Episode 115: “House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals

A History of Folk Music in 500 Songs

by Andrew Hickey.

Episode 115

House of the Rising Sun by the Animals.

Today we're going to look at a song that, more than any other song we've looked at so far, shows how the influence between British and American music was working in the early 1960s.

A song about New Orleans that may have its roots in English folk music that became an Appalachian country song performed by a blues band from the north of England who learned it from a Minnesotan folk singer based in New York.

We're going to look at House of the Rising Sun and the career of the animals.

There is

a house in New Orleans,

the cold

rising sun.

And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy.

And God,

I know

I'm loyal.

The story of the Animals, like so many of the British bands of this time period, starts at art school, when two teenagers named Eric Burden and John Steele met each other.

The school they met at was in Newcastle and this is important for how the band came together.

If you're not familiar with the geography of Great Britain, Newcastle is one of the largest cities but it's a very isolated city.

Britain has a number of large cities.

The biggest of course is London which is about as big as the next five added together.

Now there's a saying that one of the big differences between Britain and America is that in America a hundred years is a long time, and in Britain a hundred miles is a long way.

So take that into account when I talk about everything else here.

Most of the area around London is empty of other big cities, and the nearest other big city to it is Birmingham, a hundred miles north west of it.

About seventy miles north of that, give or take, you hit Manchester, and Manchester is in the middle of a chain of large cities.

Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield, and the slightly smaller Bradford, are more or less in a row, and the furthest distance between two adjacent cities is about 35 miles.

But then Newcastle is another hundred miles north of Leeds, the closest of those cities to it, and then it's another hundred miles or so further north before you hit the major Scottish cities, which cluster together like the ones near Manchester do.

This means Newcastle is, for a major city, incredibly isolated.

Britain's culture is extraordinarily London-centric, but if you're in Liverpool or Manchester, there are a number of other nearby cities.

A band from Manchester can play a gig in Liverpool and make the last train home, and vice versa.

This allows for the creation of regional scenes, centred on one city, but with cross-fertilisation from others.

Now again, I am talking about a major city here, not some remote village.

but it means that Newcastle in the 60s was in something of the same position as Seattle was, as we talked about in the episode on Louis Louis, a place where bands would play in their own immediate area and not travel outside it.

A journey to Leeds, particularly in the time we're talking about, when the motorway system was only just starting, would be a major trip, let alone travelling further afield.

Local bands would play in Newcastle and enlarge nearby towns like Gateshead, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough, but not visit other cities.

This meant that there was also a limited pool pool of good musicians to perform with, and so if you wanted to be in a band, you couldn't be that picky about who you got on with, so long as they could play.

Steele and Burden, when they met at art school, were both jazz fanatics, and they quickly formed a trad jazz band.

The band initially featured them on trumpet and trombone, but when rock and roll and skiffle hit, the band changed its line-up to one based around guitars.

Steele shifted to drums, while Burden stopped playing an instrument and became the lead singer.

Burden's tastes at the time were oriented towards the jazzier side of RB, people like Ray Charles, and he also particularly loved blues shouters like Jimmy Witherspoon and Big Joe Turner.

He tried hard to emulate Turner, and one of the songs that's often mentioned as being in the repertoire of these early groups is Rollin' Pete, the Big Joe Turner song we talked about back in episode 2.

I've got a girl, Liza bon that hill.

When it won't try to quit me, Lord, but I love her still.

She got eyes like diamonds, teeth, shine like lines, I go.

Got eyes like diamonds, teeth, shine like lines, I go.

Every time she loves me, she sends my men of soul.

The jazz group that Burden and Steele formed was called the Pagan Jazz Men, and when they switched instruments they became instead the Pagans R and Band.

The group was rounded out by Blackie Sanderson and Jimmy Crawford, but soon got a fifth member when a member from another band on an early bill asked if he could sit in with them for a couple of numbers.

