Fortunately, War spent a lot more time creating memorable music than getting involved in alcohol and dope-fueled brawls. Their best-known songs, many excerpted and developed from impromptu jams, include such hits as “Spill the Wine,” “All Day Music,” “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” “The Cisco Kid,” “Gypsy Man,” “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” “Low Rider,” and “Summer,” among others. No two of their biggest songs sounded alike. War’s hybrid style—fusing funk, soul, jazz, rock, Latin and psychedelia— was remarkably diverse.
“It’s a different era now,” he continues. “Back in the day, we could play long songs while people were getting high. Now, we do more of the hits—but not songs that they don’t remember. People have shorter attention spans. Some of the young kids that come to see us know all the lyrics; they Google everything,” he adds. “They know more about my past than I can remember. It’s amazing.”
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By early 1970, Goldstein had nabbed the band a deal with MGM Records and work had begun on their debut, which they called Eric Burdon Declares “War.” The octet was an immediate success, but after one more release with War, Burdon parted ways with the group. It took three more albums on their own before War found the level of success Goldstein had envisioned for them. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, The World Is a Ghetto is slated to receive a Record Store Day upgrade this fall, with bonus tracks, outtakes and the like.
“Morrison was getting frustrated,” Goldstein recalls. So much so that he slammed the piano lid down as the War member was still playing.
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That was enough for Burdon. The British singer bolted upstairs, fetched a gun “and shot the chandelier out,” Jordan says. “I’m from Compton so I was the only one in the room who ducked when I heard the gunshot. The rest of the party didn’t care one way or the other.”
photo: Eric Morgensen
Jordan, the only member of the original lineup still with War, just goes with the flow, happy to bring the band’s music to new generations and keep the legacy alive. “I’m the same; I have never changed. The music’s the same,” he says. “It’s still about grooves and messages. Our performance onstage has gotten much better; it’s more exciting than it’s ever been.
“The World Is a Ghetto,” War’s late 1972 Top-10 single, served as the title track for the band’s sole number one LP, which was later confirmed as the best-selling album of 1973 by the music industry bible Billboard.
“The first (post-Burdon) War album was basically everybody’s idea of what War should be—everybody in the band—and I just allowed it to happen,” Goldstein says. “Each guy did his own thing; it was something that they had to get out. When we got to the second album, All Day Music, we started writing new stuff in the studio and creating jams. But when we got to The World Is a Ghetto, we were ready for the big album.”