranglehold on it. Both the title track and the album's opener, "Cisco Kid," exploded, becoming not just hits but iconic recordings. The latter epitomized outlaw cool, presenting a fallen, inner city tough guy as a mythic bad-ass. The former made a political statement, asserting that we all live in ghettos, created by the ways we segregate ourselves from other cultures and classes. Musically, the push and pull between Latin congas, African horns and thumping funk bass in "Cisco Kid" made turned a quintessential urban tale into a universal dance anthem. But if the 3-minute single version of "Ghetto" enticed, the album take went farther, stretching into a ten-minute monster jam, elaborated by the explorative sax of Miller and the wah-wah lead guitar from Scott. The rest of the album suffered no filler, from the bouncy New Orleans funk-rocker "Where Was You At? to the searching, 13-minute instrumental "City, Country, City." The latter interwove a warm harmonica, a hard funk guitar, some lush organ, as well as a searching sax solo. It even found room for a thundering Dickerson bass break. Together, the album generated enough excitement to become the top selling set of 1972. An expanded edition, released for its 40th anniversary, featured another notable track, "Fright Train Jam," perhaps War's fastest recording, driven by their wildest guitar.
The band's winning streak only escalated with the 1975 album 'Why Can't We Be Friends?'
Like the 'Ghetto' album, it hosted two immortal singles—the title track
and "Low Rider," the street anthem to end all street anthems. Still,
more of the set emphasized the band's softer side, favoring ballads and
tranquil instrumental sections. A few animated moments surfaced, like
the lightning-fast, Afro-Cuban keyboard break from Jordon in "Leroy's Latin Lament."
But, ultimately, 'Friends' rated as War's most tame and mainstream
collection. It also marked the start of a slow-down in productivity,
arriving two years after its predecessor, and one year before the
release of two rehashed releases.
In 1976, War's old company disinterred tracks from the Eric Burdon days for a set titled 'Love Is All Around'. Some of its songs had appeared before, like the run at "Tobacco Road." Others, like an 11-minute run at The Beatles' "A Day in the Life,"
never should have escaped the studio. Also in '76, the band issued a
double set that paired an album of new songs with one comprised of
shorter versions of previously issued pieces. Both halves of the set
stressed grooves and solos over songs and none stood with War's best.
A more satisfying work appeared towards the end of 1977, 'Galaxy',
the band's last with their classic line up. This time, the music was
more free-form, leaving room for the listener to dream. For a motif, the
music exploited the then new Star Wars-mania, working in
synths to represents space exploration. It came together best in the
title track, fired by a rolling groove. While 'Galaxy' may not have
represented the band's absolute peak, it did sustain enough of a mood to
make it War's last Top 20 score. Bassist Dickerson left half way
through recording their next album, ending their heyday. Not that his
defection stopped decades of variations on the War line-up. They
continue to this day, led by Jordon, the last of the original players.
At the same time, the band's classic work lives on, in two ways: First,
through the sustained use of War samples on hip-hops records; Second, in
all those deep cuts many listeners have yet to explore.
War (American band)
WAR (Original lineup in 1976)
War (originally called Eric Burdon and War) is an American funk band from Long Beach, California, known for several hit songs (including "Spill the Wine", "The World Is a Ghetto", "The Cisco Kid", "Why Can't We Be Friends?", "Low Rider", and "Summer").[5][6]
Formed in 1969, War is a musical crossover band that fuses elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues, and reggae.[1] Their album The World Is a Ghetto was Billboard's best-selling album of 1973.[7] The band transcended racial and cultural barriers with a multi-ethnic line-up. War was subject to many line-up changes over the course of its existence, leaving member Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan as the only original member in the current line-up; four other members created a new group called the Lowrider Band.
History
1960s: Beginnings
In 1962, Howard E. Scott and Harold Brown formed a group called The Creators in Long Beach, California. Within a few years, they had added Charles Miller, Morris "B. B." Dickerson and Lonnie Jordan to the lineup. Lee Oskar and Papa Dee Allen later joined as well. They all shared a love of diverse styles of music, which they had absorbed living in the racially mixed Los Angeles ghettos. The Creators recorded several singles on Dore Records while working with Tjay Contrelli, a saxophonist from the band Love. In 1968, the Creators became Nightshift (named because Brown worked nights at a steel yard) and started performing with Deacon Jones, a football player and singer.