Alan Price was the rhythm guitarist in that band, but joined in on piano and instantly gelled with the group, playing Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano.

The other members would always later say that they didn't like Price either as a person or for his taste in music.

Both Burden and Steele regarded Price's tastes as rather pedestrian when compared to their own hipper tastes, saying he always regarded himself as something of a lounge player, while Burden was an RB and blues person, and Steele liked blues and jazz.

But they all played well together, and in Newcastle there wasn't that much choice about which musicians you could play with, and so they stayed together for a while, as the pagans evolved into the Kansas City V or the Kansas City VII, depending on the occasional presence of two brass players.

The Kansas City group played mostly jump blues, which was the area of music where Burden and Steele's tastes intersected.

Musicians they've cited as ones they covered were Ray Charles, Louis Jordan, and Big Joe Turner.

But then the group collapsed, as Price didn't turn up to a gig.

He'd been poached by a pop covers band, the Contours, whose bass player, Charles Chandler, had been impressed with him when Chandler had sat in at a couple of Kansas City Five rehearsals.

Steele got a gig playing lounge music, just to keep paying the bills, and Burden would occasionally sit in with various other musicians.

But a few members of the Contours got a side gig, performing as the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo, as the resident band at a local venue called the Club of Gogo, which was the venue where visiting London jazzmen and touring American blues players would perform when they came to Newcastle.

Burden started sitting in with them, and and then they invited Steele to replace their drummer, and in September 1963, the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues combo settled on a line-up of Burden on vocals, Price on piano, Steele on drums, Chandler on bass, and new member Hilton Valentine, who joined at the same time as Steele, on guitar.

Valentine was notably more experienced than the other members, and had previously performed in a rock and roll group called the Wildcats, not the same band who backed Marty Wilde, and had even recorded an album with them, though I've been unable to track down any copies of the album.

At this point, all the group members now had different sensibilities.

Valentine was a rocker and skiffle fan, while Chandler was into more mainstream pop music, though the other members emphasised in interviews that he liked good pop music like the Beatles, not the lesser pop music.

The new line-up was so good that a mere eight days after they first performed together, they went into a recording studio to record an EP, which they put out themselves and sold at their gigs.

Apparently 500 copies of the EP were sold.

As well as playing piano on the tracks, Price also played melodica, which he used in the same way that blues musicians would normally use the harmonica.

This kind of instrumental experimentation would soon further emphasise the split between Price and Burden, as Price would get a vox organ rather than car to piano between gigs, while Burden disliked the sound of the organ, organ, even though it became one of the defining sounds of the group.

That sound can be heard on a live recording of them a couple of months later, backing the great American blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson II at the Club of Gogo.

I'm telling everybody

I'm not backing no more wrong with snakes.

One person who definitely didn't dislike the sound of the electric organ was Graham Bond, the Hammond organ player with Alex's Corners Band, who we mentioned briefly back in the episode on the Rolling Stones.

Bond and a few other members of the Corner Group had quit, and had formed their own group, the Graham Bond Organisation, which had originally featured a guitarist named John McLaughlin, but by this point consisted of Bond, saxophone player Dick Hextall Smith, and the rhythm section Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker.

They wouldn't make an album until 1965, but live recordings of them from around this time exist, though in relatively poor quality.

The Graham Bond organisation played at the club a go go, and soon Bond was raving back in London about this group from Newcastle he'd heard.

Arrangements were quickly made for them to play in London.

By this time, the Rolling Stones had outgrown the small club venues they'd been playing, and a new band called the Yardbirds were playing all the stones' old venues.

A trade was agreed.

The Yardbirds would play all the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues combo's normal gigs for a couple of weeks, and the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo would play the Ardbirds, or rather, the Animals would.

None of the members of the group could ever agree on how they got their new name, and not all of them liked it.

But when they played those gigs in London in December 1963, just three months after getting together, that was how they were billed, and it was as the Animals that they were signed by Mickey Most.

