Robert Hover
As songwriters for Lou Adler’s Trousdale Music, P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri had churned out tons of surfing songs for Jan & Dean, the Rip chords, the Fantastic Baggies, the Lifeguards, the Rally Packs, the Street Cleaners, the Rincon Surfside Band, and Willie and the Wheels. All that changed in 1965, when Adler, hoping to influence Sloan’s writing, handed P. F. Sloan an early Bob Dylan album.
“After I heard that LP, I started writing by myself again. The first songs that I wrote outside the partnership with Barri, I wrote in one night, ‘Eve of Destruction,’ ‘Take Me for What I’m Worth,’ ‘The Sins Of The Family,’ and ‘This Mornin.”’
“I went up to Trousdale Music and played them ‘Eve of Destruction’ and they didn’t like the songs. They thought they were awful, you know, ‘that’s not hit material, forget it.’ Then one afternoon Barry McGuire came to see them for material. He was a big star at the time, due mostly to his time with the New Christy Minstrels. They played him all the hip things of the day that they had, Sloan-Barri formula stuff. I was sitting alone in the corner, watching the business go down. McGuire came over, saw this depressed young kid playing guitar by himself, and said, “What’s the matter?”
“You got any songs to play for me?” I played “Eve of Destruction” and boom! “That’s the one,” he said. He hugged me and told me, “You’re what I’ve been looking for.”
As for Barry McGuire, he was born in Oklahoma on Oct. 15, 1935. He and Barry Kane recorded an album and single for the tiny Horizon record label, but it was McGuire’s role in the formation of Randy Sparks’ New Christy Minstrels that brought the gravel-throated folkie his first notice. McGuire wrote and sang lead on “Green, Green” (#14 in 1963), the group’s biggest hit. The same year, the Kingston Trio successfully recorded McGuire’s “Greenback Dollar” (#21 in 1963). By 1965, McGuire was ready to strike out on his own, and “Eve of Destruction” would be his first solo single for the Dunhill record label.
Adler had Sloan and Barri tape McGuire’s rough vocal over the instrumental backing track, for McGuire to use as a guide in creating the final version. However, one radio station got hold of the unfinished recording and began playing it. When “Eve of Destruction” was released, it was the rough mix that Sloan and Barri had slapped together late at night.
According to Sloan, a number of radio stations banned the record. “The record company had never seen anything like it. They were actually happy. When every major market refused to play it, that’s when the record company decided to really push it. I heard that some DJ in Ohio, or somewhere in the Midwest, played ‘Eve of Destruction’ every hour on the hour. That’s what broke it nationally.”
P. F. Sloan (alone or in partnership) with Steve Barri, went on to create an enormous number of hit songs for Herman’s Hermits, Jan & Dean, the Turtles, Johnny Rivers, and the Grassroots.