The band is known for several hit songs in the 1970s (including "Spill the Wine", "The World Is a Ghetto", "The Cisco Kid", "Why Can't We Be Friends?

In 1962, Howard E. Scott and Harold Brown formed a group called the Creators in Long Beach, California.

They all shared a love of diverse styles of music, which they had absorbed living in the racially mixed Los Angeles ghettos.

In 1968, the Creators became Nightshift (named because Brown worked nights at a steel yard) and started performing with Melvyn “Deacon” Jones from Richmond Indiana, a rhythm and blues artist.

In 1969, Goldstein saw musicians who would eventually become War playing at the Rag Doll in North Hollywood, backing Deacon Jones, the blues artist, and he was attracted to the band's sound.

The subtitle of a 1970 review in the New Musical Express of their first UK gig in London's Hyde Park read: "Burdon and War: Best Live Band We've Ever Seen".

[7] Their show at Ronnie Scott's Club in London on September 16, 1970, is historically notable for being the last public performance for Jimi Hendrix,[8] who joined them onstage for the last 35 minutes of Burdon and War's second set; a day later he was dead.

The powerful, deceptively torpid groove evokes the pace of inner-city pleasures like 'All Day Music' and 'Summer.'

But however jokey and off-the-cuff they sound, they're usually singing about conflict, often racial conflict—the real subject of 'The Cisco Kid' and 'Why Can't We Be Friends?,' which many take for novelty songs.

Deliver the Word (1973), the next album, contained the hits "Gypsy Man" and a studio version of "Me and Baby Brother" (previously issued as a live recording), which peaked at No.

[11] In 1976, War released a greatest hits record that contained one new song "Summer", which, as a single, went gold and peaked at number 7 on the Billboard chart.

The group continued to attain success with their next album Galaxy (1977), and its title single was inspired by Star Wars.

War's records from 1979 to 1983 were not as successful as those from the preceding decade, and after the two RCA albums, the band's activities became sporadic.

Lonnie Jordan opted to remain with Goldstein and create a new version of War with himself as the only original member.

[17] The liner notes to the 2003 greatest hits album The Very Best of War described the band's sound as a mix of "rock, jazz, Latin, and R&B",[18] while The Maui News described the band's sound in an October 2024 article as blending "R&B, rock, Latin music, jazz, and blues.