McGuire, Barry - I Wonder Lyrics

Does anyone see Han Solo?

“Sometimes you just need someone to shout fuck this, fuck everything”

I was expecting a Sex Pistols clip after that.

is one of the few great songs from the mid sixties, as close to early punk rage

Are you kidding!? Have you listened to Rod Stewart?

Doesn't anyone notice the women horribly dancing in the background?

Phil Ochs pronounced his name as "Oaks" like the trees. I know the internet "pronunciation guide videos" say otherwise, but period interviews, introductions and news reports always use the "Oaks" pronunciation.

All response songs blow. Except Sweet Home Alabama.

Who would have thought 3 years later all this shit is happening again lol

Must be the only song that uses the word "coagulatin'

One wonders how Todd would review this song today.

According to"The Sixties" by Todd Gitlin, "Eve of Destruction" hit American college campuses like an earthquake. Like Todd Shadow said, college radicals listened to Dylan Ochs Paxton McDonald et al, but no one expected a Dylan-like song would be a Top 40 song, much less a #1. Plus it came out soon after Johnson sent troops to fight in Vietnam.

ICYMI: P.F. Sloan of San Francisco wrote the song, not Barry McGuire.

Legit feeling this right after Trump killed that Iran guy

2020 and sure feels like eve of destruction here

I think this is Iron Maiden for a solid 10 seconds every time I hear it.

He looks like He-Man.. kinda

Dawn of Correction sounds like it was written by the C.I.A.

Dickies did it better.

China violating human rights . . . Not relevant today. . . Video might be a bit dated.

He was being sarcastic.

Eve of Destruction wasn't wrong, just early. Nothing got fixed.

I actually really like Eve of Destruction 2012, considering what most of the other devout christian boomers are trying to teach kids, Barry McGuire is a fuckin hero...

Just me or does Barry McGuirre look like the Man in Brussels in the Land Down Under music video?

Big shout for that Dickies cover at the end

Fun fact - that set was later reused for "Synchronicity II" by the Police :D

> All response records blow

Wait, "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" is a great song!

He looked like a 45 year old heman

He was 19? SHit he looks older than me and I am 38

Ok Boomer

Love the Dickies at the end there

"With McGuire getting higher in L.A."
Is that a Mamas & Papas lyric or a Dr. Dre lyric?

That 2nd song of Barry McG's is basically the same condescending bullshit of Taylor Swift's 2019 "You Need To Calm Down.""
Fuck off, Barry and take TayTay with ya.

Old person here-60s protest songs sucked. Like, really fucking sucked & the vast majority of people were NOT even remotely into it. AM radio country pop/squeaky clean stuff sold 10xs as well. The media and the baby boomer college profs who've spent the last 5 decades navel-gazing and retconning the truth are lying liars who lie. Imagine telling your grandkids about how the deep messages of (insert indie band most people have never heard of here) were the soundtrack of a generation because they said shitty things about America, 2019.
Yeah, exactly like that.

Dude, if you don't stop bashing hippies and the peace & love movement, I'm gonna find you and mop the floor with your face
When I'm done with that, I'm gonna beat your ass then fuck it!
We're all about peace and love.
You don't know shit.

How did his voice get smoother with age?

Speaking of depressing sixties hits about the annihilation of the human race: "In The Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. No way you can listen to it now and not think of "In The Year 2000...." from Conan O'Brien.

i just love how emotional the guy looks as hes singing.
more singers need to emote.

Look up Lemmy's (!) version with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. No joke, it rules. Mike Batt's Philharmania.

Boris Johnson haircut!

We're on the brink of Brexit destruction...

Mickey Rourke, is that you?

2:16 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣

Zero relevance? I don't know about that, Todd

The video underemphasizes the link between McGuire and "California Dreamin'"; not only was he the first to release the song, the hit version is pretty much just that release (in which The Mamas and the Papas were the backing vocals), minus his vocals plus some of theirs (and a flute solo). Except that the "minus his vocals" wasn't complete. Listen to the start of the hit version on headphones, and you can distinctly hear McGuire as the lead vocal in the left channel. So, see, he DID have another hit. Or rather, what they couldn't erase of his vocals did.

