Eric Burdon - The Early Animals with Eric Burdon 12" Vinyl LP Album

They came from Newcastle on Tyne , those five, not far from Liverpool, where the Beatles had begun rising above it all, out of the misty dawn of the rock and R&B era. Back in 1962. What began as the three-man Alan Price Combo and regular Saturday night gigs at Newcastle’s Downbeat Club, evolved into a group containing Alan Price, Bryan Chandler, Hilton Valentine, Eric Burdon, and John Steel. The club itself, a former warehouse, had once stood on railroad tracks that led to nowhere. And so, seemingly, from that ‘non-period’ period of time, the music made by the Combo showed its closing… and a frenetic sense that it was the beginning of a group that became known as The Animals. It took one big turn of events, when club-goers said what their audiences began to show them, and they were smart enough to recognize a good thing when it came along.

Eric Burdon: “The name was probably an association with the kind of music we play, and my outfit. It’s a sort of animal sound, which to me can be pretty wild. No routines—just moments of uninhibited expression when we’re slightly potty.”

Hilton Valentine: “Maybe it was because we looked the part in those days. You couldn’t find smart mohair suits and dressed in demi-leather that created a pretty shabbily—why, and people must have thought we were animals.”

By every measure, they were the antithesis of most other English groups of the time, who played in a more mannered manner. And with Burdon as their leader, and Alan Price’s masterful invention on keyboard, Eric B. possessed more animalism than any of the others, projecting his raw realizations with anything that came to mind. They moved on to the Club A Go-Go, a bit more fashionable than the previously mentioned Downbeat.

The musical breakthrough of the 60s saw the emergence of such talents as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Herman’s Hermits, the Rolling Stones and Petula Clark. Five, and only a small number of persons at that time, who began to create a huge fandom in America. And the name Animals was a sure fit. It was thrilling to the U.S. public, with its potential for saying to the people about how they must react to this northern ‘New Music’ invasion from the bleak little townships of England. This music was as good as anything brought across the ocean in the mid-60s (won’t somebody bring back flower children?). Even to this day, boys young beyond belief are aware of something going on, and they apparently can look on it, like it, and gain acceptance for themselves.

On the dark evening of December 30 in 1963, Sonny Boy Williamson was in Newcastle at the Downbeat for one last time, with the Animals to back him up. A week later, Sonny was dead (he’d heard it was the blues). As the animals’ first LP, ‘Meet the Animals’ spun out its number of hits that year in America, the contents on this record captured the essence of the Animals’ early history, their first ever triumph by The Animals, pre-dating what has since become a classic style. This is the overall emergence of their nature, fueled by its own energy and the adulation from its audience.

Write on, Rock on! Tom Carlson