Eric Burdon & The Animals

Anyone picking this up expecting a re-tread of The Animals circa 1964 - 66 will be rather disappointed.
This is Eric Burdon and his new band through an incredibly productive period between 1967 & 1968. The two most psychedelic years in history, when most of the western world was hovering on the brink of revolution and when music was everywhere.

These albums show Eric Burdon experiencing the freedom of the times, experimenting with different styles of music and themes, allowing his resentment and angst to pour out unchecked and with a label – MCA – behind him who didn’t force him into any fixed ‘thing’.

This 5CD set contains ‘Winds Of Change’ in both stereo and mono versions from ‘67, ‘The Twain Shall Meet’ from 1968, ‘Every One Of Us’ from ’68 and ‘Love Is’ from December 68 and the thing that struck me is the anger and passion in Burdon’s vocals alongside the superb playing of the band.
Only one of the original Animals is present here (they split off in ’66) and the band here are: Vic Briggs & John Weider on guitars, Danny McCulloch on bass and Barry Johnson on drums (‘Winds Of Change’) followed by Barry Jenkins who was originally with the Animals.
On ‘Love Is’ the guitarist is one Andy Summers who reappeared a few years later playing in The Police! Throughout the whole set though is the sound of Eric Burdon and that cannot be beat.

The four albums show a remarkable spread of moods and sounds – on the down side, every style of the times and every gimmick seems to have been incorporated into the sound of the band – being created and some truly stunning and sinister songs coming out of it all. ‘The Black Plague’ on ‘Winds Of Change’ being a chilling example of what they were capable of, or ‘Sky Pilot’ from ‘The Twain Shall Meet’ a psychedelic anthem to the hypocrisy of the Vietnam war – which bizarrely leads into ‘We Love You Lil’ which opens with the theme from ‘Lili Marlene’.

The spread of original material suggests that they were touring too much to settle down and write songs and had to rely on some covers to fill out the albums but I really did love their version of ‘Paint It Black’.

Overall, this is a fantastic re-issue. The remastering is brilliant, there is a superb booklet authored by Malcolm Dome and the package is neat and complete with reproductions of the original covers.

I rarely give re-issues an ‘essential’ rating but this time around it is worth it because these albums have been so sorely neglected over the years and hearing them here is glorious technicolour gives them real new life and vivacity.