The original War was conceived by record producer Jerry Goldstein ("My Boyfriend's Back", "Hang on Sloopy", "I Want Candy") and singer Eric Burdon (ex-lead singer of the British band the Animals). In 1969, Goldstein saw musicians who would eventually become War playing at the Rag Doll in North Hollywood, backing Deacon Jones, and he was attracted to the band's sound. Jordan claimed that the band's goal was to spread a message of brotherhood and harmony, using instruments and voices to speak out against racism, hunger, gangs, crimes, and turf wars, and promote hope and the spirit of brotherhood.[citation needed] Eric Burdon and War began playing live shows to audiences throughout Southern California before entering into the studio to record their debut album Eric Burdon Declares "War". The album's best known track, "Spill the Wine", was a hit and launched the band's career.
1970s: Height of popularity
Eric Burdon and War toured extensively across Europe and the United States. The subtitle of a 1970 review in the New Musical Express of their first UK gig in London's Hyde Park read: "Burdon and War: Best Live Band We've Ever Seen".[8] Their show at Ronnie Scott's Club in London on September 18, 1970, is historically notable for being the last public performance for Jimi Hendrix,[9] who joined them onstage for the last 35 minutes of Burdon and War's second set; a day later he was dead. A second Eric Burdon and War album, a two-disc set titled The Black-Man's Burdon was released in 1970, before Burdon left the band in the middle of its European tour. They finished the tour without him and returned to record their first album as War.
War (1971) met with only modest success, but later that year, the band released All Day Music which included the singles "All Day Music" and "Slippin' into Darkness". The latter single sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. in June 1972.[10] In 1972, they released The World Is a Ghetto which was even more successful. Its second single, "The Cisco Kid" shipped gold,[11] and the album attained the number two spot on Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was Billboard magazine's Album of the Year as the best-selling album of 1973.
This band lives
up to its name. The powerful, deceptively torpid groove evokes the pace
of inner-city pleasures like 'All Day Music' and 'Summer.'
But however jokey and off-the-cuff they sound, they're usually singing
about conflict, often racial conflict—the real subject of 'The Cisco Kid' and 'Why Can't We Be Friends?,' which many take for novelty songs.
— Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)[12]
The next album, Deliver the Word (1973) contained the hits "Gypsy Man" and a studio version of "Me and Baby Brother" (previously issued as a live recording), which peaked at #8 and #15 on the Billboard chart. The album went on to sell nearly two million copies.[citation needed] The next album, Why Can't We Be Friends? was released in 1975. It included "Low Rider" and the title track, which were among the band's biggest hits.[11]
In 1976, War released a greatest hits record which contained one new song "Summer", which, as a single, went gold and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard chart. Also released that year were Love is All Around by Eric Burdon and War, containing mostly unreleased recordings from 1969 and 1970, and Platinum Jazz, a one-off album for jazz label Blue Note. The latter double album had cover art to match the greatest hits album, and was half new material and half compilation, focusing on (but not restricted to) instrumental music. The group continued to attain success with their next album, Galaxy (1977) whose title single was inspired by Star Wars. War's next project was a soundtrack album for the movie Youngblood in 1978.
1980s: The Music Band
In 1979, following the departure of B.B. Dickerson during recording sessions for their next album (replaced by Luther Rabb on bass who completed the album), the band considered changing their name to The Music Band, but decided at the last minute to continue as War, and use "The Music Band" as the title of a series of albums. The series originally consisted of two studio albums (The Music Band, The Music Band 2, both in 1979) and a live album (The Music Band Live, 1980), but after the band left MCA in 1981 and had already made records for other labels, MCA expanded the series with a compilation (The Best of the Music Band, 1982) and a third original album of left-over material (The Music Band – Jazz, 1983).
The group lost another member when Charles Miller (saxophone) was murdered in 1980. He had already been replaced by Pat Rizzo (ex Sly and the Family Stone) in 1979. Other new members joining at this time were Alice Tweed Smith (credited as "Tweed Smith" and "Alice Tweed Smyth" on various albums) on percussion and vocals (giving the band its first female vocalist), and Ronnie Hammon as a third drummer.