Mickey Most was one of the new breed of independent producers that were cropping up in London, following in Joe Meek's footsteps, like Andrew Oldham.

Most had started out as a singer in a duo called The Most Brothers, which is where he got his stage name.

The Most Brothers had only released one single.

But then, most had moved to South Africa, where he'd had 11 number one hits, with cover versions of American rock singles, backed by a band called the Playboys.

Deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans, way back up in the woods amongst the evergreens.

A student loved Kevin made up of the wood.

Lived a country boy named Johnny Bigura.

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play the guitar just like a ring-on-a-bell.

Go, go, go, go.

A go, Johnny, go as it go.

A go, Johnny, go as it go.

He'd returned to the UK in 1963 and been less successful here as a performer, and so he decided to move into production.

And the animals were were his first signing.

He signed them up and started licensing their records to EMI, and in January 1964, the Animals moved down to London.

There has been a lot of suggestion over the years that the Animals resented Mickey Most pushing them in a more pop direction, but their first single was an inspired compromise between the group's blues purism and most's pop instincts.

The song they recorded dates back at least to 1935, when the State Street Boys, a group that featured Big Bill Brunsy, recorded Don't Tear My Clothes.

Baby, let's go cross town.

Place where we can clown.

We can get drunk and clown, Mama.

Bray come down, but with it, Mama, don't you tie my clothes.

That song got picked up and adapted by a lot of other blues singers, like Blind Boy Fuller, who recorded it as Mama Let Me Lay It On You in 1938.

Mama, let me lead on you.

Mama, let me lead on you.

I'll give you this thing in this war-round world.

Let me lead on you.

Let me lead on you.

I'll buy you swegular news.

That had in turn been picked up by the Reverend Gary Davis, who came up with his own arrangement of the song.

You tell what you want to do, baby, let me lay it on you,

baby, let me lay it on you.

I give you everything in any god-almighted world, baby, if you just let me lay it on you.

Eric von Schmidt, a folk singer from Massachusetts, had learned that song from Davis, and Bob Dylan had in turn learned it from von Schmidt and included it on his first album as Baby Let Me Follow You Down.

Baby, let

The animals knew the song from that version, which they loved, but most had come across it in a different way.

He'd heard a version which had been inspired by Dylan, but had been radically reworked.

Burt Burns had produced a single on Atlantic for a soul singer called Hoagie Land, and on the B side had been a new arrangement of the song, retitled Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand, and adapted by Burns and Wes Farrell, a songwriter who had written for the Chevrelles.

Land's version had started with an intro in which Land is clearly imitating Sam Cooke.

really paid them any mind.

And baby, when I

saw you,

somehow

I knew

that you were the love

in kind.

But after that intro, which seems to be totally original to Burns and Farrell, Lance's track goes into a very upbeat, twist-flavoured song, with a unique guitar riff and Latin feel, both of them very much in the style of Burns's other songs, but clearly an adaptation of Dylan's version of the old song.

Most had picked up that record on a trip to America, and decided that the Animals should record a version of the song based on that record.

Hilton Valentine would later claim that this record, whose title and artist he could never remember, and it's quite possible that Most never even told the band who the record was by, was not very similar at all to the Animals' version, and that they'd just kicked around the song and come up with their own version.

But listening to it, it is very obviously modelled on Land's version.

They cut out Land's intro and restored a lot of Dylan's lyric, but musically, it's Land all the way.

The track starts like this:

you right.

If you just let me take you home

both have a breakdown section with spoken lyrics over staccato backing, though the two sets of lyrics are different.

Compare the animals.

And land.

I got you to be, I needed my full-time love.

Now, these are arms we'll make for just your size.

So get them, baby, where you belong.

Now you know I don't mind on occasionally.

And both have the typical Burt Burns call and response ending.

Lands.

Come on, baby.

Come on, baby.

my bad.

