The Animals were a British band of the 1960’s. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature song and transatlantic No. 1 hit single, “The House of the Rising Sun”, as well as by hits such as “We Gotta Get out of This Place”, “It’s My Life”, “I’m Crying” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”. Later, under the name Eric Burdon and the Animals, the much-changed act moved to California and achieved commercial success as a psychedelic and hard rock band with hits like “San Franciscan Nights”, “When I Was Young” and “Sky Pilot”, before disbanding at the end of the decade. The Animals were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. (More from Wikipedia)
You can talk about your pioneers of rock and roll – Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, James Brown, just to name a few – and you can even bring up your British Invasion greats – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, just to name another few. All of them are already in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. However, you can play a lot of more modern rock records all day long and not really discern more than a hint of their direct influence; no question it’s in the DNA, but actual Elvis Presley-style vocals or Chuck Berry guitar licks or James Brown wails are elusive.
That is not so with Link Wray: His influence is front and center on a good 50% of the records that I play, because he is credited with introducing the “power chord” on electric guitar to rock and roll, a technique whose effect is often enhanced by distortion.
The Rolling Stones were from London, as were the Kinks, the Who and the Yardbirds. The Animals came from Newcastle, an industrial backwater like Liverpool, though on the opposite coast. The Hollies were formed in Manchester, though the bandmembers came from East Lancashire. The Moody Blues were from the Birmingham area; Birmingham, Alabama (one of the first major industrialized cities in the American South) is named for the British city.
(July 2013)
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The Goldie and the Gingerbreads 1964 recording of “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” made it to #25 in the UK. Here in this country, Herman’s Hermits released “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” two weeks earlier; the heavy promotion of that song cut them out of the U. S. charts. After meeting the Animals, Goldie and the Gingerbreads was signed for a European tour, where they performed with the Who’s Who of the British Invasion: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Hollies, the Kinks, and others.
(October 2013)
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