After making the one-off single "Cinco de Mayo" for LAX Records in 1981 (Jerry Goldstein's own label, which also reissued Eric Burdon Declares "War" under the title Spill the Wine the same year), War signed with RCA Victor Records and recorded Outlaw (1982) which included the single plus additional singles "You Got the Power", "Outlaw", and "Just Because".[11] It was followed by Life (is So Strange) (1983) from which the title track was also a single. War's records from 1979 to 1983 were not as successful as those from the preceding decade, and after the two RCA albums, the band's activities became sporadic. They did not record another full album until a decade later. The 1987 compilation album The Best of War ...and More included two new tracks, "Livin' in the Red" and "Whose Cadillac Is That?", and a remixed version of "Low Rider" (in addition to the original version). Papa Dee Allen died of a brain aneurysm which struck him onstage in 1988.
1990s: Reformations
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War in 1992
In 1996, the group attempted to gain independence from Goldstein, but were unable to do so under the name "War" which remains a trademark owned by Goldstein and Far Out Productions.[13] In response, Brown, Oskar, Scott, and a returning B.B. Dickerson (who had not worked with War since 1979) adopted a name which referenced one of War's biggest hits: Lowrider Band. They have yet to record a studio album.
Lonnie Jordan opted to remain with Goldstein and create a new version of War with himself as the only original member. Some other musicians who had joined between 1983 and 1993 were also part of the new line-up. Both the "new" War and the Lowrider Band are currently active as live performance acts.
1996 also saw the release of a double CD compilation, Anthology (1970–1994), later updated in 2003 with a few track substitutions, as The Very Best of War. Another CD compilation from 1999, Grooves and Messages, included a second disc of remixes done by various producers.
21st century
On April 21, 2008, Eric Burdon and Lonnie Jordan reunited for the first time in 37 years to perform a concert as War at the London Royal Albert Hall. The other original surviving members were not asked to be a part of the reunion. The concert coincided with Avenue / Rhino Records' Eric Burdon and War reissues which included Eric Burdon Declares "War" and The Black-Man's Burdon, plus compilations The Best of Eric Burdon and War and Anthology. In 2008, Lonnie Jordan's edition of War released a live album / DVD of songs originally from 1969 to 1975: Greatest Hits Live. War were unsuccessfully nominated for 2009 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[14] There were rumours that Burdon would join them again in summer 2009, but it did not happen. In 2011, War played "Low Rider" and many other hits at the Rack n' Roll in Stamford, Connecticut, with Remember September and Westchester School of Rock.
In 2014 the new War released a studio album, Evolutionary. Also in 2014, War was a nominee for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[15]
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed War among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[16]
Discography
Members
Original
- Eric Burdon – lead vocals (1969-1971, 1976-1977)
- Howard E. Scott – guitar, vocals (1969–1994)
- Lee Oskar – harmonica and vocals (1969–1994)
- Thomas "Papa Dee" Allen – percussion and vocals (1969–1988; died 1988)
- Charles Miller – saxophone and vocals (1969–1979; died 1980)
- B.B. Dickerson – bass and vocals (1969–1979)
- Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan – keyboards, vocals (1969–present)
- Harold Ray Brown – drums and vocals (1969–1994)
Current
- Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan – keyboards, lead vocals (1969–present)
- Stuart Ziff – guitar, vocals (2002–present)
- Scott Martin – saxophone, flute (2017–present)
- Stanley Behrens – harmonica (2011–present)
- Sal Rodriguez – drums, percussion, vocals (1990–present)
- David "Pug" Rodriguez – percussion, vocals (2011–present)
- Marcos Reyes – percussion (1998–present)
- Trevor Huxley – bass (2015–present)
Past
- Eric Burdon – vocals (1969–1971)
- Harold Ray Brown – drums and vocals (1969–1994)
- Howard E. Scott – guitar and vocals (1969–1994)
- Lee Oskar – harmonica and vocals (1969–1994)
- B.B. Dickerson – bass and vocals (1969–1979)
- Thomas "Papa Dee" Allen – percussion and vocals (1969–1988; died 1988)
- Charles Miller – saxophone and vocals (1969–1979; died 1980)
- Ron Hammon – drums and percussion (1979–1996)
- Pat Rizzo – saxophone, flute, and vocals (1979–1983, 1993–1995)
- Luther Rabb – bass and vocals (1979–1984)
- Alice Tweed Smith – percussion and vocals (1979–1981)
- Ricky Green – bass and vocals (1984–1989)
- Tetsuya "Tex" Nakamura – harmonica and vocals (1993–2006)
- Rae Valentine – keyboards, percussion, and vocals (1993–2001)
- Kerry Campbell – saxophone (1993–1998)
- Charles Green – saxophone and flute (1993–1995)
- J.B. Eckl – guitar and vocals (1994–1996)
- Smoky Greenwell – harmonica (1994–1996)
- Sandro Alberto – guitar and vocals (1996–1998)
- Richard Marquez – drums and percussion (1996–1997)
- Kenny Hudson – percussion (1997–1998)
- Fernando Harkless – saxophone (1998–2011)
- James Zota Baker – guitar, vocals (1998–2002)
- Pancho Tomaselli – bass, vocals (2003–February 2015)
- Mitch Kashmar – harmonica, vocals (2006–2011)
- David Urquidi – saxophone, flute (2011–2017)
References
- "War | Biography & History". AllMusic.