Come on, baby.

Come on, baby.

Promise to love you.

Promise to love our baby.

And the animals.

So, whatever Valentine's later claims, the track very much was modelled on the earlier record.

But it's still one of the strongest remodellings of an American RB record by a British group in this time period, and an astonishingly accomplished record, which made number 21.

The Animal's second single was another song that had been recorded on Dylan's first album.

House of the Rising Sun has been argued by some, though I think it's a tenuous argument, to originally date to the seventeenth-century English folk song Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.

When a little masgrave to the church did go, God's only word to hear

He went and he stood all at the church door

He watched the priest at his mass

But he had more mind of the fair women Than he had of our ladies grave What we do know is that the song was circulating in Appalachia in the early years of the 20th century, and it's that version that was first recorded in 1933 under the name Rising Sun Blues by Clarence Ashley and Gwen Foster.

The song has been described as about several things.

About alcoholism, about sex work, about gambling, depending on the precise version.

It's often thought, for example, that the song was always sung by women and was about a brothel, but there are lots of variants of it, sung by both men and women before it reached its most famous form.

Dave Van Ronk, who put the song into the form by which it became best known, believed at first that it was a song about a brothel, but he later decided it was probably about the New Orleans women's prison, which in his accounting used to have a carving of a rising sun over the doorway.

Van Ronk's version traces back originally to a field recording Alan Lomax had made in 1938 of a woman named Georgia Turner from Kentucky.

Never do this I have done

this

in you, Larlin.

Van Ronk had learned the song from a record by Hallie Wood, a friend of the Lomaxes, who had recorded a version based on Turner's in 1953.

one.

Well, if I had listened to what mama said, I'd have been at home today,

but being so young and Van Ronk took Wood's version of Turner's version of the song and rearranged it, changing the chords around, adding something that changed the whole song.

He introduced a descending bass line, mostly in semitones, which, as Van Ronk put it, is a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folk singers.

It's actually something you'd get a fair bit in Baroque music as well, and Van Ronk introducing this into the song is probably what eventually led to things like Fockelharum's A Whiter Shade of Pale, Ripping Off Bark, doing essentially the same thing.

What Van Ronk did was a single trick.

You play a descending scale, mostly in semitones, while holding the same chord shape, which creates a lot of interesting chords.

The bass line he played is basically this.

And he held an A minor shape over that bass line, giving a chord sequence A minor, A minor over G, A minor over F sharp, F.

This is a trick that's used in hundreds and hundreds of songs later in the sixties and onwards.

Everything from Sunny Afternoon by the Kinks, to Go Now by the Moody Blues, to Forever by the Beach Boys.

But it was something that at this point belonged in the realms of art music and jazz, more than in folk, blues or rock'n'roll.

Of course it sounds rather better when he did it.

House of the Rising Sun soon became the highlight of Van Monck's live act, and his most requested song.

Dylan took Van Monck's arrangement, but he wasn't as sophisticated a musician as Van Ronk, so he simplified the chords.

Rather than the dissonant chords Van Ronk had, he played standard rock chords that fit Van Ronk's bass line.

So instead of A minor over G, he played C with G in the bass, and instead of A minor over F sharp, he played D with an F sharp in the bass.

So Van Ronk had,

While Dylan had

The movement of the chords now follows the movement of the bass line.

It's simpler, but it's all from Van Ronk's arrangement idea.

Dylan recorded his version of Van Ronk's version for his first album.

They cold

rising sun

And it's been

the ruin

of many par girls

And me,

oh

God, I'm a one

As Van Ronk later told the story, though I'm going to edit out one expletive here for the sake of getting past the adult content rating on Apple, one evening in 1962, I was sitting at my usual table in the back of the kettle of fish, and Dylan came slouching in.

He had been up at the Columbia Studios with John Hammond doing his first album.

He was being very mysterioso about the whole thing, and nobody I knew had been to any of the sessions except Suze, his lady.

