Barry McGuire on California Dreamin'

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Barry: McGuire - Back from the Eve of Destruction

By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST MinistriesIRVINE, CA (ANS) -- The first time I met Barry McGuire was in London, England, sometime in the late seventies when he was performing at a concert and, as always, he brought the house down with his incredible gravelly voice renditions of a mixture of his new Gospel songs and hits from the past like the huge folk hit by The New Christy Minstrels, "Green, Green" (which he co-wrote with Randy Sparks) and then, his solo success with the 1965 epic anti-war protest song, "Eve of Destruction," written by P.F. Sloan.

Barry McGuire performing

But then he shocked all of us in the concert hall when he produced a skate board and proceeded to skate around the room, a huge grin on his well-honed bearded face.That was typical of this incredible survivor of the Sixties - born on October 15, 1935 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma -- who just loved life and, even today, now in his seventies and with a Pacemaker, he still exhibits that joyful persona wherever he goes.
I have met with Barry many times since then and caught up with him again on Saturday, August 27, 2011, at a unique Jesus Freaks Reunion in Irvine, California, put on by the Upper Room Ministry, where he joined with other artist like Chuck Girard, from Love Song, Karen Lafferty who wrote Seek Ye First.., the powerful worship song, and the one and only Andrae Crouch, who performed with his wonderful backing group, and he agreed to talk about his long and rather amazing career in which he even played the male lead in the Broadway hit musical HAIR opposite Diane Keaton.

Dan Wooding interview Barry McGuire

Not wanting to waste this occasion to dig into his career, I asked Barry McGuire how he came to record Eve of Destruction, and he explained that he was on the dance floor in 1965 with about a thousand more people, when legendary record producer, Lou Adler, spotted him and invited him over to his table.Barry told me, "Lou then said, 'McGuire, are you recording?' I said, 'No, but I would like to be. He then introduced me to Phil Sloan who'd written a whole notebook full of songs and he said, 'Why don't you take these and give them a look and listen to.' So I took them home with me and loved Eve of Destruction. Three weeks later. Lou had a recording studio date and I was in there and there and then we recorded 'Eve Of Destruction' in one take."

Lou Adler and Jack Nicholson pictured at a Laker's game

By the way, if you are a LA Laker's fan, you can see the bearded Lou Adler sitting next to Jack Nicholson at most of the home games at the Staples Center. Adler, himself, has quite an amazing career. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in East Los Angeles. In 1964, Adler founded and co-owned Dunhill Records. He was President of the label as well as the chief record producer from 1964 to 1967. That summer he sold Dunhill for three million dollars to ABC Records. Later in 1967, he founded Ode Records.. In June 1967, Adler helped to produce the Monterey International Pop Festival, as well as the film version, Monterey Pop.He formerly managed Jan & Dean and produced Sam Cooke, The Mamas & the Papas, Johnny Rivers, Barry McGuire, Scott McKenzie, The Grass Roots, Spirit, Carole King, The Weaver Temptations (which he signed in 1968) and Cheech and Chong.

So then, we got talking about the Mamas & the Papa's who once featured Barry and his close friend, Roger McGuinn of The Byrds, on Creeque Alley in which they sang, "McGuinn and McGuire's still a-getting' higher, In L.A., you know where that's at."

At the time, Barry was not only known for his music, but also for his heavy drug taking during those heady years.

So I asked him if he was true that he played a role in helping to launch the Mamas & the Papas by introducing them to Lou Adler.

"Yes, it's true," he said. "I was working on my second album with Dunhill and [Mama] Cass Elliot called me and said, 'McGuire, I'm out here watching my friends from New York and we're singing this music. It'll knock your socks off. You've got to hear this stuff.' So I went over to her house and they're all sitting on the floor and flat broke. I said, 'What's this music then?' and John [Phillips] picked up his guitar and started to play and I had never heard anything like that before.

"Right there, I went to the telephone and called Lou Adler and said, 'Lou, I've got some friends here from New York and they've got some music that will blow you away. He said, 'Well, bring them down to the studio tomorrow, as the next day I had a recording session there.

Barry McGuire in the studios recording with The Mamas & The Papas

"So we set it up and they came down and Lou's jaw hit his chest and he goes 'whoa' and he signed them up and his first thought was 'Can you believe your eyes and ears?' So the album was called, 'If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears,' which was the 1966 debut album by The Mamas & the Papas.'"So how did California Dreamin' come about?

"Well California Dreamin' was a song that John Phillips had written and I was looking for some material and I liked the song so I recorded it," said Barry. "The group were broke and when Lou signed them, he said, 'Why don't we let them do your background vocals so they can make some money to live on until they can get their own album out there.' I agreed and so they did the background vocals several of the songs including California Dreamin', Hang On Sloopy and Do You Believe In Magic?

"After we heard the playback on California Dreamin', John Phillips took me out in the hallway and said that they would like to do this as their first single release.

"I said, 'That's cool man. It's your song. You wrote it.' What was so strange was that they took most of my voice off the recording. If you listen to California Dreamin' right now and you pay attention to the left track only you'll hear my voice singing 'All the leaves.' and then it's gone. I didn't know that for twenty-five years and my son one time called me into his bedroom and said, 'Dad, listen to this.' His stereo wasn't working properly at the time and so he could only hear the left side and he heard 'All the leaves.' and said, 'Dad, that sounds like you.' I said, 'That is me. They used they used my track.'"

