Eve of Destruction (song) Eve of Destruction (song) "Eve of Destruction" is a protest song written by P. F. Sloan in mid-1964. Several artists have recorded it, but the best-known recording was by Barry McGuire. This recording was made between July 12 and July 15, 1965, and released by Dunhill Records. The accompanying musicians were top-tier Los Angeles session players: P. F. Sloan on guitar, Hal Blaine (of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew) on drums, and Larry Knechtel on bass guitar. The vocal track was thrown on as a rough mix and was not intended to be the final version, but a copy of the
Protest songs in the United States they in fact pre-date. For example, "Masters of War" (1963) which protests against governments who orchestrate war, is sometimes misconstrued as dealing directly with the Vietnam War. However, the song was written at the beginning of 1963, when only a few hundred Green Berets were stationed in South Vietnam and came to be re-appropriated as a comment on Vietnam in 1965, when US planes bombed North Vietnam for the first time, with lines such as "you that build the death planes" seeming particularly prophetic. In contrast to other topical singers of the day, Dylan never mentioned Vietnam by name in