R&B/soul band War honored with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was unveiled Thursday honoring the R&B and progressive soul band War for a career that has included selling more than 50 million albums since its formation in 1969.

Band members, producer Jerry Goldstein and comedian George Lopez were among those speaking at the ceremony at 6212 Hollywood Blvd., adjacent to Amoeba Music.

The band arrived at the ceremony in “six beautiful lowriders from several car clubs in Los Angeles,” as a nod to its 1975 hit, “Low Rider,” Ana Martinez, producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, told City News Service.

The song was also the opening theme for Lopez’s 2002-07 ABC comedy “George Lopez.”

“For all my work, being in the band War was so fulfilling,” guitarist/vocalist Howard E. Scott told the crowd. “… To the fans, all the fans out there that like War, that made one song from War their favorite song, remember this: Share that song with somebody else and we’ll unite the world. Share the song that you love with War around the world.”

The ceremony came two days before the band begins a tour in Merced that also includes stops in England, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. The band includes 76-year-old keyboardist and vocalist Leroy “Lonnie” Jordan, a member throughout its existence.

The star is the 2,814th since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars.

In a biography of the band on its website, war.com, Goldstein recalled in 1969 first seeing “some of the guys who would eventually become War playing at a topless beer bar in the San Fernando Valley … and knew immediately how potent these kids were.”

Goldstein said the next morning he called Eric Burdon, who until a few months earlier had been the lead singer of the British rock band The Animals but “was ready to throw in the towel on the music scene and return” to England because “he was tired of the ‘rock’ thing and desperate for a fresh authentic sound.”

Goldstein said he “made him return to the club the next night with me. Eric was so blown away by what he had heard that he jumped on stage to jam with them. The guys weren’t familiar with Eric or The Animals. I had them in the studio within a week, and the rest is history!”

That initial recording session would become “Eric Burdon Declares ‘War,’” released in 1970. The album’s best known track, “Spill the Wine,” topped the Cash Box Top 100 and reached third on the Billboard Top 100.

The band was initially known as Eric Burdon and War and consisted of Burdon, Jordan, Scott, harmonica player and vocalist Lee Oskar, the late percussionist and vocalist Thomas “Papa Dee” Allen, saxophonist and vocalist Charles Miller, the late bass player and vocalist B. B. Dickerson and drummer and vocalist Harold Ray Brown.

Goldstein said he initially envisioned War as “just a band to back Eric. I kind of thought it would change with his musical moods. It turned out to be that constantly evolving device, just without Eric Burdon.”

The band would release one more album with Burdon, the two-disc set “The Black-Man’s Burdon,” also released in 1970. Burdon left the band in the midst of its European tour that fall and it would be simply known as War afterward.

Its first album without Burdon, “War,” failed to reach the charts, but its next, “All Day Music,” released later in 1971, was certified as gold by the music industry trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America.

Its third album as War, “The World Is a Ghetto,” released in November 1972, was the best-selling album of 1973, according to Billboard and also certified as gold.

War’s next two albums, “Deliver the Word,” released in 1973, and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” released in 1975, were also certified as gold.

Its other memorable songs include “The Cisco Kid” and “Summer.”

War’s songs have been covered by Willie Nelson, The Muppets, George Clinton, Phish, ZZ Top and The Isley Brothers and covered by such artists and groups as Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, the Beastie Boys, Method Man, Sublime, Redman, Cypress Hill, Shaggy, A$AP Mob, Scarface, the Geto Boys, De La Soul, Flo Rida, Liam Payne and Thomas Rhett.