The first time I heard this song--probably about 1980 or so (I was 2 or 3 when it came out, depending on just when in '65 it was)--my first reaction was "Oh yeah, everyone was pissed about Vietnam"...but talk about playing worst-case scenario!

“Very of its time... “

Oh. Does Alabama not exist anymore?

Barry McGuire looks constipated. Maybe that is why he sounded so angry.

he looks and sounds like alex jones of info wars

Great song. Still relevant.

I just fucking love Barry's voice. It's so intense and passionate

His sincerity and anger plus the catchy riff and his voice are awesome.

You can hear the blood pressure rising in his voice... either that or kidney stones

Those lyrics would make an awesome death metal song.

Bob Dylan sucks, there I said it for everyone so they can keep their cred.

RowdyRodimus sorry what no one was thinking that

"He kinda looks like a blonde pete rose"
This cracked me up for some reason

Ah shit, I was perfectly happy being ignorant to the existence of "Dawn of Correction".

Make your jokes people. But you did not grow up during this time in America. I did. It was exactly like this. The violence and loss of life. Do any of you know what Napalm is?  U.S. troops used napalm from about 1965 to 1972 in the Vietnam War.  Napalm is made of of plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon benzene, and gasoline. This mixture creates a jelly-like substance that, when ignited, sticks to practically anything and burns up to ten minutes. if it gets on the skin it is impossible to get off. The little girl who is running naked towards the camera survived an accidental Napalm attack on her village. Her name is Phan Thị Kim Phúc. She is known as the Napalm girl. This Pulizter Prize photo was taken June 8, 1972, by AP photographer Nick Ut, shows her at nine years of age running naked on a road after being severely burned on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack

There’s more emotion wrapped up in this song, than all other Vietnam-era songs put together.

Tried to spot Creed from The Office from his stint in the Grass Roots...

Didn't the Turtles cover this song?

"A blonde Pete Rose"
That's great.

AOC: 12 years and counting down. LOL

Sounds like Krusty The Clown singing. Also, I guess we now know how Kurt Cobain would have looked like as an adult back in the 60's.

"When you're singing a song about the imminent extinction of humanity I'm not sure the kidz bop treatment really works for it"

Worked for Gorillaz on Dirty Harry-although the music actually matched the tone of the lyrics. It might've worked on the original Eve of Destruction, but not the newer one

I love this song even though it was “before my time.” Interestingly enough, what first introduced me to the song was a scene in the apocalyptic TV miniseries “The Stand” based on the Stephen King novel. In that scene, a character named Larry Underwood sits on the hood of a stalled car on a highway and plays an acoustic guitar while singing “Eve of Destruction” as an entire city burns down in the background.

Me too! Saw Larry doing this, thought damn that's a good song, looked it up, found it, loved it. Still do.

lulz, i thought this was a vid about time zone's 'world destruction' when i saw the title.

Movie Barry looks like the bunny from magic roundabout.

That guy was 19? Jesus looks like he was 38

He's talking about the songwriter who composed this song. Barry didn't write it.

This song was effectively used in one of the story DLCs for Mafia 3.

"Quit telling me to smile mom, the world sucks" i'm almost 30 and i still sound like that.

And they can’t smoke till they’re 21 in several states...

The New Crusty Munstrals

On Spotify I can only hear this song on my left earbud

Guys, Barry McGuire wasn't a one hit. He has a life time of music

is it just me or does mcguire look and sound like trump
like every time he does the big 'TELL MEEEEEEEE' the delivery and the way his face scrunches just makes me think of trump if he was of a different political alignment

Shit, I always thought this *was* Bob Dylan singing this song.

"Tell me over, and over, and over again my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction."


Well Barry, your friend was right. It still is a bumpy ride at times, but 54 years later, we're still there.


So young liberals, remember that over-panicking about the state of the world and guilt-trip everybody (or just the whites) into oblivion is not the way to deal with whatever social or political issue that enflames your pure, pure heart.


