In the mid 1960s a young African American R&B group from Long Beach, California were struggling to find a fitting name for themselves. Originally called the Creators, they soon turned into Nightshift, due to members doing evening work in a steel yard. But the musicians wanted a moniker that captured the turbulence of the times, when violent international conflicts and civil rights marches dominated the news agenda. The band became War.
“It was during Vietnam,” says keyboardist-vocalist Lonnie Jordan, now 75 years old. “A lot of the soldiers came home to a war in their own back yards. So we started waging war against wars everywhere, with our choice of weapons being our instruments. We don’t shoot bullets; we shoot rhythms. War was for peace.”
Throughout the 1970s the band made music that matched the impact of its name. Songs such as Low Rider, The Cisco Kid and Me and Baby Brother, a tribute to a sibling who was “shot down in the name of law and order”, are prize nuggets from the golden age of funk, though War were enviably versatile, also penning soul ballads and instrumental jazz. Many of their songs have a danceable, percussion-laden sound that reflects the influence of both American innovator James Brown and Cuban artists like Mongo Santamaría. Now their work has been compiled on The Collection 1977-1994, a just-released five-LP box set that serves as an essential primer for new listeners and a neat refresher for older fans who have worn out their first-edition vinyl.
Jordan is the sole remaining member of the original outfit that included guitarist Howard E Scott, saxophonist Charles Miller, drummer Harold Brown, bassist BB Dickerson, percussionist Papa Dee Allen and Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar. They were produced by Jerry Goldstein, who trademarked the name War. All of that original lineup, bar Jordan, broke away in the mid 1990s to form the Lowrider Band, while he, under Goldstein’s guidance, continued to lead a reloaded War with new musicians.
“People wanna hear us after all this time,” the slender, moustachioed frontman tells me just before heading on stage for a raucous sold-out show at London’s Royal Festival Hall as part of Chaka Khan’s Meltdown. Given the group’s 50m record sales and 20 gold and platinum discs it was no surprise the roof nearly came off.
War’s dedicated UK fanbase makes sense given their transatlantic origins. The band took off when Eric Burdon, lead singer of Newcastle upon Tyne blues-rock group the Animals, hired them as his backing band for his burgeoning solo career in 1969. They recorded Eric Burdon Declares “War” and, as Jordan puts it, “burned down the house” at the Devonshire Downs festival (a spin-off of the famed Newport pop festival) that same year. Also on the bill was Jimi Hendrix, who would jam with War in London the night before his death in 1970. “We knew Jimi from the ‘chitlin circuit’ [the network of black venues in America formed during segregation] so we were all cool together. He joined us for the last 20 minutes of our set at Ronnie Scott’s,” recalls Jordan. “We played a blues number, Mother Earth by Memphis Slim, then the next morning we got a call to say he was gone. It was tragic.”
Encounters with other stars, or stars in waiting, have also stuck in Jordan’s mind. “In France we opened up for this guy Reginald [Dwight] … who later became Elton John,” Jordan says. “But the people wanted us back. They started hitting tables on the same beat of the last song we played. Reginald … or Elton, he didn’t like it so much.”
Upstaging a burgeoning pop behemoth may have made for awkward post-show conversation, but War kept winning hearts and minds. Their musical eclecticism was matched by a message of global unity in anthems like the sun-kissed, reggae-ish Why Can’t We Be Friends?, which contained the resonant line: “The colour of your skin don’t matter to me / As long as we can live in harmony.”
Sadly, a band with black and white members did matter to some venues and promoters. Tours at home and abroad could prove highly problematic. “There were countries we couldn’t go to because of that, like South Africa,” Jordan recalls. “And because Lee was Jewish there were more issues. One place didn’t allow the white band members in, and another the black.
“Down south in the States it was the same situation,” he continues, with a world-weary sigh. “Our music was about making people aware of what we were going through. We didn’t try to make a political statement by saying: this is what should be done. We were just saying: ‘Why can’t we be friends’?”
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Like many funk groups who hit a commercial peak in the 1970s, War found their success tailing off in the 80s. Shrinking record company budgets were a problem for the seven-piece ensemble, and there were changing fashions in black popular music to contend with. The advent of hip-hop made War less compelling to a new wave. Jordan though saw the historical link between the young tyros and the older exponents of Black music.
“I thought rap was cool because I’d been listening to The Last Poets (and Gil Scott-Heron) and all the stuff going on during the Watts riots,” Jordan says, referencing the 1960s civil disturbances in the black Los Angeles neighbourhood. “I liked it when the new kids talked about what was happening in real life.” Although did take exception to “beefs” between MCs – understandable given War’s peace platform. “Why are you rapping against one another when there’s so much chaos going on already, with the police against blacks?”
In the 1990s Warfound their tasty riffs being sampled multiple times by a legion of producers, a trend the band capitalised on with the album Rap Declares War. The 1992 compilation featured MCs rhyming over original War breaks, notably De La Soul, Beastie Boys, 2Pac and Ice-T, who all had Jordan’s blessing. “It was a way of saying, ‘We’re not mad at you for sampling us,’” he chuckles.
War last recorded in 2014, but the songbook the band created over 50 years still makes them a major draw live. Their timeless music is a reminder of an era when spontaneity was the order of the day, when musicians came together and played whatever they felt in the moment. “We didn’t try to arrange anything,” Jordan says. “Everything was just organically done. We were one of the few real jam bands. All you had to do was turn the tape on.”
The Collection 1977-1994 is out now on Rhino.