We give necessary and sufficient conditions for warped product manifolds (M, g), of dimension ⩾ 4, with 1 -dimensional base, and in particular, for generalized Robertson–Walker spacetimes, to satisfy some generalized Einstein metric condition. Namely, the difference tensor R·C−C ·R, formed from the curvature tensor R and the Weyl conformal curvature tensor C , is expressed by the Tachibana tensor Q(S, R) formed from the Ricci tensor S and R. We also construct suitable examples of such manifolds. They are quasi-Einstein, i.e. at every point of M rank (S − α g) ⩽ 1, for some α ∈ R, or non-quasi-Einstein.