Eric Burdon and the Animals: "San Franciscan Nights"

September 23, 1967 (1 week)

Sing with your eyes closed if you must but know that it doesn't make what you're doing any more profound or soulful.

The above is something I've been meaning to post on social media recently but I have so far resisted due to fear of backlash or, worse, of it being completely ignored — and also because my oldest and closest friend is a committed eyes closed performer. He knows how I feel about it but I don't think he needs reminding - even if by reading this review that's exactly what will happen.

It would be tempting to say that it wasn't always this way. I was once convinced that singing with eyelids firmly shut was a novelty in pop. Bernard Sumner from New Order and Canadian national treasure Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip seemed to be the only people who did it back in the early nineties. Because they were the only people I noticed doing so, I allowed them to get away with it. Then, everyone started doing it. In fact, as long as there have been stage-frightened singers, there have been those who won't open their damn eyes while singing.

It isn't done simply as a matter of avoiding crowds, however; it is also, as my un-posted Thread suggests, a way to add gravitas, particularly when there isn't much there to begin with. Eric Burdon had the good fortune to come up during the initial burst of the British Invasion but he lacked the looks and stage presence of contemporaries John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. He didn't have the look nor the personality of an entertainer. What he did have was a sick bluesy baritone. The combination of that gravelly voice and while keeping his eyes closed ensured that everyone knew that he meant it.

Being earnest in pop isn't my favourite quality but I will acknowledge that there is a place for it. As I previously blogged, the reason The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" is so effective is because of what it does to impressionable young musicians. Forget 'Dublin Soul', this is the real music of commitment. Burdon lays it out on the line and puts everything he has into it. You've got to give that much to stand any chance of making it.

But this isn't "House of the Rising Sun" we're dealing with. No, "San Franciscan Nights" is an entirely different beast. Still, I don't doubt Burdon's sincerity. He has always struck me as one of those English rock stars who loves America while wishing to have as little to do with his homeland as possible — and fair enough. Celebrating the US is one of the most quintessentially British things imaginable (along with, of course, expressing nothing but contempt for the US; I can't think of any offhand but no doubt there are a handful who have done both).

Opening as if he'd missed his calling as a carnival barker, we're treated to a rare example of Burdon's sense of humour in song as he shills for the city as place that Europeans should "save up all your bread" in order to pay it a visit. Wait, is Burdon joking? It's impossible to tell with him but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that for once he wasn't always such a deeply serious old downer. Sadly, it doesn't last once the song gets going. While there is an attempt at capturing the spirit of '67 with some wistful music and Burdon's flowery lyrics, it is nonetheless unconvincing. Eric Burdon was a blues singer from the north of England: the chap who sang "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" didn't need to tell us all about where he ended up.

Unsurprisingly, the idealism of "San Franciscan Nights" clashed with reality. George Harrison, his then-wife Patti and their entourage visited the Bay Area only a month or so earlier. Expecting to find enlightened people meditating and painting pictures, he was aghast to discover that the famed Haight-Ashbury region had become a ghetto full of stoned losers and homeless drifters. In retrospect, Burdon should have scrapped the paean to the centre of flower power and instead gone for a far gloomier take on hippie free love and dope and fuckin' in the streets in a kind of sequel to "House of the Rising Sun". Impressionable youths descend upon the city from all over only to wind up penniless and with crippling drug addictions. Those who did not end up as casualties of LSD are instead the target of cult shysters and dangerous madmen. If nothing else, it would've suited Burdon's overly-serious nature; hell, he could've even sung it with his eyes closed for all I care.

Score: 3

Eric Burdon and the Animals: "See See Rider"

October 17, 1966 (2 weeks)

For all the innovating that The Beatles were doing at the time, they couldn't do it all. For example, both Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention had put out rock double albums prior to the Fab Four's 1968 two disc set The Beatles (aka The White Album) — with a select number of jazz artists predating them as well. John, Paul, George, and Ringo pioneered such practices as the use of feedback, doubeltracking, the use of tape loops, recording backwards, and made being compositionally self-sufficient a standard (among other things), so it really isn't necessary to credit them with innovations that they had nothing to do with. (Seriously, they did not invent the concept album) They were ahead of the game yet there weren't always there first — and occasionally they could even miss the bus on certain fads in the world of pop. One trend that the Fabs ended up being surprisingly late in adopting was releasing songs that clocked in at well over the three minute mark.

This is something that I've been noticing more and more as I've been covering the Canadian number ones from 1966. Up to this point, seven singles I've reviewed have sailed past three minutes (Lou Christie's "Lightnin' Strikes", The Vogues' "Magic Town", The Mamas and the Papas' "Monday, Monday" and "I Saw Her Again", The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black", The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" and The Association's "Cherish") with another five (David and Jonathan's "Michelle", "Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", Tommy James and the Shondells' "Hanky Panky", The Hollies' "Bus Stop" and Los Bravos' "Black Is Black") coming just a few seconds short. The days of the trim two minute 45's going to the top appear to be coming to a close. (The Dave Clark Five's "At the Scene" has been the shortest of the lot with an economical one minute and fifty-two seconds).

Songs being three-or-so minutes may not seem like much of a change now but it represented a significant shift in pop. The release of both The Beatles' Rubber Soul and Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited in 1965 began to shift pop and rock recording artists away from singles and towards albums. With more running time to play with, there was less of a need to keep songs on the shorter side. With more substances being taken by musicians, time became more elastic. The old worry that DJ's weren't about to play singles for any more than three minutes could easily be shrugged off: if they were going to cut it off at the halfway mark so they could yammer on then so be it.

