The look and dress of members of War may have frightened the Japanese public during the Los Angeles funk band’s first tour of Japan in 1974. The band, which instilled rock, jazz, soul, blues, reggae and Latin music into its funk, came up with a unique solution: write a song called “Why Can’t We Be Friends.” The song went on to reach the top 10 on the U.S. music charts and became the title track of War’s highly praised 1975 album.

Keyboardist Lonnie Jordan, the only remaining original band member, recalls the band initially not understanding what was going on in Japan.

“We started looking at each other when we walked out of a restaurant where I had my first sushi and my first sake and, believe me, we were almost sake’d out!” Jordan tells me. “We walked out in the streets, and people were looking at us really strange. We realized, with our big Afros, bell-bottom pants, long hair and a mixed-race group of guys, it looked pretty weird. I would be afraid if I was walking on the other side of the street looking at us, too!”

A riveting, new double album, Live in Japan 1974, documents the music of that tour. The band members in Japan looked like they came off a battlefield – the same look when the group organized — but it was understandable, because it was the 1970s, Jordan says.

Live in Japan 1974, according to long-time War producer Jerry Goldstein, doesn’t take a back seat to any previously released live War albums.

“This is the original seven members basically at the peak of their career,” Goldstein says. “They’re really starting to peak and mature. It’s different from the other live albums from 1973, 1980 and 2008 but definitely on par. The band didn’t play the same show twice, so each live album has its own vibe to it.”

As War currently continues to tour with shows scheduled through February 2026, including May and June dates in California, Texas and Niagara Falls, Canada, Goldstein fondly remembers the shows that culminated in the new Live in Japan 1974 album.

“I was surprised how nice and fun the people were, but I was most surprised how they knew all the songs and were into the music,” he says. “They even sang along.”

Goldstein’s favorite moment during the tour occurred in Shizuoka, a city about 105 miles southwest of Tokyo. The audience spontaneously clapped and chanted to bring the band back on stage, and their boisterousness is documented as “Shizuoka Chant,” the four-minute-plus seventh track on Live in Japan 1974’s second disc.

“I was impressed that they created their own music and sang it back to us — interpolating our music in a way,” Goldstein says.

The double album concludes with the next track “Where Was You At,” a song from War’s 1973 hit album The World is a Ghetto. That album’s title track and its hit single, “The Cisco Kid,” are also performed on the 14-track Live in Japan 1974.

Prior to the formation of War in 1969, Jordan and other original members were in a band called Nightshift that backed Los Angeles Rams football great Deacon Jones in a local club during his singing engagements. Eric Burdon, the former lead singer of the influential British Invasion group the Animals, and Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar were scouting Los Angeles clubs for a new band and were impressed by Nightshift. Burdon soon took control of the group, replaced two horn players with Oskar and renamed the band War.

“Eric heard us play,” Jordan recalls, “and said, ‘I like the fact that they can play every genre of music.’ That was the type of band he was looking for. He met us at a nightclub, and the next thing you know, we were rehearsing at a place called SIR in Santa Monica, California, preparing to go on the road with him without even a record or at least without a record of Eric Burdon and War. We were trying to let the people know that this is not Eric Burdon with the Animals. I take my hat off to Eric. He taught me a lot about entertaining in front of a larger audience, larger than what we were used to playing prior to meeting Eric.”

Eric Burdon and War rehearsed for about a month, Goldstein says, and played their first gig at the Newport ’69 Festival at Devonshire Downs, a racetrack and event venue in Northridge, California. It was a monster gig for a new band. Acts at the three-day festival included the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Byrds, the Rascals, Three Dog Night and Joe Cocker. Eric Burdon and War went on stage, following Jethro Tull and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Burdon and the Animals had been a bluesy English rock band, so Burdon was seemingly an unlikely fit with War. Did the combination work?

“Yes, we didn’t change our style,” Jordan responds. “Eric pretty much melted into our pot. He came into our pot and started cooking up some chitlins, mojitos, Irish stew and other mixtures of things from Newcastle. It was a gumbo mixture when he came in, and we just went anyway he wanted to go. Eric also wanted to be an actor. He would always improvise music, and that is where we learned to improvise music. When he would go somewhere, we would just follow. We would jam to what he was improvising.”

They released a debut album, Eric Burdon Declares War, in 1970, and it included a huge hit “Spill the Wine.” A second album was released the same year, and then Burdon, who previously had sung the big Animals hits “House of the Rising Sun,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” quit the collaboration with War.

His departure didn’t slow down the talented L.A. band, whose members shared the vocal duties. Without Burdon, they put out a solid, engaging self-titled album in 1971, and then, near year-end, All Day Music, which reached the top 10 and spent 39 weeks on the music charts.

The World is a Ghetto hit No. 1 on the charts and became 1973’s best-selling album with more than 3 million copies sold. The next album, Deliver the Word, contained the hits “Gypsy Man” and “Me and My Baby Brother” and sold nearly 2 million copies. 1975’s Why Can’t We Be Friends? was also a big seller with the hit title track and “Low Rider.” The title track was played as a soundtrack for the first joint U.S.-Soviet Union space mission.

In 1979, original bassist Morris “B.B.” Dickerson left the band, and saxophonist/flutist Charles Miller was murdered in a robbery attempt. The band went through many personnel changes in subsequent decades and primarily became a touring act. In 1988, percussionist Thomas Sylvester “Papa Dee” Allen, who once had played with jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, died of a heart attack on stage.

War’s music reached a new audience in the 1990s when the group’s songs were sampled by hip-hop artists. In 2008, the band played a reunion show with Burdon at London’s Royal Albert Hall prior to Rhino Records’ reissues of their joint albums and War compilations. War was nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 but didn’t receive enough votes for induction.

In 2014, the band released Evolutionary, their first studio record in a decade. In recent years, according to War’s website, the group has toured more than 150 dates annually “to audiences ranging from tens of thousands to intimate clubs.”

Many concertgoers over the years have been inspired and enthralled by War’s performances, so I ask Jordan which concerts he attended were the best.

“The concert that is very memorable to me was James Brown,” he responds. “I was only 16 years old, and my mother told me not to go out to a club to see him. I wasn’t allowed into the club at 16, but I somehow managed to get through with some older people. I had such a good time and, after that show, I fell asleep at a burger stand.”

His wakeup call was a nightmare. Someone had broken into the joint while Jordan slept, and he was arrested.

“I was accused of the crime until they discovered that the fingerprints didn’t match,” Jordan recalls. “I am thankful that the police investigated the crime, as that was a different time back then. It was a very scary moment, and my mother was not very happy with me!”

That concert will obviously never be forgotten, and I ask Jordan what album by another artist will forever be memorable, the best one he has heard.

“Where do I start?” he answers. “Jimmy Smith, Bill Evans, James Brown, Tony Bennett, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, and the list goes on. There were so many great artists that it is hard to pick a favorite. So many of those artists inspired me.”

Goldstein, who has produced every War album, certainly knows a heck of a lot about record albums, so I ask him which album is the best one he has listened to.

“How do you pick one?” he responds. “Ray Charles was my first best album and then Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Sgt Pepper wasn’t too bad either and Led Zeppelin II.”

How does Goldstein sum up the significance of War’s entire catalog?

“When you play the band’s records, you will understand,” he says. “It’s really an amazing amount of work. A lot of it is free form and jams that we created into songs in the studio. It’s timeless.”