What does it sound like?:
The Animals’ debut LP followed The Beatles by a year and a half, The Hollies and The Rolling Stones by six months, coincided within a week of The Kinks and preceded The Yardbirds by a couple of months and The Who by a full year. All seven bands were heavily influenced by American Rhythm & Blues and Tamla Motown. Without exception, these bands covered Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, at least in spirit, and their debut albums were full of covers. Eleven of the twelve tracks on the UK version of The Animals are covers and the remaining one, the opener, co-credits Bo Diddley, a song that acknowledges their debt to the Diddley beat and their third place in the UK pecking order by quoting A Hard Days Night and I Wanna Be Your Man.
The Animals, the LP, tends towards the gritty, bluesy end of the R&B spectrum, featuring three John Lee Hooker songs, two Fats Domino and two Chuck Berry, but any or all of them could have appeared on the first two Stones LPs. The Animals’ two main advantages were Eric Burden’s powerful rasp and Alan Price’s distinctive riffs on his Vox Continental organ. Burden’s voice sounds as if it had emerged deep from the ground like the coals in Newcastle, where the group lived. Price had the talent to wrench his keyboard from the rhythm section into the spotlight of a lead instrument, often eclipsing the guitar. Hilton Valentine competed by often playing as wild and as Dave Davies in The Kinks. John Steel might have not have had the musicality of Ringo or possess Charlie Watts’ swing but he was a much needed anchor of a band that, live especially, could otherwise teeter into chaos. Chas Chandler suffered from his surprisingly inventive basslines being low in the mix, as was the case for British acts in 1964, and was the main backing vocalist.
The Animals were in the vanguard of the British invasion, screaming girls chasing their car, sold out concerts, appearances on the Ed Sullivan show, heavy radio play, the whole bit. It wasn’t this album that caught the attention but the single they left off it. The House Of The Rising Sun is a folk song, transformed into Blues Rock before the genre even existed, recorded in just one take. The guitar arpeggio is perfect and the vocal extraordinary, but it’s the organ that makes it unique and established the Animals sound. A British act, telling a tale of woe set in New Orleans, was number one on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the record label added it to the LP, even though it is very different to the rest of it.
This is a reissue of a long deleted product. On CD, there are two discs. The first is the UK album, in mono, with The House Of The Rising Sun tacked on at the end, and the second is stereo as remastered in 2004. You can buy a single yellow vinyl version for Black Friday.
There were more hits to come but The Animals, in this incarnation, were short lived. They couldn’t write enough quality material themselves. Once Alan Price left, they lost their bearings without their distinguishing feature. They lacked the charm of The Beatles, the sex appeal of The Stones and the story-telling of The Kinks but they explored a byway less travelled and their tough, nuggety style won them a lot of acolytes.
What does it all *mean*?
Tempus fugit. It’s frightening that this album and single were released sixty years ago.
Goes well with…
A CD player and a long memory. Can’t be that many of either left.
Release Date:
18th October 2024
Might suit people who like…
British R&B of the early sixties.
The House Of The Rising Sun
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4-43lLKaqBQ&feature=shared
Thanks Tig. As it happens I played a whole side of Eric Burdon Declares War on my little radio show the other night. It was the second LP I ever bought.
What do you of that part of Eric’s career?
I prefer the second LP, Black Man’s Burden, though I don’t think he’d get away with its title or inner gatefold picture these days. War, after he left, were even better!
Alan Price had a fulfilling career and Chas Chandler became more famous as a producer, notably for Jimi. Their producer, Mickie Most ran a successful label in the seventies.
Chasing also managed and produced Slade. Convinced them to go to America, and then convinced them to fill the vacant slot at Reading Festival in 1980.
So was party to their decline and re-birth.
Also setup Barn record label to release Slade stuff when Polydor contract ended, and then part funded Cheapskate records.
As I recall Eric had the distinction,in those militant times, of being kicked out of the band coz he was white.
He left them in a funk.
Heard muttering “ oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”
My birthday present (exciting huh!) will be a few CDs bought directly from the Ace website.
High quality items, considered and pored over for several days.
One has a whopping (and obscure) 30 Rock ‘n’ Roll songs on it. I like the look of another with 24.
re: ‘The Animals’. I can’t help feeling the various stray As and Bs (and a BBC session or two?) should be on this. Thirteen tracks, repeated, seems very small pickings. Poor value compared to Ace or Bear Family.
They’re a funny group. Huge at the time, even I don’t play them. They kinda fall between two stools, like DONOVAN. Too popular/familiar… but, crucially, ‘not’ the Beatles. I seem to go from the Beatles, then on to the Pretty Things, then the Action, then all the others below that!
However, the elephant in the room is ‘always’ the same elephant in the room, so let’s say hello to Jumbo again!