Clocking at just over four minutes is "See See Ride" by Eric Burdon and the Animals. (They had simply been The Animals previously but departures and a retooling of the group led to a renaming; like most acts who are altered to an "...and the..." they were never the same afterwards) Extending a 7" past conventional times is not always a mistake — Bob Dylan's extraordinary "Like a Rolling Stones" famously went on for a remarkably fat-free six minutes— but it should only be done if there's no going any shorter. Being that this is an intense 12-bar blues without any frills beyond a trippy organ, Burdon and co. could have easily shaved it down to two-and-a-half minutes and no one listening would've been the wiser. But would I like it more had it been cut down? Possibly but I can't say for sure. Had it been, say, two minutes and twenty seconds, I wouldn't have grown as tired of it but perhaps I wouldn't have noticed it as easily had it not outstayed its welcome. What got me to pay attention was that it was getting on my nerves.

Eric Burdon was always a blues singer, he had the voice for it and he was such humourless individual that he couldn't have done well in any other genre. (That said, there is wit to be found in the blues but not when it came to the leader of The Animals; to be fair to him, many British blues singers tended to be overly earnest) "See See Rider" is an old time blues number by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey and one thing it never needed prior to this version was acid rock organ slithering through the entire thing. (Come to think of it, it still doesn't need one) I've long been a sucker for the likes of Booker T. Jones and Joe Zwainul but spotting a superfluous organ solo can be painfully obvious. Remove it and we're left with yet another competent but rather pointless Animals' blues tune; added on, it just comes across as lazily pandering to the trends of the emerging psychedelic rock movement. The pressure was surely on to compete with The Beatles and Stones but if any group wasn't going to be up for the challenge it was — with all due respect — The Animals.

The Beatles, fresh from being done as a lucrative but creatively stifled live act, would quickly adapt to the move away from the two minute pop song. The four minute running time of 1967's "Strawberry Fields Forever" would soon become the rule. Not coincidentally, this was also around the time that the golden age of the pop single came to an end. The Animals were never the most natural of stars and only ever put out a respectable if unremarkable batch of 45's so it wasn't the biggest loss for them. As a blues act, they may have been looking to stretch out. Which is great but only if you happen to like that sort of thing.

Score: 4

The Animals: "The House of the Rising Sun"

September 8, 1964 (1 week)

They recently announced the cast of the quartet of biopics that will be released in 2028 on each member of The Beatles. To say there's been an outcry is an understatement. All four main actors are experienced which disappointed some who were hoping they were going to cast a set of relative unknowns. Others had been hoping for some degree of local Merseyside flair represented. Then there were complaints that some looked far too chiseled to be playing those spindly thin mop tops, although there was one notable exception. Irish actor Barry Keoghan, they claimed, is far too ugly to play Ringo Starr!

Jesus, imagine being too unattractive to pull off a convincing turn as Ringo of all people. That's gotta sting. Fair assessment or not, it seems clear to me that Keoghan really ought to have been cast as Eric Burdon instead. (You know, for that inevitable Animals biopic; I doubt very much he'll be appearing in, say, the John Lennon movie) There are only so many people out there with a face that looks like they've just sucked on a lemon so it seems like a perfect match to me.

"The House of the Rising Sun" sure is a great song for impressionable youngsters in the nineties who want to form a rock group but have no idea in how to go about doing so. Is this because it is punk or some other type of D.I.Y. genre? No, even though The Animals were one of the early exponents of the British blues boom, which was one of the original 'fool around with instruments you don't know how to play and see what comes of it' styles. No, the reason it makes such an impression on youths with guitars is because of the authenticity involved.

Authenticity? From a Newcastle five-piece that all surely went to art schools recording an ancient song about whore houses in Louisiana? Absolutely. I think you'll find that many of the most earnest of rock musicians are also the biggest fakers. Though we may try to convince ourselves otherwise, authenticity is artifice.

This is a conclusion I can make as a grown man in his late forties but it never would have occurred to me thirty years ago. Eric Burdon looked pained as he sang the words to "The House of the Rising Sun" and he even closed his eyes at times. Of course he meant every word! And I'm not accusing him of anything untoward — I don't even doubt that he was sincere. But it's still a performance. And a very strong performance at that. On the other hand, what am I doing listening to this now that I no longer dream of being a rock star myself? 

The British Invasion seemed to be cooling off a bit by the second half of 1964. Since the move from CHUM to RPM that July, The Beatles had been the sole UK act to reach the top spot. In reality, it was only just getting going. While the Merseybeat groups as well as bands who owed a debt to the Fab Four had been the early beneficiaries of the trend, acts from a wide range of areas of the British Isles who played a variety of styles were beginning to emerge. While The Beatles had a power and sound that was all their own, The Animals were one of the first groups to provide an alternative to all that sunshine pop. While the bubblegum UK groups would continue to flourish, a much more well-rounded second wave was beginning to arrive on North American shores. It won't be for a while yet until we get Rolling Stones, Who and Kinks number ones so until then it's (a) The Beatles, (b) a load of silly Brits doing what amounts to music hall and (c) The Animals.

"The House of the Rising Sun" is one of those singles that brings to mind my claim that music doesn't age, only we as listeners do. I like to think there are youths around the world who are learning from The Animals or are at least inspired by their authenticity. Youngsters could do a whole lot worse than consuming this deeply influential tune but they should also keep in mind that it's merely a stepping off point. Bob Dylan's brave but flawed version from his self-titled debut is worth hearing once but it doesn't come close to what he be recording even a year later. Similarly, Burdon and the Animals had stronger records in them, even if few would be nearly as memorable. So, get into something this powerful and gripping but then let yourself explore and be far more artificial even as you're becoming more authentic. The two needn't clash — in fact, ideally they go hand-in-hand.

Score: 7