The Animals
 Alan Price started out as a northern British bluesman, playing
with a combo of Hilton Valentine, Bryan 'Chas' Chandler and John Steel on
the Newcastle club circuit.
Price played a mean set of keyboards
and had a soul-tinged voice that was sexy but lacked the ferocity
to cover the grubbier end of rock.
However, in 1962 they recruited a suitably mean lead singer to
fill out the sound and beef up the image.
Eric Burdon had one of
the grimiest voices in the business and would throw himself into
the songs, whip the band into overdrive and slaughter the
audience.
The original name of the group, The Alan Price Combo, had to go
and The Animals came into being.
Supporting older, black musical legends like John Lee Hooker
and Sonny Boy Williams as they toured the UK, the band grew into a
professional unit, with Eric perfecting his skills as a
rabble-rouser. The only dark cloud on the horizon was the rivalry
between Alan and new front man Eric, and the first signs of
resentment soon began to show.
In 1964 they moved to London, where they teamed up with
then-unknown producer Mickie Most, and signed to Columbia. They
blasted their way through Price's arrangement of the traditional House
Of The Rising Sun, which went to #1 in the UK, the USA and
around the world.
 For
the rest of the 60s, The Animals hit the charts regularly, most
famously with Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood and We Gotta
Get Out Of This Place.
However, it wasn't long before ego problems resurfaced, and
only two LPs, The Animals (1964) and Animal Tracks
(1965), were recorded before Price left to pursue a more
mainstream solo career.
He was quickly replaced by Newcastle's Dave Rowberry. Steel had
also left the band by the release of its third album, Animalism
(1966), the new drummer being Barry Jenkins (ex-Nashville Teens).
In the limbo of these personnel changes, Burdon recorded a solo
single and an LP (Eric Is Here) and moved his base to
California.
There he formed a second incarnation of the band, Eric Burdon
& The Animals, comprising Burdon, Jenkins, guitarist Vic
Briggs, John Wieder (guitar/violin) and Danny McCulloch (bass).
This line-up produced two LPs with a different style from the
R&B stompers they'd kicked around in the clubs of London and
the north of England.
1967's Wind Of Change featured tracks with titles such
as Poem By The Sea, It's All Meat, and Yes, I Am
Experienced, Burdon's reply to the title of Jimi Hendrix's
just-released debut album.
The new, 'psychedelic' Animals did fairly well, with chart
successes at home and in the USA (including Monterey and San
Franciscan Nights), but not well enough to avoid McCulloch and
Briggs being replaced by bassist Zoot Money and guitarist Andy
Summers.
This final line-up was packed full of skilled musicians, each
of whom had his own musical statement to make. Expecting them to
function as a unit was demanding too much and after two minor LP
releases, The Animals folded.
 Alan
Price was by now an 'all-round entertainer' having done TV,
novelty songs, and worked briefly with fellow British bluesman
Georgie Fame in a kind of R&B supergroup.
Chas Chandler (pictured at left) had hung up his bass to
reinvent himself as a producer, working with Hendrix and British
glam-popsters Slade.
Wieder went on to become part of Family, Zoot Money went solo,
and Andy Summers worked with Kevin Ayers and Kevin Coyne, before
joining The Police.
Eric Burdon kept on rocking, digging back down into the dirt
for his next venture, War.
War's urban, Latin-tinged funk had to be put briefly on hold
while the original Animals re-formed in early 1976 , releasing an
album, Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, which
generated some interest on the nostalgia circuit.
However, Price left almost immediately to continue his solo
career and nothing more was heard from The Animals until they
briefly re-formed again in 1983, recording a studio LP, Ark
and issuing Rip It To Shreds, a live hits
compilation.
They then, once again, returned to solo projects.
Chas Chandler died on 17 July 1996 at North Tyneside General
Hospital, Newcastle, after suffering a heart attack. He was 57.
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