The Animals, Absolute Animals 1964-1968 (Raven Records, 2003)
A while back we looked at a couple of live CDs by Eric Burdon. We were not too happy with what we heard. The I-Band and even The New Animals were disappointing at best, and Burdon's fundamental blues growl was a shadow of itself. This new collection, of forty-year-old classics, offers Eric Burdon at his prime, fronting a series of excellent bands, doing the hits and displaying the grit and drive that made the Animals the best British blues band ever.
The first song is the New Orleans prostitution standard "House of the Rising Sun." Burdon and organist Alan Price arranged this for Price's funky organ, and altered the lyrics to focus on the gambler, not the hooker, but it remains a benchmark of British rock. Sly, sinuous and bluesy, Price's organ, Burdon's vocals and the solid backing of Chas Chandler's bass, Hilton Valentine's guitar and John Steel's drums blend unforgettably! Their take on John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom" shows why they were so admired as a blues band. They assimilated the lessons they learned while backing American blues artists like Sonny Boy Williamson on English tours, and owned the blues form!
"I'm Crying" was a rare original (by Price and Burdon) for these early Animals -- their forte was in arranging a series of carefully chosen cover tunes. Nina Simone's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home"; Mann & Weil's "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and the traditional "Baby Let Me Take You Home" were each Animalized and made Top 40 radio exciting to listen to in the mid-60s! Alan Price left the band when he discovered he had a fear of flying during the first U.S. Tour. He was replaced by Dave Rowberry in 1965. Burdon became the sole leader, and his excesses changed the focus of the band considerably.
For awhile they continued to choose excellent songs that the band could sizzle away on while Burdon exercised his considerable vocal abilities. "It's My Life," "Don't Bring Me Down" and the traditional "See See Rider" are all here, examples of the high energy, blues-rock that The Animals did so well. But the loss of Steel, who was replaced by Barry Jenkins, and Valentine's increasing use of LSD and resulting loss of focus, led to Chandler's resignation and the dissolution of the band in 1966. All those great tunes in only two years . . . aah, those were the days. However, Absolute Animals has two years left to document!
Burdon put a new band together, Eric Burdon & the Animals, which put the spotlight on his own name. Gone was the defining organ sound, replaced with John Weider's electric violin and a beefed up guitar sound courtesy Vic Briggs. Danny McCulloch took on bass duties, and the hits kept on coming. "When I Was Young" and "Good Times" went for a more psychedelic sound, and Burdon and the band began to write their own songs, featuring lyrics which sought to describe the psychedelic milieu. Burdon's lyrics possess a charm and innocence that border on trite, but somehow capture the times better than most. See, for example, the early rap "San Francisco Nights" or Eric's review of the early Pop Festival "Monterey"! I recall playing the anti-war "Sky Pilot" over and over on a juke-box one summer afternoon. Its seven minutes were split in two for the A & B sides of the single. I played one then the other 'til I ran out of quarters. This song is included with no breaks on Absolute Animals!
The band changed again; Zoot Money and Andy Summers stepped in. The sound shifted to a more experimental tack on songs like Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" and Traffic's "Coloured Rain," both of which are included here. The informative liner notes (by Glenn A. Baker) tell us that the guitar solo on this last song is Summers' longest recorded solo.
The CD concludes with an interview with Alan Price and Eric Burdon reminiscing about the origins of the Animals. A curiosity but not essential. The music, on the other hand, IS essential. Every record collection needs some Animals. The fact that they bounced around from label to label makes it hard for a quality anthology to be assembled. Raven Records of Australia has done what no-one else has been able to. They have secured clearance for the most important songs from all the labels and remastered them on this outstanding collection. Is it complete? Well, I'd like to have the B-side "Talkin' 'Bout You" on CD, but other than that slight quibble . . . this is a nearly perfect collection. And it sounds great to boot! Bravo!
