Newcastle Herald Weekender
| AFTER almost 40 years in showbiz, The Animals' main attraction is on the move again. Eric Burdon, the R&B man responsible for the worldwide hit We Gotta Get Out Of This Place (dedicated to Allied soldiers fighting the Vietnam War), is relocating from downtown Hollywood high up into the Los Angeles hills. |
| "It's getting too crowded down in the valley," explains Burdon, who led the British Invasion of the 1960s along with acts such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. "There's too many cars and not enough places to park, so I've moved up into the mountains." |
| But please don't let him be misunderstood. |
| "I don't mind people, but I get enough of that action on the road so I prefer the peace and quiet when I'm at home," says the singer who once quit music because it was getting "too competitive". |
| "But I'm not complaining because I've still got lots of work. I'm moving into a new house and I'm setting up a new office." |
| "All I know is that I've got a new CD with a lot of really great songs on it and I'm looking for a deal to distribute it. I have a new book out and I'm also looking for an Australian deal for that. I've got a DVD coming out in June, so at least I'm busy." |
| Burdon, who will toast his 62nd birthday on May 11, is also happy for the first time in "quite a few years if you must know". |
| That has almost as much to do with his hectic schedule, which includes a concert tonight at Doyalson-Wyee RSL and another tomorrow at Wests Leagues, as it does the new lady in his life. |
| "I've been a bit sort of depressed, but I'm all right now," he says. "I was lonely. I wasn't too happy with what was happening in my life but then I found this woman and she changed everything women have a habit of doing that." |
| "She changed everything and now she's pretty much in control of everything." |
| "Anyway, things are looking much better for me than they did last year or even last week." |
| The woman is Marianna, a beautiful 20-something law student from Greece whom Burdon met while touring through Germany. |
| He brought her on his last Australian tour 18 months ago but she will not be accompanying him this time as she has university commitments in Athens. |
| "She worships me," he says. "I don't know why but she does. She's a good girl ... what else can I tell you? She's doing the brunt of the paper work involved with this move. I just go `what's that, where's that?' and she organises it." |
| When Burdon falls for a woman, he falls hard. The 1970s masterpiece 'Spill The Wine' was actually inspired by the way his then Mexican girlfriend walked into a room. |
| "You can probably work out that Marianna's a lot younger than me, but we'll meet up again." Burdon assures himself and Weekender. |
| "We have to realise that our lives are meant to be spent together and apart. I suppose that keeps our relationship fresh." Their relationship has borne more than love and a mountain mansion. |
| Burdon visited Marianna's homeland recently to record a track with leading Greek pop band Pixlax (coincidentally, Gordon Gano, whose American band the Violent Femmes play at Panthers Clubnova Newcastle tonight, also did a duet with Pixlax). |
| "I just recorded a track in Greece and did a few live appearances with them which down very well," Burdon says. "Pixlax invited me over to do some work with them and I thought it would be interesting. I'll try anything once." |
| English-born Burdon has a long and successful history of experimenting with different musical groups and genres. |
| After the original R&B Animals disbanded in the mid-1960s, Burdon undertook a solo project backed by an orchestra then re-emerged with a new rock band, which aptly became known as the "New Animals". |
| The New Animals sent the crowd wild at the legendary Monterey Pop Festivals of the late 1960s, performing classics such as San Franciscan Nights, Paint It Black, Hey Gyp and Gin House Blues. |
| But Burdon set himself free from The New Animals and linked soon afterwards with harp great Lee Oskar to form a funky percussion outfit called War, which fired off the chart-toppers Tobacco Road and Spill The Wine. |
| Considering this incarnation, Weekender wondered out loud what Burdon thought of the conflict in Iraq. |
| "I don't want to get into that because I don't want to get arrested," he says. |
| "Now is the time for all good men to shut up. |
| "Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about it but it certainly doesn't look too good from where I'm standing." |
| Nevertheless, he won't be installing a bomb shelter in the basement of his new Californian digs. |
| "A bomb shelter won't help me," he explains. |
| "I'm about 20 miles away from the biggest US Marine combat base in the world (Twenty-Nine Palms). If they get hit, a shelter up here's not going to do me much good." |
| After his sonic War, Burdon collaborated with jazz-bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon on an LP titled Guilty! then reunited with the original Animals for two studio albums, Before We Were Rudely Interrupted (1976) and Ark (1983), plus a live greatest hits offering. |
