Barry McGuire – Eve of Destruction
1965
119K Likes
Best comments
1.“At the age of eleven, I got my first transistor radio, and this was the first song I heard on it. I'm now 70, and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. What is wrong with us?”
More comments
- 2.“When is the worst time to have children? Eighteen years before a war.”
- 3.“Barry and his wife are friends of ours – we once went lobstering together off the Maine coast before his concert in Portland. He told me this song should never have had to be written, and he hated taking royalties for it... but a man has to live. You know where the money went? His children's and grandchildren's housing and education.”
The story
In 1965 P. F. Sloan was a 19-year-old staff songwriter at Dunhill with a song about a world teetering on the edge. Barry McGuire, fresh out of the New Christy Minstrels, didn't even like it at first. He cut the vocal late one night, reading the words off a crumpled sheet for basically the first time, tired and raspy. It was supposed to be a rough guide take. Sloan played guitar and harmonica, Hal Blaine drummed, Larry Knechtel played bass.
Then a rough mix leaked to a DJ and the song took off before anybody could fix it. It wasn't even the A-side. By September it was number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and number one in Canada, Norway and West Germany too. Some American stations banned it, claiming it gave aid to the enemy in Vietnam. The BBC restricted it. Radio Scotland pulled it. At least 25 answer records followed, and The Spokesmen rode The Dawn of Correction into the Top 40.
McGuire never had another solo hit. Sloan said he got shut out of national TV, and the fight hurt McGuire's career. Sixty-plus years later, a worn-out guy reading a protest song cold still beats most of the polished ones. Sometimes the first take is the take.