- Henderson, Alex. "War - Peace Sign". AllMusic. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Palmer, Robert (February 13, 1977). "Jazz Pop—A 'Failed Art Music' Makes Good". The New York Times. p. D20. Retrieved March 18, 2018.
...War, the black rock group.
- Hanson, Amy. "War - Deliver the Word". AllMusic. Retrieved January 15, 2017.
- Burdon, Eric; Craig, Jeff Marshall (October 2, 2002). Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. Da Capo Press. pp. 105–6. ISBN 978-1-56025-448-5. Retrieved April 25, 2011.
- Buckley, Peter (October 28, 2003). The Rough Guide to Rock. Rough Guides. p. vii. ISBN 978-1-84353-105-0. Retrieved April 25, 2011.
- "Year End Charts - Year-end Albums - The Billboard 200". Billboard.com. Archived from the original on February 14, 2008. Retrieved August 6, 2009.
- Richard Green (September 19, 1970). "Eric Burdon & War: Hyde Park, London". New Musical Express.
- Brown, Tony (1997). Jimi Hendrix: The Final Days. Omnibus Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-7119-5238-6.
- Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 305. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.
- Colin Larkin, ed. (1997). The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Concise ed.). Virgin Books. pp. 1230/1. ISBN 1-85227-745-9.
- Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: W". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Robertchristgau.com. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 22, 2019.
- "Banken und Finanzprodukte im Vergleich". BankVergleich.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2009.
- "Newsday | Long Island's & NYC's News Source". Newsday.com. Archived from the original on November 9, 2008.
- Greene, Andy (October 9, 2014). "Green Day, NIN, the Smiths Nominated for Rock Hall of Fame". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 25, 2015.
- Rosen, Jody (June 25, 2019). "Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire". The New York Times. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
External links
INTERVIEWS
Interview: Lonnie Jordan
by admin ⋅ May 21, 2018
Keyboard player/singer Lonnie Jordan is one of the founding members of the band WAR, a melting pot of soul, funk, Latin, and jazz influences whose songs include “Low Rider”, “Spill the Wine”, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”, and “The Cisco Kid”.
WAR’s fortunes took off when singer Eric Burdon asked them to back him up after leaving the Animals. They recorded two albums together, and had a huge hit song in 1970 with “Spill the Wine”.
WAR raged on after Burdon’s departure, and in 1972 they released the Number One album The World Is a Ghetto. More ’70’s success followed, with “Low Rider”, especially, striking a chord which resonates to this day.
This interview was for a preview article for noozhawk.com for the 5/27/18 WAR concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl, a show with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic also on the bill. It was done by phone on 5/7/18
Jeff Moehlis: This is a show where WAR is sharing the bill with George Clinton. Did you and George know each other back in the ’70’s?
Lonnie Jordan: Yeah, we knew each other. We didn’t actually hang out, but we always met each other onstage whenever we would play together back in the day. It was fun. It was just like one big party [laughs].
JM: Were you surprised to hear that he’s planning to retire from touring?
LJ: Not really. You know, he had his run. Like the song “Home” says: “I’ve had my run and I’m ready to go home.” So no, I’m not surprised.
And he’s deserving to retire. But to be honest with you, I doubt if he does retire. It’s hard to retire when you’re making music, and when you’re making people happy. I’m just sayin’ [laughs]. I don’t plan to retire. James Brown didn’t retire.
JM: I imagine that even if he stops touring, he’ll keep writing and recording music.