I pumped him for information, but he was vague.

Everything was going fine, and Hey, would it be okay for me to record your arrangement of House of the Rising Sun?

Expletive.

Geez, Bobby, I'm going into the studio to do that myself in a few weeks.

Can't it wait until your next album?

A long pause.

Uh-oh.

I did not like the sound of that.

What exactly do you mean, uh-oh?

Well, he said sheepishly, I've already recorded it.

You did what?

I flew into a Donald Duck rage, and I fear I may have said something unkind that could be heard over in Chelsea.

Van Ronck and Dylan fell out for a a couple of weeks, though they later reconciled, and Van Ronk said of Dylan's performance, It was essentially my arrangement, but Bobby's reading had all the nuance and subtlety of a Neanderthal with a stone hand axe, and I took comfort thereby.

Van Ronk did record his version, as we heard, but he soon stopped playing the song live, because he got sick of people telling him to play that Dylan song.

The Animals learned the song from the Dylan record, and decided to introduce it to their set on their first national tour, supporting Chuck Berry.

All the other acts were only doing rock and roll and RB, and they thought a folk song might be a way to make them stand out, and it instantly became the highlight of their act.

The way all the members except Alan Price told the story, the main instigators of the arrangement were Eric Burden, the only member of the group who had been familiar with the song before hearing the Dylan album, and Hilton Valentine, who came up with the arpeggiated guitar part.

Their arrangement followed Dylan's rearrangement of Van Ronk's rearrangement, except they dropped the scalar bass line altogether.

So for example, instead of a D with an F sharp in the bass, they just play a plain open D chord.

The F sharp that Van Ronk introduced is still in there, as the third, but the descending line is now just implied by the chords, not explicitly stated in the bass, where Charles Chandler just played root notes.

In the middle of the tour, the group were called back into the studio to record their follow-up single, and they had what seemed like it might be a great opportunity.

The TV show Ready Steady Go wanted the animals to record a version of the old Ray Charles song, Talking About You, to use as their theme.

The group travelled down from Liverpool after playing a show there, and went into the studio in London at three o'clock in the morning before heading to Southampton for the next night's show.

But they needed to record a B-side first, of course, and so before getting round to the main business of the session, they knocked off a quick one-tick performance of their live showstopper.

I know

I'm one.

On hearing the playback, everyone was suddenly convinced that that,

not talking about you, should be the A-side.

But there was a problem.

The record was 4 minutes and 20 seconds long, and you just didn't ever release a record that long.

The rule was generally that songs didn't last longer than 3 minutes, because radio stations wouldn't play them.

But Most was eventually persuaded by Chaz Chandler that the track needed to go out as it was, with no edits.

It did, but when it went out, it had only one name on as the arranger, which, when you're recording a public domain song, makes you effectively the songwriter.

According to all the members other than Price, the group's manager, Mike Jeffrey, who was close to Price, had explained to them that you needed to just put one name down on the credits, but not to worry, as they would all get a share of the songwriting money.

According to Price, meanwhile, he was the sole arranger.

Whatever the truth, Price was the only one who ever got any songwriting royalties from their version of the song, which went to number one in the UK and the US.

Although the version released as a single in the US was cut down to three minutes, with some brutal edits, particularly to the organ solo.

None of the group liked what was done to the US single edit, and the proper version was soon released as an album track everywhere.

The Animals version was a big enough hit that it inspired Dylan's new producer Tom Wilson to do an experiment.

In late 1964, he hired session musicians to overdub a new electric backing onto an outtake version of House of the Rising Sun from the sessions from Dylan's first album, to see what it would sound like.

but young

and half in

Marley,

they cold

rising sun.

That wasn't released at the time, it was just an experiment Wilson tried, but it would have ramifications we'll be seeing throughout the rest of the podcast.

