Customer Reviews

Anthology

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Barry McGuire has never deserved his "one hit wonder" status. The problem obviously is that his most memorable hit EVE OF DESTRUCTION so totally overwhelmed an unexpecting audience that it left listeners stunned. Although he had previously recorded several albums with The New Christy Minstrels, scoring a hit with GREEN, GREEN (featuring Barry McGuire), the world of 1965 was completely unprepared for the depth of emotion, both raw and plaintive, in EVE.
Mr. McGuire appears to have lived the life of a rebel, while most record reviewers would be happy if he had only sung about it. The "smart" thing for him to do would have been to sit back and craft a string of songs that sounded exactly like Eve, but he moved on with his life, leaving the public still struggling with the power of his first solo hit. Barry McGuire's contribution to music has continued through the decades, with little of it currently available to the buying public. I am glad to see that Amazon is offering his early works, at last.
A few interesting sidenotes, The Beatles offered an imitation of Barry's EVE OF DESTRUCTION in one of their famous and rare Christmas records. Also, the popular recording artist Eve shortened her performing name, which was originally Eve of Destruction. I should also mention that amongst Barry's famous collaborators are The Mamas & the Papas and The 2nd Chapter of Acts, both of whom sang back up for Mr. McGuire. In fact, the Mamas & the Papas can be heard on this CD.
I reccomend this CD to all who love music, and are willing to try something different. Barry McGuire is one of the great personalities of the recording business.

I've always liked Barry Mcguire. I am not sure about his 1970s christian music (I am not a fan of christian music) but I know about his music from the 1960s. I believe he had only 2 albums in the 60s, "Eve of destruction" and "This precious time." I own the "EVE.." L.P. and have listened to it over and over, I am a fan of folk music and his sand-papery voice is something quite unique. This C.D. is great with one exception.. His cover of
"Sloop John B." was unfortunatly not included on this C.d. Although I love the Beach Boys version of the song, Barry
Mcguire really whales on it, he also sings the original lyrics (in the Beach Boys cover the lyrics are modified a bit from the original early versions when the song was titled "Wreck of the John B.")
Barry also appears in the 1967 movie "The Presidents Analyst" with James Coburn. Barry appears with another forgotten 1960s band known as Clear Light.
Another bit of trivia. There was a "answer song" released by a right-wing one hit wonder group (formed only to record the answer song) known as The Spokesmen the song was titled "The Dawn of Correction)

With his blond haired neo-Cro-Magnon good looks and a powerful, growling voice to match, folksinger Barry McGuire hit the charts like an exploding H-bomb in the summer of 1965 with the P. F. Sloan tune "Eve of Destruction". This wasn't his first foray into top-40 territory, as a couple of years back he had been lead singer on the New Christy Minstrel's hit "Green Green". A little later he was mentioned in the Mamas and Papas song "Creeque Alley", which told the story of their earlier musical journeys and incarnations, etc., in which Jim/Roger McGuinn of the Byrds as well as John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful also played prominent roles. [McGuire's good friends from the New Christy Minstrels and the Mamas & Papas sang backup for him on various songs on several of his albums.]

Though Barry has written a few of his own songs, mostly he recorded covers of other artists' works; but his singing style is so strong and unique [and tuneful as well] that it makes his interpretations well worth listening to. There are four Dylan covers [tracks 1, 11-13], and seven more of P. F. Sloan's [in addition to "Eve": 5, 6, 8-10, 16-17], plus "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" (Lennon/McCartney) and a few others.

It may seem rather baffling that Barry hasn't been featured more prominently in the American musical scene; but maybe America's love of originality tends to work against a "singer/songwriter" who rarely records anything besides other songwriters' tunes. He was sort of Dunhill Records' hired gun, recording many of the excellent songs coming from the pen of 'staff songwriter' Sloan [many of whose songs also went to the Turtles, the Grass Roots, and others.]

It should be noted that McGuire's rough voice is not highly suitable for the more softer-sounding tunes--you wouldn't expect him to cover something like "Elusive Butterfly", or to serve as a stand-in for Marty Balin on the next Jefferson Airplane re-union tour. But he manages to growl/muddle his way through "You Were On My Mind" and "She Belongs to Me" etc. without too much of a meltdown.

