Song Exploder - War - Low Rider

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

The band War formed in 1969, in Long Beach, California. “Low Rider” is from their 1975 album Why Can’t We Be Friends? The song was a hit as soon as it came out. It went to #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. And it’s just had tremendous lasting power ever since. Besides being in Dazed and Confused, where I heard it, it’s been sampled by The Beastie Boys, it was covered by Korn, and it was the theme song for all six seasons of The George Lopez Show.For this episode, I talked to War’s bandleader Lonnie Jordan, and their producer Jerry Goldstein. The two of them told me how “Low Rider” was made in the studio, through a combination of improvisation and meticulous editing.For more, visit songexploder.net/war.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. I remember watching the movie Dazed and Confused when I was a sophomore in high school, and the song Lowrider by War came on. And I had this strange moment of feeling like I was hearing the song for the first time, but I'd also already known it my whole life? It's one of my favorite movie music memories. And that song had been around my whole life. To me, it feels like it's part of the architecture of pop culture. The band War formed in 1969 in Long Beach, California.

Low Ryder is from their 1975 album, Why Can't We Be Friends? The song was a hit as soon as it came out. It went to number one on the Billboard R&B charts. And it's just had tremendous lasting power ever since. Besides being in Days McVewed, where I heard it, it's been sampled by the Beastie Boys, it was covered by corn, and it was the theme song for all six seasons of the George Lopez show.

For this episode, I talked to war's bandleader, Lonnie Jordan, and their producer, Jerry Goldstein. The two of them told me how Lowrider was made in the studio, through a combination of improvisation and meticulous editing. My name is Lonnie Jordan. I am the bandleader, music coordinator, and keyboard player of war. That's me, along with my partner. I'm Jerry Goldstein. Wars producer from beginning. There was seven people in the band.

Charles Miller, saxophone, and vocal on lowriter, Papa D. Allen on percussion, Harold Brown on drums, B.B. Dickerson, bass, Howard Scott, guitar, the Oscar Harmonica. It all started on the West Coast, California, in the studio called Crystal Studio.

Crystal Studio on Vaughn Street. And we went into the studio, and we didn't have a song yet. We weren't really writers. We didn't know nothing. And Jerry knew that. So he just took us in and said, okay, let's see what we can get.

They'd never been in the studio, so I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. And we respected that because of his past, you know, with songs like, hang on, Sloopy, Snoopy, hang on. And my boyfriend's back, and I'm going to jump, all that stuff. I would stand probably over his shoulders sometimes

and watch how he was writing things and he would just do it like it was nothing. I did. The second would come into my head. Listening to the tracks jamming. So we did a 45-minute jam. It was just part of the creative process. We'd go in and we'd start recording.

And most of the time, we'd just jamming. It's going along and all of a sudden eight minutes in, or something. It was a nice groove. This is, ah, this is cool. So I make a note because it was only a small part of the jam that I had checked off. I said, this part's interesting. We should work on this,

you know. Best editor in the world, Jerry Goldstein. And that was the whole part of it. It's kind of like between myself and the band and the engineer, we were like a nine-piece band. And we all in it at the same time together, you know, feeling it, creating it from scratch. That was our baby. Okay, check this out. step by step.

We did this whole 45-minute jam. We haven't developed any form yet. I just found eight minutes of it that I liked. That's it. And I mixed the whole eight minutes and then edited it to figure out what the record's going to sound like and what's the order of everything.

And it was like a process. It was scientific. It was crazy at times. This is the way we wrote. We have tracks and ideas. And then we would just make records out of them and a lot of times they were written in the studio. Like, I had to create the beginning.

There was no beginning, because it was part of a jam. So I created the beginning by putting the cowbell by itself. Papa D did that beginning. That's when we started creating the form of the song. When I used to play the timboles, I had my own style. I did know people like Tita Fuente and all these other percussionists was playing like, boom, come, p'oom! Mine was, Badoon.

And Jerry liked it. I didn't like it, but he kept it because he knew it was different. Our style was so eclectic, and he had his own way of playing him, and they just found the pocket every time. And then that was the trademark. Harold Brown on the drums, he's singing along with it in his own way. Whatever's coming out of his head, he's singing it. That's what he did.

But it happened on all the things he did. All the songs. but even the leakage was in the groove. Ah, that's Bibi. Ah, yeah. Great line. B.B. was like a very innovative bass flare.