Incidentally, Dave Van Ronk had the last laugh at Dylan, who had to drop the song from his own sets because people kept asking him if he'd stolen it from the Animals.

The Animals' next single, I'm Craying, was their first and only self written A side, written by Price and Burden.

It was a decent record, and made the top ten in the UK and the top twenty in the US.

But Price and Burden were never going to become another Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards.

They just didn't like each other by this point.

The record after that, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, was written by the jazz songwriters Benny Benjamin and Horace Ott, and had originally been recorded by Nina Simone in an orchestral version that owed quite a bit to Burt Bacharach.

some bad.

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good.

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood.

The animals version rarely suffers in comparison to that.

I was going to say something about how their reinterpretation is as valid in its own way as Simone's original, and stands up against it.

But actually listening to them back to back as I was writing this, rather rather than separately, as I always previously had, I changed my mind, because I really don't think it does.

It's a great record, and it's deservedly considered a classic single, but compared to Simone's version, it's lightweight, rushed, and callow.

Simone was apparently furious at the animals recording, which they didn't understand, given that she hadn't written the original.

And according to John Steele, she and Burden later had a huge screaming row about the record.

In Steele's version, Simone eventually grudgingly admitted that they weren't so bad for a bunch of white boys, but that doesn't sound to me like the attitude Simone would take.

But Steele was there and I wasn't.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was followed by a more minor single, a cover of Sam Cook's Bring It On Home to Me, which would be the last single by the group to feature Alan Price.

On the 28th of April 1965, the group were about to leave on a European tour.

Chas Chandler, who shared a flat with Price, woke Price up and then got in the shower.

When he got out of the shower, Price wasn't in the flat, and Chandler wouldn't see Price again for 18 months.

Chandler believed until his death that while he was in the shower, Price's first royalty check for arranging House of the Rising Sun had arrived, and Price had decided then and there that he wasn't going to share the money as agreed.

The group quickly rushed to find a fill-in keyboard player for the tour, and 19-year-old Mick Gallagher was with them for a couple of weeks before being permanently replaced by Dave Roebery.

Gallagher would later go on to be the keyboard player with Ian Jury and the Blockheads, as well as playing on several tracks by The Clash.

Price, meanwhile, went on to have a number of solo hits over the next few years, starting with a version of I Put a Spell on You, in an arrangement which the other animals later claimed had originally been worked up as an animal's track.

me down,

I'll put a spell on you

Because

you're mine

I'll put a spell on you

Because you're mine

Price would go on to make many great solo records, introducing the songs of Randy Randy Newman to a wider audience, and performing in a jazz-influenced RB style, very similar to Moes Allison.

The Animals' first record with their new keyboard player was their greatest single.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place had been written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, and had originally been intended for the Righteous Brothers, but they'd decided to have Mann record it himself.

where the sun forgets to shine,

people say they're just, they know use in trying.

They know use in drive, oh girl.

Now you're young and old, so pretty.

Staying here with me and bright.

But before that version was released, the animals had heard Mann's piano demo of the song and cut their own version, and Mann's was left on the shelf.

What the animals did to the song horrified Cynthia Weill, who considered it the worst record of one of her songs ever, though one suspects that's partly because it sabotaged the chances for her husband's single.

But to my mind, they vastly improved on the song.

They tightened the melody up a lot, getting rid of a lot of interjections.

They reworked big chunks of the lyric, for example changing, Oh girl, now you're young and oh so pretty, staying here would be a crime, because you'll just grow old before your time, to Now my girl you're so young and pretty, and one thing I know is true, you'll be dead before your time is due, and making subtler changes, like changing if it's the last thing that we do, to if it's the last thing we ever do, improving the scansion.

They kept the general sense of the lyrics, but changed more of the actual words than they kept, and to my ears at least, every change they made was an improvement.

And most importantly, they excised the overlong bridge altogether.

I can see what Man and Weill were trying to do with the bridge.

