San Diego Reader

Barry McGuire, best known for his big hit “Eve Of Destruction,” has put together a tribute show called Trippin' The Sixties, featuring some of the best and most-loved folk rock songs of the '60s. He’s joined by John York (the Byrds).

In addition to their own songs, Trippin’ the Sixties is filled with other great '60s music, with interesting stories about the tunes and their creators, all of whom McGuire spent time with back then. Included: The Times They Are a Changin’/Blowin’ In The Wind/Mr. Tambourine Man/Turn Turn Turn (Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger & The Byrds); California Dreamin’/Monday, Monday/Creeque Alley (The Mamas & The Papas); What a Day For a Daydream/Do You Believe in Magic? (The Lovin' Spoonful), and many more.

Barry McGuire stepped into the public eye in 1962 on the Andy Williams Show as the gravelly voiced lead singer of the New Christy Minstrels. He launched his musical career with the million-sellers “Green Green” and “Green Back Dollar.”

In 1965, at the heart of the peace movement, McGuire went solo. His growing awareness of social hypocrisy was expressed in his third hit “Eve of Destruction,” with lyrics written by P.F. Sloan (“Secret Agent Man,” “Where Were You When I Needed You”) and arranged by Lou Adler.

“‘Eve of Destruction’ was recorded in the last 20 minutes of a three-hour recording session,” says McGuire. “We’d already done two songs, and Lou said the third one sounded too much like the first one, so he wanted to do something else.”

“Phil [Sloan] had given me a page from his songbook, with his hand-written lyrics to 'Eve.' I’d been carrying it around in my back pocket for the last two weeks, and the paper was all folded and wrinkly. I pulled it out of my pocket and said, ‘Hey, how about we do this song, I really like what it has to say.’ I smoothed out all the folds and wrinkles and put Phil’s lyric sheet on my little music stand over in the corner.”

The studio musicians only ran through the tune a couple of times. “Our engineer, Bones Howe, said, ‘OK, we’re recording.’ He hit the red button and history happened. One take, that’s all we got; we were out of time. We listened to the playback, [and] I had missed the last note in the song. We did a quick fix and we were done. I wanted to redo the whole vocal track, but there was a band out in the hall waiting to get into the studio, so that was it.

“If you listen to the third verse, you’ll hear me going ‘Aaaah you can’t twist the truth’…the reason I’m going ‘aaaah’ is because I had lost my place on the wrinkly paper. I thought we could come back next week and re-record the vocal, but it never happened.”

TRIPPIN' THE SIXTIES w/Barry McGuire & John York August 28 @ 7:30pm Watch a promo video for Trippin' The Sixties at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icRyF6...

Watch a video of Barry & John singing “Eve of Destruction” at AMSDconcerts in September 2008 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QodRg...

TICKETS & INFO: $20 / $45 (Dinner Package) @ http://www.amsdconcerts.com/August.html AMSDconcerts 4650 Mansfield Street San Diego (Normal Heights) CA 92116 (619) 303-8176