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| BURDON FEELS BLUE |
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Friday 31-Jul-1988 - by Dave Veitch, Calgary Sun (Canada) |
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| His
voice is exactly how you'd expect it to sound -- it's so rough, he could sand a hardwood
floor by merely speaking. |
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| The
voice belongs to Eric Burdon, arguably the greatest singer of the 1960s British blues
explosion, Mick Jagger included. |
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| An
assured and enthralling interpreter of the roughest American blues and R&B, Burdon's
talents were first showcased as a member of The Animals, a Newcastle quintet that somehow
turned the traditional folk-blues number House of the Rising Sun and Nina Simone's Don't
Let Me Be Misunderstood into unlikely "pop" hits in the mid-1960s. |
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| Yet
speaking over the phone from his home in San Diego, Burdon can muster little excitement
when talking about the state of American blues. |
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| "I
must say my particular romance with African-American culture ended with people like Jimmy
Witherspoon," he says, referring to the Kansas City blues belter who died last
September. They cut a of couple albums together in the mid-1970s. |
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| "Over
the last 25 years, blues has become white boy's music. It doesn't belong to black folks
anymore. I hate to finger anybody for being responsible, but Eric Clapton led to a uniform
blues feel. You know what's coming next.... Blues has become too comfortable with itself.
It has become too warm and cosy. |
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| "I
think it's got to rip and wrench at your soul. When I was a kid in Newcastle, that's what
first impressed me about the blues -- just the concept of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters.
Even their names said it." |
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| Burdon,
who performs tonight at the Classic Rock Festival in High River, says world music -- not
just the blues -- is what excites him nowadays. |
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| "What's
needed right now, more than ever, is interracial, multinational musicians exchanging ideas
and feeding off one another," he says. |
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| Like
Peter Gabriel? |
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| "Absolutely!"
he answers. |
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| "I
think (Gabriel's) soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ is a milestone in modern
music. Peter Gabriel is highly under-rated, no matter how rated he is. He's a wonderful
player and musician." |
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| Burdon
is no stranger to world music himself. Following stints in the original blues-oriented
Animals and the more psychedelic New Animals, Burdon joined funk group Night Shift, which
soon changed its name to War. This multi-racial outfit blended Latin and Caribbean
influences with jazz, funk and pop to create world-beat music in the early-'70s, long
before the term "world beat" was coined. |
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| "What
I brought to that band was rock 'n' roll performance," says Burdon.
"Unfortunately, it didn't work out. I didn't hang around long enough to learn and
pick up from them like they picked up from me." |
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| Burdon
left War after two studio albums and a Top-5 single, 1970's Spill The Wine, although the
group continued to have great success throughout the '70s. |
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| The 57-year-old singer says he hopes to take the sound of War a few steps
further on the music he's now working on. |
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| "I
want to venture into more percussive areas.... I'm veering off into world music, ethnic
feels and touches. On the demo I'm working on, I have everything from a funk track to a
pseudo-African track." |
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| As
for the blues, Burdon maintains the music hasn't moved forward since the death of his
close pal Jimi Hendrix in 1970. |
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| "He
was the peak, the point, the apex," says Burdon, who watched in awe as Hendrix burned
his guitar performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. |
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| "I'm
always waiting to go to another event like Monterey. I'm always looking for another guitar
player like Jimi Hendrix to emerge." |
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| In
the meantime, Burdon is currently writing a followup to his 1986 autobiography, I Used To
be An Animal But I'm Alright Now, which will concentrate on his friendship with Hendrix
and his beliefs that foul play contributed to the legendary guitarist's death. |
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| "Incorporating
Jimi into my book gives me more latitude to deal with Hendrix strictly as I knew him, for
obvious reasons," Burdon says. "The Hendrix family owns everything
(Hendrix-related) these days. If it's my story and my thing, I'm free to speak my mind and
tell whatever my feelin feelings are." |
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| TONIGHT'S
CLASSIC ROCK FESTIVAL LINEUP: Streetheart (5-6 p.m.), Eric Burdon (6:30-7:45), Paul
Rodgers (8:15-9:45) and Alice Cooper (10:15-11:30). |
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