Righteous Brothers' songs would often have a call-and-response section building to a climax, where Bill Medley's low voice and Bobby Hatfield's high one would alternate and then come together.

But that would normally come in the middle, building towards the last chorus.

Here it comes between every verse and chorus and completely destroys the song's momentum.

It just sounds like noodling.

The Animals version, by contrast, is a masterpiece of dynamics, of slow builds and climaxes and dropping back down again.

It's one of the few times I've wished I could just drop the entire record in, rather than excerpting a section, because it depends so much for its effect on the way the whole structure of the track works together.

He's been working and slaving his life away.

Oh, yes, I know it.

He's been working so hard.

Oh, mom's been working to favour

every night and to him.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

We gotta get out of this place.

If it's the last thing we ever do,

From a creator's rights perspective, I entirely agree with Cynthia Weill that the group shouldn't have messed with her song.

But from a listener's point of view, I have to say that they turned a decent song into a great one, and one of the greatest singles of all time.

We Gotta Get Out of This Place was followed by another lesser but listenable single, It's My Life, which seemed to reinforce a pattern of a great animals single being followed by a merely okay one.

But that was the point at which the animals and most would part company.

The group were getting sick of most attempts to make them more poppy.

They signed to a new label, Decker, and got a new producer, Tom Wilson, the man who we heard earlier experimenting with Dylan's sound.

But the group started to fall apart.

After their next single, Inside Looking Out, a Prism Worksong collected by the Lomaxes, and the album Animalisms, John Steele left the group, tired of not getting any money, and went to work in a shop.

The album After Animalisms, confusingly titled Animalism, was also mostly produced by Wilson, and didn't even feature the musicians in the band on two of the tracks, which Wilson farmed out to a protégé of his, Frank Zappa, to produce.

Those two tracks featured Zeppa on guitar and members of the wrecking crew, with only Burden from the actual group.

You love me, baby.

I tell you what I'm gonna do.

I love it, I'd still

kill everybody to get some love from you.

Won't you love me?

Come on,

I want you.

Soon the group would split up and would discover that their management had thoroughly ripped them off.

There had been a scheme to bank their money in the Bahamas for tax reasons, in a bank which mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth.

Burden would form a new group, known first as the New Animals and later as Eric Burden and the Animals, who would have some success, but not on the same level.

There were a handful of reunions of the original line-up of the group between 1968 and the early 80s, but they last played together in 1983.

Burden continues to tour the US as Eric Burden and the Animals.

Alan Price continues to perform successfully as a solo artist.

We'll be picking up with Chas Chandler later, when he moves from bass playing into management, so you'll hear more about him in future episodes.

John Steele, Dave Roebery, and Hilton Valentine reformed a version of the Animals in the 1990s, originally with Jim Rodford, formerly of the Kinks and Argent, on bass.

Valentine left that group in 2001, and Rowberry died in 2003.

Steele now tours the UK as The Animals and Friends, with Mick Gallagher, who had replaced Price briefly in 1965, on keyboards.

I've seen them live twice, and they put on an excellent show, though the second time one woman behind me did indignantly say, as the singer started, That's not Abbott Clapton, before starting to sing along happily.

And Hilton Valentine moved to the US and played briefly with Burden's Animals after quitting Steels, before returning to his first love, Skiffle.

He died exactly four weeks ago today and will be missed.

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A book based on the first 50 episodes of the podcast, from Savoy Swingers to Clock Rockers, is now available.

Search Andrew Hickey 500 Songs on your favourite online bookstore or visit the links in the show notes.

This podcast is written and narrated by me, Andrew Hickey, and produced by me and Tilt Ariser.

Visit 500songs.com

that's 500 the numbers songs.com

to read transcripts and liner notes and get links to hear the full versions of songs accepted here.

If you've enjoyed the show and feel it's worth reviewing, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

But more importantly, tell just one person that you liked this podcast.

Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves.

Thank you very much for listening.