the animals / eric burdon - classic or dud - search and destroy

amazing that there's never been a thread (that i can find) on these dudes. so... strained would-be ray charles dork or blue-eyed soul genius?

i have to admit i like both the original animals and the "eric burdon &..." configuration, but have found little time for his stuff with war. some of the hippier, dippier stuff is hard to defend ("winds of change," or the interminable cover of "river deep, mountain high" anyone?) but lots of the R&B stuff is deathless and i also love "don't bring me down"....

for some animals awesomeness see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a126NLcEi1o

Classic. Then not quite classic/not quite dud either/ then classic again. It helps if you love Eric Burdon's voice in all its sublime absurdity.

Search: All the early stuff with Alan Price (especially the great, hilarious "Story of Bo Diddley"), "Anything," "Sky Pilot," "White Houses," "River Deep Mountain High" and the surprisingly good reunion album, Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted

Destroy: the intro and some of the lyrics to the otherwise achingly lovely "San Franciscan Nights." Also, pretty much all the tracks on the Eric Burdon and the Animals albums aside from those listed above, except for the entire album Love Is, which is rather glorious when it's not tedious in its overproduced, pretentious extravagance.

Love the fuzztone riff of "Girl Named Sandoz" and always wanted to cover it in a band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWQkJwdt3CQ

Gotta share this, even if it's a touch indirect -- just stumbled across it in the interview with Fear's Derf Scratch I linked on another thread. It's him talking about covering "We Gotta Get Outta This Place":

A. Philo and I came up with the arrangement for "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," because he's playing in G and I'm playing in F-sharp. And there's only like two places where we come into key, and that's between the verses where he hit an E and an F together and it goes "bwom-bwom! We gotta get out of this place" or - yeah. And there's one place where we come together and we hit the same tonic note - he plays the tonic chord and I play the same bass note. And we were trying to "Let's fuck this song up as much as we can," so we're doing it and Lee hadn't shown up for rehearsal, and he pulls up and he hears it and goes, "Ah yeah, let's do it!" So we ended up keeping that arrangement. Years later, I ended up spending a weekend with Eric Burdon, and he told me that was his favorite rendition of it that he'd ever heard other than his.

Q. Wow! Really?

A. Yeah, that was pretty trippy.

Q. What were you doing with Eric Burdon?

A. Well, Bob Seidmann - back to him - he had a few parties, and like Big Brother And The Holding Company, he knew all those people, and a lot of artsy people and stuff like that. And there was one artist named Ming, this woman named Ming who lives out in Palm Springs. And I'd go out there and I'd visit James Gurley, who was the lead guitar player for Big Brother. And when I was out there, I don't know how it came about, but I went over to see Ming and I was looking for James I think, and I went over to see Ming and Eric was there. And me and Eric, we just started chatting it up and before I knew it, the weekend had passed. And that was that. He's a great guy.

There's a pretty good Smashing Pumpkins cover of Girl Named Sandoz.

does not compute

White Man's Burdon, Lloyd, White's Man's Burdon

Spill the Wine is a really really bad song

yup. a lot of the stuff w/ war is excruciating.

but i've always thought this was kind of glorious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FZU4JVOmro

In the minority here, but i really, really get into Black-Man's Burdon. Never got much into the Animals material, as the music always comes off a bit too thin. Burdon's voice in any vehicle, however, is indelible and one of the most identifiable around.

The Animals are the best. Just an incredible run of singles, excellent music. But yeah, Burdon's voice is definitely what brings them over the top.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2013/02/an_animal_roars_again_the_eric_1.php

Some entertaining Springsteen comments in here re Burdon

Springsteen denoted "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" as "every song I've ever written. Yeah. That's all of them. I'm not kidding, either. That's "Born to Run," "Born in the USA," everything I've done for the past 40 years."

In describing Burdon, he said "When you saw Eric Burdon, he was like your shrunken daddy with a wig on. He never had a kid's face. He always had a little man's face... They put him in a suit, but it was like putting a gorilla in a suit. You could tell he -- fuck that shit, man, he didn't want it, you know? And then he had that voice that was, like, I don't know, Howlin' Wolf, or something coming out of some 17 or 18-year-old kid."]

a few months ago i bought a cheap and cheerful comp of their mickie most era ..
when 'club a go go' hit the soundsystem, you had to pick me up off the floor.
had no idea the xenomania crew were that brazen re their sampling.
not checked the credits, but i am assuming the animals got the necessaries for the lift ..