LJ: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean look at Tony Bennett, my favorite artist. Frank Sinatra couldn’t retire either. Nobody retires. They may get a little tired, but they don’t retire.
JM: Going way back to WAR’s early years, how did the song “Spill the Wine” come together?
LJ: You’ve probably heard a million stories, but the story I’m giving you is from the horse’s mouth. We were in the studio still creating “Spill the Wine”. We were done with the track, and that’s another story that has to do with a connection that I had a run-in with Jim Morrison. That’s a whole other story [laughs]. But to make the story shorter and everything…
We were in the studio at Wally Heider’s in Los Angeles, and it just so happened that Eric [Burdon] was in the song booth improvising. He was trying to come up with a story. We were all having a hard time, and a young lady was in the booth with him. I won’t mention any names, and I won’t even tell you what they were doing.
I had bought a bottle on wine – back in those days I wasn’t really that into wines. I just figured wine is wine. So I bought a big bottle of Boone’s Farm [laughs]. You know, that’s all I knew. Otherwise it would’ve been whiskey. So I had this big bottle sitting on the left side of the console board, and a styrofoam cup. But as I was watching Eric in a dark lit room while the track was playing, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything. But I noticed he was being inspired in there – I won’t go any further than that. As he was being inspired, I took the top off and poured this big bottle of wine still looking at Eric. I’m like, “Wow, I should be in there.” [laughs] As I was pouring it I wasn’t paying any attention, and it all spilled over into the board, and the board started smoking [laughs].
It didn’t ruin the tape. The tape was still going, the volume was still there, but everyone thought it was funny and Jerry [Goldstein] had to get on the horn to tell Eric in the monitors in his earphones that Lonnie spilled wine in the board. And that was a “bingo” from that point on. “Spill the wine.” Eric was just having fun. He just started singing and blurting out things, and that was one of the blurts he blurted out: “Spill the wine”.
And next thing you know, Jerry and Chris Upton, the engineer, had this bulb lit up in their head and it just went from there. And the girl that was in the room, she was already speaking Spanish on the track. Nothing connected or related to “Spill the wine”. She already layered hers on the track of what they were doing, which, again, that’s personal [laughs]. So that was there, the track was there, we just needed to put a story to the struck. So up came “Spill the wine”, and there it was.
JM: You mentioned Jim Morrison. From the horse’s mouth, did you really punch Jim Morrison at that party?
LJ: No, I still don’t believe it. Jerry Goldstein said I did, Eric said I did. I did not punch Jim. I can tell you what I did. I think they all turned around and saw him backing up slowly into the fireplace. They were all high. I wasn’t taking any acid, so I can tell you I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t even introduced to acid at that time, but the whole house was on acid. It was a party.
Jim lived right behind, on the hill down below. He loved Eric. I was playing the piano – it was at the time that we were still creating the music to “Spill the Wine”, and Eric and I were sitting at the piano while everybody else was partying. The next thing I know Jim jumped up on the piano. I didn’t even know who he was. I didn’t know a lot of the American artists back in those days. I knew the British Invasion, the people who were at the house, but I didn’t know who Jim Morrison was, or Lydia Pense. I really didn’t know.
This guy, who was Jim Morrison, had a Superman outfit on, and he kicked over the lid on our hands. We moved our hands out of the way just in time. Eric jumped off the piano, ran up to the room upstairs, came downstairs, shot a gun. He shot the chandeliers out with his gun, and nobody ducked. I knew everybody was on some strange drugs. I’m the only one that ducked [laughs]. It was a strange thing. He shot the chandeliers, and as I say nobody ducked.
Jim Morrison backed up into the fireplace. What I did was I put my finger on his chest, on that Superman logo, and I said, “You need to quit, whoever you are.” Because he kept rolling his fist around, and said, “I bet you’d like to hit me.” I knew he was high, and I said, “You’d better cool it man” [laughs]. So he backed up when I touched him, and I guess I looked like I hit him but I didn’t. Like I said, I touched his chest, and I moved my body back with my finger, and I guess it did looked like I struck him, but I didn’t hit him, because I never hit people, not with my hands having to play piano [laughs]. I didn’t have insurance on my hands at the time. I never hit anybody. If I was going to hit him, it would’ve been with a bat or something.
