War’s Lonnie Jordan: ‘We don’t shoot bullets; we shoot rhythms’

The frontman of one of the great groundbreaking rock-funk-soul acts of the 60s and 70s talks about politics, peace and their influence on rap music

In the mid 1960s a young African American R&B group from Long Beach, California were struggling to find a fitting name for themselves. Originally called the Creators, they soon turned into Nightshift, due to members doing evening work in a steel yard. But the musicians wanted a moniker that captured the turbulence of the times, when violent international conflicts and civil rights marches dominated the news agenda. The band became War.

“It was during Vietnam,” says keyboardist-vocalist Lonnie Jordan, now 75 years old. “A lot of the soldiers came home to a war in their own back yards. So we started waging war against wars everywhere, with our choice of weapons being our instruments. We don’t shoot bullets; we shoot rhythms. War was for peace.”