Eve of Destruction

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Eve of Destruction is a protest song by PF Sloan , interpreted by Barry McGuire , from 1965, which despite partial radio boycotts reached a large audience as a million-seller and became the number 1 hit in the United States.

History of origin

PF Sloan has been a member of the surf duo The Fantastic Baggys with his writing partner Steve Barri since 1963 , for which he wrote a variety of surf songs ; In addition, Sloan's falsetto voice was predestined for surf songs. Their last single It Was I / Alone on the Beach (Imperial # 66072) was released in February 1965 . From mid-1964 Sloan 's attention was drawn to Bob Dylan's music , which could hit the pop charts in the folk and protest genre. Inspired by Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (released on March 27, 1962 LP The Freewheelin 'Bob Dylan ) and Dylan's LP Bringin' It All Back Home (released March 22, 1965), Sloan composed den Title Eve of Destruction from around June 1964 along with four other songs, all of which remained unpublished at first. It was around this time that Sloan met producer Lou Adler . At the same time, the coarse-voiced Barry McGuire had separated from the folk troupe New Christy Minstrels and met - almost at the same time - in June 1964 also the record producer Lou Adler, who had learned of Sloan's new compositions.

Adler was just planning to start a new record company called Dunhill Records . The first single in the catalog was Shelley Fabares with My Prayer / Pretty Please (Dunhill # 4001), which was released in June 1965. McGuire had previously received a recording contract with the young Dunhill label in May 1965. The regional label then signed a distribution agreement with ABC-Paramount Records to secure national distribution of its records.

production

Recorded on the early Thursday morning of July 15, 1965 as the fourth track, Barry McGuire's voice sounded rough, hoarse and tired, especially since only 30 minutes of studio time remained. Producer Adler had made for good studio musicians , because Thomas "Tommy" Tedesco (guitar), Larry Knechtel / Joe Osborn (bass) and Hal Blaine (drums) were part of The Wrecking Crew , who had contributed to the professional instrumentation of many hits. P. F. Sloan also played guitar and harmonica. The song is characterized by only four chords and a catchy harmonica riff, whereby Adler had halved the tempo. Since the studio time was over, only a rough version of Eve of Destruction was available as a take . This still contains production errors, such as McGuire's "ahhs" when he couldn't read passages of text and a cut that was too fast in the transition to the final passage.

publication

Barry McGuire - Eve of Destruction

Dunhill vice-president and co-founder Jay Lasker brought this take to the KFWB radio station in Los Angeles in the early morning regardless of its technical flaws, and they played it immediately. The enormous response forced Dunhill Records to hurry, and there was no time to mix a technically perfect master tape. As A-side, the producer chose What's Exactly The Matter With Me (also composed by Sloan), Eve of Destruction was relegated to the B-side and released on July 21, 1965 as Dunhill # 4009. Producer Lou Adler initially feared that the single would not be played on the radio because of the critical B-side. After its publication, it is initially classified as a regional hit by Billboard magazine . In fact, some radio stations and the BBC refused to play the record with the government-critical B-side because of the suicidal thoughts raised.

However, this did not prevent the enormous commercial success. The song with the end times mood hit the pop charts on August 21, 1965, where it was number one for a week on September 25, 1965. Supported by intense airplay from pirate stations , the song sold six million times worldwide.

On August 12, 1965, Sloan released an LP on Dunhill Records produced by Steve Barri under the title Songs of Our Times (# 50004) with twelve original compositions, which also contained the titles Eve of Destruction and Take Me for What I'm Worth . It appeared numerically after McGuire's LP Eve of Destruction (# 50003; September 1965). Completely different from the surf music about beach, sun and girls, Sloan showed a deep social awareness, influenced by Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger .

text

The title of the song ( English for "eve [ie shortly before] the annihilation") indicates the desperate, resigned-angry apocalyptic mood that pervades the entire text. Specifically, the following grievances and temporal phenomena are discussed and criticized in the four stanzas:

  • the Vietnam War , particularly the fact that in the mid-1960s, 18-year-olds in the United States were drafted into the military and old enough to kill, but were denied the right to vote (minimum age 21 years old);
  • the hatred in Red China ;
  • the Cold War , particularly the constant threat of nuclear war ;
  • the racial segregation or the disadvantage of the Afro-American population and the inactivity or even active hostility towards minorities of the state authority;
  • the Christian hypocrisy of the middle class ;
  • Senators decide on their own and do not obey any rules;
  • The futility of killing without thinking about it instead of showing respect for people and life .