Barry paused for a moment and then said, with a huge smile on his face, "So my trivia question is, what is the first karaoke song to ever become a hit record? It's California Dreamin' because they sang karaoke to my track."

I was then intrigued to discover how the group came up with the name of The Mamas & the Papas?

Barry with his wife Mari

"Well the story I got from them was that they were all sitting on the floor watching TV one night as they didn't have any furniture, just the TV," Barry began. "And Cass was sitting there and, there was a documentary on the Hell's Angels that they were watching. So Cass heard the guys calling the women 'their Mamas' and she flipped over on her back and started thumping the floor with her elbows and kicking her heals in the air and said, 'I want to be a Mama. I want to be a Mama.' So John's siting there and he said, 'Well, I guess then we'll have to be the Papas. So they called themselves The Mamas & the Papas."Over the years, Barry admits that his life was in turning into quite a mess and, in a previous interview, he told me how he finally found Christ through reading Good News for Modern Man, a modern translation of the New Testament with newspaper headlines on the cover.

"One day, I was lying on the floor and was wrestling with myself and I realized I couldn't go back and undo all that I had done," he recalled. "It was right at that time I remembered the story of the Prodigal Son that I had just read about and it was almost as if God was saying to me, 'Well, that's you Barry. You've squandered your inheritance in a foreign land, and now you are living like a pig and you're just living in filth. But I you give your life to me, if you come home and make this decision." I cut in and said to the Lord that I couldn't do this."

He said that for some time, he wrestled with God and he said he finally remembered screaming out to the Lord, "If you are really are there, I want to know." Then he "kind of whispered" in his head, "Are you really there?"

Barry said, "And right at that moment, I believe I received the Holy Spirit into my life. I was overcome with tears when I heard that still small voice say, 'Yes, I am here.' It was if I died at that moment to my old life and I was re-born.

"I even began attending church in Fresno and made new friends who began praying for me and at one of their services, I publically gave my life to Christ. As a group laid hands on me, I felt a bolt of lightning go through me.

"Afterwards, I went to see my mother, and when I told her what had happened, she began to weep because although she wasn't a Christian, she felt a joy surge through her that, at last, something positive had happened in the life of her son."

By now, Barry had begun meeting with other men who had also found Jesus and they would study the Bible together.

"I then met a man called Tony Salerno who was the director of a group called Agape Force, who were a team of young kids who were out to win the world for Christ. The group had an outreach and I was one of 52 people, mainly youngsters, who were baptized at the end of the meetings.

"The day I was baptized and went down into the water, to be washed of my sins, buried with Christ and come out a new creation, I thought, 'How perfect. This is Father's Day.' And the name of the river was the Kings River. I said to myself, 'When God does it, he doesn't miss a lick. I mean everything is where it is supposed to be.'

"I was so blessed by the Agape Force team that I ask if I could join them and I would study the a manual written by a New Zealander called Winkie Pratney called 'Youth Aflame.' I had never met anyone like Winkie before who was funny and yet deadly serious about his relationship with God. I would go out on the streets witnessing and singing in the local parks."

How he met his wife, Mari

"Then a beautiful young lady called Mari arrived to join the team with some 15 others from New Zealand," said Barry. "Mari went through the eight-week course and it just happened that the day the New Zealanders had arrived in LA, I was sent in one of the three vans to pick them up.

"Mari told me later that she nearly flipped when she first saw me - a huge figure with a Santa Claus beard and cut-of Levis and hair hanging all over the place. She had never been out of the country before and was quite overwhelmed with California.

"I fell for her immediately, but also felt the Lord telling me not to tell her. It was like a volcano inside of me, because she was so lovely and I wanted immediately to ask her to marry me. I really prayed about it and eventually believed that I had received a confirmation from the Lord that she was to be my wife. But the Lord had told me not to tell her. It took six to eight months for this to unfold and back home, Mari's mother wrote to tell her that she had received Christ.
"I finally proposed to Mari by letter, and we were married in my home town of San Pedro, and my best man was one of my sons. The guy who conducted the marriage ceremony was the man who had baptized me in the King's River."

Now, more than 36 years later, they are still together and have two children and also grandkids.

Trippin' the Sixties logo

I thanked Barry McGuire for sharing his story with me and then discovered that besides singing at Jesus Freak reunions and on PBS nostalgia shows, he is also now doing a tour, even though he now has a Pacemaker, called Trippin' The Sixties with John York from The Byrds."It is a show that's just my journey through that decade; who I knew, met, partied, performed with recorded with, and wrote songs," he said. "I tell the story behind the scenes what happened in our personal lives some of the things that went down. And we do the songs that everybody knows like California Dreamin' that John Phillips wrote and we do Tambourine Man that Roger McGuinn got to before I could. I wanted to sing Bob Dylan tunes but Roger beat me to them."

Note: I am now working on a book with Barry McGuire about his incredible life with the working title of From HAIR to Eternity.

I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing much of the above.

For more information on Barry's work today, please go to:www.barrymcguire.com

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Dan Wooding, 70, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 48 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He now hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on KWVE in Southern California which is also carried throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK and also in Belize and South Africa. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 200 countries. You can follow Dan on Facebook under his name there or at ASSIST News Service. He is the author of some 44 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel "Red Dagger" which is available this link.

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