I think one of the more curious and unique things about Eric Burdon's music was how he would incorporate spoken word into his tunes. It doesn't always work at all, but it is his own thing, seems very influenced coming out of bebop poetry and related records.

Eric Burdon announced that guitarist Hilton Valentine has died. RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fy7opKu46c

(Seems like nearly every clip of this band in their original configuration has them miming to a pre-recorded track. I can't find a single good clip of them actually performing "House of the Rising Sun.")

That BEAT CLUB video of Eric Burdon playing with War from 1970 is one of my favorite old music videos I have seen in a while. That band is just bada$$.

Been listening to "Thrills Pills & Bellyaches" CDR on the work drive a few times and it kinda hit me that the groove and laconic vocal style are kinda similar to Burdon and War in many ways, especially on that BEAT CLUB take of 'Spill the Wine'.

XP Decades network has been showing The Best of Ed Sullivan shows (in reality mostly abridged vintage eps) and I've been surprised at how often the Rock bands are actually playing live vs. lipsyncs or live vox to backing tracks. This (post-Price) Animals clip is live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PBFPFSe9bE

As is this earlier "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" (w/Price)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjKzr6tLz0

Valentine bringing the 12-string Vox Teardrop Action!

Thanks, that was really good! I love vintage Animals. I imagine most people have a compilation with 15 or 20 tracks, but I got everything they released between 1964 and 1966 - barring UK/US differences, it's essentially three albums and few odds and ends. Not a lot of music but it's a great, concentrated body of work. The Stones and the Who went on to greater things, but in terms of the older stuff, I think the Animals and Them were even better at blues-based rock and R&B, partly because they had lead singers who were better at that music.

Is there a way to tell those Sullivan performances are *not* live vox over prerecorded backing tracks? I think by '66 they normally presented rock groups that way. On certain Rolling Stones appearances it's really obvious. There was an engineer named Art Shine who took the groups to a studio on W. 57th St. to do the precordings, according to a thing I just read.

precordings is not a word but maybe it should be

Hadn't heard about the prerecordings before. I have the 'Stones On Sullivan' DVD set, and yeah it's clear they were using backing tracks in certain (but not all) cases.

Barry Tashian has said that when the Remains appeared in late '65, that they played live, but had no control over the sound ("I had a rented amp which was about 25 feet away, and I couldn’t hear what I was playing,” says Tashian. “I felt crummy about how it came out.”*). You rarely see amps on Sullivan.

*https://pleasekillme.com/barry-tashian-remains/

I also figure that if the drums are mic-ed and the other instruments appear to be plugged in, then it's live. In the comments for the "Inside Looking Out" clip it's mentioned that Chandler's amp wasn't working, so that had to be live-live.

I remember a Burdon interview — possibly from the 1995 PBS Rock & Roll documentary series (Dancing InThe Street in the UK) — where he talked about the Animals being on a package tour with Chuck Berry in the UK. There were a number of other British bands on the bill, and Burdon thought, “They’re all going to try to out-rock each other, with Chuck on the bill.” He astutely figured that the most effective way for the Animals to be remembered would be to play a song completely out of line with what everyone else on the tour was doing, so they worked up “The House Of The Rising Sun.”

great clips!

I think the Animals and Them were even better at blues-based rock and R&B, partly because they had lead singers who were better at that music

^i love early stones but this is otm

young Eric looks so much like my friend Dave it's uncanny

My favourite x10 is their other "Don't" song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIvqfsXQqg

They provide a great punchline in "Education" from the Small Axe films. That's Valentine to Burdon's left, right?

Yeah, the guy with the Telecaster.

That track is another terrific one. Valentine's tone is cool--for those who would know, is that a really compressed fuzz tone?

keyboard guy was the one kicking it w Dylan in Don't Look Back iirc

No that was Alan Price in Don't Look Back. The guy in "Don't Bring Me Down" is Dave Rowberry who replaced Price in '65

oh damn i didn't even notice they'd switched him out. that's him in the "please don't let me be misunderstood" video right?

Yes. "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" was the first single that Rowberry played on.

According to Wikipedia, Mick Gallagher (later of The Blockheads) filled in briefly between Price & Rowberry, and since 2003 he's been with the current version of The Animals (one original member: drummer John Steel).

We discussed the Sullivan Live thing relatively recently w.r.t. The Cowsills.

