The Smiley Smile Message Board

What a disaster this song is with PF Sloan totally missing the point of Bob Dylan's songs and humor. I feel like the lyrics just spit out current world events worse than even the most dated Phil Ochs songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo

I think the song is great.

I don't think it's simply a Dylan pastiche either though. There was a big folk tradition that was inspiring the folk-a-rock-a-boom.

PF Sloan was a great writer, and his heart was on his sleeve when he wrote the song. If you listen to Sloan's own version, and forget McGuire's blustery delivery, the song is a lot more likable.

I will check that version out, McGuire's vocal was terrible and one of my main problems with the song. He just sounds like he is spitting out the words.

An all right record but when it comes to protest songs of that time I much prefer Sonny's "Laugh At Me."

Heard BM sing it last year, near here in Pasadena; he sings it sweeter, takes out the dated Selma lyrics, and he led me, a Conservative Republican who can't stands hippie Utopians, to my feet cheering the historical status and experience of his song.

I like that hippie stuff. Its part of what initially attracted me to 60s music in the first place when I was a teeager.

Lyrics way too on the nose. The song, by all rights, shouldn't work -- but somehow it does.

It's crude, it's blatant, it's overly earnest, but it has energy and power. We're still talking about it 48 years later.

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Tower Records had a monthly magazine called "Pulse", and living several years a half-block away from a three-story Tower location, it was a great (free) source of music info, pre-internet. One great feature was a music history cartoon series on the last page.

On one entry I remember, they drew the story of PF Sloan. A key point important to this thread that I remember was the explanation of Barry's vocal style on "Eve Of Destruction".

Yes, he is literally "spitting out" the words...he didn't like the song, did not want to record it, and refused to learn or rehearse the lyrics for his lead vocal.

So they had cue cards drawn up with the lyrics, and someone cycled through the cue cards in front of Barry as he sang. Which explains why he delivered certain lines like he was about to trip over them.

Thanks to the now-defunct "Pulse" magazine for that neat bit of trivia.  :)

Great info GF! That vocal does reek of cue card reading. :lol


I am surprised they released it with that vocal, should have done more takes or got somebody else to sing it.

This is one of my favorite singles from the 60's. I just listened to it in the car during my lunch break, in fact. I like to perform it at the karaoke bar. I like the vocals. I like the song.

Try Barry's early 70's lp "Barry McGuire and the Doctor"sometime.