But he backed up into the fireplace, and this young lady came running in the house, to the fireplace, and said, “Is James here? Where is James?” I said, “Are you looking for that guy?” “Yeah”, and she picked him up like he was piece of paper, and took him out of the house, took him, I guess, back to his house. Then that’s when I found out the story about who he was. “Oh, that guy!” I didn’t know.
The only American artists I knew back in those days… Well, we knew Jimi Hendrix. You know, Jimi’s connection with The Animals, Eric being our lead singer, and Chas Chandler of The Animals producing his first album, and he and Eric being really good friends. He jammed with us the night before he passed away. We were the last band he jammed with. We used to pass each other back in the day, when he was playing with The Isley Brothers, Little Richard. And then we were on the road around the Seattle area, playing all the hole in the wall clubs, and we passed each other many times back in the ’60’s. We pretty much knew each other. We knew him when he was just a back-up player, doing exactly what we were doing, playing the same kind of music. R&B stuff.
JM: What do you remember about the night you jammed with Jimi Hendrix shortly before he passed away?
LJ: He was pretty cool, just the same person that we knew in L.A. in the past. My manager and producer Jerry Goldstein had this bungalow, and he always came there. As a matter of fact, one of our first gigs that we did was a festival with Jimi Hendrix, Mother Earth. It was a whole bunch of people – Marvin Gaye was on that one. A lot of people were on that – The Grass Roots. It was a three-day festival. [JM: This must’ve been the The Newport 69 Festival]
He was the same guy. Just shy and mellow. He came down Tuesday night, didn’t bring his guitar. I asked him, “Man, are you going to bring your guitar? You should jam with us.” So he did. He brought his guitar the next night, which was Wednesday. We were at Ronnie Scott’s at the time, in England. We had like five nights there. We were playing in the middle level, and Osabisa was playing down below. I would go down there to listen to those guys play.
But then Jimi came down the next night and we jammed on Memphis Slim’s “Mother Earth”. The only scary part that seemed weird to me is that afterwards, when he goes back to his flat or wherever he was living, and we get this call from Monika saying that Jimi has vomiting and she didn’t know what to do. We were telling her to call the ambulance, and she was panicking because she didn’t want to get in trouble. She was still going to school. She wasn’t a nurse – she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to get busted with the drugs in the room. The law back then was a little bit more strict than it is today. Nobody was mad at her. She couldn’t help it, and she didn’t know all she had to do was turn him over. He could’ve probably survived it had he turned over, but nobody really knew what was going on. We didn’t have a cellphone where you can take a picture, or “go live”. We just didn’t have access to all that.
JM: The album The World Is a Ghetto was a huge hit for the band, and went to Number One. What are your reflections on that particular album?
LJ: Like most of our songs that we wrote, everything was basically improvised, pretty much like how Eric taught us how to improvise on the stage back in the day. Whatever you do onstage, you can go in the studio and do the same thing. Just turn on the tape. If you don’t, then you’re going to miss everything, because we cannot repeat it. My take on it is that it was something that just came out of our heads, that came off the streets. Everything that we wrote pertained to the streets. We would just take it and pick up the tempo, and write some words according to what was going on at the time. The music just came naturally.
The World Is a Ghetto was basically about us connecting with the world like troubadours, making people aware of what was going on, especially those that never had the chance to travel outside their town or city. They don’t know what’s going on. A lot of people that don’t travel are afraid of other people [laughs], or if they stay in one city with one race of people, they are afraid to connect with another race of people because they don’t know how they are, however they’ve seen them on TV. They don’t know. The World Is a Ghetto was something pretty much related to that issue, in its own way, without being political. Because we never wanted to ever be involved in any type of politics.
JM: What do you remember about the recording of the song “Low Rider”? Did it also come from a jam?
LJ: It was all a jam. Our saxophone player Charles Miller came in, and he had just bough a lowrider car [laughs], you know, a nice Chevy car. It was time to go into the studio, and he drove the car to the studio, came in and had a bottle of tequila. We already had the track already made, and he sat down on the bench – I’ll never forget – and he had a lemon, he had salt, and some shot glasses. Of course I took a shot with him. He sat down and put his headphones on. “Charlie, you’ll like this!”
He started listening to it, and we knew how he was. He could take a song and make it funny, make it street, whatever it was he would make it happen. And he did. He just started singing it with that attitude. Like we always do, we were rolling the tape. If you don’t, they you’re going to miss it. So we always had the tape running. We never said, “Are you ready?” He just sat down and put his phones on, there was a mike there, and we just turned the tape on. And there it was right there. He had it. It was like magic [laughs].