Well makes sense that they would try to limit the variables of what could go wrong in a tv recording studio by only having the voice be live. & I guess that it's only in the wake of rock getting harder and heavier that amps begin to have an allure of their own. So not going to mess up the stage layout by having them in picture.
Also things more likely to be played live once people have worked out how to hear each other better. Monitors and things not very present before a certain point.

But there were some televised live shows NME awards and things. Not sure why Germany would have live set ups for tv earlier but Beat Club and Beat Beat Beat were always live I think. As was Baton Rough in France.

Ah well do love a bit of Animals. The post Price stuff is a bit more subtle possibly but the early stuff is also pretty fine.

Okay that Ed Sullivan video was great, thanks, although Alan Price and the drummer whose name escapes me did look a bit like Thunderbirds back there.

Dave Rowberry, not Alan Price. The drummer is Barry Jenkins.

Ha, sorry. I have yet to study the lineup changes properly, even though they are probably mentioned right up thread.

Oh wait. I was taking about “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” not sure what show that was from, Sullivan or not.

Seems like maybe the Ed Sullivan Show, January 24, 1965. Price was still around then, as mentioned by C. Grisso/McCain.

And so John Steel as well at that time, I think.

In the early 80s, I remember The Animals as being played pretty regularly on AOR radio, segueing just fine with early Who and Stones, even while surrounded by Billy Squire and Pat Benetar. I was totally psyched to see their reunion in 1983, would have been my first rock concert (but a family trip intervened, sold ticket to another friend). By the mid-80s they were sorted into the Oldies section of record stores, and they didn't make it into the subsequent FM Classic Rock canon, 'cept maybe House of the Rising Sun. But I remember Misunderstood and We Gotta getting played often

I remember that too, that's the way I must have become acquainted with those hits since I didn't own any of the records till much later. "It's My Life" also got a lot of play on my local rock station, and so did the
"New Animals" hit "Sky Pilot," although the station may have limited that one to the one day a week they devoted to psychedelic stuff.

Also David Johansen had a hit with a live medley of Animals songs around '82 which kept those hits in the consciousness.

I think we had teh first Animals lp i th erecord box probably a hangover from its original era. Then they were a band who had some popularity in the mod revival scene, though maybe not as much as the obvious things like Small faces, Who Yardbirds, Kinks. Not sure exactly how that worked but there were a number of bands that that repopularised.
They were great though and i do like taht more sophisticated stuff tehy were doing a little bit into their career both with and after Price. Did love teh cd of the Animalisms type era that I picked up mid price in the 90s. Think I had to get the 2cd with teh Animal Tracks cover that i think was mainly Price. Don't think I've heard about them being really repackaged in years. THough I think there was a Mickie Most era box set sometime, is that like 15 years ago.

Real Gone (US) did a nice CD box set of the early albums that was a limited edition, and thus long OOP. Their rights and cataloguein the states are a bit of a mess, probably due to contractual stuff going back to the '60s. Abkco controls the Mickie Most stuff, while Universal has everything else; for the longest time the only Animals CDs you could get were individual and not very complete Best Ofs from each label. The situation is better now with streaming and imports. But some stuff is still hard to get. For instance, there's a US-only LP from '66 called Animalism (not to be confused with Animalisms, a Brit LP that was called Animalization over here): 12 exclusive recordings produced by Tom Wilson, with a cameo by Frank Zappa, and the last stuff recorded before Burdon broke off and formed the new lineup. It had a couple brief legit reissues from Sundazed and Hip-O Select, but they were pulled somewhat quickly due to what Bob Irwin has said were weird contractual issues.

I can’t remember even trying to buy Animals LPs back in the day, tbh. Was content to hear their singles on the radio, I guess.

And don’t remember the old guard critics recommending any comps or albums. Don’t have a copy of Stranded anymore so I can’t peek at Treasure Island, for instance to see what is in there.

Heh, just looked up on Xgau’s site.

Just noticed that too.

I always liked his non-review of the second Burdon-War album:

The Black Man's Burdon [MGM, 1971]

On the front cover of this album is a black man in silhouette. On the back cover Eric, looking paunchy, rests his head in the crotch of a black woman straddled above him. He also holds her ankles. Inside the jacket seven men, presumably the band, occupy the background of a full-length photo of a grassy field. Six of the men are black; five are bare-chested. In the foreground recline two naked blondes who obviously belong in a centerfold. The left hand of one is thrown back to reveal a clean-shaven and possibly airbrushed underarm, so that her right does not quite conceal her pubic hair. Her companion hides her sex with both hands. The only man who is standing appears to be walking toward the women. He has removed the belt from his pants. D+

IIRC, the Animals album Marcus picked for Treasure Island was the old MGM Best Of... which later was reissued as the Abkco hits CD.

This one, right?

https://isteam.wsimg.com/ip/82009aa1-916d-11e5-9bdb-f04da2077796/ols/800_original/:/rs=w:600,h:600

I had that as a kid, from a pile my dad would bring home from his milk store. Those were the albums I scratched and abused on a portable, so they never became part of the collection I started as a teenager.

That's it!

Marcus (from Wiki):

"This was trash R&B from Newcastle, England, and especially when the focus shifted from American blues to savage pleas for release from working-class slums, more powerful than it had any right to be."

The UK LP Animalisms is probably the one non-compilation LP that I'd hold up as a great and cohesive album. As usual, the US version (re-titled Animalization) included non-LP singles, which meant dropping a few tracks and changing the entire track sequence.

In 1999, there was a CD reissue of the UK LP that sensibly adds everything from the U.S. Animalization as bonus tracks (as well as the EP In the Beginning There Was Early Animals).

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71aFEy0SgRL._SX425_.jpg

The old ABKCO compilation pictured above is probably the most common one in the U.S., but in the U.K. there was a better one from EMI called Singles Plus. The ABKCO CD uses a much better photo for its cover, but the EMI U.K. CD has better sound quality.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/819gkosCwVL._SY355_.jpg

Even though I had the albums, I burned my own CD just to make something more comprehensive and to scoop up a few singles that ABKCO and EMI don't own. Looks like this:

1. Boom Boom
2. Talkin' 'Bout You
3. Dimples
4. Baby Let Me Take You Home
5. Gonna Send You Back to Walker
6. House of the Rising Sun
7. The Right Time
8. Bury My Body
9. She Said Yeah
10. I'm Crying
11. Take It Easy
12. The Story of Bo Diddley
13. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
14. Club A Go Go
15. Let the Good Times Roll
16. Bright Lights, Big City
17. Bring It on Home to Me
18. For Miss Caulker
19. I Can't Believe It
20. We Gotta Get Out of This Place*
21. It's My Life
22. I'm Gonna Change the World
23. Don't Bring Me Down
24. Inside Looking Out

* the correct U.S. single version. For some reason, EMI issued the wrong take in the U.K., but the correct take selected by Mickie Most and the band was used in the U.S. Over time, the U.S. single version fell out-of-print, possibly because someone incorrectly assumed the U.K. version was the correct or preferred master (even though that's usually the case). No one fixed this until ABKCO did in the '00s - unfortunately, that means both the EMI and ABKCO CD compilations shown above have the "wrong" U.K. version.

The Animals were one of the top “invasion” bands and may have had an impact beyond what they’re typically given credit for. I believe they took “House of the Rising Sun” from the first Dylan album, and I suspect that hearing Animals’ records led Dylan to adopt an organ for his sound. The surging foundational organ that helped them transform their r&b roots into hard rock, with Burdon’s shouting baritone and poetic swagger, made the Animals unique. Arguably, as they declined the Doors came along to fill their niche.

"The Animals and Them were even better at blues-based rock and R&B, partly because they had lead singers who were better at that music

Jagger was so cringe a lot of the time doing his blues or country voice. Esp anything slower tempo.

Going back for a sec to Ed Sullivan: One of today's episodes had the original Byrds doing two songs: a completely mimed "Mr. Tambourine Man" and a completely live "Turn! Turn! Turn!". The latter was interesting: Michael Clarke was really thumping the skins, if you could have somehow isolated him, you could have a number of cool breakbeats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX6SuX0Z6AQ

Back to The Animals, here's the original band doing "Boom Boom" live in '65 (just ignore the monster introducing them)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f62s8bGiic

...and here they are, hating life as they mime "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" in a Beach Party movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3mgapAcVdU

don't think i'd ever heard him interviewed before. man the newcastle accent is cool

one of my favorite Animals tracks is "Cheating," which was the B-side to "Don't Bring Me Down" and sounds like the blue print for Tom Petty's "Breakdown"

another excellent deep cut is "Outcast," a cover of the somewhat obscure American soul group Eddie & Ernie