“Hello Jumbo again!”
The people likely to have purchased this ten or twenty years ago… all owning CD players, the vast majority still able to play CDs, hardly anyone (2%?) owning a record player… have nowhere to buy it on their local High Street!!!
I suspect sales will be in the hundreds. Evidence, no doubt, of the declining CD, but I refer you back to the main reason for such low sales… the elephant in the room, Jumbo.
“Goodbye Jumbo again!”
He’ll be back.
The decline of the cd has been and gone and coming back again. The numbers are increasing and many record shops that have a good stock will sell higher numbers because Lp’s are just too expensive.
You can buy 3cd’s for one lp in many shops which is why the increase
The Aninals interest me but not this particular release which I think has missed a trick.
@deramdaze
Assuming you’ve not already got it, here’s one you might enjoy, D.
https://www.hhv.de/shop/en/records/item/v-a-psych-british-prog-rock-folk-and-blues-1966-1973-1133951v1?f_lco=453054537&f_scp=4&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADIWopXxmtwUjpmv0fn-sFVS9zBit&gclid=CjwKCAjw68K4BhAuEiwAylp3klHKmtizupkpSDrV7TxuYXWt-3PGPGdKKpI2qQLTAylsqN4R21MwlxoCwj0QAvD_BwE
Apols for long link, forum won’t post dodgers stuff so had to get from HMV
There’s some real quality to be had, which makes this release, which would have looked slight in 1994, even more puzzling.
A couple more observations:
1. The Animals were on Columbia, making the Parlophone label, though accurate in 2024, look careless/daft/historically wrong.
2. On the 45cat website, there have been more Animals’ LPs released in Canada, the U.S. and Germany, confirming the group’s strange position in U.K. pop.
3. There’s never been an official (the one I’ve found doesn’t look official) “Live at the BBC”.
4. There are five 45 tracks that should accompany House of the Rising Sun on this release.
5. House of the Rising Sun , with its ‘Trad. Arr. A. Price’ acknowledge, was the very reason the original group split up!
6. Imagine the Stones first LP reissued with Not Fade Away tacked on at the end.
In 1994, you’d have given it a 4/10, with the proviso that if it turned up for a fiver at the HMV Sale in 1995, you’d probably pick one up.
In 2024, 2/10 would be kind.
I agree with the above, that they were a strange ‘in between’ group. Whenever I play their stuff, it’s great fun, but it’s also completely pointless in the main. They are quite a bit better than all the other groups with exactly the same repertoire, I guess – a bit more aggressive, maybe? There was a nice double CD called Animal Tracks back in the 90s that covered the ground that most would need.
Yes. Animal Tracks is very good.
There was a reunion album, “Before We were So Rudely Interrupted”, in 1977. I had it on cassette. A bit of a curate’s egg, but had its moments, before they all realised they still couldn’t stand Alan Price/he couldn’t stand them. They tried again, in 1983, with the patchier ‘Ark’, ahead of drawing the same conclusions. That one I taped from the record library. Soot Money augmented, presumably so Price could leave early.
I must give it another listen. HOTRS is obvs a banger but I recall thinking in the main they sounded a bit feeble compared to, say, the Bluesbreakers album which still sounds magnificent. Burdon had a great voice though.
Tasty version of Hooker’s Dimples
I have a single with HOTRS, DLMBM, and WGTGOOTP. I feel like I’m satisfied with those 3. WGTGOOTP is more poppy. Apparently Springsteen found a lot of inspiration in that song for his own career. Can see why.
The aforementioned Animal Tracks is the release to get. It is astonishing for such a popular group ( and the singles were great) that they only made two LPs with Alan Price, then just one on Decca with Dave Rowbottom. It was the same with groups like the Yardbirds, the Zombies and many others – considering their enduring profile their discography is actually quite thin, whereas the Stones, the Kinks and the Beatles churned them out.
I don’t know how old Eric Burdon was when he sang House of the Rising Sun. He looks about sixteen.
23. Just. By two weeks.
This should be further up, in reply to Junior’s contribution.
..but War’s Danish harmonica player, Lee Oskar, is white. He never got kicked out for it.
According to Wikipedia, Burdon and Oskar first joined forces in LA after Burdon’s “New Animals” broke up and later teamed up with the other musicians that became War. Burdon was only fairly briefly with them all (1969-1971), but Oskar remained with War until they disbanded in 1993 and still occasionally plays with 3 of War’s founder members in The Low Rider Band. Perhaps Burdon was just a bit too white, while Oskar was not.
I image the real reason Burdon and War parted company was because they didn’t want to remain as just Burdon’s band and Burdon wasn’t prepared to just be a another member of War.
LO went on to found a leading blues harp business whose products I heartily endorse.