By the way, before the song actually came out we filmed the Duke’s lowriders and the Imperials lowriders. They were pretty much rival car clubs back in those days. We gave them a copy of a whole bunch of cassettes while we were filming. We took those films and used it as our backdrop whenever we would play the song onstage. We took the film all the way to New York, to Japan, to Germany. People had never even seen a lowrider back then. Except from California to Albuquerque they knew about lowriders. But beyond that no one had ever seen it. People went into shock [laughs] when they saw all these cars hopping up and down. They just didn’t know what to make of it. We were the first to introduce it, not to mention the song.
JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?
LJ: Well, if you’re going to really play music, don’t drive yourself and other people crazy not being committed [laughs]. Commit yourself, and learn the piano first of all – because that’s the mother of all instruments – before singing, before guitar, before bass, or any other instrument, even violin. Learn the piano, because that will help you know all the fundamentals of music for all the other instruments, including your voice.
Also, I would advise if you’re going to really get involved in the music, get involved in the music business as well. Learn the business. Learn how you get paid [laughs]. That’s the bottom line. I don’t have to go into details about that. Learn how you get paid.
JM: Do you see any path that would lead to you playing together with the other members of WAR from back in the ’70’s?
LJ: Not really. That’s pretty much like if I would get back with my ex-wife again, which I have no plan to. No plans at all. But we did make beautiful music together, which is our children that we had, pretty much like a marriage, because we did have a marriage. I still love the guys, but we moved on from each other. And it’s been so long – out of sight, out of mind.
I can’t really ever say we never will, because as we get older life seems to turn different avenues all the time for one another. So I can never say never, because you never know if the right opportunity would come around. When I say opportunity, it might be the right money – who knows? It could be an assortment of a lot of different things. I don’t know, I really can’t tell you. Again, I wouldn’t say never.
JM: Well, personally I think WAR should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Maybe that’s an occasion…
LJ: That’s one way. I’m sure they would make us play. That’s a thought.
Let’s put it this way. If it’s the right opportunity, and we have a good offer, then we could work out something. As long as it’s not something that we have to do all the time. So I don’t know. I really don’t know. That’s a hard question.
JM: Do you remember playing in Santa Barbara over the years?
LJ: Yes, I do. We played the Bowl in, maybe the ’90’s or the ’80’s. We did do the Bowl.
You have to also understand that I lived in Santa Barbara in the ’60’s. I lived there for five years, when the original guitarist Howard Scott went into the Army. I met my first wife at a club in Oxnard where all the soldiers would go.
On Haley Street there was a club there Sneaky Pete’s or Speakeasy – I forget the name of it, it’s been so long. It was a happening place. And when I was living there I used to play jazz at an Italian club owned by a Madam [laughs]. A lady madam. I was in this band and we would do shows. I was just waiting for Howard to come back so we could put the band back together back in L.A. But that’s where I lived. I lived there a long time. On Figueroa Street I played the Sportsman. There was a lot of jazz going on back then. There was a jazz club right across the pond where the graveyards are – Falcon Lounge. It was a really nice one. There were a lot of jazz clubs back then, and I had the opportunity to go to all of them. I lived there a long time. I saw Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Chambers Brothers at the Earl Warren Showgrounds. That was a great show.
JM: I didn’t realize you had such a Santa Barbara connection.
LJ: Yeah. I used to live off of Milpas, on a street called Mason. There’s a lot of factories around there. It was factories then, but now even more. There’s probably two or three houses now [laughs]. That’s where I lived in a little house. I called it “running away from L.A”. But I left and came back to L.A. real quick, after five years.
One of my closest friends Ray Estrada – he’s passed away, but he used to sing the Spanish part on “The Cisco Kid”. He was the one who turned me on to all of the clubs there, because he also played jazz guitar. We had a band together, so when I went back to L.A. the band got back together, and we started recording with Eric and went from there, I made sure that Ray came down and put his Spanish part on there. You know, to show him some gratitude. His daughter to this very day is very happy about that, that I did that. I’m glad she’s happy. I don’t even think she was born then, but she found out about it as she got older. As far as she was concerned, her dad was a star. That’s good. She’s forever grateful.
THE MUSIC OF WAR: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH WAR:
