WAR HERO

On a rare visit to Britain, Eric Burdon spills the wine to Alan Clayson

His hair is now quite white and the lines on his face reveal that his 67 years on this planet haven’t been quiet ones. Yet Eric Burdon still looks distinctly like Eric Burdon.

One of the most charismatic figures to leap from the TV screen during the 60s beat boom, Burdon’s subsequent ventures, however successful, have always been measured – in Britain anyway – against his achievements with The Animals, whose career suffered more than most from the discords that make pop groups what they are. In 1966 they quit while they were ahead, with their Don’t Bring Me Down ensconced in Top 20s all around the world. Eric then fronted a New Animals, but the old bunch reassembled periodically, most conspicuously for a world tour in 1983, 14 years before drummer John Steel and guitarist Hilton Valentine became mainstays of an Animals targeted for the nostalgia trail.

Today, Steel is the only member of the original Tyneside outfit performing in this incarnation, while Valentine plays in a US-based outfit led by Burdon.

Visiting London from his California home recently to undertake a reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall with War – with whom he joined forces in the early 1970s for three albums that included the US No 1 single, Spill The Wine …

by Alan Clayson
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