Interview with Howard Scott and Harold Brown from War

The 1970s have been acknowledged widely as a highly creative and influential period in the history of music.  The media and establishment have decided who the main players were from this era - the rock greats, along with a few token black musicians i.e. Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder.  In reality, many more black music artists equaled or surpassed the more widely acknowledged rock stars in terms of song writing, musicianship, influence and record sales.  The band War are a good case in point - at the time they were massively popular, and their recordings still sound superb in the 21st century.  The variety in their music is unique - up tempo and down tempo dance floor classics, laid back love songs, socially aware funk, jazz based workouts, all with a distinctive heavy blues and Hispanic influence.  On many of their albums every track is superb.  

War's releases from back in the day have had a massive impact on progressive DJs and music producers ever since their release.  The 13 minute masterpiece of chilled jazz funk City, Country, City, (from seminal 1972 War album The World Is A Ghetto) was picked up by DJ David Mancuso at The Loft, possibly the most influential night of all time.

Epic in their scope, panoramic in their field of vision, and finely variegated in their structure, "Girl You Need A Change Of Mind" [by Eddie Kendricks] and "City, Country, City" were the standout tracks, microcosmic representatives of a programming philosophy that had germinated in the countryside before it was transplanted to NoHo .... "City, Country, City" described Mancuso's biographical map, with the record's journey from city to country to city operating as a dual metaphor for the different tempos of rural and urban life plus the Loft reveler's split existence between Woodstock and Manhattan.

(Love Saves The Day, A History Of American Dance Music Culture, 1970 - 1979, by Tim Lawrence, Duke University Press 2003)

Meanwhile in California (War's home) and across the world, tunes like Low Rider, Why Can't We Be Friends, The Cisco Kid, Me And Baby Brother, The World Is A Ghetto, Summer, Heartbeat, Galaxy and many others were instant street funk classics that appealed to a massive audience, with War releasing 10 albums that went gold or platinum in the 1970s.  With the West Coast rap explosion of the 1980s War were sampled to such an extent that in 1992 they recorded Rap Declares War, a collaboration with Tupac, Ice T, De La Soul, Brand Nubian, The Beastie Boys and other hip hop heavyweights of the time. 

In January 1997 I was fortunate enough to interview Howard Scott (drummer, vocalist and songwriter) and Howard Brown (lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter), prior to War giving an unbelievable performance at Hull Adelphi.  Before printing the interview I would like to offer my recollection of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding it.

My first experience of War was in 1992 when a friend played me a single he'd found in a Hull charity shop - Me And Baby Brother.  Who?  What?  Funk with blues harmonica - I didn't know such things were possible.  Over the next few years I was able to find many War records, and they became regular visitors to my turntable(s).  

Then, one Sunday in 1996.  10pm, I'm chilling at home, about to watch a film.  The phone rings, it's Paul Jackson, owner of Hull Adelphi, a live music venue I have often worked for.  After his usual grumpy introduction Paul said the unforgettable words "Does the band War mean anything to you?"  He spoke clearly enough, there was no way I had misheard him.  In amazement I tried to articulate the extent of how good War were.  Paul told me that in that case he was going to put in an offer for them to play Hull Adelphi on their forthcoming UK tour.

After the call ended I dismissed the idea of War at The Adelphi.  The Adelphi is more famous for indie and rock bands, and as somewhere for Hull artists to perform.  There have been some excellent jazz, soul and reggae performances there over the years, but War?  Never in a million years.  I mentioned Paul's phone call to a few people who were all in agreement - if only.  

Sometimes the seemingly impossible comes to pass.  Paul contacted me some time later to tell me that War were booked for a Friday night.  Paul decided to promote the gig himself but agreed to let me DJ it, he also agreed to ask the band if they were willing to be interviewed by me.  My experience of interviewing world famous funk musicians was minimal at this time (it still is).  Despite being aware of this Howard Scott and Harold Brown offered to meet me on the Friday afternoon at their hotel.  Before the gig I was given a press release which informed me that, due to falling out with their record company, War were not allowed to call themselves War in the US, however the band contained 4 original War musicians with 3 younger New Orleans musicians replacing the others who had died or left the band.  

Meeting Howard Scott and Harold Brown was a pleasure and honour.  My lack of interviewing experience was obvious, particularly at the beginning of the interview, however they tolerated my uncertainties about what I was doing and we ended up talking for around 50 minutes.  

The night of the War concert was amazing.  Before the gig ticket sales were low.  The unprofessional looking fliers and posters didn't help, and The Adelphi had to charge quite a hefty admission fee to make it financially viable.  None the less, the word got out - a '70s funk band was playing The Adelphi.  Speaking to Paul Jackson whilst I was DJing at the beginning of the night, he looked ill with nerves about having a flop on his hands, however the place was soon full to bursting.  The atmosphere was strange, many people I spoke to were aware that War were supposed to be really good but had not actually heard their recordings, let alone knew if they could still cut it live.  In the present day commercialised music era people have become used to over hyped, average quality live performances, however in Hull money is scarce.  When people splash out for a night out they want it to be good. 

Soon enough it was time, I killed the decks and forced my way to the front of the stage, which had become a very hot and busy place to be.  War came on stage and launched into their set.  I got the impression they were shocked to be playing such a small, scruffy venue, and I don't think they could hear what they were playing either, never the less they soon seemed very relaxed.  War came up in a time and place where top quality musicianship and performance were the norm, and before becoming million selling recording artists they were already established as a highly successful live band.  Their performance that evening showed that entertaining a live audience is a skill they have not forgotten.  

The entire audience was won over instantly, everyone in the room moving to the infectious mix of sounds that is War music.  No words can do justice, if you were there you will know what I am referring to.  To hear one of the greatest bands of all time live is always a treat, to watch them perform in an intimate venue with an audience keen to party was pure pleasure.  The best gig of all time in Hull, no contest (for the record, Jimmy Witherspoon at Hull Truck Theatre in 1993 was in a similar league).

All too soon, the night was over.  Like true professionals, War took the Adelphi's shortcomings in their stride, and after the gig they seemed to have the confidence and humility you see only in the world's greatest performers.  I will never forget standing on De Grey Street at midnight on a Friday, watching world famous funk band War squeezing into a minibus with their equipment, heading back to their hotel as they had to catch a train early the next morning for their next gig.

The following week I wrote up the interview and sent it off to a few music magazines, none of whom got in touch with me.  I rang one of them a week later to ask what they thought, the person I spoke to told me that unless War were in the news for some reason, the article would not be newsworthy.  The fact that I had not got someone to take photos of the interview or the gig did not help.  Disillusioned I gave up.  Howard Scott had given me his card after the gig and asked me to send him a copy of the interview, which I never got around to, feeling ashamed at being unable to get it published.  I have now lost my original write up, although I did give a copy to Paul Jackson at the time, who told me he found it of interest.  When I decided to do this website I realised that finally I would be able to publish the interview, and a quick search in my mum's loft resulted in my finding the tape.  Here is the result.

The interview

Before there was War there was The Creators, a highly successful live band from 1962 to 1969.  I began by asking what it was like to be coming up in this era.

Howard Scott:  Oh man it was fabulous brother, because when I was 15 years old I was going to Compton High School.  When we came into music was right at the tail end of the blues era, all the clubs, if you wanted to work in Los Angeles California you had to play blues.  That was right before the transition to more sophisticated things like Knock On Wood and Otis Redding came in and Wilson Pickett, and players like Sam And Dave, all those kind of things had not happened yet so we were still playing blues out in California.  So we got a chance to play out in the clubs as kids, 15, 16 years old and be around all these great blues players out there, and be around people drinking beer at night and whiskey, and watching them get drunk and fight and stuff, and the amazement of like saying "damn this is the real world" and being able to go back to school the next day and tell everybody "guess what I saw last night, guess what happened?"  

I did not know at the time I was doing such great things.  It was all blues: harmonica players, unbelievable blues guitarists, singers, and the way people dressed, the way they carried on in the clubs it was fantastic to me, I saw things that still look good to me because that was the tail end of a era that we came in on back in the '60s.  But even then we started creating our own style of music, because we would take what we saw and then start doing a different thing with it.

Another thing that happened to us when we were growing up, the neighbourhoods we lived in were pretty much Latino, there was the black influence, and then very much so Latin, we grew up with the Mexicans.  By us growing up with that prepared ourselves for the transition to be War first of all, but in The Creators that right there gave us different ears to play in the Los Angeles clubs, because we had a different rhythm, a different style of playing the music that everybody wanted to hear on the jukebox.

What they did over here with music when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones were first getting their influence, they were getting their influences at the same time we were getting our influences, put it like that.  And we were influenced by the same people.  And it seemed like we grew up with these people because they seemed to be closer to us and we could go out and see them in local dives and everybody we knew had just got through playing with some funky band like maybe Muddy Waters band, they'd come into town and boy if you played in a band with somebody that played with Muddy Waters, it was just like you being with Muddy Waters.

Harold Brown:  Remember when we met Lowell Fulson, over across the street from your house, I'll never forget seeing him in that sharkskin suit he had, T Bone Walker used to play in a club that we used to play in, Big Mama Thornton, we met her when we were kids.

Howard Scott:  We played in the same joint - you talk about joints, we played in the same joints, and here we are in high school, be out in the alley and watch Big Mama Thornton come out of that club on a break with a half pint of whiskey man drinking that shit talking crazy.

Harold Brown:  And be wearing her some overalls and she always kept a little 22 pistol in her right pocket .

Howard Scott:  God we came up with some people boy - The Simms Twins, Don and Dewey, Sam Cooke.

Harold Brown:  Sam Cooke, we met him when were kids, we were at Moore's Swing Club on Maine Street in South Los Angeles and Sam Cooke walked up to Mr Moore and asked him to introduce him to us, and during our break we came down and he sat by the bar and he spoke to us.  I'll never forget seeing him going across the street and going into his Jaguar, he had a XKE.

Howard Scott:  We were just youngsters man.  That's where I think we got our influences.  The main thing that got us to be where we are today was in the name The Creators, so we were creative.  We chose to take music and boy we could play.  In high school, we had a club out there in Los Angeles called Jefty's, he let us start playing in this club as minors, he didn't care because we could pack that club up on Friday, Saturday, Sunday night.  And we were in high school so that meant  boy our egos swole up good because we were around all these adults and we were making money.

Harold Brown:  We'd go out on those nights and make more money than kids who'd work every day during the week.

Howard Scott:  And almost as much as our parents.

Harold Brown:  It was an interesting time period.  And The Creators gave us that thing, it was a state of mind, long as we kept  thinking creators we were able to create music.  So we had no parameters on our music, there was no such thing well we could only just play this narrow band of music ... we could become who we wanted to be or play whatever we wanted to.

Howard Scott:  When we grew up, our background got us ready for being with Eric Burdon and playing in War.  But it also got us, as soon as somebody heard War music they automatically identified with Southern California.  I never thought we'd play Southern California music, it's just something we do, it came up like that.  Southern California music.

War's home of Los Angeles is world famous for its crime and poverty, thanks to films such as Boyz In The Hood and gangster rappers from NWA onwards.  I asked if it has always been a rough area.

Harold Brown:  Rough is relative, I  think it's just a pressure cooker.  I go through there now, my mother still lives around Willow Brook South Los Angeles and I have to go there and it doesn't feel any rougher to me than it was then.  I think what's happening is that it's getting more publicity ... people are seeking to get publicity, they go out and enact these things they're hearing on the news, parleys and parleys.  

I think it all boils down to money.  I think Wall Street is to blame for a lot of violence, capitalism is bringing on a lot of situations.  A lot of the have nots are being pulverized, every time they turn on the TV or the news or the advertisement in the magazines, it's always saying to them you're nobody unless you got a BMW or Mercedes Benz, you're a nobody unless you're wearing a certain type of tennis shoes, you're a nobody unless you're living here, you're a nobody.  The values are being screwed up.  That's my personal opinion.

Howard Scott:  Back in the '60s there were things to do, you could go out to different neighbourhoods, music was the thing that brought us all together.  We could go from any part of Los Angeles ... as long as you were playing music you could always get together.  Then slowly but surely all the programmes for the youth were being taken away, phased out, cut back.  The boys clubs were being closed, the parks were being closed, little league baseball was being shut off.  

Harold Brown:  Music in school, arts.

Howard Scott:  First thing they cut back in school is the arts.  Then the generation up after us, our kids, had no more to do than go to school.  And when they started going to school they had the turf wars, the red and the blue, it's like civil war in the United States.  

The gangster rap came up out of the gangs, out of the street gangs, they started talking about what they were doing, how their lifestyle was, what they were not getting so here's what you do.  You get yourself a 9 millimeter and then you go out there and blast someone, that's your brother.  When you kill someone say 2 streets down from where your boys are you finding out you just shot your cousin, a blood relative.  And we were doing this thing out in Los Angeles one time about everybody loses in a drive by.  

Wall Street glamorises the thing because they let everybody see through music videos and I say the music industry is a big perpetrator, the music industry sit back and allow this music to be played over and over, people being bombarded with these negative songs, these negative words, negative values, that glamorise the life of a gangster.  And then when these guys start becoming millionaires everybody want to do that.  Why should I go to school when there's no opportunities?

Harold Brown:  And it's the money guys, I've sat around dinner tables with them and it makes me wanna puke.  Some record big shot will go and give a deal to some of these little rappers to do all this hardcore rap, to make a few dollars in the name of capitalism.  And then they will not allow those guys to certainly not come visit their home, they're not going to have them in their neighbourhoods, and they're not gonna let them marry their daughters.  But yet they'll prostitute themselves and the music for the mighty gold dubloon.

