Still exploring my teenage years this month. At the time, the “British invasion” began, I was a mere lad of fifteen just beginning to get into music. I enjoyed the Beach Boys, just beginning to make some noise, but if there were any others at the time, the intervening years have faded them from my mind. In addition to the bigger bands from that time, the Beatles, the Stones, Who, one of my other favorites was an outfit called The Animals. Eric Burdon fronted that band and I had a fondness for his voice. What a voice!
I didn’t know then where their music came from, their influences, or that their biggest hit was a cover of an American folk song. Hell, I was just a kid.I didn’t care where it came from, I was just into the music.
There were a few other bands I liked during that time and I will likely post on them in the future. It’s fun revisiting my far off youth.
Here are a few clips of my favorites from their repertoire:
Please Don\'t Let Me Be Misunderstood
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Above photograph is copyrighted by http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoot42/4276325829/ . The photographer was Richard William Laws.
Twenty years later I was listening to House of The Rising Sun and marveling at his voice as well. Great, great band,
Though it started out as the Alan Price Combo, and in the film DON’T LOOK BACK, Bob Dylan exercises his typical personal charm by rubbing it in that Price was kinda dismissed from what was once his own band. Price has been one of the great rock keyboardists…the shoe went on the other foot, of course, after the second version of the Animals, the one with Andy Summers who would go onto the Police, broke up so that Eric Burdon could put together the funkier War…and War fired Burdon, and went on to their greatest successes (such as “All Day Music” and “The World is a Ghetto”).
I was lucky enough to catch the original Animals 1983 reunion concert, including Price, in Honolulu…and damned if the War reunion (not including Burdon) didn’t follow in the same venue about a month or two later.
Dylan was not rubbing anything in with Price during the scene in Don’t Look Back. He asks what the Animals are going to do for a piano player and then merely asks, “Aren’t you playing with them anymore?” It’s a pretty straight forward conversation. No snarkiness from Bob that time. Neither was Burdon fired by War. They played together for about three years, recorded at least two albums, and Burdon had to leave the 1971 European tour after collapsing onstage. The official reason given was asthma. Also, Burdon didn’t reunite with War until 2008 for a one-time-only concert at Royal Albert Hall.
I, too, saw one of the 1983 Animals reunion concerts. The original lineup had to augmented by some . . . shall we say, heavier musicians, in order to get a good, full sound. Burdon, however, sang great that night as he always does. He is one of the premier rock vocalists of all time and it’s a shame he is not held in as high esteem today as some others are from the same era.
I’ll believe your account of Burdon’s separation from War, but if Dylan isn’t being snotty toward Price he’s doing a great approximation of it. I’ll take another look.
The story about Burdon’s first meeting with Nina Simone, the first to record “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” is classic…she was none too pleased that these upstarts were making more money off the song than she was, till he explained that the Animals’ success with the song just meant that her audiences in the UK were just likely to increase as a result, upon which suggestion she found the situation somewhat easier to bear…
House of the rising sun was superb. I didn’t hear it till I was a bit older than you but I’ve loved it ever since.
Not one of my favorites, perhaps least of all the British rock groups of the time. House of the Rising Sun was way over played on AM radio that first summer, and after a while it just got to be “change the station!”
I loved The Animals. We Gotta Get Out of This Place was the only song I have ever dared sing on Karaoke Night.
If I remember correctly, Alan Price did one of my favorite ‘cute’ songs, Simon Smith and His Dancing Bear.
Loved this group. They had a distinct sound.
Oh yes, The Animals are terrific and often seem forgotten by many these days. Great call.