And I'm going to tell you right now, a lot of rock and roll bands back in the day, after we did that song, a lot of rock and roll is simulated the bass line. We were ahead of our time. Give me that bass. I never re-recorded any of this stuff. I always made the original.

original jam work. You know, it's more organic that way. And that's why it's so raw, and that's why it's war. So then we come back in and say, okay, let's put some real lyrics on. And it's just so happened that Charles Miller, our saxophone player at the time, walked in the studio, and he had just parked his lowrider car outside. He just bought it. And we all went out to see it. 52 Chevy. Ooh, it was nice. And I said, you got that low-writer out there. Why don't we write a song about you about low-writers? And he went out on the mic and we wrote down everything that we wanted to write about low-writers.

And the low-rider vibe and the low-rider culture. All my friends know the low-rider. Charles had his own real style of singing. He was kind of brilliant in his own way, and he was a great sax player. and he also had a unique vocal sound. The low rider is a little higher. The low rider culture, the beginning of it all, was happening in Los Angeles, East D.A.

And we came out with a culture, you know, of people, Hispanics and blacks, who shared the same dreams of fixing up a car and seeing who can have the best car, who can drop at the lowest. I mean, it was a crazy scene at the time. The low rider drives a little slower. Low rider is a real goer.

I was in the studio playing the piano while they were trying to work out the lyrics. And then I came back in to hear what they had. And then Lani said, why don't we try, take a little trip? Take a little trip. Take a little trip. Take a little trip and see. Take a little trip. Take a little trip.

Take a little trip with me. And then acoustic on a song like that, Howard Scott. Howard Scott. That piano sound is called an RMI. RMI piano. Only a few bands had those. They didn't really like them.

But I like the attitude. head. Jerry put it on tape and said, okay, let's put it on there without thinking about it, because thinking for us was a disease. That's right. Nobody thought it. We just, no thinking. We just did. Just do it, yeah. All of our music is sax and harmonica. That's the horn section. That's our horn section, period. And that's me on their little xylophones. People don't even know the xylophones in there. No, they don't, but it's a mix. That's part of the sound. You know, it's like, that's what we did. We just did what we felt.

And, you know, there was a xylophone there that day. I didn't order it. It was just from the previous session, I guess. And actually, Stevie Wonder worked in the afternoons, and we worked in the evenings. So I guess Stevie had it or something, you know. The line is the hook all by itself. If you ask someone, they said,

Yeah, I know that song you guys did. That, that, that, that, that, that. Yeah, when I tell people who. or younger, you know, or you maybe don't know Low Rider, and I sing the hook. Everybody knows that. And then they sang, The Rider is a little higher.

And that's it. I mean, I spent days editing this thing to get it right because I had to finish the album. And this is the last song I was doing on the album. And it's 6 o'clock in the morning, and I'm at Sound City, and I've got five edited versions that I had done that day. And I took the shortest version

because you never get enough in three minutes. Don't overdo it. Just give them enough, just what it needs, and that's it. I had a friend on some local radio station, and before we actually released it, I had this radio station play it. The phones, the guy was saying,

he's never had the phones light up like it did. The Lowrider community, and especially the Hispanic community. I mean, they made us. We had a huge Mexican-American following and a huge Mexican following because we would play towns like El Paso and get more pesos in the box office than dollars.

Lower Arda has a life of its own. It's been done so many different ways and so many different times. I didn't even know half of the rappers until they started sampling our music. Beastie boys. A lot of rappers come up on stage with us. What's the name?

with the big clock. Flav and Flav. Yeah, Flav of Flav. Came up on stage. I said, wow. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Before I met these guys, I'd write the song, I'd arrange the song, I'd hire the musicians, I'd tell them what to play.

So I was in total control of all the sessions. And then they came along, and they were different from anything. It's a whole different. The most interesting ensemble of people that I have worked with. And the one thing. I always did is allow everybody to do, you know, whatever you are, you are, whatever you want to play, you want to play. And it was completely opposite of what I had done before. I learned from them. We all learned from each other, too, and we had a good time.

Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together in the final song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full ink. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, where she case her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may

have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer producer Phil Weinrope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now.

You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. And now here's Lowrider by War, in its entirety. Visit songexplore.completor.net slash war. You'll find links to buy or stream Lowrider, and you can watch. watch the music video. War will be on tour in the USA over the summer of 2024, and you can get

tickets for that at war.com. This episode was produced by Craig Ely, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi-Hirway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder. You can also get a Song-Exploder t-shirt at song-exploder.net slash shirt.

I'm Rishi-Kesh-Hirway. Thanks for listening.