I remain very optimistic that somewhere along the line - songs like Why Can't We Be Friends, we're always looking for that magic song that will maybe change just one person's life.  It's always beautiful when someone walks up to us and says "I was getting ready to jump out the 18th floor and I heard that song come on the radio and it saved my life."  This is what we're living for.

Although War were critical of the music industry and the hip hop artists, they also seemed proud of the influence their music has had.

Howard Scott:  We came up with the background of coming out of South Central Los Angeles.  We gave up South Central Los Angeles to DJ Quik and to Eazy E.

Harold Brown:  And I gave up Long Beach to Snoop Dogg, he probably go stand on my corner.  I go stand on my corner and I look at all these young guys go stand up on the corner where our band started, 21st and Lenton, in Long Beach, stand there, and all these little guys'll look at us and look at me and wonder 'who are these guys?'  They don't even understand, unless they know us personally, that we were actually one of the seeds that started right there. 

Howard Scott:  But the rappers know.  All the rappers, when they really wanted to get into sampling some of the funkiest music that they had to get, everybody wanted to get into funky music, so what they did was they went back to the '70s.  And then when they went back to the '70s catalogue to find bands to sample they sample 3 top bands - James Brown, the P Funk then came War ... because of the songs we wrote and the street orientated music we did, because we wrote music that people on the street level and on any level in between could relate to.

I asked if this suggested a continuity between War's original tunes and the hip hop generation.  

Harold Brown:  It perpetuates the music, we got our craft from James Brown, BB King, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Little Junior Parker, Muddy Waters, we even got some from Richard Berry, we got some from probably even The Beach Boys you know what I'm sayin'.  So we got it and then the youngsters came up and they picked up on it, which are young men now.  They built the bridge across,  so then the younger people come across in their teens, bridge that, so now they're getting a taste of this music that was going on in the '60s and the '70s.  And then all of a sudden a lot of them now are getting interested and saying, 'Wait a minute, besides using a computer or sampler, maybe I can be a drummer, a real drummer, or I'm gonna play a real guitar, I want to be a real musician.'  At one time there was a lot of music being sampled, computer music.  Now all of a sudden seems like there's an interest in becoming a real musician again.

As our conversation had gone from the '60s to the present day, I brought it back to War's peak period by asking about their disco classic Galaxy.

Harold Brown:  That was like a forced change to us.  Our band went through some changes.  Our partner Charles Miller, who grew up in Long Beach, him and I grew up together, he was no longer in the group.  And BB [Dickerson, War bass player] went on his sabbatical.  So then we had some other guys step in that were more like quote unquote professional musicians, they were musicians for hire, and they had certain ideas.  And during that '76 to '78 period when disco came in, that was like formula music, that was like 120 beats per minute, and you gotta have this right there and you gotta play this lick.  It was kind of uncomfortable for us, like putting on a suit that our mother was making us wear.  

So then we got into it and got involved in it, and Galaxy was almost like an accident.  It was our attempt to play disco music and we went after it, what was so incredible was it was such a big hit in Europe.  When we heard the rhythm and stuff going we just all of a sudden just got into it and said 'whoo'.  I heard this rhythm coming over and I walked over to the console, I said "take me to your place in space", the next thing I knew Howard started throwing out lyrics, next thing I knew Charles started throwing out lyrics ... then that song took off.  We never did realise how big a hit Galaxy was before we came to Europe.  I never understood until just recently, when we was at The Jazz Cafe and certain places .

I would like to leave the closing words to Harold Brown, as I believe they summarize what this piece of writing has been about.

We knew when we first got together and started playing music that we had something magical.  Tonight in Hull is going to be something very special.  Because there is no night that is exactly the same in War music.  Because each night we have a special way of delivering the message.  It's the same message, but we don't read it off of a paper and say well we're going to repeat every word and phrase it exactly the same.  It's very special.  And tonight is gonna be very special, when our spirit and our souls intermingle with the rest of the people that's inside that building, we have a special way of giving that message to them. 

Interview conducted Hull, UK, 24th January 1997.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank Paul Jackson for having the balls to put on an amazing night, and Howard Scott and Harold Brown for talking to me.  Most of all I would like to thank War for their unforgettable performance that evening, and for all those tunes they recorded back in the day - big respect and peace, may your music live for ever.

Epilogue

In May 2006 I managed to finally trace Howard Scott and Harold Brown - see http://www.lowriderband.com/