The apocalyptic song denounces various US American and worldwide political / social situations and thus becomes an undisguised criticism of the US government. Book author B. Lee Cooper categorizes Eve of Destruction as "cynicism against persons of social or political rank". Overall, the song belongs to the category of dystopias because of its dark and negative attitude towards the world's problems .

effect

Through the composition Eve of Destruction , all contacts in the established pop music business turned away from the composer Phil F. Sloan because of the problematic content, from music publishers to record companies to the current folk performers. Only Bob Dylan and Judy Collins stood by him. In addition, only Lou Adler's music publisher Trousdale Music was ready to take over the publishing rights, just as Adler's Dunhill Records carried out the production and distribution. Despite this isolation, Sloan wrote a total of 150 titles between 1965 and 1967, 45 of which hit the charts.

After its publication, the song met with negative, even hostile reactions from many Americans, as they took it in the middle of the Cold War and at the beginning of the US intervention in the Vietnam War as an unpatriotic statement. Apparently the FBI even opened a file on McGuire in the 1960s. Many radio stations in the United States and Great Britain boycotted Eve , others only broadcast it in a double pack with the counter-song of the Spokesmen , Dawn of Correction . McGuire himself saw his big hit not as a protest song, but as a "diagnosis of the human condition" (a diagnosis of the human situation).

Even if the song is no longer as polarized as it was back then, it does not fail to have an impact today, as many of the problems addressed - the Middle East conflict, non-electoral war participants (keyword: child soldiers ), atomic threat (from new nuclear powers ), discrimination against minorities and bourgeois double standards  - are still up to date. The mixture of angry, desperate and resigned mood that can be felt throughout the song, as well as the folksong-like simple melody, have made Eve of Destruction one of the most important protest hymns of the love and peace generation .

The modification named after the song Eve of Destruction for the computer games of the Battlefield series also deals with the subject of the Vietnam War .

In 2012 the artist Susan Hiller used Eve of Destruction as the main song for her acoustic-optical work of art "Protest Songs" at dOCUMENTA (13) . The music project 1,000 Days, 1,000 Songs published the title on its website in April 2017 as a protest against the policies of US President Donald Trump .

Cover versions

  • Christopher & Michael brought out the German version We are at the end . youtube.com
  • The Turtles were the first to release a cover version of their album It Ain't Me Babe , released in September 1965 .
  • The band The Dickies released a cover version of Eve of Destruction on their 1979 album The Incredible Shrinking Dickies .
  • The band Red Rockers released a cover version of Eve of Destruction on their album Schizoprenic Circus in 1984 .
  • The CD Philharmania Vol.1 covert Lemmy , the singer and bassist of Motörhead Eve of Destruction along with the "The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ". The CD was released by Stella Music in November 1998 (No. 559 618-22).
  • DOA covered Eve of Destruction in 2004 on their album Live Free or Die .
  • The Klaus Renft Combo released a German version on their album Abschied Und Weitergehn in 2008 under the title Never on a battlefield .
  • Another German-language interpretation was provided by Hans Hartz under the title The white doves fly again (2002: album Echt HARTZig ).
  • Billy Idol also released a version of the song in 2008 that could only be heard as a stream on MySpace.
  • The Pretty Things covered Eve Of Destruction on their CD Rage Before Beauty in 1999 .
  • Juliane Werding A rotten tree does not bear good fruit from her CD In deep mourning 1972
  • The Pogues released their version of Eve of Destruction on the album Just Look Them Straight In The Eye And Say… PogueMahone !! from 2008.
  • Johnny Thunders covered the song on his acoustic album Hurt Me, which was released in 1983.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to McGuire, it was recorded on Thursday after midnight and played on the radio the following Monday, July 19, 1965, so July 15, 1965 was the recording date
  2. ↑ Interview with Lou Adler in Melody Maker , February 5, 1972, p. 43.
  3. ^ Billboard Magazine , Aug. 14, 1965, p. 48
  4. ↑ Peter Blecha: Taboo Tunes - A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs . 2004
  5. ^ Fred Bronson, The Billboard Book of Number One Hits . 3rd revised and expanded edition. New York City, New York: Billboard Publications, 1992, p. 183
  6. ^ Joseph Murrells: Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 210
  7. ^ B. Lee Cooper: Popular Music Perspectives: Ideas, Themes, And Patterns in Contemporary Lyrics . 1991, p. 183 (books.google.de)
  8. ↑ Barry McGuire: FAQ . on Barry McGuire's homepage
  9. ↑ About EoD-Mod. ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: eodmod.com . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eodmod.com
  10. ↑ 1,000 Days, 1,000 Songs. Dave Eggers , Jordan Kurland, accessed April 21, 2017 .