Oddly enough, the CD insert contains hardly any information at all, not even the names of the songwriters (though the track time of each song is included). It also contains the names of the compiler and his 'creative consultant'--although it doesn't appear that these two did much of anything.

The songs from the 'Eve of Destruction' LP are a little annoying to listen to because the engineer/producer decided to pan McGuire's voice hard left and his guitar hard right, and jack the vocal up high enough that it drowns out the guitar a bit. [As if Barry's strong voice really needs to be excessively prominent in the mix!] In other words the left-to-right mix isn't very good. You won't be able to fix this with the balance control on your stereo amplifier--all that will do is squeeze the bad mix closer towards one side.

If this really bothers you [hopefully not], my suggestion would be to run the mix through a high-end CD-recorder, tape deck or any device [e.g. a stereo mixer] which will enable you to control the volume of the left and right channels separately. Even better, if you find the tweak that suits you, burn the offending songs to a new CD or a high-qality cassette. Note: make sure you know which songs don't have this problem, so you can undo the tweak during the re-recording of those already well-mixed songs (there are only a few).

I first heard Barry McGuire as the gravel-voiced lead in the New Christy Minstrel's huge hit, "Green Green", and it came as no surprise to me when he later successfully laid down the monster hit "Eve of Destruction" - still the best protest song of all time. Although he never seemed to capitilise musically on the phenomenal success of "EoD" with other big hits, his incredible, powerful voice on this selection of songs seizes you with its raw passion, not only in the "protest" genre of songs, but in the simple and touching love songs, such as "I'd Have to be Out of my Mind" (great piano accompaniment!) His "Cloudy Summer Afternoon" is a real blast, and overall this is a superb album from a guy who, sadly, never seemed to realise his full potential.

"Barry McGuire: Anthology" is an excellent collection of Barry's mid-sixties recordings. This collection has all of the tracks from his "Eve Of Destruction" album (with the exception of "Try To Remember" which is sadly and lamentable absent from this collection . . .) plus tracks from his follow-up "Child Of Our Times" (with back-up vocals provided by "The Mamas&The Papas" . . . all worth listening to and enjoying over again.

One of my personal favorite tracks on this collection is "The Grasshpper Song" -- the laid-back happy care-free mood transferred from barry's attitude and voice to the listener - it just makes you feel good.

Also, the very first track, is Bob Dylan's "Masters Of War" which Barry spits out with the appropriate venom . . . it is STILL relevent today: both Dylan's lyrics and Barry's delivery!

Finally, it appears that the original title for this "Anthology" was to be "World's Last private Citizen". . . well, Barry may not have been the "last private citizen" but he was and is amoung the few.

Thanks again Barry McGuire for gifting us with so much music and song throughout your career . . . and for the message.

This album is an anthology of Barry's early works, and if it is understood as such, then it's the best available. I met and spoke to Barry twice, in 1/91 and in 2/99, about 15 minutes each. But the "anthology" simply ignores the vast bulk of his work since the early 70's. He tours and records now with Terry Talbot, a former member of the 60's country-rock band, Mason Profitt, and he resides in Fresno, CA. He has a "faster" version of Eve of Destruction on one of his recent albums and still performs it live. Check out the Talbot-McGuire website.

I have had opportunity 3 times to see Barry in concert since 1972. When Barry became a Christian evangelist it seems the "music world" stopped updating his 'resume. I feel he has done works and miracles with his Christian music. It is neat to reminisce with the older "pre 1971" music of his as well as his Christian music works.

The angry voice of Barry Mcguire will live on forever. Quite a few P.F. Sloan songs her. Sloan is a great songwriter but Mcguire sings them the
way they should be sung, angry and powerful.

I can't believe the Eve of Destruction was not a sample. That song is why I came here. Eve of Distruction was ahead of its time. It should be out now. Ron

Bought this album after hearing Barry MacGuire at a Church Xmas Eve family night. Enjoyed his performance and exceptional voice. Hope he continues to give Christian performances.