Try something else. Be creative. It might stop the rise of populism that scares your pure, pure heart so much. You might actually convince people.

Funny thing is Barry says it isn't a protest song, just reflecting the headlines in the news. But you know, with all the nukes ready to go and Mao saying it didn't matter if the US nuked China there would still be millions left, there was a genuine fear.

It's actually relevant now,in these times.

On a serious note : ....where the hell is the pissed off people ?? ...talking about how Muslims and socialists have been elected to undermine our freedom ! How the far left is trying to make this country into a third world nation ?? .......trump 2020 !!!!!!!

"Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace." Very topical, these days.

In that "Eve of Destruction" clip he's dressed like a wannabe or castoff from Paul Revere & the Raiders, who charted big with a protest song of their own, "Kick", which still is probably the best-sounding anti-drug song ever recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfEtO-zswdI

"...in other words it has zero relevance to today."

I laughed so hard.

I was expecting him to say something like "the eve of destruction? In 2012?" but of course I forgot how early this video came out.

The lyrics were not pessimistic because he was 19. It was not his lyrics. The lyrics were actually written by P. F. Sloan, a songwriter for many pop-folk artists.

He was talking about the songwriter, not Barry

Eve of Destruction: A great 60's song with unparalleled melodic pessimism ... good times, good times

"All response records kind of blow." Even Sweet Home Alabama?


I enjoyed that "Child of Our Times" song. I haven't liistened to much of his work yet but it seems to me like he did indeed deserve more than 1 hit.

haha zero relevance good one i caught that

Speaking of Bob Dylan, how about "One Head Light" by the Wallflowers?

That's his son Jakob Dylan's band.

Wow I just made a connection. You said "Bob Dylan went to #2... this went to #1. That feels [bad] [...] because this is clearly a Dylan rip." That sounds exactly like what happened to Future when a clear rip off of him--Desiigner--went to #1 when he hadn't and couldn't. He has yet to get a #1, even as a featured artist, and yet some soundcloud poser comes in and takes #1. Desiigner was the Barry McGuire of 2016.

I was born in the early 2000s and I love this song I am obsessed with music like this and punk from the generation it is way better than the shit rap these days

Yeah, but Dylan's lyrics were never as literal as Eve of Destruction's, they were more abstract and poetic. "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Times They Are A' Changin'," etc, don't mention many specific contemporary events or propose any solutions.

I Google searched Barry McGuire just now, found a fascinating interview with him from a few years ago. Interesting anecdotes about the times and hanging out with contemporaries like Hendrix, John Sebastian and the Mama's and the Papas. He claims Eve of Destruction was done in one take at the end of a long recording session with him singing the lyrics from a crumpled piece of paper he'd thrown away earlier. It goes into him becoming a Christian, and that he was screwed over royally from the royalties he should have gotten in that genre (he apparently sold millions of albums in the Christian field). He still comes off as more of the cosmic hippie type of Christian. Interesting guy.https://canadianchristianity.com/bc/bccn/1008/22mcguire.html

Another good one to do in the same time frame would be "Ode To Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry. Great song, great unsung artist.

In the vein of this song, how about The Ballad Of The Green Berets? I’m mean a song about commandos becoming the biggest hit of 1966, that’s got to be worth delving into.

Yeah, that'd be a great one to do, considering what a bizarre song that was and the bizarre life the dude lived afterward.http://www.marcleepson.com/sadler/sadlerfacts.html

Hell yeah! ... The Dickies during the credits ... excellent!!!

I met Barry McGuire in 1998...

he really failed because he didn't know how to use a microphone so they couldn't record his new album

This guy suffers from Rick Moranis face.

I KNEW you were going to end the video with The Dickies cover and I m so happy that you did

This is like the 1960s version of Land of Confusion.

Man, Barry McGuire looks and sounds really drunk when singing. He looks like he is going to throw up any second.

More constipated than drunk, to me. That said I kind of like this song, despite it being dated as hell.

He-Man's pop career was mercifully brief. And WTF names their band after a blackface mistrel show?