We Gotta Get Out of this Place by The Animals.
More
than two months of Cronavirus
confinement for many of us and yesterday’s torrential downpour and nuisance
flooding in these parts have pushed a lot of us over the edge. A primal scream seems called for. We have just what you need courtesy of The Animals.
The
Animals were an English rhythm and blues
and rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960’s.
They band moved to London upon
finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and
especially for their deep-voiced front man
Eric Burdon. Their breakthrough #1 hit The House of the Rising Sun turned a New Orleans honky-tonk blues about a girl gone wrong turned brothel
whore into a blues lament for a lad led
astray and set the tone a raw edged style quite different from those nice
boys The Beatles or even the blusier rockers The Rolling Stones. But unlike those other British bands, they
did little original music of their own creations relying instead on covers, adaptations, and professional songwriters. Their hits included It’s My Life, Inside
Looking Out, I’m Crying, and Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.
The Animals in 1965-- Eric Burdon, vocals'Alan Price, Keyboards' Chas Chandler,bass; Hilton Valentine, guitar; John Steel, drums. |
Under
the name Eric Burdon and the Animals,
the much-changed line-up moved to California
and achieved new 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. Altogether,
the group had ten Top Twenty hits on
both the UK Singles Chart and the Billboard
Hot 100 In the U.S.
Burdon
was the working class son of an electrical repairman who described his
childhood as a dark nightmare” that “should’ve
been penned by Charles Dickens.” Due to the river pollution and humidity in
Newcastle he suffered asthma attacks daily. During primary school, he was “stuck
at the rear of the classroom of around 40 to 50 kids and
received constant harassment from
kids and teachers alike”. He went on to describe his primary school as “jammed
between a slaughterhouse and a shipyard on the banks of the Tyne. Some
teachers were sadistic—others pretended not to notice—and sexual
molestation and regular corporal
punishment with a leather strap
was the order of the day,”
Eric Burdon circa 1968. |
He
developed an early interest in American
jazz—Louis Armstrong was his first hero—and later blues. He switched from jazz trombone to singing while studying at the Newcastle Art College. He hung out with a tough and hard drinking
crowd from which the original members of The Animals were recruited before
moving to London. He was only 23 when The Animals hit with House of the Rising Sun.
After
the Animals broke up Burdon went on to front Californian funk rock band War in 1970 with singles like Spill
the Wine, Tobacco Road, Paint It
Black, and They Can't Take Away Our Music. Since
the mid-70’s he has performed as a solo act and with several bands under different
names. He continues to work today at
age 79.
Burdon still going strong in 2018. |
Today’s
song We
Gotta Get Out of This Place was written by the Brill Building songwriting Barry
Mann and Cynthia Weil and
originally intended for the blue eyed
soul Righteous Brothers who had achieved their hit with the duo’s You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ but was snatched up by Mickie Most, the Animals’ producer. The song was recorded in England at Columbia Gramophone studios. Two takes
were recorded, one released in the United
Kingdom and another released by the band’s American label MGM. There were only minor variations in a line or two of lyrics but many critics thought that the American version feared a rawer and more
emotional reading by Burdon.
The
song reached # 2 on the UK pop singles
chart on August 14, 1965 held out of the top slot by the Beatles Help!
And made it to #13 on the U.S.
pop singles chart but its cultural
importance transcended those numbers.
Burden heartfelt performance was a reflection of his own experiences in
Newcastle—the bleak town he had to get out of.
We Gotta Get Out of this Place was voted the #1 by the troops themselves like the grunt in Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick’s documentary series The Vietnam War |
It
resonated first with teenagers and
was soon a defiant scream and became
an anthem of defiance at high school
proms and graduation parties. But it was really adopted by U.S. troops in Vietnam. It was central to
the G.I. grunt’s soundtrack to the war and was later used in theatrical movies like Hamburger
Hill and the TV series Tour
of Duty and China Beach.
In
a 2012 keynote speech to an audience
at the South by Southwest music festival, Bruce
Springsteen performed an abbreviated version of the Animals’ song on acoustic guitar and then said, “That’s
every song I’ve ever written. That’s all of them. I’m not kidding, either. That’s Born
to Run, Born in the U.S.A.”
Surely
it is just as apt for our current sequestration.
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