| Burdon returned to his solo recording pursuits, releasing two albums which led to the motion-picture Comeback, and finishing the first draft of his autobiography under the working title I Used To Be An Animal But I'm All Right Now. Burdon recently completed a more comprehensive tome that he has christened Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. |
| "I try not to think about my career too much," he says. ``I decided to write a book about it instead. If there's any Australian publishers reading this interview, I want to let them know there's a great book up for grabs. |
| "It's as complete an autobiography as you can get in 400 pages. But there's a lot more from where that came from. I intend to keep writing. I want to do some fiction. I've been living pure fiction so I might as well try to write some." |
| Burdon does not overly enjoy thinking or talking about his hits, particularly The Animals' breakthrough 1964 rendition of The House Of The Rising Sun, but he has "no problems singing them". |
| "I don't have any problems at all with them because they're good songs" he says. |
| "But everybody keeps wanting to talk about them. They all want to know about The House Of The Rising Sun for some reason. They want to know who wrote it but it's so old that nobody knows." |
| "I think it was originally an English hymn from the 15th century that came across the Atlantic with the founding fathers and was changed into an American folk song." |
| A lot has happened for and to Burdon in the two decades between his biographical volumes. |
| He lent Late Show bandmaster Paul Shaffer a hand on the CD Coast To Coast; made a brief appearance in Oliver Stone's film The Doors then played with guitarist Robbie Krieger; toured and recorded with famed keyboardist Brian Auger; did a duet with Jon Bon Jovi as part of their Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame inductions; and performed a tribute to Jimi Hendrix with Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell and Dr John (The Animals' founding bassist, the late Chas Chandler was manager and producer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience). |
| All of which provided him with him ample ammunition for his forthcoming first novel. |
| "I've got a whole bunch of ideas," he says. "The hard bit is trying to work out what will strike a chord with people. `I'm interested in the human experience so I'm trying to invent a character that people will pivot towards. He will be a musical character, that's for sure, because one can only write with any authenticity about things you're involved in. |
| "My hero will be a musician but it certainly won't be me. He could be a side of me that I like but it won't be all me." |
| What side does he like? |
| "That's difficult to answer." he says. "I would really have to think deep about that ... the sides of me I do like are what I glean from friends and my audiences. The best side of me is that I can still entertain people for a couple of hours and watch them walk away satisfied." |
| And they will be satisfied this weekend after hearing The House Of The Rising Sun, which, like him in some ways, made the transformation from Brit beat to American cult status with a few dark deviations. "I suppose it is a bit like me," he acknowledges. |
| "I'm in the middle of writing another DVD that the BBC in London have shown some interested in. |
| "It's a documentary on me going back to my home town of Newcastle in England. I'm a Geordie, but I haven't been there in 20 years. That's why I was so intrigued when I learned that I was performing in your Newcastle. But you're not Geordies, are you? You're Novocastrians ... Or is it Nouveau Casilians?" |
| "I'm actually sitting here drinking nouveau Australian wine. You have some good bottles and reasonably cheap too. I'm drinking a Black Swan Merlot from South-East Australia, maaate." |
| "I've never had any reason to go back. My family always came out to California to see me. I don't have any friends left there but I still love the place, although I can't stand the weather." |
| Burdon will this weekend sprinkle fresh tracks from a yet-to-be-released album through sets of what have become rock standards. |
| "I haven't got a title for the album," he admits. "I won't decide on that until I get a distribution deal." |
| "At the moment it's called Eric Burdon's new album, which has a got a ring to it." |
| "What I can say is that it's multi-faceted. There's a couple of blues tracks, a few rock tracks and some ballads." |
| Newspaper advertisements spruik that Burdon will backed by another menagerie of New Animals, keyboardist-violinist Martin Gerschwitz, guitarist Dean Restum, bassist Dave Meros and drummer Bernard Pershey. |
| Two other original members, drummer John Steel and guitarist Hilton Valentine, ventured Down Under without Burdon six years ago but still calling themselves The Animals. |
| "I have the right to call myself The Animals," Burdon says. "I was lead singer in the band and it was me that came up with the name and I've worked hard for 30 years, so I think I can call myself whatever I like." |
| "Of course, I'm not coming with the original Animals. One of them's dead for a start, there's one I don't talk to but I might be doing some concerts together with two of the others next year .. I just don't know." |
| '"I'm not responsible for what people put in the newspapers. I can't control that." |
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